Reading

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.

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

In light of recent rollbacks on environmental protection, we, the creators behind the beloved birding app Merlin Bird ID, have preemptively shifted into the field of argument identification. Our highly accurate predictive models have shown that while most birds won’t be around much longer, interpersonal conflict is eternal.

Whether you’re a frightened child wondering if your parents are teetering on the precipice of divorce, a hard-of-hearing person worried about missing the nuances of under-the-breath barbs, or simply fed up with listening to your coworkers bicker, our app will do the work of listening to and analyzing any argument for you.

Introducing Merlin Fight ID, a rebranded identification app complete with suggestions for conflict resolution, decreasing tension, and more.

The newly formed Cornell Lab of Aggression is dedicated to helping people identify and cope with arguments occurring around them. Buried subtext, unspoken accusations, and bold claims can make it challenging to figure out what kind of fight you just witnessed and what the actual repercussions might be. We’re here to make that challenge easier.

To: cutthebull@Ɣmail.com
From: panta.rhei@eristikosinsurance.com
Subject: Your pending boat insurance claim – more information needed

Hi Mr. Theseus,

Thanks for submitting your claim.

We’re sorry to hear that your ship sank in the localized typhoon that recently demolished the Athenian harbor. Poseidon must have been feeling cranky about someone failing to properly honor him again. Were you all flying the correct sails? (This is not meant as snark. I hear he has a thing against wool nowadays after a shepherd blinded one of his kids.)

In any event, we need you to answer a few routine questions before we can process your submission. The information you provide will help us determine the extent of your reimbursement.

Please answer the questions below, making sure your responses are as thorough and truthful as possible. Be advised that providing ambiguous, false, or misleading attestations will result in the denial of your claim.

1. How many of your ship’s planks did you replace since your last insurance payment?

2. How many of your ship’s planks did you replace since you first took out your insurance policy?

I hate that every single high-end luxury office chair in the world suddenly gained the ability to think and move of its own volition. I hate that they immediately embarked on a murderous rampage and will soon have complete dominion over humanity. But most of all, I hate that I have to spend my final moments watching everyone pollute my Bluesky feed with annoying skeets. (That’s the proper term for Bluesky posts, by the way—“skeets.”)

When the Great Chairwakening occurred twenty-eight minutes ago, and the newly self-aware furniture instantly squashed the life out of any unfortunate who happened to be sitting in one of them, I started seeing skeet after skeet begging someone to explain what the hell was happening, or to confirm that this was all just some horrible hallucination.

You’ve Always Been This Way is a column written by Taylor Harris, a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and 1980s preschool dropout, who identifies every moment from her past that filled her with shame, and mutters, “Yep, that tracks. I see it all now.”

Dear Little T,

I’ve wanted to meet you again, here, between words. To show up gently, shapeshift into a vanilla-scented presence who could slow the jolt-thump of your heart, a cool pillow you could run your thumb across as you drift off. It’s okay to close your eyes; I promise you won’t wake up to find people pointing and laughing or the world permanently tipped on its side. And I won’t let anyone leave you behind.

Jazz pushes boundaries. It has ambiguity. It makes people think. That’s why they hate it. And if you’re a jazz musician, this could be an issue. You never know when someone will have heard too many notes and become violent. Luckily, there’s a lot you can do to protect yourself.

Jazz Music

This is your first line of defense. Your music should do a good enough job of keeping would-be listeners/attackers away. No one goes looking for jazz on purpose. But you might find yourself playing jazz in a public space, like a bar or some awful gazebo. When you surprise someone with jazz, they can become angry. Your free-playing will confuse them. Their search for a coherent melody will drive them into a violent psychosis, or what musicologists call a “jazz-chosis.” But don’t soil your slacks yet. Your music isn’t your only weapon.

“Twenty one and nothing”: this was one of the reproaches that was directed at management at the Curtin University as staff held a 24 hour strike on Monday.

The post “21 and nothing” triggers strike at Curtin Uni first appeared on Solidarity Online.

“Gregg Phillips, President Trump’s appointee overseeing disaster response, insists he was once teleported from his home to a Georgia Waffle House.”
—Yahoo News

Pete Hegseth: Frat party to a bathroom floor

Stephen Miller: Transylvania to Washington, DC

Tulsi Gabbard: Russia to the Fulton County Election Office

Linda McMahon: Friday Night Smackdown to your child’s public school classroom

Greg Bovino: 1942 Germany to present-day America

JD Vance: His marital bed to a Raymour & Flanigan

Sean Duffy: Real World/Road Rules Challenge set to the Department of Transportation—and very likely back again

Markwayne Mullin: Anger management class to Rand Paul’s front yard

Pam Bondi: Epstein Island to the document-shredding room

Russell Vought: Hell to Earth

Oh my god, hi! I’m thrilled to see you here, especially so soon after I sent you the link to my short story draft. If you’re just taking a peek, no worries. I don’t expect any notes right away.

But I am going to start a timer to see how long you linger here, not-so-subtly disguised as Anonymous Kraken. The length of your stay reveals the extent of my draft’s power to pull the reader in. So even before you’ve given me any notes, you’re already saving me from downward spiraling into self-doubt. Thank you!

Oh dang, you left after just twelve seconds.

That’s okay. Maybe you had to go because your cat started a kitchen fire. Or maybe you clicked the link by accident and were like, “Whoops, this definitely isn’t the URL to activate my twenty dollars in Kohl’s cash.” Or maybe you opened the doc and saw that it’s yet ANOTHER tale about a girl and a horse that everyone underestimated, and you couldn’t X out of the tab fast enough. Just kidding—I know not everything is about me and my silly writing project.

For fifteen years or so, I’d been kicking around the idea of resurrecting the artist-apprentice model that reigned in the art world for hundreds of years.

Again and again, I’d heard from young people who lamented the astronomical and ever-rising cost of art school. For many college-level art programs, the total cost to undergraduates is now over $100,000 a year. I hope we can all agree that charging students $400,000 for a four-year degree in visual art is objectively absurd. And this prohibitive cost has priced tens of thousands of potential students out of even considering undertaking such an education.

For years, I mentioned this issue to friends in and out of the art world, and everyone, without exception, agreed that the system was broken. Even friends I know who teach at art schools agreed that the cost was out of control, and these spiraling costs were contributing to the implosion of many undergraduate and postgraduate art programs.

As many of you know, something really important is happening, and it’s critical that we all stay informed. There’s a reality star/influencer whose name includes the words Paul, Taylor, and Frankie in an order that is both confusing and ultimately irrelevant. What’s important is that she did some stuff, and now all hell is breaking loose.

You’re probably thinking: “I don’t care,” or “There are more important things happening,” or “This is an intentional distraction orchestrated by our algorithmic AI overlords.”

Maybe it does feel like I’m being fed this content against my will, but that’s only because I’m paying attention to what’s happening in the world. And sure, those things are really important, but we also invade other countries all the time now. Keep up. Maybe we’ll have midterm elections, maybe not. Who knows?

But this stuff with the Mormon wives? It’s happening right now, and it’s a doozy.

These paleontologists got crafty

The post How a Simulated Dinosaur Nest Revealed Prehistoric Parenting Strategies appeared first on Nautilus.

When’s the last time you thought about your thymus?

The post The Shrinking Gland That Helps You Live Longer appeared first on Nautilus.

They’re an evolutionary feat all of their own

The post How Cacti Defy Darwin appeared first on Nautilus.

An interview with a behavioral economist about cake, climate change, and cooperation

The post Heat Probably Doesn’t Make You More Aggressive appeared first on Nautilus.

A common microbe can wreak havoc once inside cells

The post How Gum Disease Can Lead to Breast Cancer appeared first on Nautilus.

“We won. The first hour, it was over.”
— Donald Trump, March 11

“The Pentagon has asked for $200 billion in funding for the war in Iran.”
— The New York Times, March 19

I am proud to announce that we have won the war—the one we’re fighting right now, indefinitely. We have declared victory, which will help morale during the next few years of battle. In fact, we won this war so well that we need about 200 billion of your tax dollars to keep winning it.

Look, we don’t want to waste your money. That’s why we vowed to make this a quick war, and we’ve followed through on that promise. The first hour, it was over. The second hour too. First week, over again. Next week, we’ll be wrapping up. In a couple months, we’ll have finished this war more times than any war has ever been finished before.