Excerpts from The Believer: Ask Carrie A quarterly column from Carrie Brownstein, who is better at dispensing advice than taking it. Q: What is an appropriate amount of time to stay at your friend’s art show if you’re not interested in the social aspect of that kind of thing? I’m all about showing up to support people, but I find the conversations at these events so tedious and perfo…

Forgotten Literary Moments in Which a Cat Throws up and No One Wants to Deal With It The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they bought regular kibble, even when specifically asked to get hairball control, and then retreated into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess that Mr. Fancybiscuits had made. When…

Was It Cake? “It’s not cake!” my wife screamed as the cleaver split the thermostat in our foyer. I pushed past her and sank my chef’s knife into the Ethan Allen sofa we had bought when we moved. Goose down spilled out of the gash. I looked at my wife and grimaced. “Not cake!” our children screeched as they danced in the floating feathers. Seven days prior, w…

Deferred Culling Email to President Nyarlathotep’s Workforce “The Trump administration is offering nearly all federal workers the opportunity to resign from their posts now and still retain full pay and benefits through Sept. 30.” — NPR – – – During the first week of His Return, President Nyarlathotep issued a number of screeching carrion calls from Mount Blasphemy (formerly 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.) concer…

Reasons Your Password Was Rejected Password must contain both uppercase and lowercase characters. Password must have eight to twelve characters. Too many characters detected. Pump the brakes, George R. R. Martin. Password cannot contain trademarked characters—e.g., Garfield, The Smurfs. Password cannot contain characters that are dangerously close to trademark infringement—e.g., …

How We Restored Our New York City Loft to an Authentic Nineteenth-Century Sweatshop From the moment my husband Jon and I saw the sun-drenched loft on Mercer, we knew two things: We absolutely loved it, and we had to change everything. We loved the location, the fourteen-foot ceilings, the exposed brick, the historic pre-labor-law building. But the more modern additions were intolerably bourgeois. This space was not meant to be …

Everything You Need to Know about Rememory, the $150 Million Apple TV Hit That Can Be Watched Only in a Retirement Community in Ohio Following in the footsteps of Apple TV’s star-studded non-Severance critically acclaimed shows that no one has ever heard of because they never advertise them, like Disclaimer, Presumed Innocent, and For All Mankind, Rememory has been described by Apple’s Tim Cook as “our greatest achievement yet.” With the second season likely to pick up a whol…

Reviews of New Food: Jeni’s Cosmic Bloom Ice Cream Have you ever time-traveled? I didn’t think I had until that day in the freezer aisle at Horizon Market, staring at an ice cream flavor that seemed like a practical joke: Jeni’s Cosmic Bloom. It sounded like an overpriced candle. The carton teased: “Citric like a mandarin, refreshing like a kiwi, punchy like passion fruit.” That told me absolute…

Executive Order: We Must Stop Everyone from Transitioning, So the President Knows Who to Grope “An executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day back in office offers a new federal government definition of the sexes that could have a major impact on transgender people nationwide. The order calls for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passp…

A Chinese Spy’s Surveillance Report on American TikTok Users SURVEILLANCE REPORT #4891 SUBJECT: American Social Media Behavioral Analysis DATE: 01/22/2025AGENT: Chen Wei I continue to monitor American social media trends on TikTok to identify opportunities for ideological influence and assess potential threats to collectivist ideals. Below are my findings on key creators of interest. @corporatebestie A tw…

Watch as I Destroy Your Society, Gradually, Over the Course of One Hundred to Two Hundred Years Now that I have defeated you, I shall feed my conceit and explain the horrors I will enact upon you… Behold despair. Behold destruction. Behold the ultimate instrument of my revenge—a multifactorial framework of social, political, and economic pressures to undermine your country via the erosion of its complex systems! What? Why are you looking a…

Submissions Are Open for the Second Annual Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction We’re pleased to announce that submissions are now open for the second annual Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction, in honor of the extraordinary work and life of long-time McSweeney’s author Stephen Dixon. The Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction recognizes an emerging fiction writer who is experimenting with form and expanding the boundaries…

Announcing the 2nd Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction We’re pleased to announce that submissions are now open for the second annual Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction, in honor of the extraordinary work and life of long-time McSweeney’s author Stephen Dixon. The Stephen Dixon Award for Short Fiction recognizes an emerging fiction writer who is experimenting with form and expanding the boundaries…

Excerpts from The Believer: Inside Out With stable employment exceedingly difficult to come by, intellectually disabled adults have another, occasionally lucrative, way of participating in American society: they can become artists. – – – On a Monday morning in early June, Nicole Storm arrived at the Creative Growth Art Center in downtown Oakland, California. Light poured in through b…

New York Times News Quiz, ca. 2045 1 of 11: Former President Donald J. Trump, the first U.S. president to serve during a Civil War since Abraham Lincoln in 1861, died this week at 98. Which of the following was his last recorded statement? “I’m not dying” “I’m running for president” “Pass me that gun so I can make sure JD goes before me” “Covfeve” 2 of 11: Congress passed a bil…

Faculty Fight Night To: Department of English Re: Faculty Fight Night Thank you for your overwhelming interest in Faculty Fight Night. What started as a modest departmental fundraiser has become a major university charity event. To your many questions: The format will be three one-minute rounds (wearing heavy gloves and headgear) under the rules of the state boxin…

The Items You Own That Don’t Contain Microplastics Two unglazed clay pinch pots you made in the third grade that your parents recently regifted you after Swedish death-cleaning their house. The multicolored wool throw blanket your grandma crocheted in 1982 before she switched to polyester yarns.1 A single $125 organic cotton GOTS-certified long-sleeve slate gray crew neck shirt you purchased aft…

This Is How You Normalize Performing a Fascist Gesture “There were angry reactions across Europe to Elon Musk’s apparent use of a salute banned for its Nazi links in Germany, where some condemned it as malicious provocation or an outreach of solidarity to far-right groups.” — The Guardian – – – 1. Have the wealthiest man on Earth (ideally someone who has gone out of his way, perhaps on a social medi…

After Studying Existentialism for a Semester, We Have Jokes These jokes were written by students in Shannon Barker’s high school English class in Chicago, Illinois. – – – 1. DAD JOKES Knock Knock. Who’s there? No one. Never. You’re alone in life. No one cares about you. – – – What did Kate Bush say to Sisyphus? Be up that road, be up that hill, be up that building… – – – …

Why Are People Leaving This City We’ve Made Impossible to Live In? As city leaders, we’re stunned we’re losing thousands and thousands of residents who say they can’t build a life here. We don’t understand why they’re leaving, even after we’ve spent all our time in office making this city absolutely inhospitable to working people. The building block of a comfortable life is housing, so we’re surprised to hear p…