Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World It’s a universal modern-life experience to talk about something and immediately see an ad that seems like it must be a result of that conversation. Maybe you tell someone you’re planning a vacation and then start seeing advertisements for flights and hotels. Maybe you talk about how you want to take up running and find yourself bombarded by bann…

The 2024 Presidential Debate Drinking Game REQUIRED ITEMS One 750 ml bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey A television or any device capable of streaming the debate live A sense of resigned masochism that can come only from no longer having any reason to believe that we live in a world where outcomes can be predicted using logic and reason. THE RULES Every time Biden makes a moderately s…

Way to Go, You Just Blew Up Our Death Star, the Largest Walkable Community in the Galaxy No, no, great job, you disintegrated our Death Star, the first-ever pedestrian-only planet. You drove a million miles just to ruin a perfectly lovely living space. Just admit you were jealous of our commute and hated the idea of us enjoying a holistic work-life-play housing concept optimized to balance labor and leisure. You couldn’t bear to wat…

Reviews of New Food: Unnamed Test Variety Apples I was minding my own business in the produce section when I came across an unassuming display of apples near the end of the aisle with a small sign that read UNNAMED TEST VARIETY APPLES (NON-GMO). They were on sale for $1.48 per pound. I did not hesitate. What were they testing? A new kind of pesticide? How mealy the flesh of an apple can be whi…

ChatGPT Now Has PhD-Level Intelligence, and the Poor Personal Choices to Prove It “If you look at the trajectory of improvement, systems like GPT-3 were maybe toddler-level intelligence… and then systems like GPT-4 are more like smart high-schooler intelligence. And then, in the next couple of years, we’re looking at PhD intelligence…” — Open AI CTO Mira Murati, in an interview with Dartmouth Engineering – – – ChatGPT has bec…

Introducing Our New Whole-Body Deodorant Because You Are Gross and Disgusting Life can be pretty smelly sometimes. And that’s totally normal, so don’t worry. Our company is here to save you with products that will cover up your stench. We all know that traditional deodorant goes on your armpits. But other parts of your body smell, too. Obviously, we don’t like to talk about or even think about those body parts because the…

My Recent Interview to Simply Rent a Small House in Los Angeles for Six Months THEM: Are you the Dan Kennedy who has written all about how to make millions of dollars? You sell a program of some sort to people and say they can get rich with this program if they buy your books and stuff? ME: Oh, god, no. I’m really glad we’re meeting. That’s a different Dan Kennedy. No, I’ve written three books, comedy books, and humor. I’m…

Working from Home, as Imagined by My In-Office Boss I yawn awake at the painfully early hour of noon o’clock to the pinging of 1,005 unread emails. A voicemail from my boss leaps to the top of my mountain of notifications: “PLEASE LOG INTO TEAMS NOW!!” I take a deep breath and realize it’s the perfect time to grab a cold brew—on the company card, of course. At the coffee shop, I join a group of r…

Excerpts from The Believer: Take the W: Collier – – – Our friends at The Believer are now publishing web exclusives. To celebrate, we’re sharing excerpts of their inaugural weekly column, in which Katie Heindl (author of the beloved Basketball Feelings) writes about the WNBA for both longtime fans and the casual observer. If you want to follow along and bypass the paywall, pick up a Believer…

Norse Mythology for Bostonians: Wayland the Smith Performs an Extreme Feat of True Finnish Sisu Art by Matt Smith – – – In 2019, an abandoned smartphone was found partially buried beneath layers of sediment and urine in a South Boston alleyway. This forgotten relic was soon revealed to contain a remarkable audio-text describing in great detail the religious beliefs of ancient Scandinavia. This oral manuscript was transcribed and released t…

You Really Want to Start Skateboarding in Your Midthirties? Here Are Five Picks for Relaxing Outdoor Chairs Instead Hey, your partner called us. Wow. Skateboarding? Right now, at this point in your life? Recreationally? No! Why do you insist on wading into the waters of the Unknown when the safe shores of Life have been given to you by people who love you? Here are our top five picks for outdoor relaxing chairs. All are perfect for taking a load off and think…

What I Would Do If I Got Off the Roof of This Office Building and Were Elected President We live in the greatest nation in the world, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of room for improvement. During my first hundred days in office, I promise to tackle immigration reform, cap insulin prices, and ensure that people will no longer accidentally get their cars stuck on top of an office building at midday on a Thursday. A day-one …

If They’d Told Me We Were Poor, I Would’ve Tried Being Funny Though her family sometimes received food stamps and occasionally had their utilities cut off, Marcie Alvis Walker’s parents led her to believe that they were an average middle-class Black family. They encouraged her to pursue her dreams and told her that if she worked hard enough, she’d achieve them. The small catch was that Walker’s dream was …

Concerning Local News Weather Team Promos The News Channel 4 First Alert Weather Team has experience YOU can count on. Stay INFORMED. Stay CONNECTED. With the News Channel 4 First Alert Weather Team’s latest resumé and cover letter. We’re the News Channel 4 First Alert Weather Team, and we’re working for YOU. We’re the News Channel 4 First Alert Weather Team, and we, like, actually want…

We Love the Character of this Neighborhood So We Bought a House, Tore It Down, and Built a Mansion Resembling a La Quinta Inn Isn’t this neighborhood charming? The cute brick ranches. The historic bungalows with their breezy porches. The old apartment buildings that symbolize our romantic notions of the working class. Even the duplexes are just adorable. It’s inspiring how people share walls and divide roofs right down the middle. So egalitarian. Yes, we love the chara…

Tomorrow’s Itinerary for the Geese in My Apartment Complex 0500: Sound the alarm. 0600: Recitation of the day’s mantra in the traditional spirited honking. 0700: Singing of “O Canada” and flyover in standard formation. 0800: Announcement of the flock’s minutes. 0830: Synchronized shitting and breakfast on the east bank of the retention pond. 1000: Gather outside the dog park fence for the “Taunting of t…

A Nostalgic Reverie for My Youth, When I Wasn’t So Nostalgic All the Time Ah, childhood! I remember it fondly and often. Getting grass stains on my knees, eating fruit roll-ups, and most importantly, not being burdened by constantly reminiscing about my childhood. Life was so simple then. No responsibilities, no cares, no memories of fifteen to twenty-five years earlier to warp into the romantic if misguided belief th…

How to Respectfully Decline an Invitation to a Social Obligation You Simply Do Not Feel Like Attending In this column, professional speechwriter Chandler Dean provides partly satirical, partly genuine “How To” advice focused on a hyper-specific subcategory of speeches—from graduation speeches to wedding toasts to eulogies, and all the rhetorical occasions in between. – – – Yay! You’ve been invited to a thing. But on the other hand: Shit! You’ve b…

A Guide to Our Company’s Completely Reasonable Interview Process Dear Candidate, Thank you for your application. Should we move forward, here are the stages you can expect to encounter as you advance during a typical interview process with our team: Fifteen-minute introductory phone call with the recruiter Thirty-minute Zoom interview with the hiring manager to discuss strengths, weaknesses, and the last thi…

The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father Tries to Have “The Talk” with Hamlet ACT III, SCENE IV: Castle Elsinore Enter Hamlet, dragging the corpse of Polonius. Enter Ghost. GHOST: Mark me. But don’t mark me late for dinner! HAMLET: Forsooth, don’t sneak up on me like that! GHOST: Son, what wast that scene back there with thy mother? HAMLET: Nothing! T’was perfectly normal! Just a normal conversation between a son trying …