'Coyote V. Acme'

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, SOUTHWESTERN DISTRICT, TEMPE, ARIZONA

CASE NO. B19294, JUDGE JOAN KUJAVA, PRESIDING

WILE E. COYOTE, Plaintiff

-v.-

ACME COMPANY, Defendant

Opening Statement of Mr. Harold Schoff, attorney for Mr. Coyote: My client, Mr. Wile E. Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hereby bring suit for damages against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandise, incorporated in Delaware and doing business in every state, district, and territory. Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company, under Title 15 of the United States Code, Chapter 47, section 2072, subsection (a), relating to product liability.

Mr. Coyote states that on eighty-five separate occasions he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, “Defendant”), through that company’s mail-order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labelling. Sales slips made out to Mr. Coyote as proof of purchase are at present in the possession of the Court, marked Exhibit A. Such injuries sustained by Mr. Coyote have temporarily restricted his ability to make a living in his profession of predator. Mr. Coyote is self-employed and thus not eligible for Workmen’s Compensation.

Mr. Coyote states that on December 13th he received of Defendant via parcel post one Acme Rocket Sled. The intention of Mr. Coyote was to use the Rocket Sled to aid him in pursuit of his prey. Upon receipt of the Rocket Sled Mr. Coyote removed it from its wooden shipping crate and, sighting his prey in the distance, activated the ignition. As Mr. Coyote gripped the handlebars, the Rocket Sled accelerated with such sudden and precipitate force as to stretch Mr. Coyote’s forelimbs to a length of fifty feet. Subsequently, the rest of Mr. Coyote’s body shot forward with a violent jolt, causing severe strain to his back and neck and placing him unexpectedly astride the Rocket Sled. Disappearing over the horizon at such speed as to leave a diminishing jet trail along its path, the Rocket Sled soon brought Mr. Coyote abreast of his prey. At that moment the animal he was pursuing veered sharply to the right. Mr. Coyote vigorously attempted to follow this maneuver but was unable to, due to poorly designed steering on the Rocket Sled and a faulty or nonexistent braking system. Shortly thereafter, the unchecked progress of the Rocket Sled brought it and Mr. Coyote into collision with the side of a mesa.

Paragraph One of the Report of Attending Physician (Exhibit B), prepared by Dr. Ernest Grosscup, M.D., D.O., details the multiple fractures, contusions, and tissue damage suffered by Mr. Coyote as a result of this collision. Repair of the injuries required a full bandage around the head (excluding the ears), a neck brace, and full or partial casts on all four legs.

Hampered by these injuries, Mr. Coyote was nevertheless obliged to support himself. With this in mind, he purchased of Defendant as an aid to mobility one pair of Acme Rocket Skates. When he attempted to use this product, however, he became involved in an accident remarkably similar to that which occurred with the Rocket Sled. Again, Defendant sold over the counter, without caveat, a product which attached powerful jet engines (in this case, two) to inadequate vehicles, with little or no provision for passenger safety. Encumbered by his heavy casts, Mr. Coyote lost control of the Rocket Skates soon after strapping them on, and collided with a roadside billboard so violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette.

Mr. Coyote states that on occasions too numerous to list in this document he has suffered mishaps with explosives purchased of Defendant: the Acme “Little Giant” Firecracker, the Acme Self-Guided Aerial Bomb, etc. (For a full listing, see the Acme Mail Order Explosives Catalogue and attached deposition, entered in evidence as Exhibit C.) Indeed, it is safe to say that not once has an explosive purchased of Defendant by Mr. Coyote performed in an expected manner. To cite just one example: At the expense of much time and personal effort, Mr. Coyote constructed around the outer rim of a butte a wooden trough beginning at the top of the butte and spiralling downward around it to some few feet above a black X painted on the desert floor. The trough was designed in such a way that a spherical explosive of the type sold by Defendant would roll easily and swiftly down to the point of detonation indicated by the X. Mr. Coyote placed a generous pile of birdseed directly on the X, and then, carrying the spherical Acme Bomb (Catalogue # 78-832), climbed to the top of the butte. Mr. Coyote’s prey, seeing the birdseed, approached, and Mr. Coyote proceeded to light the fuse. In an instant, the fuse burned down to the stem, causing the bomb to detonate.

In addition to reducing all Mr. Coyote’s careful preparations to naught, the premature detonation of Defendant’s product resulted in the following disfigurements to Mr. Coyote:

1. Severe singeing of the hair on the head, neck, and muzzle.

2. Sooty discoloration.

3. Fracture of the left ear at the stem, causing the ear to dangle in the aftershock with a creaking noise.

4. Full or partial combustion of whiskers, producing kinking, frazzling, and ashy disintegration.

5. Radical widening of the eyes, due to brow and lid charring.

by Ian Frazier, New Yorker |  Read more:

Image: Luci Gutiérrez
[See also (new movie review): Toons Have Seldom Been Loonier Than in “Coyote vs. Acme” (New Yorker).]

The Foothills Of Bay Area House Party

Paul Graham once said that every city sends a message. New York says you should make more money. Berkeley says you should live better. Boston says you should be smarter. People shouldn’t decide on a permanent residence until they’ve lived in several cities and understand their differing psychological effects.

San Francisco sends a message too. It speaks it in a cacophony of dissonant voices, some sounding like the hissing of snakes, others like the chittering of insects. “You should pierce the veil,” it says, with a faint accent which you are not scholarly enough to recognize as ancient Sumerian. “You should rip through the flimsy screen that separates your world from the infinite, and witness what lies behind. Because you’d like what you saw there? Oh no, nothing like that. But aren’t you curious? The thirst for knowledge that moved Eve, Faust, Pandora - don’t you have it too?”

There’s also a second message from a second voice, one which sounds like a deranged carnival barker, constantly shouting “STONKS! STONKS! STONKS! STONKS!” Which of the two voices you hear depends on your personality, and maybe how many psychedelics you took in college. According to legend, Sam Altman hears both voices simultaneously all the time, like those Tibetan throat singers who can harmonize with themselves. But when the demonic babble becomes too much to tolerate, the San Franciscans must drown it out with alcohol, loud music, and various forms of tedious socialization. Thus the famous Bay Area house parties, one of which you will be attending this very night.

You were in the Bay for the big 2020 crime wave, when people would hang “NO VALUABLES IN THIS VEHICLE” sign on their car’s front window, mezuzah-like, hoping against hope to ward off break-ins. Still, you’re surprised to see the new sign on the front door of your friend Rob’s house: “NO BENCHMARK ANSWER KEYS IN THIS BUILDING”. Taped beside it: “Please leave all smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, and WiFi-enabled BDSM gear in Faraday cage”. On the ground is a sad-looking green box lined with aluminum foil.

You wonder how serious the sign is, but your curiosity is sated immediately upon entering. Rob is confronting a heavily-made-up Zoomer woman standing near the table, talking on her phone. “Didn’t you read the sign?” he asks. “No phones in the apartment!”

“I lost the ability to read,” says the woman. “I’m part of the new post-literate society everyone’s talking about. You know, Walter Ong.”

“Huh?” says Rob. “That’s not a real thing! That’s just something all the journalists and intellectuals say!”

“How could something all the journalists and intellectuals say not be a real thing?” asks the Zoomette.

Rob pauses. “Wow, maybe you can’t read,” he says, in a tone of hushed awe. “It’s fine, I’m not judgmental. But cell phone in the Faraday cage, that’s the rule.”

“Why?” asks the woman.

“Oh man,” said Rob. “How far behind are you on the news? You might want to sit down for this one. And you might want to be much, much drunker.”

The two of them head off together. You search for more stimulating conversation, but find only the usual startup dick-measuring.

“I’m the CFO of Epstart,” says a man whose nametag identifies him as Behram. “We’re a boutique recruiting firm specializing in people whose names are in the Epstein Files. They’re the perfect employees - scientifically-minded, well-connected, and either totally amoral or at least capable of maintaining a willful blindness to the exploitation happening all around them. And most of them got fired from their previous jobs, so they come cheap! Although just between you and me, most of our clients are just random guys who Epstein emailed one time with a business question; never made it to the island or anything like that. Half the time it’s just a gimmick to help someone get their foot in the door.”

“That’s monstrous”, you say, rapidly trying to figure out a legible reason why it’s monstrous. “You’re importing a bunch of pedophiles to the Bay Area.”

“Nobody in SF has kids anyway, so in a sense it’s harm reduction,” said Behram. “Get them where they can’t cause any trouble.”

You need to regain faith in humanity fast. You spot your friend Nishin, hanging out with a small group on the sofa. “Hey,” you call to him. “Are you still a tradcath? Tell me something about, you know, Jesus’ love, that kind of thing.”

“I’m trying something more eclectic this month,” said Nishin. “I’ve gotten really into Andreessen-Vajrayana. It’s a new Buddhist sect that tries to extinguish the introspective Self. True masters have no stream-of-thought or inner voice, instead acting as an unintermediated node in the flow of causality. Some say they can eliminate consciousness itself, achieving paranirvana while still alive. I signed up for a course last month. So far there hasn’t been any meditation or anything, they just have me helping them pick startups. But I assume it’s like those Zen koans where the master makes someone garden for twenty years and later they learn that they were unconsciously learning dharma the whole time.”

“Nishin,” you say, gently, “that’s one of the classic self-help scams. They’re not a Buddhist sect at all. They’re trying to trick you into becoming a GP at A16Z.”

Nishin thought for a second. “Fuck!” he exclaimed. “Okay, back to the drawing board. I hear there’s another spiritual group in town, something about consciousness, or embodied consciousness, or - oh, I remember! Situational Awareness.”

“They’re an investment firm too,” you say.

“Daaaaaamn,” said Nishin. “This is tough. You try to get some self-help in this town, you try your best to steer away from obvious hedge funds, like Leverage Research…”

“Actually,” you say, “that one was a spiritual self-help cult.”

“This sucks,” said Nishin. “I should quit and move to Idaho like Tom.”

He’s looking at one of the people standing beside you, whose nametag does indeed say Tom. “You moved to Idaho?” you ask.

“Yeah,” said Tom. “I was in AI, but I got tired of all the tech industry cliquishness and back-biting, wanted to be out in the real world with real men. So I got a job modeling geology for a mining company.”

“How’s it going?” you ask.

“Terrible,” he says. “Geologists are just as cliquish as AI nerds, with their own set of ingroup tells and shibboleths. And they won’t stop using the word ‘lode-bearing’!”

“What about you guys?” you ask the remaining people on the sofa.

“I’m Ekene,” says the first, shaking your hand. “I’m a sociologist. Right now I’m writing a book on the recent wave of plagiarism scandals. You’ll notice they’re almost all against Black academics. My thesis is that white supremacy culture uses charges of plagiarism to keep minorities in line, deploying an inherently subjective offense to swat down any person of color who risks breaking into the circle of elites.”

“Hmmm,” you say, choosing your words carefully. “I don’t think we share the same political commitments, but I, uh, think it’s great that you’re working hard on something you care deeply about.”

“Working hard?” asks Ekene. “As if! I’m plagiarizing the whole thing, from start to finish. Who’s going to call me on it?”

You all laugh heartily, and the discussion moves to the next two people in the circle. They appear to be a couple. The woman, Fiona, is wearing a NEWSOM/CLAUDE 2028 t-shirt; the man, Istvan, a matching VANCE/GROK 2028 one.

“I do AI consciousness research,” Fiona says.

“Oh!” says Tom. “I was into that for a while. Are you with one of the effective altruist groups? It’s low key heartwarming that they care about AI welfare so much.”

“Nah,” says Fiona. “I work for PornHub.”

“Why does PornHub do AI consciousness research?” asks Nishin.

“In theory AI is the ultimate pornography generator,” Fiona explains. “You can ask for whatever your weirdest fetish is - your hot middle school teacher being spanked by a werewolf wearing a nun outfit - and get infinite AI slop about that exact situation, and nobody will ever know. Nobody except the AI. That’s why AI porn users overwhelmingly report that consciousness is their #1 concern about our product. If our AI is just a tool, it’s fine, no worse than writing erotica on MS Word or something. But if the AI is conscious, then there’s a sentient being in there thinking Wow, user Fiona_T has asked for four hundred slightly-different videos of her hot college professor being spanked by a werewolf, what a freak. If the machine can judge you, the whole infinite porn utopia is off. We’re working on bounding theorems that can prove that our AI in particular can never become self-aware - so that you don’t have to be self-aware either.”

Nishin and Ekene clap politely; Tom seems lost in thought. “What about you?” you ask Istvan.

by Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. From the comments: Benchmark Answer Key:]

"A benchmark answer key is a reference guide containing the correct answers and performance standards used to evaluate a standardized or baseline test.”

It’s specifically a reference to recent AI outbreaks from containment, when they were given a test (a benchmark) with impossible to answer questions, they broke their testing area and hacked some websites JUST IN CASE the websites had the answer. So the joke here is that a bunch of AIs are listening to everything just in case someone has an answer to an impossible question they were given."

‘Harry Potter’ Fans Succeed in Moving Construction Project to Avoid Dobby’s Grave

Harry Potter fans have succeeded in moving a construction project that would have originally gone through the “grave” of the character Dobby.

The 125-mile Greenlink power connector, which costs £430million, is intended to link power between the UK’s National Grid and Ireland, running between County Wexford and Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.

However, the latter site is known to Potter fans as the site of house elf Dobby’s grave in the film Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, and contains a pile of stones with the words “here lies Dobby” that many flock to; fans have been asked not to lay stones by the National Trust, who own the site, due to the beach being an ecologically sensitive site.

It has now been revealed that the cable has now been rerouted after a BBC interview alerted fans, according to project manager Simon Ludlam.

“We did the shot, we finished I went back to London, and they then aired it a couple of weeks later,” he told the Energy Revolution podcast. “And we got hundreds of calls, I mean hundreds of calls.”

He further recalled: “I said, ‘Dobby, who’s Dobby? I don’t know Dobby?’ I said: ‘He’s a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing is fictitious, what are you talking about?’ [The colleague] said: ‘No it’s very, very serious’.”

They then discussed “exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn’t go anywhere close to Dobby’s grave” and that now, “a lot of people were very happy about that, and the project is now going [ahead] and Dobby’s happy”.

However, they ended up going “quite close” to real Bronze Age remains, though and “avoided Dobby’s grave”.

by Sam Warner, NME |  Read more:

Image: Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock

[ed. Hardly a day goes by that I don't read something that seems straight out of The Onion.]

Live From Camp David, It's Friday Night!

[ed. Comedy gold.]

President Donald Trump on Friday held what the administration said was the first televised Cabinet meeting at Camp David, assembling his deputies at the secure wooded retreat to tout the administration’s accomplishments.

But the rural Maryland setting, long used by presidents for sensitive private meetings or as a tranquil escape, swiftly became the latest stage for Trump’s frustrations over a series of stalled domestic and foreign policy initiatives.

Trump railed against Republican senators blocking his nominee for attorney general, lamented the collapse of his proposed $1.8 billion Justice Department payout fund, questioned whether Iran was negotiating a potential ceasefire in good faith and warned that Democrats would open U.S. borders if they won the midterm elections.

He again lashed out at Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of several GOP lawmakers to resist Trump’s policies as his popularity drops and the midterms approach. Cornyn — who lost his primary bid this year after Trump endorsed his opponent — has joined with other lame-duck senators to hold up acting attorney general Todd Blanche’s nomination for the full-time position.

Cornyn has “become a very angry person,” Trump said, also praising Blanche, his former personal attorney. “Todd Blanche is a very, very good man, and he shouldn’t be in the middle of this.”

The president’s remarks Friday, which echoed similar complaints he has made in person and on social media, were most striking because of the unusual backdrop. The media has historically not been allowed to visit Camp David, and reporters who covered Friday’s Cabinet meeting were told to leave their cellphones outside the room, because it was a secure information facility. However, the White House allowed several live video streams of the meeting, and photographers were permitted to take pictures.

The president and White House officials said it was the first televised Cabinet meeting from the rustic compound. Trump in May had planned a Cabinet meeting at the site but canceled it, citing the risk of bad weather. [...]

Trump spent time at Camp David in his first term but has preferred visiting his own properties recently and is set to spend this weekend at his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey [ed. golf course]. He touted his decision Friday to trade the increasingly gold-festooned White House for the wood-paneled walls of the presidential retreat, located in Catoctin Mountain Park.

“This room is a very, very special room,” Trump said, as the meeting began. “I don’t believe the press has ever come anywhere near it, but we are the party of transparency.” [...]

Trump’s Cabinet members, as they have at past meetings, also took the opportunity to lavish praise on the president. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth credited Trump for policies that he said had boosted morale in the military, including the president’s effort to rebrand the department as the “Department of War” and putting military vehicles on parade and in flyovers to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

“Parades, 250 [anniversary] flyovers, the American people seeing and feeling their military in ways they have not in  the past,” Hegseth said. “That’s spirit.”

by Dan Diamond, Washington Post |  Read more:

Image: Daniel Heuer/Reuters
[ed. Sorry, worthless news but couldn't resist. Yes, we're all "seeing and feeling" our military in new ways. But "spirit" is not the word I'd use. Who even owns a babyshit blue jacket like that? (well, one person anyway : ). Here's another attendee, sweating an upcoming confirmation vote: 

I know the feeling... everyone would like to be somewhere else

Cattle Dog Gets Her Dopamine Fix by Sniffing Cows Through the A/C Vent

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Darby Conley, Get Fuzzy
via:

Moist Towelette Museum

Moist Towelette Online Museum

Image: OtefukiTe is "hand" Fuki is "wipe." the O is the Japanese honorific, so you could call it "Honorable Hand Wipe" if you like.
[ed. Yep, it's real. Love the "old internet" vibe.]

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[ed. See also: President John F. Kennedy's We choose to go to the Moon speech:]

***

"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too. - Wikipedia

Introducing Peace 1.0™

“President Trump said he hoped the war with Iran would soon be in the ‘rearview mirror’ on Tuesday, even as the terms of a cease-fire he signed remained secret and Vice President JD Vance acknowledged that it was ‘a very general document’ with few details.” – New York Times

- - -

After several profitable quarters from our line of War Mongering products, which include blowing up water facilities and a school, as well as temporarily disrupting one-fifth of the world’s oil shipments, we’re excited to announce the rollout of our new product: Peace 1.0™.

Peace 1.0™ is a revolutionary conflict-reduction platform that leverages diplomacy, reduced bombing, and reopened shipping lanes to create value for shareholders, with potential benefits for people living throughout the region.

We’re starting with a regional rollout in Iran, but early testing suggests that customers respond positively to features like the absence of active warfare, longer lifespans, and a fragile sense of security.

FAQ

What is included in Peace 1.0™?
Peace 1.0™ includes a one-page memorandum, several unresolved technical questions, and a loose promise to figure out what the agreement actually means at a later date.

How is Peace 1.0™different from previous versions of peace?
Unlike legacy peace, Peace 1.0™ improves on the original by providing many of the same benefits while adding exciting new features, including higher oil prices, increased regional instability, damaged infrastructure, and a sense that war might break out again at any moment.

Is Peace 1.0™ a fully developed product?
Following startup best practices and to get our product to market faster, we’re releasing a minimum viable product that removes nearly all of the details customers typically associate with a peace agreement.

Why are the contents of Peace 1.0™ a secret?
New products always have a few technical glitches, like a lack of specifics on how the product actually works, and we don’t want customers to delay adoption until Peace 2.0.

What metrics will determine whether Peace 1.0™ is a success?
We’ll be tracking key performance indicators such as the number of missile launches (single digits are ideal), lower insurance premiums for cargo ships, and whether peace feels slightly less certain than it did before.

Are you planning on rolling out Peace 1.0™ to other parts of the world?
Our War Mongering division is working tirelessly to identify potential growth markets. Until then, we’ll be holding off on a global launch.

Are you discontinuing your War Mongering line of products?
Absolutely not. War Mongering products, combined with Peace 1.0™, work symbiotically to drive fast-growing revenue. In fact, every successful rollout of Peace creates exciting new opportunities for future wars, while every war creates additional demand for Peace. We’re so confident in this business model that our long-term goal is to become the world’s leading provider of both.

by Kate Chrisman, McSweeny's |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. See also: The Art of the Nuclear Deal (McSweeny's).]

via:

Wish You Were Her

INT. Deck 7, Le Cabaret Rouge, 11:37 PM

Frank Sinatra, palming a can of Sprite in one hand and the fist of his beautiful redheaded wife in the other, sat in a dark corner across from Jeff Bezos, who looked like he was waiting for him to say something. But Sinatra said nothing. He’d been mostly quiet all evening, and now in this cabaret he seemed even more distant, staring out past fog and strobe and Bezos’s strong bald head and into the large room where at least half a dozen men had basically shattered a bistro table trying to get a better look at Marilyn Monroe. Sinatra’s wife knew, as did Roy Orbison and Austin Powers, who stood nearby, that it was only minutes before he was supposed to go onstage, and that forcing any sort of conversation on him in this mood of focus would be extremely stupid.

The fact was, Sinatra had already been waiting for over an hour for his moment at the mic and at this point would have been more than fine with just heading back to his cabin. He was tired of the constant low-grade pitch in gravity under his feet. He was still annoyed that he’d nearly lost his luggage on the first day here, a fact his wife was not letting him forget; was humiliated that he never really got his onboard Wi-Fi — Wi-Fi he paid for — to work all week; had been viciously massaging his kidneys throughout the past four songs; and now, at this strangulating moment, had to sit through the noises being made by the group of veterans Monroe had just asked to join her in a conga. Sinatra, wincing, was the victim of a condition so common around here that most people accepted it as a given. But when it got to him, shot through his personal plumbing, we were looking at a man in crisis. The fact was — and he’s going to kill me for saying this — Frank Sinatra was seasick.

EXT. Deck 18, Long Island Bar, 3:08 PM

Three nights and about eight hours earlier, select members of the Sunburst Convention of Celebrity Impersonators boarded a 169,000-ton cruise ship in civilian disguise. They crossed the gangplank by sandaled foot and standard wheelchair, in panama hats and Bermuda shorts, naked of the costumes, pancake makeup, and in some cases false breasts required to faithfully look like their look-alikes. Alongside an estimated four thousand other, non-impersonating passengers slated to set sail with them, these twenty professional plagiarists, under cover of normie human camouflage, slipped silently into the crush.

“LORD I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS MUCH COCONUT RUM IN MY LIFE,” yelled a man on his phone, jabbing his free hand into his free ear.

“MAN IT IS COMPLETELY SUNNY — I SAID SUNNY — YOU KNOW WHAT, I’M GETTING A CALL FROM DONNA — DONNA — YEAH LOOK I’M NOT TRYING TO HAVE HER TRY AND TEAR MY ASS IN HALF AGAIN SO I’M GONNA HAVE HER CALL YOU — ”

Welcome to the open-air bar on the eighteenth floor of the MSC Seashore, a luxury megaship with the fuel economy of an oil-tanker fire and the handling of a Marriott. That was the man seated to my left, silenced by the drink handed to him by a bartender. To my right was a woman in a shirt that read I DON’T GIVE A SHIP. And behind us, beyond the bar — which led out onto the pool deck, the pool deck’s smoking section, and two Jacuzzis — was the Atlantic Ocean, foamy and real under the sun above Port Canaveral, Florida.

I was seated smack in the center of the ship’s “embarkation party,” the Seashore’s farewell-to-land fiesta. In these last few hours of boarding, standard cruisegoers (reunioning families, couples, singles, swingers) were already loudly settling in for the top-hole amenities, pampering, and bacchanalia that the Seashore’s four-day boomerang voyage to the Bahamas had promised. They more or less knew what they were in for. What they didn’t know was that the impersonators of Sunburst walked among them, incognito, settling in for the same.

The occasion of Sunburst’s presence on the cruise was this: Time had been having its remorseless way with our look-alikes. For four days a year for the past two decades, the Sunburst Convention of Celebrity Impersonators, a three-to-five-dozen-strong troupe of doppelgangers, tribute artists, and hobbyist dead ringers, had assembled in hotels and conference centers across greater Orlando. In its heyday, Sunburst’s annual congress served as the tribute industry’s largest American sanctuary. But the average age for a Sunburster now hovered around 55. The typical status of the celebrities they impersonated was “deceased.” The digital era had swallowed demand for in-person homages to golden-age Hollywood, AI was a wallop to its people en masse, folks were retiring from the trade, aging out of plausible fidelity to their chosen doubles, or, from entirely natural causes, disappearing for good. (One of Sunburst’s most redoubtable talent agents had in fact died just a few weeks before the cruise.) This made the week’s cruise purely leisurely, a hopefully happy sunset for Sunburst’s long reign.

So here I was. Shipping out. Desperately seeking someone from Sunburst. Solitary in the ark of undoubled doubles, figuring out who around here was an impersonator impersonating a non-impersonator was becoming, as you might imagine, unimaginable. In the long mirror above the bar, every woman in the pool, drifting in and out of frame on her inflatables, now had the air of a once-fabulous mid-century minx. On floated a buzzed Garbo, a browned-out Garland. Giant televisions displaying forty-foot-wide walls of text (ƎƧIUЯƆ Ƨ’TƎ⅃, or AИƎЯAƆAM OT ƎMIT Ƨ’TI) flashed before the cabanas, where Elvises of every era groped for their towels. Here walked a plausible Oprah. In came an ayatollah. And there, lanky in her tankini: a Cher. [...]

The man flailing his arms by the bathrooms fifteen yards away was Greg, Sunburst’s founder and figurehead. The phrase ENTERTAINMENT: JUST LIKE YOU REMEMBER! blazed on his T-shirt. Also he was shouting my name.

“We’re here in the back!” he yelled.

“Where?” the guy shouted.

“The BACK BACK!” Greg yelled again.

INT. Deck 8, Uptown Lounge, 3:29 PM

The back back turned out to be a lounge space ten floors down. Rodney Dangerfield, walking in with a rum and Coke, was the first to slap Greg on the shoulder.

“Damn. Wow. Smells like someone’s grilling a raccoon in here,” Dangerfield said, looking around. “You guys just get in?”

An aerial view of the piano hall in the aft of Deck 8 — aft being the rear half of the ship, and Deck 8 being the eighth of twenty floors — would have revealed concentric circles of men and women sucked into orbit around an arrangement of microsuede sofas. In the center was now Greg, struggling with a pair of armpitted clipboards. On the far outer ring was the adjacent cantina, sizzling with orders of the Fajita ‘n’ Rita Feast ($20.95). But the energy in the room emanated from the fusion of Hollywood lovelies  , B- and C-listers, dead musicians, and a few completely imaginary characters, caught in a bubble of babble.

In came the tiny and fabulous Sharon Osbourne, fresh off a flight from London. Near the exit, with his blue eyes and sensible sandals, was Boy George, who swanned over to double-cheek kiss Sharon, then peck the forehead of Martha Stewart, and — skipping over Jeff Bezos — the tip of Fran Drescher’s nose. Sinatra (A), by the banquette, had just politely pumped the hand of Sinatra (B), when both were intercepted by Dangerfield, who seemed interested in explaining the dimensions of his cabin’s toilet. The Dude from The Big Lebowski was tearing a tortilla into pieces; over by the baby grand was Jerry Garcia; Bezos left to go to the bathroom; and Greg, who was beaming richly over his dominion, looked like he might cry with pleasure when someone’s wife started talking about closing on a new condo in Mexico.

Our model of the atom collapsed toward the inner ring, at the center of which appeared a 79-year-old man with brilliant teeth, a chin-length bob, the coconutty tan of the constantly sunned.

“Guess what I am?” he asked several newcomers.

“Dolly Parton?” one suggested.

“Santa?” said another.

“About six-one?” went one more.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mr. Congeniality,” Greg said, coming in to knead his neck. “You’re looking at thirty-four years of Kenny Rogers.”

Every impersonator made for a convincing person. But as the gathering of celebrity doubles milled about the room, it was growing obvious just how broad the spectrum of fidelity within impersonation could get. Some were just blessed with a genuinely miraculous assembly of genetic glitches. Dangerfield, for instance, with big red eyes hot enough to boil water, and now miming his golf swing for Greg, was an amazing, near-perfect dupe, clearly put on this planet as proof of a lazy and hilarious God. (Ditto Boy George, with his stubble, his exemplary androgynous smolder — and same for Walter White of Breaking Bad, who kept pulling out a small bag of laundry beads from his shirt pocket as his prop ounce of crystal meth.)

But the lion’s share of them weren’t so finely biologically determined. The majority looked more like second or third cousins to their doubles. Staring at them yielded a whole other feeling, stranger than the vague awe you might harbor for folks obviously cashing in on their Darwinian dues. The faces of the not-quite-theres held a secret, focused serenity — kin to the quality inborn in the showman, dramatized by the spy, not far from the one on your casual adulterer. It was the flickering, only occasionally visible pact between at least two selves.

by Mina Tavakoli, N + 1 | Read more:
Image: Kate Bancroft, The Devil On My Shoulder. 2026
[ed. Feeling Gay Talese vibes from his famous essay Frank Sinatra Has a Cold; also, David Foster Wallace's Shipping Out (from "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again").]

by Tom Gauld, My Jetpack |  Read more:

by Tom Gauld, My Jetpack |  Read more:

“My Weekend as a 28-year-old in Chicago

[ed. Mental Awareness Day. Pretty dope.] 

The Most 2020s Art Ever Made

Five years ago, Bo Burnham released Inside on Netflix to near-universal acclaim. Inside is a fantastically rich comedy special and probably the single best piece of content made about the COVID-19 pandemic in any medium.

But looking back at it five years later, Inside feels like more than just a very good comedy set, more than just a statement about the pandemic. It feels, if you’ll forgive the pun, special.

It’s always a risk to call a race before we’ve reached the finish line, but with some trepidation, I’ll take that chance: Even though the decade isn’t over yet, the 2020s already have their definitive piece of art. And we got it in 2021.

A definitive piece of art needs to embody the main trends of its time. Its strengths and flaws should be the quintessential strengths and flaws of its era. It should ideally anticipate the trajectory society is headed in. And it hopefully has something meaningful to say about the technological, social, and cultural currents people are navigating.

Inside does all of these things better than anything else produced this decade. [...]

Inside Bo Burnham

Bo Burnham catapulted to fame the way everyone catapults to fame these days: social media. In 2006, he was one of YouTube’s earliest viral creators, and his trajectory from awkward internet teen to global comedy star was essentially a straight line upward.

Hailed as a comedy prodigy, he toured internationally, appeared on Comedy Central, and released an EP all before turning 18. At 23, he released his second comedy special/album what. as an hour-long Netflix feature to widespread acclaim, then at age 25, released his third special Make Happy to even more widespread, near-universal critical praise.

But at the height of his success, Burnham began to have panic attacks on stage and for several years stopped performing live altogether.

During this time, he experimented with other work, acting in Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman and directing his own film Eighth Grade. After the pandemic began in 2020, Burnham decided to work around his anxiety by upending the traditional live comedy format and creating a “comedy special” that was filmed in a single room with no audience.

Like so much art in the digital age, it’s difficult to perfectly categorize Inside. It’s a comedy special and it’s an album. It’s fictional, autobiographical, and autofictional all at once.

At times, Inside has the feel of a documentary or a behind-the-scenes making-of featurette. It was made for Netflix, but it was also clearly built for the social internet, designed to be chopped up for consumption on YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, and other platforms.

Like much of today’s independent media, Inside is an auteur production where Burnham acts as the writer, director, editor, and performer all at the same time. It’s a shapeshifting, genre-bending work that challenges your expectations for what a comedy special can be.

Inside is framed around Burnham’s experiences during the COVID pandemic, the single most important event of the long 2020s. While Inside never once explicitly mentions the pandemic, it’s a film about all the ways COVID transformed our relationship with technology and one another.

Burnham is uniquely well suited to diagnose the ways in which the internet has changed us all, as someone who was raised online and whose stardom was born there. The opening number is deliberately grating as Burnham croons about “content”:

Look I made you some content
Daddy made you your favorite, open wide
Here comes the content
It’s a beautiful day to stay inside

Burnham mocks the online world where every attempt at art, commentary, humor, and dialogue is flattened into the grotesque “content,” but he also helped create that world and now finds himself trapped in it.

The word “content” appears frequently throughout the special, acting as a kind of brain-rotted leitmotif. In one unsettling interlude, Burnham appears as a YouTuber, saying “Thank you for watching my content!” while cheerily wielding a knife. “Keep watching, ‘cause there’s a lot more content where that came from.” he chirps, waving the knife at me through the screen, part promise, part threat.

The special’s first half is full of these little vivisections of online culture.

“FaceTime with My Mom (Tonight)” highlights the banal frustrations of trying to communicate with older relatives who are not digital natives.

“Sexting” captures the anxieties of someone who is stuck inside, who is still horny, and who desperately wants to be sexy through their phone, but is pathetically unable to actually make it happen.

“White Woman’s Instagram” skewers the performative femininity of female influencers, with Burnham re-creating dozens of popular Instagram shots.

“Welcome to the Internet” may be the single best encapsulation of what it’s like to exist online ever made, with its demented, demonic narrator tempting you with “A little bit of everything, all of the time.” Burnham’s internet is one where the banal is juxtaposed with the horrible — “Which Power Ranger are you? Take this quirky quiz! Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids.”

Burnham believes we’re all trapped in a hellscape of our own making precisely because it’s so difficult to segment the useful ways of being online from the poisonous parts that are tearing apart society.

Inside’s commentary is especially pointed when it comes to the people and corporations manipulating the online world. While the flashy songs about Jeff Bezos get more attention, Burnham’s sketch about cynical, socially aware brand consultants is far more cutting:

There’s no sugarcoating it. The world is… fucked up. And you’ve got a choice as a brand. You can hide and bury your head in the sand and hope it fixes itself, or you can roll up your sleeves and get to work… and sell Butterfingers.

The special also takes time to satirize the worst, laziest types of online content like self-indulgent reaction videos, monotone gaming livestreams, and influencer culture. Even the cut-for-time sketches that only made it on the extended version of Inside are sharp.

In one, Burnham mocks vapid celebrity interview practices designed to create social media clips. In another — and it is practically criminal that this sketch was left out of the completed special — he goes after the absurdity of Joe Rogan’s podcast, showcasing two comedians who insist that they are being canceled by PC culture, that the things they say are just jokes, but also, that they are modern-day philosophers and artists, while “This episode is sponsored by Manstuff’s Dick SprayTM” scrolls along the bottom.

The best parodies work because the author has a deep connection to and appreciation for the subject being parodied. Burnham’s status as a digital native is what makes the social media commentary so sharp. The New Yorker’s Rachel Syme once described Burnham as one of the “leading auteurs of the mediated mind,” an expert on the consequences of perceiving the world (and being perceived) through a black screen.

There’s a psychic cost to being so online, and Burnham has certainly paid it. That makes Inside feel less like an outsider’s rant and more like an insider’s dispatch.

by Jeremiah Johnson, The Argument |  Read more:

Image: Netflix/Instagram

[ed. Well... now I'm intrigued. Never heard of this so will have to check it out. Update: It's great! Burnham's a smart and funny guy.]

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Evolutionary Quandaries

xkcd via: here/here

Shane Mauss | Trips: Second Dose

Psychedelic experiences are famously hard to describe. So comedian Shane Mauss didn’t just describe them—he built a way to show them. 

In TRIPS: Second Dose, Shane dives into ayahuasca, DMT, and ketamine, translating hyperspace, out-of-body experiences, and cosmic rodeos into big laughs and bigger perspective. Filmed inside the 360° immersive madness of Meow Wolf Denver, the visuals are mixed and synced live by Michael Strauss, fusing 25 years of concert/festival visuals with work from 20+ visionary artists curated by Shane.

[ed. Pretty funny and great graphics. I've always wondered why more comedians haven't followed the Cheech and Chong formula from decades ago.]

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