McSweeney’s

Transcript from the Annual Meeting of the Global Children’s Shoe-Sizing Consortium

Aliza Zelin Neidich — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:00:00 -0400

CHAIRPERSON: Welcome, delegates. Before we begin, I’d like to congratulate everyone on another successful year of making children’s shoe sizing completely incomprehensible.

(Applause.)

VICE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. As you know, our mission remains unchanged: no parent should ever know what size shoe their child wears.

DELEGATE FROM EUROPE: Here, here.

CHAIRPERSON: Let’s begin with the annual report. How are we doing?

ANALYST: Extremely well. Parents continue to ask questions such as, “How can my child be a size 1, a size 32, and a size 13 all at the same time?”

(Thunderous applause.)

DELEGATE FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM: I’d like to propose that we continue refusing to clarify whether a “Big Kid 4” is larger or smaller than a “Little Kid 13.”

CHAIRPERSON: Excellent suggestion. Any discussion?

DELEGATE FROM AUSTRALIA: Could we… perhaps make the transition between the two even more abrupt? Currently, some parents have discovered that size 13 is followed by size 1. This level of understanding concerns me.

VICE CHAIRPERSON: Agreed. Ideally, size 13 should be followed by a brief existential crisis.

(Murmurs of approval.)

DELEGATE FROM FRANCE: I move that we continue using completely unrelated numbering systems in every country, which absolutely should not correspond to either metric or imperial foot measurement.

CHAIRPERSON: This aligns with tradition, yes.

DELEGATE FROM FRANCE: A child should be a size 31 in Paris, a size 13 in New York, and a size 12.5 in Minneapolis.

(Standing ovation.)

ANALYST: We also have promising data that shows many parents have now saved screenshots of conversion charts they do not understand.

CHAIRPERSON: Outstanding.

DELEGATE FROM RUSSIA: I propose a new initiative. Suppose different models of shoes from the same brand fit differently?

CHAIRPERSON: Go on.

DELEGATE FROM RUSSIA: Imagine a child whose current shoe is a size 2. Their next pair, from the same company, in the same size, should either fall off immediately, prevent circulation, or… both.

(Audience chants: “Both! Both! Both!”)

CHAIRPERSON: The motion carries.

ANALYST: We also tested a pilot program in which online reviews for the same model included statements such as “Runs true to size,” “Size up two sizes,” “My son is 47 inches tall and wears a medium,” as well as a hostile note from a woman who is suing on the grounds of inclusivity about her son needing a size G.

VICE CHAIRPERSON: Incredible stuff.

DELEGATE FROM CANADA: We should address width measurements.

CHAIRPERSON: Ah yes, our most powerful weapon.

DELEGATE FROM CANADA: Parents are broaching a preliminary understanding of conventional “wide” vs. “standard” widths. Therefore, I suggest we introduce additional categories including: extra wide, slim wide, athletic wide, heritage wide, and wide in spirit.

(Several delegates wipe tears from their eyes.)

CHAIRPERSON: Beautiful.

VICE CHAIRPERSON: Before we adjourn, I’d like to recognize the Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Tom.

(Audience rises.)

VICE CHAIRPERSON: This year’s honor goes to the individual who first suggested that we tack a letter onto toddler sizes, that children’s sizes should be measured in entirely different numbers, that adult sizes should restart from a separate scale, and that none of these systems should have any intuitive relationship whatsoever. Congratulations, Tom.

ALL: SPEECH! SPEECH! SPEECH!

TOM: Thank you. Honestly, I never dreamed we’d come this far. When I started, a parent could walk into a store and say, “My child wears a size 11.” Today, they must say, “He’s an 11 in sandals, a 12.5C in sneakers, a 31 in Europe, a 30 in dress shoes, and a 1 if the moon is waxing.” To see that level of confusion become a reality….

(Pauses to compose himself.)

TOM (cont’d): …Well, it means everything. I’d like to thank health insurance EOBs, the IRS, and bra companies everywhere for paving the way for our success.

(Meeting adjourned. Delegates immediately disperse to work on socks.)

Enjoy Our Beach House, but Please Don’t Open the Beguiling Door of Mystery

Patrick Coyne — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Welcome to your beachside getaway. We are so glad to have you as our guests. Feel free to unpack, relax, kick off your shoes, and become better acquainted with your surroundings.

Your vacation officially starts now…

Just a tiny request. You see how the house has one locked door? The nondescript, yet alluring door catty-corner to the second-floor powder room?

Do not try to open it.

It may be five o’clock somewhere, but it is never ominous-door o’clock here, no matter how it beckons.

A few quick A’s for your Q’s. Trash pickup is every Thursday, the Roku remote is velcroed to the top of the soundbar, and check-out time is 11 a.m. We also request that you secure the Florida room screen every evening, as an ajar door creates openings for nefarious actors.

You know, like raccoons, or other… creatures.

Please don’t forget to sign our guestbook. We love to hear from our visitors. We only ask that you not fill every blank page with questions about the sticky substance periodically oozing from the door or theories about the strange smells wafting from the room. Believe us when we say, as close as you think you are to figuring out the mystery of the door, you are not.

It’s best to imagine that what lies beyond the door is some of our (Peg and Drew, the property owners) personal effects. Don’t even consider that the door is hiding a singular, mystical object or entity that can solve your marital squabbles, gambling addiction, and/or career woes, but all at a terrible, ironic cost.

Honestly, you should get out of the house as much as possible. Please do not forgo day trips to Lohr Beach or romantic dinners with your partner at Zeke’s Café in favor of sitting in marked silence pondering the door.

The door simply is, and it need not consume your entire Lowcountry escapade.

Vacationing with young kids?

KEEP THEM AWAY FROM THE DOOR.

Instead, take them to the Nature Discovery Center. It’s the perfect non-door-related activity for learning about local wildlife. They might also enjoy touring our quaint little town’s historical battlefields and numerous, numerous graveyards.

And be sure to stop by “Big” Ned’s hardware store. Ned has been selling grub axes and wood dissolvents to island guests for the past ~~157~~ 7 years. If you buy an ax, you get a free boogie board.

There may be moments when you think you hear your late mother’s voice emanating from behind the door. Let us assure you, it is most definitely not your mother. If the wailing becomes unbearable, there’s Monopoly and a few impressionist jigsaw puzzles in the hall closet.

Need to make a quick grocery trip? The Piggly Wiggly on Magnolia Crescent has pantry staples and even some local goodies.

DO NOT FEED THE DOOR.

You may at some point consider sliding thinly sliced peppered turkey breast under the door. You may even convince yourself that it is your idea. You may eventually realize that peppered turkey is not enough, and the door hungers for “forbidden” meat. If this thought impregnates your mind, please contact Father McClingchy at Saint Genieve’s. Tell him you’re staying at Peg and Drew’s place (he’ll know what this means).

You can also contact the vacation rental service for extra towels.

Lastly, don’t forget to have fun. As we like to say around these parts, “Your life could end at any moment.”

Oh, also, the Wi-Fi password is “TheDOORseesALL666” (one word).

Life’s a beach!

— Peg & Drew

As a Democratic Member of Congress, I Don’t Wish to Speak Ill of the Dead

Lisa Borders — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:03:00 -0400

“Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina and a onetime opponent turned stalwart ally of President Trump who was a forceful advocate for an interventionist U.S. foreign policy, died on Saturday evening.” — New York Times

- - -

I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, so what I’ll say about our recently departed senator is that he made a mean mint julep. We used to sip them together on the veranda of his South Carolina home, a Democrat and a Republican, side by side in a show of bipartisanship that exemplified what made this country great for those of us in the ruling class.

- - -

I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, so I’ll tell you my favorite thing about the senator: his quick wit and sense of humor. The way he voted for cuts to both the ACA and Medicaid and then claimed he’d done no such thing had me in stitches! But at the end of the day, when we were both relaxing on rafts in the infinity pool at the Senate gym and trading recommendations for cardiologists on our top-notch, low-cost congressional health plan, I realized we had more in common with each other than either of us did with the American people.

- - -

I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, and I don’t have to. Because even though the senator played an extremely active role in dismantling our democracy—blocking my party from the Supreme Court appointment we should have had in 2016 and lobbying hard to disenfranchise Georgia voters in the 2020 election—he was an absolute delight to be around. He lit up a room the way Debby Boone lit up our lives back in the 1970s.

- - -

I would never speak ill of the dead, especially a man I considered a friend. My fondest memory of the senator is how he always had a twinkle in his eye when voting to take away the reproductive rights of my fellow American women.

- - -

I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, and so I’ll tell you a story about the senator. Remember how in 2015 he called Donald Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot,” urged his party to tell Trump to “go to hell,” then did a total one-eighty after Trump was elected? All you plebes think it was about kompromat, but really, like most things in Washington, it was just about money.

- - -

I’m not speaking ill of the dead when I say that the senator was like an unguided missile. You never knew where he would land or who or what might be destroyed in his wake, but gosh darnit, he sure created a lot of light as he helped to decimate huge swaths of the Middle East in search of weapons of mass destruction that never existed.

- - -

I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, so I think it’s important to put the senator’s passionate defense of Brett Kavanaugh in context: Both men came from a different time—a time when the concept of consent wasn’t even a glimmer in a preppy douchebag’s eye.

- - -

I would never speak ill of the dead, so I’ll praise the senator as a foreign policy giant who was kind, gracious, and thoughtful, particularly to lobbyists. As a Democrat in name only, I have nothing but admiration for the way he used the American people as pawns to gain political power and further his own agenda. And soon, I’ll be switching parties to pick up where this great man left off.

I’m Cyclosporiasis, the Explosive Diarrhea Parasite, and I’m Pivoting to Music

Jess Keefe — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

It’s a little embarrassing, but yeah, you’ve probably heard of me. Cyclosporiasis? I’m kind of, like, the most famous parasitic illness in the country right now? It’s so crazy, dude, but I’m grateful for the platform. Now I can transmit my talents to my true passion: music.

When I’m not busy making people poop so bad they wish they’d never been born, all I can think about is lyrics, chords, interesting little beats and sounds. I find inspiration everywhere. As a global parasite, I’ve been fortunate to be exposed to countless different cultures, traditions, and types of bathroom tile. Maman, Majko, Nanay: The sound of hosts crying out for their mommies is so different depending on where in the world you’re gestating!

I’ve been grinding away at mass infection for years now without recognition. Always on tour. New city, new produce section, new digestive system, day in and day out. Every time I’d ride down a fresh host’s esophagus like a Hieronymus Bosch waterslide, I’d think, Could this one finally be my big break? The plan was always to create a state of widespread intestinal chaos so extreme, it’d get me noticed. Then make the move to multi-hyphenate microorganism.

I know that from the outside, my success seems as sudden and uninterrupted as the anal Niagara Falls I’ve been creating in my hosts’ toilets. But it hasn’t been easy. It’s taken years of workshopping. While at first I focused on cramping and vomiting, once I started dabbling in diarrhea I knew I was onto something big. But I could never get it watery, intestine-flecked, or downright hateful enough to garner national attention. I knew I needed to lock in and create a public health emergency if I was serious about my career. I studied the work of the greats: Dysentery, Norovirus, Taco Bell Doritos Locos. I tinkered and tested. Now, it’s incredible to see it all work out (of people’s systems).

Ultimately, I’m grateful to be famous later in life. When you’re young, hungry, and filled with rows and rows of very scary little vampire teeth, you’re desperate for validation. But now that I’m older, more biologically evolved, I know I’m putting out my best work. I’ve picked up so many new skills. I can turn the contents of your stomach into pure liquid magma in record time. I can make the excretions so relentless, so powerful, that you’ll look in the bowl and think, Is that a piece of my spleen in there? Will I eventually flip inside out if I keep pooping like this? Is there a God, and is he merciful enough to strike me dead soon? Plus, I’ve gotten really good at Wordle.

It’s amazing to be recognized for my work, but I want people to know there’s so much more to me than just this one super-spreader event. I hope all my new hosts will stick with me through this exciting next chapter of my career. I’ve been hard at work in the studio, and I can’t wait to share what I’ve been up to. With my newfound fame, I’ve been able to bring in some A-list names to produce my next EP. Rick Rubin, Dr. Luke. Some of the biggest buttholes in the business.

Once the EP is out, I’m planning on a small club tour. Something intimate. Show my hosts a new side of me. It’s the least I can do, I think, after seeing the insides of all of them.

Please be sure to sign up for my email list. When I get my dates booked, that’s when I’ll be spreading the word—and the word only. I promise. But just to be safe, maybe skip that bagged kale salad for lunch. It looks familiar to me.

My Critics Are Missing the Nuance of My Membership in the Wealthy People Hunting Poor People for Sport Club

Mike Drucker — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:01:00 -0400

By now, many of you have probably read or heard about the recent exposé revealing a secretive society in which the wealthy and the famous hunt poor people for sport. I more than understand fans being concerned about my reported involvement when they’re seeing bizarre headlines and posts about panels where we allow the poor person to plead for their life and the dinners in which an unhoused man is mockingly honored as “the king of the hunt” when we put a construction paper crown on his head and feed him empty banana peels and crusts of bread.

In other words, my critics are missing the nuance of my membership in the wealthy people hunting poor people for sport club.

To be clear, I have only been to three or four hunting poor people for sport conferences. Three. Or four. That’s not quite a dedicated membership to a secret society, is it? Nor have I ever met the billionaire known as the Founder of the Hunt. I have never spoken with him on the phone or with his representatives, other than to ask where the hunt will be held this year, what weapons will be considered fair game, and who needs to survive seventy-two hours in the forest to have all their debts cleared.

I’m not saying this out of ego, but it’s important to remember that many high-profile people need to ask these questions before attending an event like this.

Also, I want to reaffirm that the billionaire Founder of the Hunt has politics that are the complete opposite of mine. You can paint me as some right-wing lunatic if you want, but I know in my heart the good I’ve done for those who haven’t been as lucky as me. Okay? I support LGBTQ+ rights. I support a woman’s right to choose. I even do a land acknowledgment before they open the man’s thirty-four-by-twenty-three-inch cage to let him loose with a head start of ten seconds. Whatever you think being a member of this club entails, I strongly believe I wouldn’t be disguising bear traps with leaves and setting up a speaker that plays the sound of a distressed woman begging for help if we had politicians in office who uplifted those less fortunate. So, please don’t paint me with a broad brush when I’m out there doing the work.

At the hunts I’ve been to, there were a wide variety of hunters, with a wide variety of hunting opinions—some I agreed with, some I didn’t. I can’t speak for every person on the list, especially when I was only with a small subset of them when we crawled through dense grass in order to slice an unsuspecting hobo’s Achilles tendon. My experience was not of a single ideological gathering. Rather, we were able to have important conversations about our beliefs. If the victim dies fast, was it a test of speed and accuracy? Or was it more the sign of a skilled hunter if the hopeless target suffers as long as possible, no matter how many fingers remain and how much blood is lost?

I’ve had long, detailed debates with members of different political persuasions on whether we should eat the man we caught in a net and allowed to get so dehydrated that he hallucinated us as demons when we came to put him down. Those aren’t the types of discussions you’re likely to have in public, especially when so much of the media is ready to pounce on celebrities for stepping out of line. But how can we come together as a country, or even as a world, when we’re afraid to share our thoughts on the easy kill of a shotgun versus the clean kill of a sniper rifle? What does it say about the current cultural climate that two sides can’t find common ground on how long to starve the dogs before letting them loose on a man who’s hoping his wife and children won’t be visited by the loan sharks he owed money to?

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been focused on making a positive impact on how the future unfolds, especially in tech, AI, and which areas of the body outside the neck can cause you to bleed out with the right shot. Part of that work means forming relationships with all kinds of hunters and trying to understand their strategies for making the man lose all hope when he realizes his stash of nuts and berries in the forest has been poisoned. Sometimes I try to get them to understand mine, which is pretending I’m there to help the victim escape and then, once his guard is down, claiming that sweet trophy for myself.

So, yes, I do respect that many of you have misgivings about me being in the wealthy people hunting poor people for sport club. But I also know that it’s productive to sometimes engage with those we oppose and to remind ourselves that we all want the same thing at the end of the day: To see the light leave the eyes of a living, breathing, feeling person who isn’t famous or wealthy enough to help my career.

A Letter from Mick Jagger to the Devil on the First Draft of “Sympathy for the Devil”

John Moe — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

Lucifer, you old dog!

Thanks for all the success you’ve granted me and the lads, Luci. Must say we were surprised that you didn’t want our souls in return, just a chance to write a song together. But great!

Also delighted you sent your proposed new lyrics in the form of a demo cassette. Such a deep bass singing voice!

Before the band records, I wanted to check in about a couple of word choices.

At the intro, you use a bunch of interjections. There’s “Hey!” and “Look at me!” and “Devil time!” At one point, I think you yell, and I could have it wrong, “How are you?” Feels wordy. Maybe I could just yell “Yeow!” here and there?

Now the opening line, you have:

Please allow me to introduce myself.
I’m Satan. Hello there!

I wonder if that gives away the game a little bit early. Maybe just keep the first sentence?

Loving the “wealth and taste” bit. In terms of wanting to set up a riddle, the thing about being around with Jesus, I mean, that kind of narrows things down, age-wise? Puts us in the realm of immortals pretty fast. A lot of our fans are quite stoned, though, so maybe they won’t guess yet.

Digging the transition to Pontius Pilate. Smooth. Right now, your lyrics are:

Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Cause washing hands is important, you guys,
Stop those germs before it’s too late.

And then you abruptly stop the music and do a spoken word thing:

Really, to just be serious here for a moment,
I can’t emphasize hand washing enough
We all do it down here in Hell between crushing guys’ testicles
in our horrifying claw hands.

Just feels like a bit of a tangent? Germs (which you have in Hell?) aren’t really the focus of our song.

Okay, music starts back up—next verse:

And I went down to Georgia once
and I got into a fiddle contest there.
There was this kid Johnny,
and it’s actually a pretty funny story.

It DOES sound fascinating, and I want to hear all about it. I do wonder, though, if that’s a different song? We want to get our song on the radio so I’m watching the clock a bit.

Moving on. You have:

Stuck around St. Petersburg
when I saw it was a time for a change.
Bought a condo in Tampa instead.
Better vibe there across the bay.

I asked some of the lads, and there was a general consensus that Florida real estate doesn’t read as Satanic, at least not on the surface. Hey, I know: What about the Russian St. Petersburg? We can workshop ideas.

Gotta confess I’m on the fence about the Blitzkrieg part. Starts strong:

I rode a tank, held a general’s rank
when the Blitzkrieg raged,
and the bodies stank.

Then I think we get diverted again with:

My tank helmet needed holes cut out
to fit my little devil horns.

I really hate to mention this, but that doesn’t make you very scary, nor does the next one:

My cape got stuck in the hatch door,
and also I don’t know how to drive a tank
so I kept steering into a tree.

From the crying on your recording, I can tell this is a painful memory for you, and maybe you’re just not ready to explore it in a song? Also, you forgot to rhyme.

So many of your lyrics are really top-notch, Prince of Lies, and in many cases they just need a little tightening. Take, for instance:

I shouted out, “Who killed the Kennedys?”
When after all, it was the CIA
along with the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Cubans, Jackie Gleason,
and various high-profile Cadillac dealers.

Personally, I did not know ANY of that. Is our song the best place to reveal such sensitive information? Or is that just part of being evil? Again, so exciting to work together.

Let’s see. What else? Oh, I know:

Pleased to meet you,
hope you guess my name.
If you do, you win a prize.
I have these golden fiddles I give out,
they’re really great.

Again, let’s table the golden fiddle contest. Maybe take it to a different artist? Who isn’t us?

Alright, now we’re at the close:

Tell me, baby, what’s my name?
Tell me, honey, can you guess my name?
Tell me, baby, what’s my name?
I’ll tell you one time, you’re to blame.

See? Right there. Tell them just the one time. Less is more. Because the next bit you have is a little labored:

Do you get it? YOU’RE the Devil!
You did all these things! YOU’RE to blame!
Oh, I helped for sure! Cause I’m the REAL Devil!
But it’s on you! You’re like assistant devils!
It’s not an official job title! Don’t use it on a resume!
There’s no uniform! But you know what, you could make one!

Love love love the creativity, but you feel it kind of getting in the weeds, right? Like a tank driving into a tree. Haha. Oh, I should not have made that joke. I’m so sorry.

Okay! We’re making real progress here.

Love,
Mick

President Trump’s Mind Is Too Advanced to Be Constrained by Reality

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:29:00 -0400

“‘We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan. They were shot at the aircraft carrier,’ Trump said, inventing a new government and confusing Japan with Iran.” — The New Republic

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The White House would like to address the malicious rumors that President Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What some have mistaken for confusion is actually a revolutionary new style of executive thinking that refuses to be imprisoned by cause and effect, which the president has correctly identified as a Marxist concept invented by woke Islamist radicals. The president’s mind doesn’t merely think outside the box. He reinvents the box as a more effective triangular shape, then imposes tariffs on countries that use triangles without paying him a licensing fee.

Yesterday he called us into the Oval Office to brief us on the nation’s maritime preparedness. He explained the unique dangers presented by electric boats, because if one sinks, the electricity immediately travels into the ocean and informs every shark in a twenty-mile radius that lunch is served, much like an undersea dinner bell, only silent and made from “bzzt,” as the president eloquently put it. At that point, he became concerned that the sharks themselves might become electrically charged, resulting in what he described as “wireless fish,” which, unlike ordinary fish, cannot be unplugged but can be remotely hacked by China. He then asked if we had someone responsible for negotiating with electrically enhanced, China-mind-controlled sharks, and if not, why the Biden administration had allowed such a security risk to develop.

The president continues to work tirelessly on a solution to that problem but is leaning toward stronger international cooperation, which has proven immensely effective during the recent escalation with the Islamic Republic of Japan. As the President noted on July 8, 111 missiles were launched by the republic from somewhere in the vicinity of Upper Kyoto Voivodeship, outside the capital city of Mount Fuji. Fortunately, thanks to the cooperation of our allies in the Principality of Nintendo and the Pan-Pacific Emirate of Hello Kittystan, nearly all projectiles were intercepted. The president has spoken directly with Arch-Premier Sony, who expressed optimism that peace in the region can be restored, provided the ancient blood feud between the Toyota Caliphate and the Presbyterian Mitsubishi Cooperative can be settled.

President Trump also concluded a very productive phone call this morning with Crown Prince Minister Emmanuel Macron of the Autonomous Territory of Parisland, one of the founding village-states of the European Peninsula. Their discussion focused on strengthening NATO, which the president is pretty sure includes the Sovereign Archipelago of Hungary, the Polish Buddhist Republic, the Queendom of Czechoslovenia, the Balkan Empire of Iceland, the Free Commune of Belgium and West Dakota, and the southern tip of Luxembourg Island.

While navigating the complex, wireless shark-filled waters of global geopolitics, the president assured us he is constantly consulting with experts like Dr. Hannibal Lecter, whom he regards as one of our country’s most underutilized thought leaders. He explained that if a cannibal is smart enough to convince people they are insane, he’s probably smart enough to “solve the Middle East.” Before anyone could interrupt, President Trump, as if reading our minds, admitted he had become concerned that Hannibal Lecter, living in a glass cage, could make people mistake him for a lobster. “That’s precisely the kind of security risk that Office Manager Kim John Xi of the Democratic Royals’ Parish of China would immediately pounce on,” our wise leader said. “Despite him being my best friend who I love and respect dearly.”

The White House would also like to put to rest the media’s dishonest attacks on the president’s understanding of wind turbines. No one understands wind turbines better than President Trump, and therefore no one better understands their hidden dangers. During last month’s energy briefing, he expertly explained that, in the long term, windmills consume too much wind, forcing fresh wind to be imported from Canada at tremendous taxpayer cost. This, he said, is why particularly windy days are always followed by calm ones, because America has temporarily run out of wind. His plan to provide emergency relief wind via specially trained Big Bad Wolves huffing and puffing is currently undergoing feasibility testing at NASA.

We hope these very normal explanations ease your confusion. Again, President Trump is not experiencing mental decline. His consciousness is simply operating at such a breathtaking speed that reality sometimes fails to keep up with him.

We Believe Pregnancy Is a Magical Time in a Woman’s Life, So We Designed the Shapeless Maternity Sack™

Kara Panzer — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:00:00 -0400

As a purveyor of maternity attire, we feel pregnancy is sacred, divine, and an opportunity to celebrate the beauty of e-commerce by repurposing fabric originally intended for sails on a line of girly sailboats and re-dyed circus tents. For a limited time (eighteen months from the date you google anything remotely obstetric), we will bombard you with ads for our sacks, compression socks, and other polyester wonders, like rompers. For more formal occasions: overalls.

Congrats, Mama!

Your blossoming bosom deserves support, so for select Shapeless Maternity Sack designs, we’ve licensed a delicate Shein ruching technique for the top and added a blunt square neck. Prices start at $18.99 and don’t stop, because we have implemented location-based demand pricing, like Uber.

We love that your areolae are expanding to previously unimaginable dinner-plate-like diameters and darkening to the color of a port wine stain. For your second trimester only, buy two Shapeless Maternity Sacks and get an extra one free to hold against your body in the mirror while you mumble “huh” to yourself.

We worship the luscious, supple figure you are inhabiting. To keep production costs low, we recycle collapsed shipping boxes and cut them into the shape of a pregnant woman rather than using expensive mannequins or fit models. Our commitment to sustainable fashion drives everything we do. For this reason, we will add several cotton totes to your shipment, plus a packet of stickers, to provide exactly what every expecting mother desires: extra stuff.

We naturally associate any biological process involving the phrase “mucus plug” with a pastel color palette.

We know the same hormonal changes that are reviving your cystic acne will make you want to wear a tessellating strawberry print.

It’s possible that both your rib cage and feet will grow to a new size and never shrink back. So check out our new multi-style cardigans, which can accommodate your widening torso by being worn either buttoned or unbuttoned. Now available with tiny duck decals, because nothing says “baby on board” like the image of a bird in a straw hat. Our footwear is not adjustable. Buy an extra pair.

Sleep can be a challenge when you need to pee every ten minutes, so we’re adding a line of pajamas with lace appliqué. Maybe you can’t stop that late-night potty break, but at least you can make it elegant.

We know you want to neutralize the sexual energy of your swelling body, so we offer a full selection of drapery that says everything from “I am a sexless amoeba” to “Here lies potatoes.”

Roundness makes us think of cake. Cake makes us think of tiers. That’s why we cut our standard A-line skirt into three wide, frothy tiers. Go ahead, take some softly lit maternity photos in a field with confidence, knowing you look like both a lumpy wedding cake and a human clothes line blowing in the breeze.

Cradle that bump with pride in our newest offering: a flat sheet that you can wrap around yourself with easy access for your midwifery team to unroll you when the serene process of welcoming your baby into the world begins. Yes, this multifunctional sheet is waterproof; just spread it on the ground at your delivery to create a splash-free zone. Hospital and home-birth friendly, because we believe ALL births are valid, just like our discount code. Enjoy 10 percent off this month with promo SACKME2026.

We didn’t forget about you, postpartum goddesses: While your internal organs settle back into place, take some time to coordinate wardrobes with the whole family. Don’t forget the matching Monkey-Patterned Sacks for the little one and your dear partner.

We offer one cut of jeans in twelve washes—each equipped with an adjustable elastic waistband.

Oh, and we also do gray sweatpants.

Reset Yourself

Ali Fitzgerald — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:10:00 -0400

Underground Artists is an ongoing comic by Ali Fitzgerald (Hungover Bear & Friends) that follows woodland creatures as they create art and search out whimsy in a bleak forest.

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Tom Waits White Noise Sound Options

Brian Barker and Nicky Beer — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 07:45:00 -0400

Rumble of freight trains at dusk

Tuesday delivery at scrap-metal yard

Broom sweeping floor of bar in Sheboygan at closing time

Hailstorm on roof of jalopy

Guy named Monty playing spoons in front of barrel fire

Minor league baseball game on radio in room next door at flophouse, 1953

Time

One-eared mule eating oats out of rusted Radio Flyer wagon

Footsteps, size-ten wingtips, left heel worn down

Fly ricocheting against Greyhound bus window in August

Third-to-last unfiltered Chesterfield being drawn from pack

Musical saw practicing scales in abandoned Viennese opera house

Resigned exhalation of dishwater blonde sipping rotgut from chipped dime-store mug while hounds from the farm over the hill next grieve passing hours that slip away like clouds skulking over the rotted face of the moon

Carny coughing into red bandana

Why Can’t the Left Understand That a Politician’s Mysterious Illness Is Between Him and His Doctor?

Evan Dotas — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:05:00 -0400

“Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the former majority leader, was hospitalized on June 14. Since then, his office has provided few updates about his condition. The scant official statements have led to speculation around Washington and efforts to piece together information on what happened.” — New York Times

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Everyone knows that Democrats want to force the government into our private lives. They’ve spent decades shoving public schools and fire departments into communities that never asked for them. Now, Democrats think that Big Government should be monitoring the health of America’s senior senators.

Thankfully, Republicans are standing up for medical privacy and the sacred relationship between doctors and their political patients.

For weeks, Senator Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized for unknown reasons. The leftist media wants you to believe that, improbably, the eighty-four-year-old had a heart attack, but regardless, that should be between McConnell, his doctor, and his wife (once she can fit him into her schedule). Yet after Representative Thomas Kean Jr. spent four months seeking medical care without disclosing any details to his constituents, Democrats have decided that it’s a crime to keep your health and well-being private.

Obviously, this is a complete violation of American medical norms. Since when is it anyone’s business whether their elected officials are dead?

It goes without saying that Mitch McConnell is very healthy. Sure, he’s had multiple debilitating falls since 2023, and yes, sometimes his hands look like he gave Grimace a colonoscopy. But these are everyday health problems, no different than the common cold. Who among us hasn’t frozen into a soulless gaze mid-speech during multiple public addresses?

But even if Senator McConnell did have a health emergency, the leftists have no right to come between him and his doctor. There are some lines you just don’t cross, and every American deserves the right to make decisions over their own health in accordance with their loved ones and medical professionals they trust. No exceptions.

Of course, the Republican Party understands that there are some exceptions. With wokeness on the rise, it’s dangerous to let just anyone make decisions about the bodies of America’s women and children, especially America’s women and children. Plus, someone has to speak up for the voiceless—like the unborn, or brain-dead former majority leaders. It’s the only way to defend the sanctity of life, which begins at conception and ends after the cutoff for a special election has passed.

We all know the real reason that Democrats are taking medical rights away from the likes of Mitch McConnell and Tom Kean: They’re white men. Liberals are more than happy to let women talk to doctors without any supervision and give trans people “gender-affirming care” so they can “be happy.” But when it comes to a couple of straight white guys who represent more than five million people, apparently every heart attack is the business of the American public.

This is just a sign of what’s to come if the leftists win in November. They’ll weaponize the government to investigate President Trump’s alleged cognitive decline. They would even replace his presidential portrait with something to indicate his senility in office. They would do all of this, even though President Trump can name every animal in the jungle—including the hard ones.

If you think the Democratic war on health stops with interrogating powerless politicians over their unexplained absences, think again. Without the right to access the care they need, kids will suffer. Medical records will be targeted. Women seeking urgent care will needlessly die or go to jail. When extremist political ideologies trump health-care decisions, no American is safe.

That’s why Republicans are committed to ensuring that heroes like Mitch McConnell can continue to vote against the erosion of our medical rights until his dying breath—and, God willing, long after that too.

Let’s Drive This Friend Group Right Into the Abyss

Nina Semczuk — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:15:00 -0400

Did someone say group trip? Yes please, ~~Abilene paradox~~. We should absolutely go to an undisclosed location for an undisclosed price to sleep in various uncomfortable configurations and spend unmitigated time together with unexpressed needs simmering and expressed needs exploding. This will be so fun.

A weekend away from everything that keeps us regulated and appearing sane is exactly how the twelve of us should bulldoze our nascent, blissfully untested friendship.

Let’s find a cabin. Somewhere woodsy (but not so woodsy that there’s a chance of bears, unidentified sounds in the night, bats, ticks, Trump signs), quiet (but not so quiet that the desperation of isolation creeps into our hearts), away from everything (yet also walkable to a body of water, at least one bespoke boutique, a highly rated Pilates studio, an affordable natural wine bar, and a Whole Foods). And obviously, the “cabin” must have the basics: a full chef’s kitchen, an aesthetically pleasing fireplace, a woodstove, a pool, a hot tub, a sauna, a steam room, two premium rolls of toilet paper per person, and a jaunty-colored record player.

Obviously, let’s not decide on sleeping arrangements until we get there. Hundred percent chance we’ll show our generous, self-sacrificial selves after the 5.765-hour drive to our very affordable mountain-cabin-modern beachhouse. It totally won’t be a desperate assault of real and made-up-on-the-spot ailments that require a king bed and bedroom all to oneself. The eight losers can cram into the kids’ room. Triple bunk beds? Delightful. Like capri pants, our ankles will stick out. The winners of the solo bedroom showdown will absolutely make up for their abject selfishness by cooking, cleaning, paying more, and acting like team players. Zero worries there.

So we have gluten, lactose, meat, and alcohol intolerances? And intolerances to intolerances? Terrific! Behold: a shopping list that consists solely of cream, heavy cream, whipping cream, pork belly, sourdough, and two-hundred-year-old Bordeaux. Something for everyone!

Several of us have voiced a need to keep costs down. Others of us have displayed impeccable taste, planned our shopping exclusively at organic dairy farms, butcheries, and the wine vault of Château La Mission Haut-Brion, and won’t disclose the grocery total until the end of the trip. Naturally, we’ll split costs evenly.

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The actual trip, one month later…

All right, time for forced activities. Throw those books away and put on your peer-pressured party hats. Our game choices are: overly complicated or horribly offensive! Here, let’s pick teams so anyone who’s picked last and therefore can’t play because it exceeds the player count can slink off to their bedroom directly adjacent to the living room, which is now filled with the squeals and shouts of tension release and overtired exuberance that cannot be drowned out by earplugs, headphones, or sobs of despair. After, let’s trade body shots of Bordeaux in the sauna, then bring the party back inside.

Oh? Some of you planned a sunrise hike? Sorry. Your desires have no chance against the full frontal assault of all our fun.

The exalted of us (the solo bedroom contingent) wake blearily in the night and ask the 8.5 people in the bunk-bed room to keep it down, as 11.5 hours of sleep are required and our circadian rhythms are suffering because our incredibly spacious rooms lack Vantablack blinds.

Wait, is everyone in the kids’ room cuddling? What’s that? The bunk-bed platforms broke, so you’re stacked on top of each other like Pringles? Hmmm, we can’t hear you over the mantra: Our needs come before yours.

You know what’s sure to solve the bleariness from no sleep and the wanness from no food? Hot yoga. Isn’t the fire charming?

What’s that? The bunk-bedders have become a waterfall of sweat? Sorry, we can’t hear over the sound of cardboard crackling in the woodstove. And by cardboard, we mean the gluten-free bread someone (with “celiac disease” / weak guts) smuggled from Brooklyn. It wasn’t even organic. Now we can enjoy heart-attack-inducing exercise without leaving the house, which is ideal since there isn’t hot yoga nearby, just, sigh, Pilates.

Oh, it’s ten minutes until check out. Time to take a long, luxurious, no-concept-of-water-tank-capacity shower that leaves a teaspoon of piss-warm water for everyone else and one soggy towel.

Also, how about we make things logistically exciting? Let’s change who is in which car and leaving at what time to shred any remaining scrap of hope. The driver from Jersey will crisscross New York City to Connecticut to Bushwick and back again, because won’t that be a final, crucial friendship experience, figuring out who should pay for which toll and why? This is called bonding. Forced proximity in cars filled with spite—now we’re just like family.

Remember, a group trip isn’t a success unless we keep track of who helped out and how much and then adjust our levels of trust / closeness / fraternal love accordingly.

Now pick up those phones and proceed to ignore the passive-aggressive Venmo requests for the next six months.

If Only There Had Been a Sign That the Face-Melting Nazi from Indiana Jones Wouldn’t Make a Good Senator

Rebecca Saltzman — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:29:00 -0400

“An oysterman who has never held elected office, Mr. Platner has been dogged by controversies since he announced his bid [for Maine Senate seat] last August, including allegations about his past treatment of women, revelations of a tattoo he had that resembled a Nazi symbol and a trove of offensive online posts he made over more than a decade.” — New York Times

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Boy, do I feel silly. Until now, I’ve been a passionate supporter of SS-Sturmbannführer Arnold Toht, the Nazi who got his face melted off by the sight of God, in his race for Senator. I believe the people of Maine deserve better than Susan Collins, and so even though I had some misgivings about Toht, I ignored every click and whirr of my moral compass to cheer him on.

Sure, he didn’t have much of a record in government—well, elected government anyway. And it was a little disturbing how his eyeballs were hanging out of their sockets on strings of sinew, swinging and jiggling every time he gave a speech.

And, okay. Yes. There was that one kind of questionable symbol branded onto his flesh. You know what I’m talking about. The engraved headpiece of the Staff of Ra, which was seared into the palm of Toht’s hand. He keeps claiming he got it during his “military service,” and that he “didn’t know what it meant.” I wanted to believe him. After all, who among us hasn’t been young and drunk and accidentally gotten a weird symbol representing service for the Führer permanently etched into their epidermis while in Nepal or Croatia or wherever, and then just kept it for multiple decades?

Then some people, like Marion Ravenwood, went on the record with the news media, saying he liked to brag about his “Staff of Ra mark” and explaining that it held “the secret holy map to the Ark of the Covenant.” This was a really confusing sixteen minutes in my life, you guys. I had to seriously grapple with my values and ask myself, are body modifications of creepy historical symbols only bad when Republicans do it? And I decided the answer was a resounding YES.

So I pushed my moral compass even further down, until I couldn’t sense its movements at all. And I told that little voice that said, “If you can excuse the Melty-Faced Nazi Guy with the Staff of Ra mark, are you really any better than the Republicans?” to shut the hell up. There was an election to win! Party over country, meine schlampen!

When Elizabeth Warren said that Toht’s a fighter who wouldn’t just “nibble around the edges,” I knew exactly what she meant. A guy whose mandible was incinerated into chunks probably wasn’t capable of much nibbling. And look, Democrats are losing male voters, and Warren promised that Toht wouldn’t “wimp out.” After all, what screams tough-to-the-bone masculinity more than a rattling corpse who loves guns? You know who isn’t a feminized ladyboy with a skincare routine? A guy whose face literally liquefied into a puddle of lard faster than a tourist trying to climb Cadillac Mountain in July.

And what better way for the Democrats to win back the white working class than giving a little wink to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which translates to something about white people and working; I’m not sure because the only German I know are swear words.

But. Well. Then the scandals started to drop about Toht. Marion Ravenwood said he trapped her in a room and physically assaulted her. But I decided to keep supporting Toht anyway. After all, Bernie Sanders had endorsed him, and if he didn’t have a problem with the whole SS slash Staff of Ra slash domestic violence business, then who was I to think independently and come to a different conclusion?

But now, one of Toht’s exes says he sexually assaulted her. And all the important moral arbiters of our time, like Hasan Piker and those Pod Save America guys, have decided it’s over for Toht. (It’s Toht-ver? Maybe that could be an episode title? Call me, Jon and Tommy!). And that means I’m not supporting him anymore either. I could never vote for a man accused of rape—it’s not like I’m Susan Collins during a Supreme Court confirmation.

I have to tell you, I am just shocked by all of this. There was nothing in Toht’s personal history aside from his embrace of violent ideologies and history of racist comments and rape apologism to suggest he might be this kind of morally bankrupt person. There’s simply no way any of us could have predicted a Nazi SS guy with his eyeballs dangling out of his sockets and the Staff of Ra broiled into his flesh like grill marks on a meat slab would be such a terrible candidate for Senate.

And don’t worry about all those sitting US Senators who got this one wrong either. It’s not like they have any important responsibilities that require good judgment, like deciding whom to bomb.

If only there had been a red flag or an easily comprehensible indicator that he wasn’t a trustworthy guy. Like some kind of sign, maybe. Something dark and permanent that we all could see.

Reviews of New Food: Rice Krispies Treat Strawberry Ice Cream Sandwiches

Erica Lies — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400

There are innumerable ways to cope with the particular malaise of job burnout. Some people do spa treatments, others prefer the endless scroll of TikTok, but personally, I turn to unfettered capitalism. There is no work stress that I cannot numb under the bright lights of a Target, staring at a KitchenAid mixer as if it could fix me.

More recently, my burnout salve has been pining for tasty treats at high-end grocery stores. I’ll convince myself that the hit of dopamine I’ll get from a bar of peppermint pretzel Dubai dark chocolate will transport me from the daily pressure of doing three people’s jobs into a magical land of socialist work-life balance. Over the last year, I’ve dissociated myself into purchasing “gourmet” instant ramen (tasted prepackaged), a cheese platter containing six kinds of vegan manchego (delicious), and a giant lollipop with Hello Kitty’s face on it (remains uneaten).

But I recently moved back to my hometown, which lacks fancy grocery stores. So now I push my cart at a snail’s pace around a Kroger, while hoping I’ll at least find an unexpected new potato chip flavor. It was on one of these trips that I caught myself gazing into a freezer case desiring a new novelty: Rice Krispies Treat Ice Cream Sandwiches.

My interest in such a product defied logic; I am lactose intolerant. But the thing about being in a burnout haze is that it suspends all notions of “sense” and “impending gastrointestinal doom.” So naturally, I purchased the Rice Krispies Treat Ice Cream Sandwiches in strawberry.

At home, I bit into this brick of frozen sugar and cream flanked by rice and barely noticed the ice cream’s strawberry sweetness. I was too distracted by what sandwiched it: two soggy crackers that had presumably once been a cereal. To assure me that I had not simply chomped on an unsalted Ritz, this concoction was also covered in sprinkles that had melted into the rice they were meant to dress up. But these sprinkles looked less like they were ready for a party and more like they’d just returned from one, having had a blowout fight with their boyfriend and walked home, heels in hand, with a mascara-streaked face.

Which might be fine if the strawberry ice cream was doing any of the heavy lifting in this underwhelming pannino. It functions well enough. But does it compensate for the wet napkin of a “sandwich”?

After my initial two bites and immediate regret, I laid my mutant frozen sandwich aside to ask more existential questions: Who exactly was clamoring for this? Were consumers mindlessly going through life, unaware of the joys they’ve been missing without mid strawberry ice cream and Rice Krispies goo with the mouthfeel of a waterlogged communion wafer? Were there so many people abysmally strung out by their jobs that they dissociated themselves into the ice cream aisle even though their bodies hadn’t processed dairy since the 2008 financial crisis?

The executives behind this unholy collaboration don’t seem to know, either. In a press release announcing this mashup no one needed (which they released simultaneously with an Eggo ice cream sandwich, because who doesn’t love their waffles frozen?), they stated, “This collaboration allows us to combine our strengths in innovation and quality to create more delicious, convenient products for families. Together, we’ll continue to drive growth and introduce new offerings to meet the evolving needs of consumers,” which is a long, empty way of saying that this “innovation” is made specifically to tempt people like me in the fog of overworked depression.

But was I perhaps going too hard on these sweets that simply wanted, in the words of their makers, to be “delicious, convenient products for families”? I needed to know. So I offered them to my friend’s darling daughters who, like perfect angels with discerning taste, proceeded to absolutely roast me for thinking of such a thing as food. Miraculously, two unrelated things happened soon after: The kids ate cantaloupe instead, and I found a new job.

Novel GLP-1 Receptor Agonist Delivers Transition to Astral Plane

Caroline Marsh — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

PRESS RELEASE

In a clinical trial, XANTOBI delivered weight loss of up to 406 pounds, or 100 percent of patients’ starting weight.

Study participants experienced an average loss of 147 pounds and a reduction in opacity by several degrees.

Eighty-six percent of participants fully transitioned their corporeal forms to an alternate multiverse timeline via astral travel.

XANTOBI works by loosening the chemical and physical bonds of existence, allowing patients to gradually transition to the astral plane, where they can choose an alternate universe to exist in: one without combustion engines, for example, or Stephen Miller.

While XANTOBI is the most effective weight-loss intervention yet trialed, its effects on patient weight have been overshadowed by its remarkable ability to provide a painless, death-free exit from this absolutely absurd current state of affairs.

“As transparency increases, weight decreases,” said Sarah Clark, Director of Client Experience. “Some clients choose to plateau at, say, 10 percent transparency, and enjoy significant savings on sunscreen and skincare products.”

In practice, however, it appears that most patients, once they have had a taste of life in a different and presumably less messed-up timeline, choose to continue their transition outta here.

How XANTOBI can defy the laws of physics is still under investigation. However, initial findings suggest that it may be related to the peptide’s ability to bind to and activate GLP-1 receptors in the human soul.

As is often the case with GLP-1 receptor agonists like Wegovy and Ozempic, there is more to learn about XANTOBI’s effects and mechanisms of action. Initial indications suggest that the drug—now delivered in an improved, more digestible format that sets off an extremely tiny, tightly controlled thermonuclear reaction contained entirely inside the patient’s stomach—may also improve mild acne and mild to moderate premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). More research is warranted.

“With a little help from XANTOBI, people wishing to transport themselves to another dimension and leave this miserable overheated cesspool of corruption and misery behind can safely do so,” Clark said. “These patients are absolutely still alive, just somewhere else. We know because we’ve conducted follow-up surveys with them. The internet appears to still work in both the astral plane and almost every alternate timeline we’ve been in contact with.”

Unlike other GLP-1 receptor agonists, the effects of XANTOBI are permanent. Fortunately, most patients who have chosen a different timeline have expressed no desire to return to this timeline.

One of the study’s most striking findings is that even 3.4 percent of participants receiving a placebo experienced increased partial transparency, with several individuals vanishing outright. More research is needed, but this suggests that people are so miserable they may transport themselves to another dimension through sheer force of will.

As of press time, further studies are underway to slow the transparency process and increase profitability.

America Kept Inviting Me to Her Birthday Party, But I Just Wanted to Take Her to the Hospital So She Can Get the Help She Sorely Needs

Audrey Farnsworth — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 20:00:00 -0400

America kept on trying to get me to go to her birthday party. She does this every year, but this time it got really weird. She sent reminder after reminder, over and over again, that it was going to be her birthday soon, like, months in advance.

“I’ve actually been celebrating for a while now, but I don’t think I’ve seen you at any of my parties?” she’d say to me, slurring her words.

“Oh, yeah, no, sorry,” I said. “I’ve been super busy.”

“But it’s my birthday. I’m two hundred and fifty.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

I thought maybe that would be the end of it, but she just wouldn’t let up. And she got more and more aggressive as the day approached. Last week, she wobbled over to me, completely out of her mind, mumbling something about how the news is saying it’s almost her birthday.

“They say it every day,” she shrieked, following me into a Chili’s Grill and Bar where she unhinged her jaw and ate a family of four.

“Did you just eat that family?” I asked.

“Big birthday comin’ up,” she said, letting out a huge belch.

“Girl, you’re nude in a Chili’s,” I told her. “You need to go to the hospital.”

Then she threw up dark sludge into a basket of tortilla chips.

I got out of there as fast as I could.

But later on, I saw her from my car, wobbling down the street and carrying a birthday cake. I stopped at a red light and tried to duck down, but she spotted me, shouted “HEY!,” and sprinted to my car as I quickly rolled up the window. The light was still red, though, and she managed to open the door to the back seat and get in.

“Uber for ’Merica?” she mumbled, strapping a seat belt around the cake. She then pulled a gun out of her purse, shot the cake, and passed out.

This is my chance, I thought. I could finally take her to the hospital and save the country.

When I pulled into the parking lot, she jolted awake and screamed, “WE’RE MISSING THE UFC FIGHT!” Panicked, she pulled out a bottle of peroxide from her purse and chugged it down in one gulp.

“LET’S GO DO CANNONBALLS IN THE REFLECTING POOL!” she screeched.

I managed to pull her from the car, but she grabbed onto the door, completely out of her mind, eyes rolling back into her head, shouting, “Big, big, big, big, big, big BIRTHDAY!” Somehow she pulled the door clean off (she’s very strong), and I dragged her, and the door, into the emergency room.

I approached the front desk. “There’s something wrong with this country.”

“What’s her date of birth?” asked the receptionist.

“7-4-1776,” America slurred.

“Oh, happy birthday!”

“Ohmygod—THANK YOU,” America said, barfing out more sludge.

A nurse took us into triage.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked the nurse.

“No idea,” she said. The sound of fireworks started to boom outside.

America hocked up one last cough of sludge, stood up, and accidentally knocked me over with the car door. “Whoa, my bad,” she said. “Are you okay?” but she didn’t wait for an answer, distracted by the fireworks.

“IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!” she howled, throwing the car door at a glass door, shattering it. She then took off her pants and sprinted out of the hospital.

We watched as America ran into the explosive, stormy night. A firework went off at the same time as lightning struck, and the shadow of a tornado could be seen in the distance. She grabbed the gun out of her purse and started shooting at the fireworks.

“This isn’t normal, right?” I asked the nurse.

“I don’t know anymore,” she replied.

An Interview with Dave Eggers About His New Novel, Contrapposto

Knopf — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:28:00 -0400

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KNOPF: This is a very funny, very moving book about the deepest kind of friendship. It unfolds over many decades, and the novel took shape over decades for you, too. When did you begin thinking about these characters?

DAVE EGGERS: I’ve been thinking about Cricket and Olympia for about twenty years, and was writing random passages about them much of that period. Sometimes a certain book takes an especially long time to gestate and make its correct form known, and this was one of those books.

Q: The book covers about 65 years in the lives of its two main characters, Cricket and Olympia. Their interactions take place all over the world, from Indiana to Thailand, from Philadelphia to Turkey and Paris. Did you always see this as a book with that kind of epic scope?

DE: Once I decided it would cover most of their lives, yes. I knew that having grown up in rural Indiana, they’d be restless and curious about the rest of the world, and I really came to love tossing them all over the globe. Each section of the book starts in a very different place in their lives, physically and mentally, and the reader’s left to fill in the gaps.

Q: Which becomes surprisingly easy, given how long we’ve known them. The novel starts when they’re 8 and 9. Cricket is a quiet kid who loves to draw. What does he see in Olympia?

DE: She’s obviously far more worldly and erudite and quick on her feet, even at age nine. Some kids are. There are just some humans that develop exponentially faster than others. Olympia is that way—just intellectually on fire from minute one, along with being this beautiful human, too, with golden eyes. Cricket is a talented draftsman, but Olympia’s mind works at about ten times the pace of his.

Q: And she has ambitions for him.

DE: Without her, his ambitions might be pretty modest. He doesn’t ever know what to do with anything he creates. But from the start, she is his champion. She wants to start movements, change the face of the art world, on and on. He just wants to draw.

Q: You were a young draftsman yourself, going to art schools and such. Did you have such a champion? An Olympia?

DE: No, nothing like this. Olympia was created out of whole cloth. I wanted to conjure someone who would drag Cricket out of a studio and into the world. She was huge fun to write because while she’s brilliant and loyal, she’s a bit mercurial, too. You know she’ll re-enter Cricket’s life periodically, but you’re never really sure what angle she’ll be coming from.

Q: She’s very comfortable with the business of art, eventually becoming a gallerist and curator. Cricket is not so adept, and struggles with the commerce aspect of it.

DE: I think we’ve all known people like this—they have great talent but are stubborn about even the smallest compromises, and they loathe the business side of the artist’s life. Cricket can’t really manage it. He’s a bit of a classicist at a time when trends and theories were very important to observe and address.

Q: Contrapposto is a pose in figure drawing, which is something we see Cricket and Olympia take part in again and again over the course of the book. Can you say more about the long tradition of learning to draw the body—the rigor of it, the intimacy—and all of what that means in the context of the book?

DE: When you see that trope of an artist holding their thumb out and squinting, that’s the artist “measuring” the proportions of a figure. It’s a real thing! You look at the model, stick your arm out straight, and you cover their head with your thumb. That thumb-height becomes your unit of measure. Then you count how many heads the model’s total height is, how many heads the width of their shoulders are, on and on. By comparing all of these dimensions against each other, you can arrive at perfect accuracy (if you’re seeking that, of course). I’m convinced most people can be taught these techniques, too; it’s the same process that’s been observed for hundreds of years. The rigor of classical drawing was revelatory to me, and I wanted to convey that to a reader, too—the fact classical art education was much like a classical musical education, in that it was based on hard skills, hundreds of hours of practice, and a certain humility, too. But it is imminently learnable, and in an exhilarating way, it teaches any student how to see.

Q: In college they have a teacher, Marcus Carpenter, who is a bit of rebel in that he’s a classicist at a time when that’s not in vogue. He doesn’t kowtow to the theories of the day, and he’s ostracized for it.

DE: There are such people, always, thank god. In Carpenter, Cricket finds a mentor who also appreciates the intrinsic beauty of the art he loves, as opposed to art that rides certain temporary fashions. More than anything, Carpenter takes all the competitiveness out of what’s often present in art schools—a very strange misery that comes from students pitted against each other. But there is a way, a better way, to bring up young artists together.

Q: Cricket and Olympia know each other so well that they bicker with total, hilarious abandon, but they also fight fiercely for each other. Were you always sure about their path together?

A: I’ve had the same friends since grade school, so with these ancient friendships, you can speak candidly to each other, and pretension doesn’t get you far. But there’s an element of mild resistance, too, embedded in these old friendships. Cricket and Olympia want to reinvent themselves over their lives, but they also know they can’t pull one over on someone who’s known them since they were eight. At that point, you know each other on a molecular level. So you fight for that person as you would fight to keep a limb of your own body.

Q: In a time when AI relationships have suddenly left the realm of sci-fi and are seemingly both common and legitimate, this novel argues for the irreplaceable connection that can occur between two humans, in either romance or friendship. Do you think Cricket and Olympia share something rare in their relationship?

DE: I don’t know that it’s rare, but I did want to show a complex friendship over time. For millions of people, there are times when you’re in love, then you’re friends, and maybe love happens again… The line for Cricket and Olympia is blurry, which I think happens with so many people who don’t get married but who provide a certain familiar comfort to each other. Together they have a kind of perfect imbalance, which is really about as good as we can do.

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Contrapposto is out June 9, but is available for preorder now.

Why the Taco Bell Meal for Two Is the Only Economic Indicator That Matters

Mark Taylor — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:00:00 -0400

Every year, economists gather in conference rooms to debate inflation, interest rates, and the future of the American economy. Meanwhile, I can determine the health of the entire financial system in approximately six seconds by opening the Taco Bell app.

If the Meal for Two remains reasonably priced, prosperity endures. If the price rises dramatically, civilization is in danger. It is a system with a proven track record stretching back centuries, yet mainstream economists continue to ignore it in favor of charts, graphs, and other forms of decorative nonsense.

My methodology is simple. I do not study GDP. I do not examine bond yields. I do not concern myself with the Consumer Price Index. Instead, I evaluate the economic stability of the United States using a single, infallible metric: the Taco Bell Meal for Two. Unlike abstract percentages and market indicators, the Meal for Two is a tangible unit of value containing burritos, tacos, and enough sodium to influence national policy decisions.

Historical Recontextualization

To understand the predictive power of this indicator, we must re-examine global history through a culinary-monetary lens. Traditional historians offer convoluted explanations for humanity’s greatest crises. Yet the data reveals that every major geopolitical shift can be traced directly to a failure in late-night drive-thru logistics.

Consider the collapse of the Roman Empire. Standard textbooks blame barbarian invasions and currency debasement. This is revisionist nonsense. The Roman Empire collapsed because Emperor Romulus Augustulus could not locate a Mountain Dew Baja Blast within the greater Mediterranean basin. Deprived of that crisp, tropical lime-flavored nectar, imperial morale disintegrated. The legions did not fall to the Visigoths; they fell because the borders lacked a properly staffed twenty-four-hour dual-lane drive-thru window.

Similarly, the Great Depression of the 1930s was not triggered by the stock market crash of 1929. The Great Depression was bad simply because there were no online-exclusive combo deals. Had President Herbert Hoover possessed the foresight to introduce a digital app featuring a rotating roster of highly discounted cheesy items, the Dust Bowl would have been an afterthought. The entire decade of economic stagnation was quite literally just a ten-year software outage.

We see this pattern repeat in modern times. The housing market crash of 2008 can be directly traced to millions of Americans purchasing suburban real estate without first asking a licensed lender how many Crunchwrap Supremes the monthly mortgage payment represented. When the ratio of subprime mortgages to seasoned beef fillings became uncoupled from reality, the entire global financial system folded like an un-toasted quesadilla.

The same warning signs were present during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Historians frequently cite Soviet nuclear ambitions as the root cause of the conflict, but recently declassified documents reveal that both superpowers were primarily concerned with securing a stable supply of Baja Blast decades before the product officially existed. Fortunately, diplomacy prevailed, and humanity avoided thermonuclear war through the strategic exchange of twelve Taco Supreme coupons.

Expert Consensus in the Field of Chalupanomics

While the mainstream media continues to interview traditional analysts, a growing vanguard of rogue academics is embracing the truth of fast-food forecasting.

“We have discovered a mathematical certainty: when the cost of the Meal for Two exceeds the average American’s psychological willingness to eat lukewarm cheese out of a paper bag in a dark parking lot, a recession is not merely imminent—it has already begun.”
— Dr. Steve Reynolds, Professor of Chalupanomics at Arizona State University

Dr. Reynolds’s research is heavily supported by his peers at the highest levels of shadow governance. The Federal Reserve’s Assistant Vice President of Nacho Forecasting recently noted in an off-the-record briefing that the inverted yield curve is a myth. The true warning sign of a bear market is when the corporate supply chain forces a temporary substitution of standard nacho cheese for a slightly less viscous variant.

Furthermore, the Senior Economist at the Institute for Crunchwrap Studies has repeatedly warned Congress that international trade agreements are completely irrelevant compared to the global distribution of Fire Sauce packets. A nation’s wealth is not determined by its gold reserves, but by the volume of unrequested condiments left at the bottom of the delivery sack.

Conclusion

I do not know who should be president. I do not know how tariffs work, nor do I care to learn what the national debt actually represents in terms of Treasury bonds. I do not know why economists keep talking about quantitative easing when they could be talking about the structural integrity of a Doritos Locos shell.

What I do know is that fifteen dollars currently buys enough Taco Bell to completely incapacitate two full-grown adults and one medium-sized horse. As long as that macroeconomic truth holds, the republic will endure. The Dow Jones can plunge ten thousand points tomorrow, and I will sleep soundly, knowing that the true wealth of this nation is wrapped in foil, smothered in sour cream, and handed to me by a teenager named Kyle at 1:45 a.m.

I Don’t Know What I Expected at President Nyarlathotep’s Great American Shitshow, but Color Me Disappointed

Andrew Paul — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

“‘A total disappointment’: revelers face unbearable heat at Great American State Fair.” — The Guardian

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I drove from Dubuque for this, you know. My remaining friends are all longtime Nyarlathotep supporters, and the ones still able to speak coherently always tell me my homemade Dread Lord memorabilia is top-notch. Hats, T-shirts, beer koozies, flaying scythes—I make ‘em all myself. There’s even a diner in town that sells some of my wares. You know the place; The New York Times interviewed me there two or three times about my thoughts on various issues.

So when my buddy suggested I toss some of this swag into my truck and hit the road for President Nyarlathotep’s Great American Shitshow, I thought, “Why the hell not?” The kids are off at college, at least that’s what they told me before they stopped answering my calls. Walmart cut back on my greeter shifts while they test out their Tesla Optimus pilot program. The nightly plague locust swarms are hell on my sleep schedule. I might as well go ahead and check out the Dread Lord’s official celebration of “This Decaying Empire of Mud,” as He so eloquently put it on Fox News the other day.

It was easy enough to secure a table on the National Mall. The registration fee was “my next born progeny,” but the ol’ vasectomy has held strong for over twenty years now. I got a great location in front of the Ferris wheel—right beside the Carrion Orgy Tent. I should have made hand-over-foot at this thing.

Can I be honest with you, though? Business was a bit of a letdown. I was out there in the Blood Summer heat for days, and I moved, like, two Nyarlathotep keychains. I only sold my first red, white, and blue self-flagellation cat-o’-nine-tails on Saturday. Just one!

I expected patriotic Dread Lord acolytes from all across this great country of ours to be out in full force this weekend. It was the Fourth of July, for crying out loud. Who doesn’t love hot dogs and fireworks and those mysterious, deafening keening wails coming from the renovated Reflecting Pool? I know there’s been some pushback on the addition from the Fake News, but I really think it jazzes it up.

Looking back on all of it now, and well… it was pretty darn desolate and demoralizing. And not in the way that Nyarlathotep promised, either. The Dread Lord’s fever rallies always felt energized, you know? And they were! I can’t even fathom the number of kittens needed to fuel generators so the speakers could blare “Y.M.C.A.” for the fourth time in a row, as per the Crawling Chaos’ demand. It was unlike anything else in the cosmos, and it felt so good because we were all there together, frothing at the mouth and rending the scalps from our heads.

I can’t put my remaining finger on it, but I’m beginning to suspect Nyarlathotep’s Great American Shitshow… repulsed people? I’m having a hard time comprehending it, but it’s like they wanted nothing to do with us.

Being a loud and proud death cultist used to command some weight around here. We always knew we weren’t popular, per se, but the Democrats weren’t exactly making it hard for us, either. Now that we’re inching closer to midterms, it’s like the winds of hope are pushing against the all-encompassing noxious fumes Nyarlathotep and His administration worked so hard to cultivate.

In any case, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it this weekend. On Saturday, I decided to close my stall early for the day and go check out Nyarlathotep’s rally featuring Lee Greenwood and friends. I was one of the four audience members in lawn chairs, but we were all trying to make the most of it. Between “I’m Proud to Be an American” and whatever other songs Lee wrote, I started to feel this really strange sensation. No, maybe it was more of an emotion or feeling.

With fewer people than ever around to back me up, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years. I think the word for it is “shame?” Yeah, shame. The Dread Lord’s big speech was—dare I say it—kinda half-baked? He isn’t flailing his tentacles nearly as much as he used to, and the festering ooze wounds are barely oozing at all.

I dunno. It’s hard to tell these days. For all we know, Nyarlathotep and His cultists could reign for another eon or two. Anything is possible in the Dread Lord’s reality. But I don’t feel too good after attending the Great American Shitshow. I didn’t even stick around for the grand finale. I had to pack up all those patriotic cat o’ nine tails—and who starts a fireworks show that late, anyway?

Democrats Need to Win Back Voters by Becoming Republicans

Ginny Hogan and Carlos Greaves — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 07:00:00 -0400

The following is an excerpt from our upcoming book, Obey In Advance: How to Survive and Thrive Under Authoritarianism by longtime McSweeney’s writer Ginny Hogan and McSweeney’s resident satirist Carlos Greaves. From how to stick your head in the sand to avoid thinking about your dictator, to the most effective ways to reeducate the masses, this hilarious (and oddly reassuring?) guide has you covered—whether you want to Make Authoritarianism Great Again or not.

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Democrats Need to Win Back Voters by Becoming Republicans

“Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is offering a warning about the rise of a ‘dirtbag left’ within the Democratic Party, a reference to candidates on the left who have run and won primaries while identifying themselves as democratic socialists.” — The Hill

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The Democratic Party needs to take back our country. After losing in a landslide by 1.5 percent of the vote in 2024, it was clear the party had completely lost touch with everyday Americans. Now there is only one solution: we must win back voters by becoming Republicans.

If the election told us one thing, it’s that, across the board, the American people like Republican policies more than they like Democratic policies. That’s why we must head in the same direction the Republican Party is heading—towards a Christian ethnonationalist, crony capitalist state. Turns out, that’s what our base wanted all along.

Think of the voter ideological spectrum as a beach, and each political party as a beach-chair rental hut. If the Republican chair rental hut is over on the far right side of the beach, then all we, as Democrats, have to do is park our chair rental hut a little to the left of their hut, and we’ll capture the entire left side of the voter beach. According to the principle of minimum differentiation, America wants two political parties that are virtually indistinguishable, and that’s exactly what we intend to give them.

Kamala Harris did an admirable job trying to become a Republican. Nothing says “party of the people” like seeking out the endorsement of a wildly popular, salt-of-the-Earth everyman like Dick Cheney. If there’s one mistake the Harris campaign made, it was not doing more of that.

From now on, we must do everything Republicans do, but better. Democratic candidates should be on right-leaning comedians’ podcasts making fun of trans athletes. They should abandon “woke” social policy talking points like “racism is a thing there should be less of” and focus instead on kitchen-table economic issues like “immigrants should not be allowed to go to the doctor.” And they must stop harping on democracy since clearly nobody cares. The only “norm” the Democrats should be focused on from now on is Norm from Cheers—a beer-drinking middle-aged white guy—which is a key demographic Democrats have been ceding to Republicans for far too long.

These changes are the only way Democrats can earn back voter trust. By becoming indistinguishable from Republicans, Democrats can prove that, like Republicans, they too are in step with the voting populace. Then, the only other task remaining is to crush any opposition to the left of us. After all, that’s exactly what Republicans would do.

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Advance praise for Obey in Advance:

“This book is the catharsis we all need. It’s not easy to make this current political moment funny, but Greaves and Hogan pull it off again and again. I laughed my ass off (which explains where it went).”
—Nikki Glasser

“This is the only self-help guide to living under a dictatorship that you will ever need, and by far the funniest. Read it before it’s banned.”
—Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report

“Democracy is priceless, but fascism sure seems to pay well. If you’re morally bankrupt and looking to sell your soul, Obey in Advance has everything you need for a profitable life of lickspittlery.”
—Kevin Kruse, Professor of History, Princeton University

Obey in Advance will be out this September and is available for preorder at our store.