FeedCity: McSweeney’s

McSweeney’s
29 May 14:09 • Caleb Coy

The Only Opening Songs On an Album

“This here banger should grab your attention.” “This semi-banger should alert your attention before the second track really grabs your attention.” “Slowwwwwww fade in.” “Honestly, this is the only track worth listening to, but it’s the pre-digital age, and we just forced you...

McSweeney’s
28 May 22:09 • Nashae Jones

Being the Black Main Character in a Destination Rom-Com: A Choose Your Own Adventure

Your life is a mess, an absolute Level 10 disaster. You’ve lost your job, and there might be pending charges after you borrowed your employer’s Hermes silk dress and Prada pumps. You’ve got no place to live after your thirteenth-floor walk-up Hell’s Kitchen sublet has decide...

McSweeney’s
28 May 18:06 • Ali Fitzgerald

Affable Insects

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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McSweeney’s
28 May 14:54 • Jesse Kubanet

What May Follow When You Are Slacked “Hey”

You’re fired.

You are getting a promotion.

You are getting a demotion.

You are now in charge.

The person you hate here the most is now in charge, and they told me to tell you that you are fired.

No paychecks this week, cool?

Could I borrow you for a sec?

Could I borrow you for a quick sec?

I’ve always loved you.

We’re doubling your salary.

We’re taking your salary and cutting it in half.

We’re taking your salary, cutting it in half, and giving that half to the person here you hate the most.

The Christmas gift this year is a donation to the charity of someone else’s choice.

Layoffs are coming, and you’re safe.

Layoffs are coming. We’re safe.

Layoffs are coming. You’re safe, I’m not.

Layoffs are coming. I’m safe, you’re not.

Layoffs are coming. We’re both fucked.

Lunch?

Guess who’s fucked?

Guess who fucked?

Coffee?

Can you open this doc?

Nevermind.

McSweeney’s
27 May 17:03 • Miles Kahn

AI Writing Jobs You Should Apply to Today

Hollywood Annotated Creative Labs, Inc. Role: AI Script Trainer The best Hollywood scripting models still take illogical leaps in narrative structure. Every correction you make becomes a training node for the next AI self-scripting model and also another notch in the deathbe...

McSweeney’s
27 May 15:03 • David Shih

For Sale: Digital Art Collection and Miscellaneous Items Priced to Move

Hi. So I have this collection. It is a significant collection. At its peak in February 2022, it was worth—conservatively—$2.3 million. Seriously. I have documentation. I will show you the documentation. I am asking $400 for all 847 pieces. This is not a joke. The $400 is fir...

McSweeney’s
26 May 18:06 • Jack Loftus

I, Sisyphus, Am Ninety-Five Percent of the Way There

“Insider reporting from an unnamed White House official says the Iran deal is ‘95% done.’ The remaining 5% of negotiations are focused on Iran opening the Strait of Hormuz and turning over all nuclear material.” – Conservative pollster Frank Luntz, writing on X. - - - I, Sis...

McSweeney’s
26 May 13:09 • Ioan Marc Jones

Can You Avoid an Old High School Friend at the Bus Stop? A Decision Tree

1. Do you have a mobile phone? Can you act like you have received an important call? A. I have the latest iPhone, and I studied at the Cours Florent in Paris for three years, under the tutelage of the great Cédric Blanc. I have trained my entire life for this moment. B. Yes,...

McSweeney’s
23 May 19:18 • Knopf

An Interview with Dave Eggers About His New Novel, Contrapposto

- - - Q: 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 Olym...

McSweeney’s
22 May 19:06 • Audrey Burges

My Typical Day According to My Thirteen-Year-Old

I wake before dawn to coordinate with my vast network of parental co-conspirators. Our agenda this morning is straight fire, as the youth would say, beginning with a vigorous debate about scheduling sunrise for maximum cruelty. We ultimately settle on triggering dawn just a ...

McSweeney’s
22 May 15:15 • Kristen Mulrooney

Reviews of New Food: Fenway Park’s Lobstah Poutine

So you spent the last two hours fighting for your life trying to merge into aggressive traffic, avoid potholes, find the one open space in the parking garage near the T stop, and stay on your feet in a crammed Green Line train with no handholds, and now you’re going to sit y...

McSweeney’s
22 May 13:12 • Tyler Gooch

I’ll Take This Costco Sample, but Only So I Can Make an Informed Purchasing Decision

Oh, hello—sorry, almost didn’t see you here at the end of the aisle with your hairnet and your alluring toaster oven full of mysterious, cost-free delicacies. I was just passing by, shopping for things that cost money. That’s what I do when I come here. I participate in the ...

McSweeney’s
21 May 18:06 • Kristina Grob

Thirteen Ways of Looking at AI

With apologies to Wallace Stevens. - - - I Meeting with the academic dean I asked him to share with faculty How admin are using AI. II A colleague shares a short story: Kafka sitting in a sales meeting For AI. III AI can help faculty take Burdensome things off their plate, S...

McSweeney’s
21 May 18:06 • Ali Fitzgerald

Nature Cam

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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McSweeney’s
21 May 13:51 • Ginny Hogan

Epidurals, for Him

You’ve had a long, hard nine months. Your wife’s been pregnant, and in month nine, she was so uncomfortable in bed that she made you sleep on the futon. Twice. And yet, you survived. At long last, the big day is upon you. A baby’s birth is a significant medical event, and pa...

McSweeney’s
21 May 00:36 • Rachel Levit Ades

Easier Way to Win a Million Dollars: Going on Survivor or Storming the Capitol?

“In the end, only one will remain and will leave the island with one million dollars in cash as their reward.” — Jeff Probst, host of Survivor

“For the moment, the fund has been capped at the patriotically symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, and many Jan. 6ers have already done the math in an effort to determine the maximum amount that each of them could get. If all of them sought money and received the same amount, the payouts would be around $1.125 million each.” — New York Times

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*-“Paramount Is Rolling Back DEI Initiatives to Align With Trump Mandates.” — Variety

McSweeney’s
20 May 18:09 • Carlos Greaves

Corruption Has Gotten Way Too Lazy

“President Donald Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service on Monday in exchange for a settlement deal to launch a $1.8 billion fund to pay claims made by his friends for purported unfair prosecution.” — Mother Jones - - - This used to be a ...

McSweeney’s
20 May 12:12 • Sarah Totton

Scenes from The Baltimore Beefcake, an Edgar Allan Poe Biopic in Which He is Totally Jacked

SCENE 1. EXT. A BOULEVARD. MIDNIGHT. POE drops his frock coat, loosens his cravat, and tears open his shirt, buttons flying, to reveal his body, which is totally jacked. His nipples glisten in the moonlight. A BLACK CAT, in the process of killing a RAT, spies POE’s lithe, fr...

McSweeney’s
19 May 21:06 • Devorah Blachor

Oh No, I Left the US Because of Trump and Moved to the Part of Europe Where All Live Performances Are Cirque du Soleil Knockoffs

Like many others, I left the United States because I wanted to get away from Trumpʼs America. But now that my only entertainment opportunities involve two men riding neon glow-in-the-dark motorcycles inside an enormous orb, I must ask myself if I made the right decision. It ...

McSweeney’s
19 May 16:15 • Josh Mendez

What I Imagine William Shakespeare Thought Every Time He Rewrote the Same Scene Over and Over Again

It is widely believed (by me, just now) that William Shakespeare revised his plays constantly, fueled by ambition, self-doubt, and whatever they drank instead of coffee back then. Based on that and vibes alone, here is what he probably thought each time he tweaked the same s...

McSweeney’s
19 May 14:12 • Burt Lancaster

McSweeney’s Books: An Excerpt from Our New Book, Documentary Now!

- - - McSweeney’s and Broadway Video present the official over-six-hundred-page comprehensive companion book to IFC’s Documentary Now!, made with the assistance of series directors Rhys Thomas and Alex Buono and including new writing by Seth Meyers, a foreword by Pulitzer P...

McSweeney’s
18 May 20:06 • Carlos Greaves

First They Came for the Pieds-à-Terre…

"The phrase ‘tax the rich’ can be ‘just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs,’ according to the New York City billionaire Steve Roth, who said that the top 1 percent should be ‘praised and thanked.’” — The Guardian - - - First they came for the pieds-à-terre, which the...

McSweeney’s
18 May 13:42 • Emily Greenberg and Chase Bush-McLaughlin

Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: April 2026: Atrocities 867-930

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 e...

McSweeney’s
15 May 19:06 • Josh Gondelman

At Long Last, I Have Maxximized My Looks

After months sequestered in the Pagoda of Masculinity, which is beneath my parents’ house but is fair to consider my basement, I have emerged a new man. Through my relentless commitment to living the ascetic lifestyle of a monk who is allowed to play video games, I, the Angu...

McSweeney’s
15 May 15:15 • Taylor Harris

Women Be Like “I Needed This,” and It’s Just Trusting Themselves

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.” - - - Dearest Neuroba...

McSweeney’s
15 May 13:12 • Jennie Egerdie

US Army Basic Training for Muscular Olds

“The United States Army has officially raised its enlistment age limit to 42.” — New York Times - - - Arrival Once you step off the bus, basic training has begun. Recruits carrying ergonomic rolling luggage will be immediately singled out for punishment. Next, your bags will...

McSweeney’s
14 May 20:06 • Andy Orin

I Cannot Throw Away USB Cables, and It Is Becoming a Problem

Oh, I see you are reading this on a device. Perhaps you need to top off your battery? Do you need a cable for that? A USB cable? Because I have an assortment. I have somehow accumulated several lifetimes’ worth of USB cables, and I cannot get rid of them. How about a 1.0, 2....

McSweeney’s
14 May 18:06 • Ali Fitzgerald

Busy Beavers

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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McSweeney’s
14 May 12:54 • Max Gutmann, Sylvia Gutmann, and Isaac Gutman

The Secret Meanings of Pop Stars’ Names

Dua Lipa I have two lips. Elvis Presley Someone has flattened the elves. Elton John Where’s the bathroom? Cher I want it all. Ed Sheeran My eyebrows itch. Bad Bunny I am going to consume this carrot, and you are powerless to stop me. John Denver The bathroom is in Colorado. ...

McSweeney’s
13 May 19:03 • Mary Spencer

Honey, I’m Sorry I Messed Up Our Moment on the Kiss Cam

Honey, I’m sorry I messed up our moment on the kiss cam. I’m sorry I mouthed “That’s my sister!” and made a face like yuck while jerking my thumb at you, my loving wife of thirty-one years. I’m sorry I couldn’t look you in the eye and, instead, doubled-down and began talking...