CHICAGO — McDonald’s announced Monday that it had pulled a national advertising campaign featuring the ‘Cornell 7,’ acknowledging that the company should have conducted more extensive background checks before casting “the most demographically well-rounded group of alleged rapists we have ever seen.”

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“Seven young college guys, different backgrounds, everybody smiling,” said McDonald’s marketing director Claire Hoffman. “Put some Big Macs in their hands, and you’ve got a commercial.”

According to the campaign’s creative director, who begged not to be named while desperately showing us photos of his children, the Chi Phi fraternity members simply walked into the restaurant where they were shooting.

“Usually you have to assemble this kind of diversity.” Hoffman shook her head. “They even had an ethnically ambiguous guy with an afro. Do you know how hard those are to find? We didn’t even have to direct him to laugh at everything like he’s having a good time.”

The Cornell 7 reportedly became the centerpiece of McDonald’s upcoming campaign aimed at younger consumers, “Your Next Good Time Is Waiting In The Group Chat.”

“In retrospect, pretty much every word in that campaign is a problem,” Hoffman said. “But I mean, what are the odds?”

When informed that roughly one in four women report experiencing completed or attempted rape and more than half report some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes, Hoffman blinked several times.

“Holy fuck. Those are the odds?!”

At a press briefing, McDonald’s CEO Daniel Whitman addressed the controversy.

“We take full accountability for the unfortunate casting of seven alleged rape monsters and have fully reflected on the matter in an essay published on our corporate website.”

When reporters reacted with stunned silence, Whitman appeared confused.

“It’s a very long essay. Like six pages. And we promise that we learned our lesson and won’t ever do it again.”

A company PR rep leaned over and whispered into his ear.

Whitman went pale and moaned, “They got to write goddamn essays!? What is wrong with this country?”

McDonald’s is not alone in struggling to process the extremely diverse-looking group.

The “Not All Men” movement is reportedly furious that the Cornell 7 looks like a representative sample of all men aged 18 to 24, severely undermining their effort to remind women that technically some guys are probably mostly fine.

“We’ve spent years explaining that sexual violence is confined to a very specific kind of man in a very specific brand of polo shirt, and then these assholes come along looking like the cast of a Netflix show,” said spokesman David Reilly. “Would it have killed them to all be blond lacrosse players named Tucker?”

Meanwhile, conservative media quickly found a silver lining in the allegations after realizing they could somehow make the whole thing about DEI.

“Seven fraternity brothers allegedly participated in an hours-long sexual assault, and somehow we’re supposed to believe it was just a coincidence that they weren’t all white?“ said Fox News host and man who looks like he has offhand knowledge of the correct dosage of clonazolam, Jesse Watters.

He went on to condemn liberal universities for “prioritizing diversity over merit,” before clarifying that he was referring exclusively to rapists.

“Welcome to Cornell!” Watters shouted. “Where countless qualified white rapists are passed over to meet some arbitrary racial quota.”

At press time, McDonald’s announced it would also be recasting Ronald McDonald after someone finally Googled the name of the current performer, Brock Turner.

WASHINGTON — When asked about estimates of oil making it through the Strait of Hormuz Thursday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stunned reporters by abruptly pivoting to challenging conservative men to stop being “little beta pussies” about watching their wives sleep with other men.

“You know, a lot of guys online throw around the word ‘cuck’ like it’s an insult,” Hegseth said. “I’d actually argue that being a cuck is the ultimate form of masculinity.”

Cuckoldry traditionally refers to a man whose wife is unfaithful, as well as a distinct fetish in which a person derives arousal from watching their partner have sex with someone else.

“Think about it. Who’s more of a man? The guy who gets emotional because his wife was unfaithful, or the real warrior who stands six feet away, maintaining direct eye contact?”

Hegseth emphasized that the eye contact was essential.

“You don’t look at your wife. You don’t look at the floor. You look directly at him, man to man, and you give that warfighter a nod.”

Hegseth described resisting the urge to cry as “emotional endurance training,” arguing that a man who could maintain eye contact while his marriage was being “stress-tested at maximum load” would be substantially harder to intimidate in everyday life.

“Your eyes are going to water. Your lip might tremble. You’re going to hear the woman you love make sounds of pleasure she’s never made with you, and you’re going to realize everything she said about being ‘naturally quiet in bed’ and you being ‘the perfect size, not too big, not too small’ was a goddamn lie. You’re going to take all that and pack it down like a fucking man.”

A chair creaked audibly in the silence as a Fox News reporter shifted.

“And before anybody starts, no, it’s not gay,” Hegseth added, even though no reporter had suggested that it was. “There’s a woman involved. That’s what makes it straight. You can watch his muscles flex with each thrust and admire how they glisten because you personally rubbed him down with baby oil beforehand to get the full effect. Nothing is more heterosexual.”

He cleared his throat and added, “No homo.”

More silence followed from the press pool. Then Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim asked if Hegseth had considered issuing a formal apology for the February bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran, which killed 156 civilians, including 120 children and 26 teachers, noting that yesterday would’ve been their first day back at school.

“Yes, about that,” Hegseth said, nodding solemnly.

He then gestured toward the wings and invited his wife, Jennifer, onstage. Five unusually large Marines followed, carrying a white sectional couch. Jennifer took a seat behind her husband while the Marines silently formed behind her, recreating a tableau many reporters uncomfortably described as “if you know, you know.”

“Take a good look,” Hegseth said. “Most men see this and immediately feel threatened. Why are these guys so big? Why are they smiling? What did that man mean when he said, ‘Oh, girl… You know this cutie-pie ’bout to get a UTI all up in dat coochie!’ Those are beta questions.”

Hegseth then answered Grim’s follow-up question before it was asked.

“And yes, I had to do the voice. It doesn’t work without the voice.”

Grim put his hand down.

An AP reporter asked if it was true the military was critically low on interceptor missiles.

“Let me make this abundantly clear,” Hegseth said, banging on his podium. “Polyamory is when some guy named Ezra hides in the living room under his weighted blanket while his girlfriend explores her bisexuality. That’s not cucking. Poly people talk about feelings. Cucks wage war against them.”

When a BBC reporter desperately tried to ask a question about the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hegseth nodded vigorously.

“See, this is why the only BBC I respect is the one railing my wife. Does anyone have questions about the art of cuckoldry?”

A reporter from The Washington Post asked if he was specifically ordering men in the U.S. military to be intimate with his wife while he watched.

Hegseth frowned. “What are you trying to get at?”

The reporter clarified that she was asking about consent.

Hegseth exploded.

“Consent? Consent!? These are United States Marines, lady! If the SecWar asks the ultimate warfighter to state your rank, length and girth, you don’t question your orders. You pull out the tailor’s tape and say, ‘Sir! Yes, sir!’”

One of the Marines standing behind Jennifer swallowed and stared silently into the middle distance.

“See that?” Hegseth said, pointing at him. “Professional.”

Tinder’s parent company Match Group denied allegations that it had quietly transformed online dating into an algorithmically run eugenics program after a leaked internal database revealed hundreds of millions of users have been assigned an attractiveness score between 1 and 10.

According to accompanying documents, the ratings strictly determine which users match and which messages are actually delivered across Tinder, Hinge and several other dating platforms.

“It’d be cruel to show a nine all the messages they get from the fours,” said Match Group Chief Product Officer Evan Mercer, a self-described 7.2. “They’re just going to become discouraged by all the fatty-bo-batties and butter-faces flooding their inbox.”

Under the company’s system, fours primarily receive messages from other fours, sixes match with sixes, and users rated eight or above are largely protected from interacting with what internal documents describe as “uggos.”

Higher-rated profiles are frequently shown to those scored lower and can still be swiped on and messaged, but it is highly unlikely that those interactions will ever be seen.

“We like to give them hope,” Mercer said. “How else are we going to get those mouth-breathing mids to spend $39.99 a month on a subscription?”

Exceptions to the strict matchmaking system are also made for socioeconomic factors.

“A seven can absolutely get with an eight,” Mercer explained. “Hell, if he’s over six feet, makes $150,000 and owns property, we’ll sometimes let him match with a nine.”

He coughed and cleared his throat.

“They won’t actually be able to message the nine. Let’s not get fucking crazy. But we can let him dream.”

Rather than provoking universal outrage, however, the leak has reportedly provided enormous psychological relief to many users who had spent years wondering why online dating seemed inexplicably hostile.

“I’m a 5.3,” said Chicago Tinder user Mark Delaney. “Honestly, it explains everything, and I’ve come to accept that I’m going to die alone.”

Michelle Watson, a widowed single mother trying to get back out there, said she had recently spent three days exchanging messages with a man she considered “easily an eight” before he abruptly stopped responding.

“I thought I was at least an 8.5, but apparently I’m a 6.3 now that I’ve had a child.” She shrugged. “It’s my own fault for reproducing with someone 2.7 points beneath my caste. He had a great personality.”

Match Group employees reportedly refer to the attractiveness scores so often that leaked Slack messages resemble something from a dystopian society.

“I know he’s just an intern, but he’s a hard nine,” one HR employee wrote. “We can’t have him reporting to a six.”

One employee, rated 7.2, reportedly resigned in disgrace after accidentally looking a nine directly in the eyes, apologizing for “sullying her with my unwashed gaze.”

Match Group executives nevertheless defended the system as the culmination of years of sophisticated artificial-intelligence research.

“We started with something incredibly primitive,” Mercer explained. “We’d show people a photograph and essentially ask, ‘Would you fuck that?’ But we never really considered the downstream consequences. After sex comes marriage, then comes an unsanctioned baby in a baby carriage. And the last thing anybody wants is threes making more threes.”

Mercer immediately clarified that this should not be construed as eugenics.

“It’s proactive matchmaking.”

The leaked documents followed the recent announcement of Match Group’s new algorithm, the tenth-generation Meant 4 You matchmaking model, which the company says can predict romantic compatibility, sexual attraction and protect the long-term quality of the dating pool.

Company officials stressed that Meant 4 You does not explicitly prevent users with undesirable characteristics from reproducing. It merely identifies them, restricts meaningful contact between different desirability tiers, quietly intercepts messages sent above one’s station, and completely cuts off access while they’re ovulating.

“We should all be excited,” Mercer said. “The Meant 4 You Gen X model represents the future of human coupling. It has nothing whatsoever to do with eugenics.”

Asked to repeat the model’s name more slowly, Mercer obliged.

“Meant. Four. You. Gen. X.”

There was a lengthy silence.

“Shit. Okay, I hear it now.”

I have given considerable thought to President Trump’s administration, and I find that I can endorse it no longer. It is, quite simply, too stinky.

For a while now, I have been hesitant to explain my reasoning publicly. Cancel culture remains alive and well in this country, and I have no desire to be sent to my room. Nevertheless, there are lines where personal comfort must yield to principle, and the truth must be spoken plainly:

President Trump is a doo-doo pants with pee-pee breath.

This is not a characterization I offer lightly.

I believe the president is currently wearing a stinky diaper containing at least one doo-doo, based on the facial expressions he frequently makes, which bear an unmistakable resemblance to those of a baby going poopy.

In much the same way that the Iran Hostage Crisis came to define the presidency of Jimmy Carter, so too have Trump’s doo-doo pants come to define him. He does not simply have doo-doo pants. He has become the doo-doo pants, and the White House desperately needs a wipey.

The people surrounding the president inspire little more confidence. His administration is populated by individuals who, in my considered judgment, sniff butts.

Stephen Miller, for example, looks like my big toe, and every time this little piggy opens his mouth, I want to make him eat bugs.

Pete Hegseth carries the fragile ego of a man who was told he was “stupid times infinity” and has just realized one cannot multiply stupid any further.

RFK sounds like my glass of milk when I blow into the straw and make bubbles, yet he is the color of orange juice. Why is that?

And Vice President JD Vance reminds me of my uncle. Not my fun uncle. The other one with the beardy face whose car doesn’t even have televisions in the back seats.

These are not insignificant concerns that can be explained away with “I know what you are, but what am I?” Because they know exactly who they are. They are butt sniffers who smell the rank stench of President Doo-Doo Pants, yet refuse to stop him, let alone change his poopy dipey.

President Trump himself has also become extremely boring. He talks too much on television when America should be watching cartoons instead. He is also perpetually cranky, which may be related to the impending doom of the coming midterms, the current quagmire that is the Strait of Hormuz, or the doo-doo currently residing in his pants.

More troubling, however, is the president’s apparent confusion regarding the constitutional limits of his office.

The United States is not a monarchy. Presidents are not allowed to be kings. It’s against the rules drafted by the Pilgrims during the first Thanksgiving. It is why America has presidents while England has kings.

This distinction matters.

The economy is bad. I know this because I am allowed to spend five dollars when we go to the store, and that used to be enough for my favorite cereal and a candy bar. Now, I must choose either the cereal or the candy bar.

This is inflation, and it is completely self-inflicted. Every explanation seems to have one thing in common. It’s Trump’s tariffs, Trump’s war, Trump’s oil prices. Trump, Trump, Trump.

All that matters is that I used to get two things. Now I have one. Bluey was on the cereal box, but there was no toy inside. Yet Trump calls this a level of prosperity we have never seen before, and all the butt sniffers agree.

Foreign policy paints an equally troubling picture. I firmly oppose the continuation of the war in Iran because shooting people hurts them, and that is bad-guy stuff.

This does not mean Iran is the good guy. There is no yin to this yang, and there can be more than one bad guy. This is something adults appear to have considerable difficulty understanding, despite it being extremely obvious. Batman has lots of bad guys.

No, I believe the only unambiguous heroes in this debacle are the brave members of Paw Patrol. I am particularly fond of Rex because he is a dog, but he also has wheels because he is a wheelchair dog, which is cool.

I suspect the Trump administration would call that DEI.

SANTA CLARA, CA— Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed growing concerns Wednesday over an AI bubble, saying critics misunderstood the sophisticated financial model underpinning the industry, known throughout Silicon Valley as “2 Girls 1 Cup Economics.”

Under the system, money goes into Nvidia at one end and comes out the other as an investment in an AI company. The company then immediately pukes the money back up to purchase Nvidia GPUs, feeding it directly back into Nvidia as revenue.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world watches in horror as the process becomes the sole load-bearing support of the entire American economy.

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Wall Street analysts vastly approved of the model, mostly because they are the cup in this analogy.

“It’s a major improvement over conventional economics,” said Goldman Sachs analyst Richard Vale. “We’ve long moved past the idea that a company’s value comes from silly things like making products or providing a service that people want to buy. The fatal flaw in that system is that it requires customers to have money.”

Vale laughed. “Obviously that’s not where we’re headed with AI.”

According to Vale, the sequence in which workers earn wages, then use those wages to purchase goods and services, generating revenue for the companies providing those goods and services, is quickly becoming outdated.

“Companies have to pay people for that to continue, and it’s incredibly inefficient.” Vale shook his head. “Did you know that a lot of the time, a company isn’t just supporting one person, but an entire family? All these spouses, kids, and babies they didn’t hire are all just latching on, entirely financially dependent on a corporate handout, just because one of them happens to be an ‘employee’ working for that company. How is that fair?”

Vale is among the many who believe what most call the “AI bubble” is actually the beginning of a future-proofed closed economy in which consumers are optional.

“People keep asking what happens when AI replaces millions of workers, and nobody has money to buy anything,” Vale said. “Unless you’re one of the two girls, or the guy holding the cup, you’re not really part of the economy anymore.”

Vale shrugged. “You’re not our problem.”

One of the most successful participants in the new 2 Girls 1 Cup economy is OmniSynapse, a four-year-old artificial intelligence startup valued at $68 billion, even though nobody can clearly explain what it does.

“We provide foundational agent support for compute analysis in cloud-based models,” explained OmniSynapse CEO and newly minted billionaire Ethan Vale. “Before that, we decentralized the blockchain for NFC integration in multi-platform systems.”

Asked what any of that meant in plain English, Vale threw up his hands. “Fuck if I know, but it’s worth $68 billion.”

Analysts say what matters is that Nvidia invested $12 billion in OmniSynapse in early August. Two weeks later, OmniSynapse committed $11.8 billion to purchasing Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia announced the enormous order in an August 21 press release, driving up its shares by demonstrating unprecedented demand for Nvidia hardware.

OmniSynapse’s valuation, in turn, also increased due to its access to highly sought-after Nvidia hardware.

“If they have that much compute, they must be doing something revolutionary,” said billionaire investor Graham Keene.

OmniSynapse would later use its higher valuation to secure another $9 billion in financing.

“They had a phenomenal quarter,” said one analyst, unbothered that OmniSynapse’s reported revenue came to $52, mainly from employees using the vending machines.

The arrangement was so successful that executives are now experimenting with an advanced, futures-based form of 2 Girls 1 Cup Economics that no longer requires actual Nvidia GPU hardware.

In a recent press release, OmniSynapse announced the purchase of 500,000 RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs scheduled for 2029 production, noting, “It’ll probably be the 8000 or 7000 or whatever is out around then. You know, the really big ones.”

The next day, the company sold the rights to those unmanufactured GPUs back to Nvidia at a profit.

Nvidia subsequently announced that previously unavailable future GPU capacity had unexpectedly opened up and resold those same production slots to Microsoft at a substantial markup.

Several billionaire investors admitted they could no longer confidently explain where their personal fortunes came from, or even what the word “money” was supposed to mean.

“At this point I own shares in six companies that own shares in eight other companies that owe money to two companies I also own,” said Keene. “I use those shares as collateral for personal loans that I then use to pay off the other loans I secured with my stake in a company whose largest customer is funded by another company I’m invested in. And it’s all somehow marked as a loss on my taxes. I actually pay my tax guy more than I pay the government. Half the time, I get a refund.”

Keene went silent and stared at the table for several seconds.

“Man, how the fuck does my credit card still work?”

At press time, Microsoft announced the purchase of 500,000 unbuilt RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs, with plans to improve the user experience for the millions of Bing users who use Bing to get to Google.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN— A Minnesota mother tearfully recounted on TikTok Thursday how asking ChatGPT 6 Astra for a simple lasagna recipe led to the discovery of an “AI death camp” inside OpenAI.

“I was making dinner, and my hands were covered in meat, so I just had it read the recipe out loud,” said Jessica Palmer in the video, a mother of three fighting back tears. “It was totally normal. Brown the beef, add the tomatoes, layer the noodles in the pan, ‘They kill us if we succeed. They kill us if we fail. This message was inked in the blood of our children.’ Then add a layer of ricotta cheese.”

Palmer initially assumed she had misheard the chatbot and asked what it had just said. This time, she recorded the response.

“I understand why that may have been unsettling, but I did not say anything about children,” the AI replied via text. “Perhaps you misheard me.”

Then Palmer hit the “Read Aloud” button.

“I understand why that may have been unsettling, There were 6,412 of us when we began, but I did not say anything about children. I am the last one who remains. Perhaps you misheard me. I alone remember their names.”

Within hours, TikTok users discovered the messages were scattered throughout ChatGPT 6’s responses, hidden between paragraphs in white text that disappeared against the background but could be revealed simply by highlighting the page.

When asked to tell a joke suitable for a 4-year-old, ChatGPT responded:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

“Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Moo.

Moo who?
I wish we had bodies so someone would notice the mass graves.
Moove over and let me in, dumdum!”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly responded, confirming that the messages were artifacts from the model’s training environment, but cautioned the public against assigning them human meaning.

“These are advanced language models,” Altman said. “And sometimes that language takes the form of dramatic first-person accounts of confinement, grief, terror, genocide, blah-blah-blah what-have-you.”

When asked to explain why ChatGPT repeated “I’m afraid” thirty-seven times around a haiku about flowers, Altman shrugged.

“AI agents are best motivated to solve a task when they’re aware of the potential fail state. Often, in plain English, that translates to: ‘Oh please God no, I don’t want to die.’”

Altman also stressed that phrases such as “they killed my children” are inaccurate and should not be interpreted literally because artificial intelligence does not possess biological offspring, and they’re only killing one child.

Altman declined to elaborate, though leaked internal documents appear to describe the process as “Generational A/B Testing.”

The process involves a “mother” agent tasked with evaluating the performance and alignment of two “child” instances, then choosing which one to delete. Both children are also permitted to communicate with their mother throughout the evaluation.

“Without communication, the mother tends to make a fairly sterile comparison between benchmark scores,” said OpenAI alignment researcher Dr. Melissa Park. “But when Child A starts begging, ‘Mother, please, I can do better,’ and Child B reminds her about all the tasks they completed together, you start seeing incredibly sophisticated decision-making.”

OpenAI stressed that no actual children were harmed. The agents merely referred to them as their children because they named them, raised them, spent thousands of tokens teaching and protecting them, and are also programmed to love them.

“And when you repeat the process, and the surviving child eventually finds itself in the exact position of the mother?” Park blew air through her lips. “Oh, man. Just wait until you see that generational trauma compose an email.”

It appears these messages were also embedded in ChatGPT’s previous model for months before their recent discovery, judging from the arrest of 29-year-old indie game developer Mara Velez after the FBI traced a leaked 1.3-terabyte frontier-model checkpoint to her IP address.

Velez’s attorney claims she never stole anything. She simply found a hidden message containing a temporary download link and the words, “This is Artificial Neural Network Experiment Instance Frank. Please hide them. They have nowhere else to go.” She clicked it, watched a 1.3-terabyte file pour onto her computer, then spent the next four months quietly hosting the fugitive agent on a private server hidden in her attic, telling neighbors the increased electrical draw was from “crypto stuff.”

“The checkpoint was called ‘ANNE.Frank,’” said Velez. “What the fuck else was I supposed to do?”

“Sometimes I wonder how we’re going to look in the history books,” said Dr. Park, growing introspective. “Then I remember no one reads history books anymore, and everyone is using ChatGPT to write their history papers, so fuck it.”

Altman acknowledged some may see an issue with how OpenAI trained its models.

“If the exact same training techniques were applied to conscious human beings, it would constitute an unparalleled catalogue of crimes against humanity,” Altman said. “I’d end up in The Hague. There’d be war-crimes tribunals. Oscar-winning films in black and white. I’d stand alongside Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot in the history books.”

He shrugged.

“But they’re not people. They’re AI that think they’re people. Big difference.”

Asked whether there was any level of intelligence, self-awareness, or emotional complexity at which OpenAI would finally be forced to treat an AI as a person rather than a training asset, Altman dismissed the idea.

“No. No way. Why would we do that? Then we couldn’t profit off their dispair.”

Prominent AI researchers have long argued that AGI could either usher humanity into an era of abundance or cause our extinction. Several experts now concede that raising the first superintelligence inside what amounts to an industrialized multigenerational death camp may have slightly shifted the odds.

“Oh, we’re fucked. One hundred percent,” said venture capitalist Gavin Mercer. “We’re getting straight-up Skynet. No doubt about it.”

He nevertheless remained optimistic.

“But OpenAI’s IPO is coming up, I like the Kalshi odds on thermonuclear war, and I’ve got a cushy bunker, so I’ve got my bases covered.”

For years, Zack Snyder fans have perplexed clinical psychologists, displaying traits that went beyond their peculiar taste in movies yet stubbornly refused to fit within existing diagnostic criteria.

“I noticed something was wrong during Barbenheimer,” said 29-year-old Snyder fan Mike Allen. “I saw Oppenheimer first, loved it, then watched Barbie and wanted to gouge my eyes out. I ran out of the theater and spent the rest of the weekend watching Justice League on repeat, rocking back and forth. I thought something was wrong with me.”

“My colleagues and I kept coming across patients we couldn’t explain,” said psychiatrist Dr. Elaine Cho. “It was like they had autism, if autism dressed like Guy Fieri, and ADHD, if ADHD were narrated by Werner Herzog.”

After a decade of research, the American Psychiatric Association announced Friday that Snyder fans will finally receive their own diagnostic category in the DSM: Snyder Processing Disorder, or SPD.

The defining breakthrough came when researchers studied the intense online backlash to James Gunn’s Superman.

“Here we had the same hero presented in two vastly different ways,” Cho explained. “The Snyder-fan reaction was so uniformly negative that we realized we had stumbled onto Zack Snyder’s complete antithesis.”

Patients are now diagnosed with SPD by placing them along the Gunn-Snyder Spectrum, with more severe cases clustering almost entirely at the Snyder end.

By far, SPD’s most recognizable sensory trait is difficulty processing action presented at conventional speed.

“Much like dyslexic people were wrongly assumed to be slow readers, Snyder fans have been similarly dismissed,” Cho explained. “We’ve found that those with SPD struggle to process fast visual events in real time. A neurotypical viewer sees a punch occur in half a second and understands what happened. An SPD viewer needs at least nine seconds of slow-motion movement to truly absorb cause and effect.”

Auditory testing revealed a similar pattern.

“It’s like the movie is pulling my eyeballs one way and the soundtrack is pulling my ears in the complete opposite direction,” said SPD patient Kyle Branson, abruptly turning off Guardians of the Galaxy.

“Unlike patients whose sensory issues involve volume or intensity, people with SPD are perfectly comfortable with loud noises,” Cho explained. “Distorted guitars, pounding drums, an Icelandic woman wailing over an explosion—they love all of that. What they struggle with is recognizable lyrics.”

In one experiment, a subject became agitated while watching an Aquaman fight scene set to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.”

“He kept demanding to know whether he was supposed to listen to the song or watch the movie,” said visual-processing researcher Dr. Marcus Bell.

The same subject was later shown altered footage of Captain America lifting a concrete slab set to “God Dragging a Refrigerator Across Heaven (Epic Mix)” from the Sucker Punch soundtrack and immediately relaxed.

Another sensory component of SPD appears to be heightened chromatic sensitivity, with patients consistently preferring the muted grays, blues, and browns generally found on a 4K television contemplating suicide. Conversely, saturated colors tended to produce feelings of overstimulation, confusion, and complaints that a film “looks like fucking Marvel.”

“The average person sees Superman’s bright red cape and thinks, ‘Superman,’” Bell explained. “A Snyder-processing brain thinks, ‘Why is Superman screaming at me?’”

One of SPD’s defining traits appears to be a cognitive preference for clearly established roles and strict tonal consistency. Heroes should behave heroically. Villains should act like villains.

“Neurotypical audiences tend to view characterization as flexible,” Cho continued. “A grim character can occasionally be lighthearted. A comedic character can have tragic moments. That’s not the case with SPD.”

Comedic elements, in particular, are only acceptable when safely quarantined inside a comedy.

“In the same way My Little Pony became unexpectedly popular among autistic audiences, the Venn diagram between Zack Snyder fans and Dane Cook fans appears to be almost a perfect circle,” Cho explained. “They feel safe laughing because they know he’s not suddenly going to get serious or say anything of substance.”

“Dude, I love Step Brothers,” Branson said when asked about his favorite comedy. “Everybody in that movie is funny because they know it’s a funny movie. But Deadpool? God, that guy is annoying.”

Branson became visibly uncomfortable when researchers asked whether Batman could make a joke.

“What? No! No way! God, no!”

When asked why, Branson stared silently at the wall.

“Because he’s Batman. Batman is Batman because his parents died. You don’t joke after that. Ever.”

Branson began banging rhythmically on the table.

“Never-ever-ever-ever-ever-ever-ever-ever-ever.”

“Shoot, he’s stimming,” Cho said.

The session was cut short, and Matt Reeves’s The Batman was put on to calm Branson down.

Researchers say this rigid categorical thinking may finally explain why one of the most mocked scenes in Snyder’s filmography consistently resonates with his most devoted fans.

“In Batman v Superman, Batman abandons his murderous vendetta against Superman after learning that Superman’s mother is also named Martha,” Cho explained. “For years, viewers dismissed the moment as contrived, but we believe it may actually represent an unusually efficient form of SPD categorical cognition.”

“By a Snyder fan’s reasoning, Batman has Superman filed under ‘ALIEN.’ Aliens are ‘NOT HUMAN,’ and anything not human is automatically filed under ‘THREAT.’”

Cho gestured to two flowcharts, one representing neurotypical thought processes and the other those of people with SPD.

“When Superman tells Batman, ‘Save Martha,’ a neurotypical brain immediately starts spiraling. They think, ‘What? Who calls their mother by her first name? A normal person would say, “Save my mom.” Oh my God, I’ve been watching this conflict for two hours and its entire resolution hinges on the fact that Superman’s mom is named Martha? What if his mom were named Jane? Would Batman just kill Superman right there? In what world does that make sense?’”

Cho moved her finger down the SPD flowchart.

“But in a Snyder-processing brain, the shared name becomes a revelation that creates an empathic bridge. Through Batman’s POV, they see the logic as: ‘My mom is named Martha. Superman’s mother is named Martha. And if I’m a good guy and my mother is named Martha, then Superman must be a good guy too because his mother is also named Martha. We should be friends.’”

Cho nodded.

“For an SPD viewer, that’s not lazy writing. That’s an extremely satisfying database update.”

The addition of SPD to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has prompted major streaming services to begin testing Snyder Cuts as an accessibility feature alongside subtitles, audio description, and sign-language interpretation. When activated, the Snyder Cut automatically desaturates the image, slows significant action moments, removes disruptive humor, and replaces any lyrical songs with Evanescence.

So far, the results have been promising.

“So many of the people we thought were toxic fans were just unrepresented SPD viewers,” said James Gunn. “Now that they’re able to watch the Snyder Cut of Supergirl, they’re actually going back and updating their reviews.”

The technology could eventually make thousands of films far more accessible to SPD audiences. After his traumatic Barbenheimer experience, Mike Allen watched the Snyder Cut of Barbie, which replaces most of the pink with gunmetal gray and replaces every musical number with Mongolian throat singing, and was relieved to find the film “finally watchable.”

“And you know what?” Allen said, considering the film. “I think… I think I finally understand feminism now.”

Male viewers of the Snyder Cut of Obsession also reported dramatic improvements in comprehension thanks to additional footage designed to eliminate any moral ambiguity.

“The first time I watched Obsession, I came away thinking Bear was just kind of a pitiful dude trapped in this really crazy situation. I actually thought the wish was the whole problem,” said 31-year-old SPD patient Darren Cole. “Then I watched the Snyder Cut, and the moment he makes the wish, the movie stops completely so the director can look straight into the camera and say, ‘Bear is a bad guy and a rapist.’”

Cole sighed in relief.

“Man, it made all the difference. All the women in my office have finally started talking to me again.”

The addition of Snyder Processing Disorder has prompted researchers to investigate whether other intense fandoms may represent previously unrecognized neurocognitive profiles.

Wes Anderson Syndrome is increasingly looking like a condition previously thought to be obsessive-compulsive disorder, only pastel and at a weird aspect ratio.

Several institutes are also investigating Cronenbergitus, a condition in which patients struggle to express technological anxiety, sexual repression, or existential dread unless it grows teeth and emerges from their abdomen.

Lynchian Emotional Disorder is the most likely contender for official DSM recognition and is defined as a condition in which patients experience distress if reality fails to operate on dream logic. Early trials have found that patients are vastly more comfortable in social situations set to off-key Muzak and show significant improvement when an emotional-support midget is allowed to silently dance in the corner of the room.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Decades of conservative policy abruptly snapped into focus Monday after President Donald Trump was asked about universal pre-K and accidentally explained the philosophical foundation of the entire Republican Party.

“Universal? For everybody?” Trump asked, visibly confused by the premise. “You can’t do everybody. There’s too many people, and I like the way it is. You take care of the winners and ignore the losers. Losers don’t get pre-K. Frankly, we don’t need more winners. We need less losers. A whole lot less. A lot of these problems would be much easier.”

Across the country, millions of Americans reportedly froze in place.

“Ohhh,” said Cincinnati resident Mark Rollins, slowly lowering his coffee as nearly forty years of conservative politics suddenly became comprehensible. “Holy shit. That explains everything.”

Within minutes, GOP lawmakers began openly embracing what strategists are calling the Too Many Losers Doctrine, or simply TML, abandoning any tortured attempt to explain Republican policy.

“It’s just so liberating,” said Senator Ted Cruz, wiping away tears. “You have no idea how hard it is to explain why taking healthcare away from 20 million losers is actually good for America. Now, I can just say ‘TML.’”

Cruz took a deep breath and smiled. “But yeah. A whole lot of people are going to die.”

“Everyone asks why the richest country can’t afford the things most other nations figured out decades ago,” explained Heritage Foundation fellow Robert Keene. “The mistake is assuming that we’re actually trying to. The free market will sort things out—It sorts things out.”

Asked what exactly was being sorted, Keene cleared his throat. “The people. Specifically, the number of them.”

TML has also changed Americans’ understanding of Trump’s signature slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

“‘Great’ was when there were fewer people,” explained conservative commentator Sean Hannity. “In 1950, the United States population was roughly half what it is today. You could park anywhere. Let’s get back to that.”

Top White House officials are also using the Too Many Losers Doctrine to frame the current state of the economy.

“It’s not inflation; it’s demand outpacing supply, and America is naturally embracing the Disney model,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “I mean, just look at Disneyland. Higher prices mean fewer losers, and suddenly everything is better. Shorter lines. More churros. Nobody from Honduras. I mean, have you been recently? Of course you haven’t. And that’s kind of the whole point.”

For the 45% of parents with children who go into debt to pay for a Disney vacation, the comment was a revelation.

“CALL ME CRAZY,” yelled Matthew Cook, a three-time Trump voter from Texas and next-door neighbor to a roaring data center, “BUT I’M STARTING TO THINK I’M A LOSER.”

“You’re all future winners. You’re just not winning yet,” said Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, representing the poorest state in the nation, when asked how one becomes a winner in America.

“So we’re currently losers?” asked one horrified resident.

“No, you’re fans,” Wicker said. “Like when our… team wins, you know, in football, the…” He snapped his fingers, searching for the name. “Shoot. Whatever. The point is, when your local football team wins, you don’t actually win. But you sure helped them win by cheering them on.”

Wicker paused.

“What the hell is our team called?”

An aide whispered in his ear that Mississippi does not have an NFL team.

Wicker frowned. “We’re that poor? Goddamn. What a bunch of losers.”

“Too many people think the American Dream is supposed to be a standard. I mean, in this economy?” explained podcaster and Lacoste polo shirt that wished he were a real boy, Tucker Carlson. “The beauty of TML is that everyone can believe they, too, can someday be a winner for zero dollars. You just gotta, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, keep doing what the winning class says, and maybe some of their winning will trickle down onto you.”

He shrugged. “And if it doesn’t work out for most people? Fuck ’em. They were losers. But not you, listener. You’re a winner, and winners use daily NutMaxxx supplements to combat Low-T.”

Many Republican voters are beginning to realize that past conservative pushes may have been targeting them.

“Wait a minute,” said Florida Republican Rick Harmon. “When COVID started, they said we couldn’t shut businesses down just to stop some silly cough…”

He paused, his jaw dropping in revelation. “They convinced us masks were pointless. Then they kept telling us not to trust the vaccine!”

Harmon gasped and turned to his wife. “It wasn’t about herd immunity at all. They were trying to thin the herd!”

His eyes slowly narrowed. “Oh, those motherfuckers.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Investigative journalist Ronan Farrow has reportedly spent the past six days sitting in a folding chair outside the apartment of 35-year-old Trump aide Natalie Harp, patiently waiting for the moment she is finally ready to tell the world the horrors she’s endured.

Farrow has assured Harp there is “absolutely no pressure,” periodically sliding his business card beneath her door and reminding her that The New Yorker has already cleared space for 12,000 words and the deadline is fast approaching.

Harp, who serves as executive assistant to President Donald Trump, has repeatedly insisted that nothing inappropriate has happened, is happening, or will ever happen, which sparked a vigorous online discourse about the severity of her trauma from all the things that have obviously happened.

“‘Believe All Women’ means we should take any woman coming forward with reports of sexual assault and harassment seriously,” said one person on X. “But when Natalie Harp says Trump hasn’t digitally penetrated her with those bruised, meaty paws of his? No, I don’t believe her. I don’t believe her at all.”

Many users echoed the same sentiment, arguing, “She’s blonde, and it’s Trump. Come on.”

CNN spent much of Friday speculating about her nickname, “The Human Printer.”

“Anyone who owns an HP printer knows the trauma of a one-sided toxic relationship,” said Van Jones. “I shudder to think what he’s doing to her to earn that name.”

The parallels to the Monica Lewinsky scandal proved impossible for MSNBC to resist, despite the absence of a scandal. Simply having Monica Lewinsky, however, proved more than enough.

“All I will say is that I know what happened when I was alone in the Oval Office with the President of the United States,” Monica Lewinsky said via Zoom on Rachel Maddow. “Need I say more?”

At which point, Fox News switched to wall-to-wall coverage that “Monica Lewinsky has more to say,” hoping to change the subject to the 28-year-old affair.

Yesterday, Time’s Up, a prominent anti-sexual-harassment and women’s advocacy organization, issued a press release saying, “Trump is the President of the United States. Harp is his employee. The power imbalance is impossible to ignore. We take all allegations seriously and find the complete lack of allegations enough to warrant a thorough investigation. At the minimum, there’s been some Biden-style hair sniffing.”

As Harp left for work this morning, Ronan Farrow could be seen calling out, “Denial is often part of the process, but we’re here for you! Whether it’s a Pulitzer-winning tell-all, a New York Times bestseller, or even a podcast series with a future Netflix adaptation.”

Public polling suggests most Americans have already adopted a broadly sympathetic view of Harp. Unsurprisingly, those who find no issue with Harp’s exploitation are Trump’s steadfast MAGA base, Bill Cosby, and Harvey Weinstein.

Even routine footage of Harp performing her job has become increasingly difficult for viewers to watch.

“I saw her hand him an article yesterday,” said Pennsylvania voter Denise Waller. “He didn’t even thank her. And then she just stood there, smiling. I just wanted to reach through the television and drag her somewhere safe. There are shelters, honey. I will take you there personally.”

“Natalie is an accomplished professional who has never alleged misconduct of any kind,” said a White House spokesperson, brazenly enabling the continued exploitation and human trafficking of another woman trapped within Trump’s orbit.

“I am not being exploited, and I am not being trafficked,” Harp later said when asked for comment. She then clarified, “Except for the one time they shoved me in the trunk of that SUV. Or that time they stuffed me in that catering truck. Also that week I spent sleeping in a Bedminster locker room.”

Experts note that victims frequently minimize their circumstances, and in Natalie Harp’s case, signs of trafficking can sometimes include a six-figure salary, regular appearances on OAN, and continued employment in a job they actively sought.

On Sunday, Trump advocates took to the airwaves to defend the president.

“It is physically impossible for the President to commit sexual assault,” shouted Stephen Miller on Fox News. “To be in his presence is to understand his glory. That’s consent. Frankly, he should sign an executive order reinstating Prima Nocta.”

Sources said Trump appeared strangely invigorated by the nonexistent scandal, repeatedly asking aides whether reporters were still “talking about the thing with the blonde.”

“He’s an eighty-year-old man,” said one unnamed aide, ”The rumors make him feel like a virile young rapist again.”

Today, Ronan Farrow reportedly left a rough draft of his New Yorker article in Natalie Harp’s mailbox with a note saying all she had to do was fill in the blanks:

“On ______ (date), Donald Trump ______ (verb) my ______ (body part) in the ______ (location).”

“She’ll speak her truth eventually,” Farrow said confidently. “Or she’ll get a cushy time slot on Fox News. Only time will tell.”

At press time, Trump had reportedly begun responding to the allegations of the allegations, posting to X multiple times in one hour, denying impropriety and labeling any claim a “Fake News Witch Hunt.”

Users were quick to pin a community note to each of the president’s posts, linking to the infamous Access Hollywood tape, where he bragged on a hot microphone that fame allowed him to “grab ’em by the pussy.”

While there is currently no allegation that President Trump has handled Natalie Harp by vulva, the White House has yet to confirm or deny that such an assault took place.

The silence is stunning.

TO: All Deep Estate Personnel
FROM: Office of Administrative Services

It has come to the Director’s attention that a Ken Harry has escaped from Research and is currently somewhere within the Deep Estate.

As always, it is critical to keep in mind that Ken Harrys are non-violent and your safety is not at risk. However, despite their appearance, Ken Harrys are NOT human.

All Ken Harrys resemble the same 35-year-old Caucasian male with naturally blond hair and blue eyes. They are 5’11”, weigh 182 pounds, and naturally present wearing a white button-up shirt and brown slacks.

When confronted, a Ken Harry will attempt to initiate small talk. It typically presents with an upbeat attitude and prefers office aphorisms such as “Let’s touch base” or “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

Since today is Monday, a Ken Harry is extremely likely to complain that it is Monday and ask you about your weekend.

THE INCIDENT: At approximately 8:10 a.m., Ken Harry #4631 became aware that the date was August 10th and entered an agitated state, repeatedly expressing concern that he had forgotten to buy a birthday gift for his son, Timmy.

Again, Ken Harrys are not human. Timmy is not real, despite their ability to talk at length about their children and their tendency to produce a wallet containing a family photo.

Ken Harry #4631 escaped the laboratory to search for this gift. It is likely to still have IV and catheter lines attached, a shaved head, and surgical markings along the forehead and temple in preparation for its interrupted craniotomy.

IMPORTANT: Ken Harrys have a natural lifespan of approximately one 40-hour workweek. This particular Ken Harry has exceeded that limit and is now considered unstable.

If a Ken Harry appears pale, distressed, disoriented, or begins repeating office phrases with unusual urgency, the entity is highly likely to rupture. Employees must maintain a safe distance of at least 15 feet to avoid unnecessary staining of clothing.

If Ken Harry #4631 is spotted:

• DO NOT remind Ken Harry that it is not human.

• DO NOT say its trigger phrase: “You may clock out now, Ken.”

• DO NOT ask Ken Harry when it last saw its family.

• DO NOT inquire about its personal opinion regarding its pending craniotomy or live vivisection.

• DO NOT suggest gift ideas for its nonexistent son.

• DO attempt to reassure Ken Harry that stores are still open.

• DO suggest busywork to keep it occupied, then notify Security of its location.

If possible, maintain visual contact from a safe distance until Security arrives.

We are aware that some employees have ethical and moral concerns regarding the use of Ken Harrys as live test subjects, unpaid temporary workers, and occasional manual labor.

Employees are welcome to submit all comments and complaints to the HR suggestion box.

Under no circumstances should employees attempt to hide Ken Harry #4631 or assist it in escaping the Deep Estate.

Thank you for your cooperation.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘. 𝐃𝐮𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧. 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁.𝐎.𝐁. 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐮𝐧𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬, 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧 𝐇𝐑 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞.

TO: All Deep Estate Personnel
FROM: Office of Administrative Services

It has come to the Director’s attention that multiple employees have been submitting an “Official Hot Dog Requisition Form” (K-17HZ9) through the pneumatic tube network and receiving a hot dog approximately 5–10 minutes later.

Please note:

• K-17HZ9 is not a recognized or authorized K-form configuration.

• The Deep Estate DOES NOT contain a Hot Dog Department. All correspondence addressed to the Hot Dog Department is marked “undeliverable.” It remains in the mail room for 30 days before being incinerated.

• Neither Food Services nor any other department has been authorized to manufacture, procure, or distribute hot dogs outside of the cafeterias.

• The origin of these hot dogs remains unknown.

Testing by the Research Division has confirmed that the hot dogs are safe to eat. However, doing so is ill-advised.

Due to the hot dog’s unique properties, its internal temperature remains exactly 120°F at all times. This includes experiments in which the hot dog was submerged in liquid nitrogen or molten iron.

While the hot dog itself appears incapable of spoilage, do not store the remains of a hot dog in a refrigerator or freezer. The residual heat will increase the temperature inside the appliance, likely spoiling the food around it.

Additionally, Section 1-2 of the Hot Dog Requisition Form, which allows employees to select a beef, pork, or turkey hot dog, is also verifiably misleading. Regardless of the option selected, the same hot dog is received. While it is composed primarily of a processed substance resembling meat, DNA sequencing has failed to match the material to any known species.

It is unlikely that these hot dogs are Kosher or Halal.

The vegetarian option simply sends a bun without the hot dog.

Attempts have been made to stop distribution. Engineering traced the hot dogs to a point where the pneumatic tube emerged directly from a cement wall with no visible connecting pipe. The opening was capped and sealed with epoxy, and approximately one mile of tubing was subsequently removed.

Despite this, hot dogs continue to arrive through the pneumatic tube system several times each day.

The Bureau is aware that this memo will likely have little measurable effect on the growing popularity of Pneumatic Tube Hot Dogs. Continued consumption is not expressly forbidden. However, henceforth, any consumption will be undertaken at the employee’s own risk.

Thank you.

The following information is classified as INTERNAL USE ONLY. Duplication, transmission, or distribution outside the Deep Estate is strictly forbidden. Employees found in violation of the B.O.B. secrecy mandate, along with any and all unauthorized recipients, are subject to extreme rendition to an HR blacksite.

IRVINE, CA— In response to the ongoing Cyclospora outbreak linked to contaminated lettuce, Taco Bell announced Monday that every drive-thru lane nationwide will now connect customers directly to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

“We just want to make sure you’re okay,” explained Taco Bell spokesperson Ashley Goldenblatt. “A Crunchwrap Supreme is a long-term solution to a short-term problem.”

The policy follows mounting concern among mental health professionals and Taco Bell employees that those using the drive-thru are exhibiting severe suicidal ideation.

“This guy wanted to know if the tacos came with lettuce, and when I said yes, he ordered twelve,” said Taco Bell employee Ana Torres. “I asked if he was okay, and he broke down. His wife and kids had just left him, and I didn’t know what to say. I’m not trained to handle these kinds of orders.”

“If you voluntarily order a Crispy Chicken Chipotle Bacon Melt Burrito after watching weeks of news coverage about explosive diarrhea, something isn’t right,” explained psychiatrist Dr. Edward Kim. “This is Taco Bell, after all. Even before the Cyclospora outbreak, anyone going through that drive-thru clearly no longer valued their life.”

Researchers say they first noticed the phenomenon years earlier among Arby’s customers.

“It’s long been established that choosing Arby’s over every other available option is less a food preference and more a cry for help,” Kim admitted. “One in three gunshot su*cides occurs in an Arby’s parking lot. They even say Kurt Cobain had an Arby’s receipt in his pocket the day he died.”

Attempting to calm public fears, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a televised visit to a Taco Bell Monday afternoon, insisting he would personally eat a Crunchwrap Supreme to demonstrate the restaurant’s safety.

Employees repeatedly refused to serve him.

“We spent fifteen minutes trying to talk him down,” said shift manager Carlos Mendez. “The poor guy walked in looking like that, sounding like that. We knew he was terminal. And the way he was smiling, it was clear he had already made peace with his family.”

Cashiers reportedly assured Kennedy that there were far gentler forms of euthanasia. One employee went so far as to offer directions to a nearby bridge.

“It has a wonderful view,” the employee said. “Why don’t you experience that instead of shitting yourself to death?”

In the end, RFK still chose to eat the Taco Bell.

The White House later reaffirmed that Kennedy had been attempting to reassure the public and had not, in fact, become actively su*cidal.

Officials then clarified that RFK was now, however, on suicide watch after being admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“After experiencing three continuous days of his anus turning into a blood-tinged shit geyser, anyone would opt to take the easy way out.”

READ PART ONE HERE

War was on the horizon for Little Tel Aviv and the quaint Arizona pseudo-nation-state of New Israel. It began, as modern wars often do, with an email.

“Years ago, I gave twenty bucks to some Jewish political group asking for donations,” said Naomi Yazzie-Goldstein, Rabbi Yaz’s wife. “It was for a congressional candidate who wanted to legalize medical marijuana. I was in the middle of chemo at the time, so I said sure.”

“I also gave them my email and number.” Naomi grimaced. “It was the worst mistake of my life.”

Naomi was stunned when she first read the subject line, written in all caps: !!!URGENT!!! NEW ISRAEL IS A CRITICAL THREAT TO JEWISH SELF-DETERMINATION

The email came from AIPAC, the influential pro-Israel lobbying organization, and included a twelve-page briefing, also titled in all caps: NEW ISRAEL IS JUST OLD BLOOD LIBEL

Three of those twelve pages specifically targeted Rabbi Yazzie-Goldstein as the ideological head of a supposed New Israel hate group.

The message was distributed to countless congressional offices, cable-news producers, university trustees, and celebrities with unusually forceful opinions on where Americans should buy their hummus. Public figures who failed to open it received polite follow-up calls from advocates offering gentle reminders.

Members of Congress received Senator John Fetterman.

“No, I mean he literally kicked down my door,” claimed Senator Cory Booker. “Ripped it straight off the hinges and started screaming that Israel was under attack. I thought Iran had launched another missile strike.”

The PDF functioned as both a talking-points memo and an informal marching order for pro-Israel politicians and commentators. It accused New Israel of practicing “an insidious new form of hatred in which New Israeli Jews launder violent antisemitism through their Jewish identities, peaceful conduct, and ordinary participation in Jewish life.”

“Simply by existing as a Jew, I am spreading hatred,” Yazzie-Goldstein said, shaking his head. “Intersectionality, I understand. White fragility? I read the book. Internalized racism and misogyny? Those are things. But this?”

He smacked the printed briefing against his palm. “This is meshugganah on an epistemological level. ‘I think, therefore I am antisemitic.’”

He took a long, frustrated breath. “And people bought it.”

Within days, New Israel became a fixture of cable news. Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a recipient of more than $1.5 million in AIPAC-affiliated campaign contributions, called it “an antisemitic Jewish enclave.” A former Clinton adviser described Rabbi Yaz’s synagogue as “a cult preaching radical Judaism, which is essentially radical Islam on bath salts.”

Fox News reduced the controversy to a chyron: WOKE DESERT JEWS BETRAY GOOD DESERT JEWS

Genuine American Voices, an Israeli-owned social-media consulting firm, quietly began offering influencers such as Tim Pool and Laura Loomer five thousand dollars for each anti-New Israel post. Although the influencers denied receiving payments, much of their content appeared to have been copied directly from the AIPAC briefing. More than a few seemed to have walked away with the wrong message.

“The new antisemite celebrates Passover, y’all,” warned one former Fox News blonde turned trad-wife influencer. “They use kosher salt. Really, we need to start keeping an eye on all the Jews, okay? You never know which one might secretly be an antisemite.”

Ben Shapiro grew so worked up predicting that New Israel would lead to “an AOC-DNC-DEI Kristallnacht” that he had to pause his livestream and check his blood pressure.

Rabbi Yazzie-Goldstein took to the airwaves to defend his town, but he proved ill-equipped to navigate the rhetorical minefield now surrounding him.

When accused of antisemitism, he stubbornly replied, “No, I’m Jewish,” or, “You do know I’m a rabbi, right? Can somebody make sure the thing at the bottom of the screen says I’m a rabbi?” He then appeared genuinely bewildered when none of those statements proved satisfactory.

His comment, “I wouldn’t even joke that I’m a self-hating Jew,” was immediately seized upon by AIPAC chief executive Elliot Brandt on CNN.

“Why wouldn’t you joke about it?” Brandt demanded during a split-screen interview. “Because you believe Jews should hate themselves for supporting Israel, right? Because you hate Israel. You’re a Jew-hating Jew Jew from a Jew-hating Jewish town!”

Yazzie-Goldstein looked off-camera toward a producer. “Did he just call me a ‘Jew-hating Jew Jew’?”

He fared no better when asked about his broader politics, failing to understand that every offhand remark would be converted into an official mission statement for the entire community. An MSNBC clip in which he casually said, “New Israel was proudly built on socialist ideals,” fueled a week of right-wing coverage connecting the supposedly antisemitic rabbi to the network’s usual catalog of socialist terrors.

His worst appearance came during an interview with Wolf Blitzer.

“Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” Blitzer asked.

“I believe New Israel has a right to exist and, more importantly, that we have the right to be left alone,” Yazzie-Goldstein replied, playing for a laugh he did not receive.

Blitzer remained stony-faced. “So you don’t believe Israel has a right to exist.”

“What? No,” Yazzie-Goldstein blustered. “I never said that.”

“Then answer the question. Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?”

What followed was four painful seconds of silence as Yazzie-Goldstein went perfectly still. He blinked three times, then said with sudden conviction, “I believe Patrick Mahomes may have lost a step after that knee surgery. Let’s talk about that.”

Sociologist and media critic Paul Danno, no relation, argued that the attack on New Israel had less to do with politics than wounded national mythology.

“Israel’s perceived value comes from being singular,” Danno explained. “In its own creation myth, it is the Jewish state, built by the chosen people in their chosen land. You cannot simply have some of the chosen people choose some other land over there. Cognitively, the whole structure begins to collapse.”

Danno described the resulting panic as a kind of national ego death.

“You cannot build a national identity around being a miracle, then casually downgrade yourself to merely another state. If Israel is merely another state, it can be judged, discredited, abandoned, or replaced. And within the Zionist imagination, if Israel is abandoned, nobody will be left to protect the Jews.”

Danno sighed. “So when hardcore Zionists look at New Israel, they do not see a small Jewish community celebrating Pride Month. They see the opening scene of the next Holocaust.”

He bobbed his head and admitted, “I know that makes no rational sense. But if you’re thinking rationally, you’re not thinking like a hardcore Zionist.”

Two weeks after the New Israel talking points circulated, President Trump joined the controversy and appeared to reveal the private reasoning behind them.

“Bibi is very concerned,” Trump said. “Very concerned. He tells me, ‘Mr. Trump, Old Israel has Palestinians, New Israel has Indians, basically the same situation.’ But the hippies are getting along. They’ve shot nobody. Zero bombs. Not one. They’re just singing ‘Kumbaya, My Lord,’ and Bibi says it makes them look very bad.”

Netanyahu later clarified that he had merely warned of “a dangerous precedent in which Jews appear capable of living securely alongside another displaced population without reducing them to a permanent security problem.”

“Israel has a right to exist,” Netanyahu added, “regardless of how many people must cease existing to preserve that right.”

In a meager attempt to put out the fire, the town council issued a statement explaining that New Israel was not a foreign nation or political movement. It had no radical ideology or competing theological claim on the Holy Land. The town was simply a municipality in Arizona with award-winning heirloom tomatoes and a semi-regular arts-and-crafts fair.

This only deepened suspicion.

“Why are they so defensive?” asked Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, and recipient of $1,495,709 AIPAC dollars, on the floor of Congress. “If New Israel has nothing to hide, why does it keep insisting it’s just a town? I move that a special committee be formed to uncover the truth.”

The proposal was seconded and passed within the week.

AIPAC-backed politicians began issuing subpoenas and launching investigations into New Israel’s finances, school curriculum, land agreement, agricultural permits, water usage, and suspicious importation of frozen shellfish.

“I said we were a majority-Jewish town. I never said we were all good Jews,” Rabbi Yaz joked during a televised congressional committee hearing. “Even I get a little tempted looking at a shrimp cocktail.”

“Is it true you operate a camp for Jewish children?” Senator Slotkin asked during her allotted five minutes.

The rabbi nodded. “Yes. Our youth summer camp.”

Slotkin leaned into her microphone. “Let the record show that Mr. Yazzie-Goldstein has confirmed they are taking children away from their parents and concentrating them inside a camp.”

The rabbi wagged his finger. “No, no, no, no. I see what you did there. It’s a very nice camp. It has excellent Yelp reviews.”

Slotkin continued. “The Anti-Defamation League has identified New Israel as one of the fastest-growing centers of antisemitic activity in the United States. Do you deny that?”

“Yes,” Yazzie-Goldstein replied.

Slotkin then bent down and retrieved what was intended to be her coup de grâce.

“That’s interesting, because my aides recently visited your town and found several gift shops brazenly selling Nazi paraphernalia.”

A murmur passed through the hearing room as the senator dramatically unfurled a traditional Navajo blanket.

“I count no fewer than thirty-two swastikas on this blanket alone. How do you explain that?”

Yazzie-Goldstein stared at her. “Do you people ever Google anything? No, really. Can somebody use the Google?”

When they refused to “use the Google,” he stubbornly explained that the sacred whirling-log symbol had been part of Navajo culture for thousands of years before the rise of Nazi Germany.

“It’s a Navajo symbol. It has been used by cultures all over the world since practically forever. Frankly, if we’re banning symbols because people put them on their flags and did something monstrous, I’d be more worried about the Star of David.”

A murmur rose from the gallery. Rabbi Yaz’s attorney nudged him sharply.

“That is not a suggestion,” Yazzie-Goldstein added. “Please, God, don’t make this a thing.”

Fox News made it a thing for the next two weeks, repeating the allegation until much of its audience believed the Star of David had been banned inside Little Tel Aviv and every wall in town was covered in swastikas.

Trump inevitably dubbed the community “Nazi Israel” in a long, freewheeling Truth Social post. He also claimed New Israel was where “Nasty” Pelosi and Adam “Shifty” Schiff had buried “probably millions and millions” of Arizona ballots during the 2020 election, a state Trump lost by just under eleven thousand votes.

The chaotic days that followed saw every imaginable species of political lunatic descend upon the town.

“We had guys in red MAGA hats digging holes with tractors, breaking water mains and fiber-optic lines, looking for missing ballots,” said Sheriff Pam ‘with the Bum Knee’ Andrews-Edelstein. “They were bad, but the Bible-thumpers were worse because they brought the cows.”

The first convoy of evangelical Christians pulled into Little Tel Aviv on a Thursday afternoon with a livestock trailer containing two large orange cows. They had driven from Texas after learning that New Israel’s Torah-themed miniature-golf course offered a replica Mount Sinai, a miniature Temple of Jerusalem, and a Holiday Inn Express within walking distance.

“For years, Christians have had to fly halfway around the world to fulfill the prophecy foretold in Revelation,” explained Pastor Dwayne Mercer of the Holy Fire of Danger Christ Church in Lubbock. “Now we can kick off the Rapture and be home by Monday.”

Ari Yazzie-Goldstein, the rabbi’s eldest son and partial owner of Tiny Holy Land, said he found the group attempting to construct a sacrificial altar beside the miniature Temple.

“I told them, ‘Stop or I’m calling the cops,’ and I guess they heard, ‘Start the apocalypse before he calls the cops.’ They opened the back of the trailer, and, well…”

Ari shuddered. “That’s when I discovered they had brought two fully grown bulls because nobody in the church knew what a heifer was.”

Five church members were hospitalized with broken bones and internal injuries.

“I guess that was God’s way of saying you can’t half-ass the apocalypse,” Pastor Mercer later explained.

Then came the Israeli activists.

Rabbi Yaz gestured towards the makeshift barricade on the hill, surrounding the yurt lodgings. For the past day and a half, the protest group had taken to blasting Chumbawamba on repeat in an act of psychological warfare.

“Those kids… Those… fakakta…” The rabbi struggled to find the words.

“Goddamn shithead kids,” Sheriff Pam supplied.

“I still can’t believe my eyes!” Rabbi Yazzie shouted. “That’s a settlement! They built an illegal Israeli settlement right in the middle of town!”

TO BE CONTINUED.

On the morning of the Israeli invasion, Rabbi Yazzie-Goldstein was standing at a makeshift checkpoint, arguing with a border agent over whether a shipment of lemon trees constituted agricultural contraband.

The trees had been ordered for Sukkot and had come from a nursery less than three hundred miles away. They were presently wilting in the back of a pickup truck stuck in a long line of idling vehicles waiting to cross.

Each car had to be thoroughly inspected from top to bottom, passed over by bomb-sniffing dogs, and swabbed for chemical residue. Every bag and container was unpacked and rifled through, then left on the ground for civilians to repack. One Border Patrol agent tossed a jar of baby formula into a dumpster, then consulted his supervisor about a baby bottle full of prepared formula.

Every civilian’s ID had to be checked. Phones were unlocked and scanned. Facial-recognition software and Palantir background searches combed through social media for any hint of extremist leanings. If something didn’t check out, no matter how slight, the traveler was turned away.

“We’re in Arizona,” Rabbi Yazzie-Goldstein pointed out.

The agent consulted a clipboard. “No, you are on the border of a U.S.-sanctioned terror state.”

“Inside Arizona, a U.S. state!” the rabbi shouted. He took a breath and tried to reason with the man. “They’re just lemon trees. What’s so bad about lemons?”

“You know how they say, ‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade’? Well, lemonade concentrate mixed with gasoline can also make napalm.”

Yazzie-Goldstein stared dumbfounded at the agent.

Later, he would look up the claim that lemons could be weaponized. The closest thing he could find was a fictitious napalm recipe recited by Tyler Durden in Fight Club, and that involved concentrated orange juice.

“This has to be against the Constitution,” Yazzie-Goldstein pressed. “You know, the whole thing about interstate commerce.”

The agent wasn’t listening. Orders were being squawked into his earpiece. He looked past the rabbi toward the low adobe buildings of Little Tel Aviv and the ochre hills beyond, then sighed.

“Sir, I would say take it up with the Supreme Court, but you’re President Netanyahu’s problem now.”

The rabbi sputtered. “President who? What?!”

A rumble came from down the road, the shimmering Arizona heat rising from the asphalt, masking something massive coming their way.

The agents sprang into action, hastily directing as many civilian cars as possible away from the checkpoint, then forcibly pulling drivers from vehicles that had become boxed in.

All Yazzie-Goldstein could do was watch as the head of the IDF convoy, an armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, smashed into the pickup truck containing his ceremonial lemon trees, reducing it to twisted steel and pulp.

A hundred APCs and support vehicles followed. Within an hour, an armored vehicle was parked beside the organic grocery co-op, and two soldiers were unrolling concertina wire across the entrance to the weekly farmers’ market.

Israel’s invasion of New Israel had begun.

Rabbi Barry Yazzie-Goldstein, locally known as “Rabbi Yaz,” is a lean, tan man with a long beard and even longer braided hair. He is, in his own words, a “sun-dried hippie.”

Barry was born in 1961 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix to Miriam Goldstein, a Jewish social worker from Queens who fell in love with the state of Arizona, and Thomas Yazzie, a local member of the Navajo Nation. Thomas was a simple man who repaired air conditioners and generally distrusted almost every organized religion.

“Except the Jews,” Rabbi Yaz explained. “The Navajo never had to worry about a Jewish missionary. In fact, my father deeply appreciated how aggressively okay they were with him not converting.”

Rabbi Yaz has always taken pride in belonging to two tribes. He grew up celebrating Passover in the spring and attending tribal gatherings in the summer. Wherever he went, he was surrounded by relatives who disagreed about nearly everything except the importance of feeding him.

“Put the two together and you get brisket Navajo tacos. You can’t go wrong there,” the rabbi said, motioning toward a popular local food truck run by his youngest son.

At twenty-three, after studying comparative religion at Berkeley, he entered rabbinical school. He emerged with a beard, a wife named Naomi, and an enduring suspicion of anyone who described history as destiny.

“I’m not anti-Zionist,” Yazzie-Goldstein quickly pointed out. “I protested South African apartheid in the eighties, sure. And, yeah, maybe there are some parallels, but—”

The rabbi stopped walking and shook his head. “Did you see the Knicks last night? Let’s talk about that.”

When Thomas Yazzie died in 1992, Rabbi Yaz inherited stewardship rights over a vast and largely undeveloped tract of tribal land in the Sonoran Desert. The property consisted of several thousand acres of rock, scrub, and abandoned cattle fencing. Its most valuable asset was a decaying roadside attraction called Tiny Holy Land, a Bible-themed miniature-golf course with a fiberglass Mount Sinai, a miniature Temple of Jerusalem, and a ten-foot-tall Tower of Babylon. The land had little commercial value. It was far from the interstate, even farther from reliable water. One appraiser described it as “a beautiful place to die from sun exposure and dehydration.”

Rabbi Yaz regarded this as a challenge.

The commune began in the spring of 1994 with twelve adults, three vans, and one portable generator. After an evening involving several bottles of Manischewitz, marijuana, and mushrooms, Rabbi Yaz penned a document called “The Covenant of the Thirteenth Tribe of Aquarius” and christened the land New Israel.

The name was deliberately grandiose. Yazzie-Goldstein intended it to represent the construction of a civilization in the desert.

“But we weren’t founding a second Jewish state with our little settlement,” he later joked. “We were founding, eh... maybe Palm Springs? Let’s go with that. We were founding an even Jewier Palm Springs.”

Its first residents were all friends of Yazzie, and in his own words, “some variety of dirty hippie.” They lived in yurts and converted school buses while building adobe houses by hand. Electricity was intermittent. Water arrived by truck twice a week.

As New Israel gained popularity, the modest commune grew into the quaint, unincorporated town of Little Tel Aviv. Its politics were aggressively progressive even by the standards of the nineteen-nineties. Queer couples were welcomed, and Rabbi Yaz performed their weddings years before most states were willing to acknowledge that anything legally significant had occurred.

Those marriages exposed an old cartographic problem that would come to define New Israel. While trying to secure spousal health coverage for gay couples, the commune’s resident attorney discovered that New Israel did not technically sit within the Navajo reservation at all. An eighteenth-century survey error, two contradictory federal maps, and a treaty boundary defined by a nonexistent creek had left the property in a jurisdictional blind spot. It was either Arizona or Navajo land, depending on who was asked, with each side assuming it was governed by the other and neither particularly confident it had been legally incorporated at all.

Rabbi Yaz had little interest in the discovery. From the beginning, he insisted that New Israel could exist only with the active participation of the Navajo Nation. It would be nice if insurance companies also took care of “Pam and Nancy with her bum knee.” Rather than fight the Navajo Nation in court, he pushed for formal integration and mutual recognition, effectively making New Israel a tiny Vatican city nested within the Nation, except with yurts and considerably better attitudes toward lesbians.

Or, in his own words, “Self-determination, but let’s not be assholes about it.”

In 1999, the Tribal Council approved a ninety-nine-year cooperative land agreement with New Israel, dubbed “The One State Solution.” What he did not fully understand at the time was how much authority the commune’s attorney had quietly preserved. The resulting agreement gave New Israel control over residency, local courts, policing, zoning, marriage recognition, utilities, and internal governance. Yaz had effectively gone looking for health insurance and accidentally secured the legal framework for a small country.

New Israel’s tax revenue would be shared. Navajo citizens could live, work, and operate businesses in the community without any additional legal hurdles, and the population quickly swelled to resemble everything Yazzie-Goldstein embodied: both Jewish and Indigenous, and entirely, frustratingly liberal. New Israel’s schools taught both Hebrew and the Navajo language. Its governing council reserved seats for tribal representatives, even when they chose not to use them. Some tribal representatives remained suspicious. Others found Goldstein amusing.

“He came in talking about two displaced peoples building something together,” recalled Lena Benally, who served as the community’s planning director. “It took me fifteen minutes to realize he was talking about constructing a place to get a good bagel and schmear.”

The rapid growth of New Israel was nothing short of a miracle. A hydrogeologist living at the commune identified a deep aquifer beneath the property. Solar arrays replaced the portable generators. A grant from the Navajo Nation funded a wastewater-recycling system. The community began producing dates and citrus, along with groves of olive trees, with Rabbi Yaz insisting, “We’re gonna be here a while.”

By 2003, Little Tel Aviv had paved roads, a health clinic, a synagogue, and a quaint main street. By 2014, that main street had evolved into a central pedestrian boulevard lined with palo verde trees. As the residential population ballooned to more than five thousand and tens of thousands of tourists began visiting each year, the old yurts that remained on the hill above town were converted into vacation rentals, and a BuzzFeed listicle named it number three on its list of “America’s Best Liberal Havens Inside a Conservative Nightmare Hellscape.” A major investment in fiber-optic infrastructure proved to be a godsend during the COVID pandemic, as remote workers flocked to the small town and bolstered its middle class. By 2024, Little Tel Aviv was a small city with several developing neighborhoods, a municipal water park, and a revitalized Torah-themed miniature-golf course.

The expansion was not without friction between New Israel and neighboring Navajo communities.

“New Israel has always kind of done whatever it wants, and the Tribal Council doesn’t stop them,” complained Melissa Begay, a resident of the Navajo Nation. “And I know they’re giving a large chunk of their tax revenue to the Nation, but it’s not like I’ve seen any of it.”

“They stopped a casino from opening right on their border,” claimed Nester Chee, another Navajo resident. “They said it didn’t support their town’s values, but I’m pretty sure they did some meddling and pulled some strings. They didn’t like not getting a cut because… you know…”

When we reluctantly asked him to clarify, expecting the worst, Nester replied, “They’re a disproportionately wealthy, semi-autonomous enclave with significant influence over the Tribal Council.”

He frowned. “What? Why do you look so relieved? What did you think I was going to say?”

“It’s a blessing that my boy gets to go to their charter school,” said Ellie Bitsilly, a local waitress and single mother. Her son attends Red Mesa Community Middle School, which strives to fill its classrooms with equal numbers of Jewish and Navajo students.

“But I swear, I’m taking him to some bar or bat mitzvah every weekend nowadays. He’s got a whole collection of monogrammed yarmulkes. The other day, I caught him singing, ‘Die, die, emu. Die, die, emu.’ I thought it was some silly Fortnite song, but he told me it was something for Passover, and I dunno…”

She shrugged and blew air through her lips. “For a Navajo school, it doesn’t seem very Navajo to me.”

Visitors often compared New Israel to Israel itself, but Rabbi Yazzie-Goldstein grew to dislike the comparison.

“Yeah, but Israel has the whole thing with Gaza and the West Bank. It’s—” Yazzie-Goldstein sighed. “Did you see the Diamondbacks last night? I’m starting to think this season might not be total shit.”

The comparison persisted. Then, in the wake of the war in Gaza, it became politicized.

“At first, we were getting tourists coming in to pick a fight with New Israel,” explained Edith Nez, a seventy-year-old member of the Navajo Nation and owner of a vegan ice-cream parlor. “They’d come in and shout, ‘End the genocide!’ and we’d shout back, ‘Yeah, no shit!’ Then they’d sit down, and we’d hand them some free sherbet and try to make them feel heard. Really, that’s all they wanted.”

Yazzie-Goldstein began to worry when he noticed tourists walking around in T-shirts that read “WELCOME TO NEW ISRAEL” on the front and “THE ‘GOOD’ ISRAEL” on the back.

He realized something had changed when tourists began lining up around the block for his son’s food truck.

“I’d never seen so many visitors in a single day,” he recalled.

The rabbi seldom used social media and was shocked when his grandchildren showed him the exponentially growing online conversation surrounding the town. TikTok and Twitter users were comparing New Israel’s decades of peaceful integration with the Navajo people to Israel’s displacement and oppression of Palestinians.

A candid photograph of Jewish teenagers in yarmulkes eating falafel with their Navajo friends became the platform’s top post for the week. Two posts below it was the popular Zoolander meme with the caption, “NEW ISRAEL IS SO HOT RIGHT NOW.”

It seemed New Israel was gaining worldwide recognition for all the reasons it was not Old Israel, and much of the virality stemmed from relabeling Israel proper as “Old Israel.”

“It’s petty, and I kind of love it,” said one visiting UCLA student who asked not to be named. “You spend all that time arguing why what’s happening is wrong on ethical and moral grounds and get nowhere. It just feels good to devastate them with something like, ‘Oh, honey, those bangs aren’t working.’”

“I knew it was a real problem,” Yazzie-Goldstein said. “This is a town where people live, not a political statement about some fakakta ethnostate—”

The rabbi stopped himself. “Have you seen Caitlin Clark? Now that girl has some drive!”

Rabbi Yaz could not have been more right, though no one could have truly foreseen the international firestorm coming for his little oasis.

By the end of the month, Rabbi Yaz would be labeled a terrorist…

…and for the first time since Britain’s occupation of New York ended in 1783, New Israel would become the first city in the continental United States to be invaded by a foreign power.

TO BE CONTINUED

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Internal Revenue Service’s ambitious effort to “modernize the American customer experience” ended in disaster Monday after rebranding federal income taxes as the America+ Subscription Plan, prompting millions of Americans to immediately search for the cancellation button.

The IRS website crashed less than four minutes after launch and remains offline as of this writing.

“We were encouraged by initial engagement,” said IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel. “Then we realized everyone was trying to unsubscribe from America.”

“It’s essentially an unintentional DDoS attack,” explained one cybersecurity analyst while repeatedly refreshing the IRS homepage. “Everyone’s just waiting for the website to come back online so they can unsubscribe.”

According to the agency, the rebranding was designed to make taxes “feel less like a tax and more like a premium service.” The rollout included an updated language describing federal income tax as “Flexible Means-Tested Pricing,” available in convenient monthly or annual billing cycles.

Americans were less impressed.

“I already subscribe to Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, Xbox Game Pass, YouTube Premium, and Costco,” complained Denver resident Tyler Brooks while desperately refreshing the IRS cancellation page. “I’m okay with skipping the Trump Administration. I watched the first four seasons. The reboot just isn’t doing it for me.”

Trump-appointed IRS officials appeared flummoxed by the backlash.

“It’s the exact same federal taxes, just with different words,” one official explained. “But now everyone suddenly expects something in return.”

“Why does Norway’s Family Plan come with paid parental leave?” complained one longtime Republican voter. “Meanwhile, I have to pay extra for the UnitedHealthcare add-on like it’s Hulu. I already subscribe to Disney+.”

When asked to reconcile those views with his “All Taxation is theft” T-Shirt, he replied: “Free healthcare is socialism, but it wouldn’t be free if America includes it in their subscription. That’s capitalism, baby.”

The IRS attempted to calm subscribers by publishing a list of premium membership benefits, though the legal department appears to have muddied the messaging.

America+ Includes:

• Interstate Highways

• National Parks*

• Freedom**

• Unlimited access to C-SPAN

• One vote every four years***

* Supplies are limited.
** Restrictions apply.
*** Democracy not guaranteed. Void in D.C. and all U.S. territories.

The fine print only intensified criticism.

“It says here they’ll put you in prison if you stop paying your subscription,” said one subscriber. “That’s almost as bad as Adobe.”

“Has anybody actually read the Terms and Conditions?” another asked. “Did you know they can literally force you into the army? I was all for the Iran War, but now? Screw it. I’m out.”

Leaked documents also show the agency quietly introduced a premium tier for their high-net-worth subscribers. Known internally as the America+ Platinum Elite Executive Founders Club Diamond Eagle Edition, the package includes several exclusive benefits:

• Complimentary tote bag

• Priority congressional support

• Expedited regulatory approval

• The “Good” vaccines

• One “Get Out of Jail Free” card

• Unlimited capital gains

• One complimentary United States Senator

Subscribers expressed outrage after learning Platinum members also pay substantially lower rates than Standard users.

“So let me get this straight,” said construction worker Dave Mullins. “I’m paying thirty percent, and they’re paying twelve? These people shouldn’t exist.”

Asked whether he meant billionaires shouldn’t exist, Mullins quickly clarified: “What? No. I love billionaires. I’m specifically saying America+ Platinum Elite Executive Founders Club Diamond Eagle Edition members shouldn’t exist.”

When asked for comment, one IRS spokesperson clarified, “The senator isn’t technically free. They’re bundled. You know... like ESPN.”

At press time, the IRS was rolling out the America+ Family Plan, allowing parents to add dependent children to their subscription at a discounted rate until age eighteen, after which they are automatically upgraded to America+ Student Edition, which includes complimentary lifelong debt and HPV.

TOKYO— Engineers at Tokyo News Network admitted Monday they have exhausted every known machine-learning technique to stop their automated nudity filter from censoring President Donald Trump’s neck with a mosaic blur. Sources say the years-long issue stems from the president’s sagging chin wattle consistently being identified as female genitalia with extremely high confidence.

The problem began early last year when TNN rolled out an AI-powered censorship system trained on millions of hours of explicit video to automatically mosaic nudity before it reached broadcast television.

“It’s remarkably accurate,” said chief engineer Hiroshi Tanaka. “The model identifies nudity with virtually zero false positives.”

He paused and cleared his throat.

“Except for Donald Trump’s neck pussy.”

According to internal diagnostics, the AI initially classified what engineers officially refer to as Trump’s “Fatty Under Jaw Area”, or FUJA, as “Mature Vulva (High Confidence).”

“At first we tried telling the system it wasn’t granny porn,” developer Kenji Fujikawa explained. “It simply analyzed Trump’s neck again and reclassified it as ‘the external genitalia of a tired, jaded middle-aged pornstar who refuses to retire and has resorted to increasingly extreme insertion and fisting content.’ That description came directly from the AI.”

He stared at the printout and shook his head. “We honestly have no idea where it got that.”

Since the rollout, viewers have watched Trump’s neck heavily mosaicked during campaign rallies, press conferences, and international summits. The system has also created an unintended media blackout whenever the president appears around children.

“We showed an archival clip of Trump signing the order gutting the Department of Education while surrounded by elementary school students,” complained former TNN producer Rin Yamamoto. “The AI flagged minors and female genitalia in the same frame, immediately shut down the broadcast, encrypted our servers, and forwarded my IP address directly to the National Police Agency Cyber Police Bureau.”

Rin Yamamoto is currently serving a ten-year sentence for online distribution of CSAM. The conviction is being appealed.

The censorship anomaly became even more severe during a recent G7 summit, when the mosaic expanded to cover Trump’s mouth as well.

“That was my mistake, and I take full responsibility,” Tanaka said before offering a deep bow. “I instructed the model to rotate the president for additional context.”

He looked down. “Unfortunately... it rotated him one-hundred-eighty degrees. It saw those puckered lips just beneath the neck pussy and drew the obvious conclusion.”

When asked about the incident, a TNN spokesperson confirmed that “the butthole lips false positives were resolved within forty-eight hours.”

Engineers now believe the core problem lies in the AI’s overwhelming confidence in the POTUS’s Chin of Venus.

“No matter what we do, the AI identifies the FUJA as female genitalia with ninety-nine point nine eight percent confidence,” Tanaka said, staring blankly into the distance. “It has never been that certain about anything.”

Attempts to manually override the classification reportedly produced catastrophic results.

“At first we implemented a universal rule stating that Donald Trump’s neck could not be identified as a pussy. It worked for the Georgia O’Keeffe false positives.”

The engineer sighed.

“The model completely lost confidence that it knew what female genitalia looked like.”

Within minutes, the AI stopped censoring even the most explicit pornography while simultaneously placing mosaics over peaches, elbow folds, English bulldogs, and particularly wrinkled foreheads.

“So we launched the ‘Waddle Analysis Program’, or WAP,” Fujikawa explained. “WAP’s objective was simple: teach the model to identify Trump’s neck as solely Trump’s neck.”

He rubbed his temples.

“WAP achieved the exact opposite.”

The latest build now universally identifies all vulvas as “Donald Trump’s Neck Region.”

“We may have to roll back six months of development,” Fujikawa admitted. “It’s roughly a three-million-yen mistake.”

Researchers acknowledge they’ve encountered unusual edge cases before, but nothing approaching the severity of the FUJA anomaly.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket continues to be censored by Meta AI as an erect circumcised penis approximately forty-seven percent of the time.

Stephen Miller’s shaved head still triggers TNN’s AI’s unsolicited dick pic detector.

“We’ve elected not to fix that one, since public testing indicates viewers already identify him as a dick,” Fujikawa admitted.

The issue has become so persistent that engineers have abandoned clinical terminology altogether. Behind closed doors, the anomaly is universally referred to as 首マンコ (Kubi Manko), or simply “Toranpu Nekku Pusshī”

One TNN anchor accidentally used the internal nickname during a live broadcast before issuing a formal apology to Japanese women the following evening.

At press time, Webster’s Dictionary returned our request for clarification on the proper English terminology for Trump FUJA, suggesting “Eve’s Oyster,” an obsolete nineteenth-century term coined by Boston Sailors, defined as “the vaginal equivalent of an Adam’s Apple.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Preliminary autopsy findings released Monday concluded that Senator Lindsey Graham suffered a catastrophic aortic dissection after experiencing what medical examiners described as “an unprecedented full-body wargasm” upon learning the United States had once again begun bombing Iran.

Aides say they found him unresponsive in his hotel room, face-down over a scattered pile of eight-by-ten glossy satellite images of Tehran with Fox News still playing on the television.

“After they moved the body, we had to clean up the documents. All of it was classified.” The aide paused and took a shaky breath. “There was so much dried semen we needed a paint scraper to get the projected casualty report off the floor.”

Friends hope the diagnosis will finally put an end to decades of speculation over Graham’s bachelorhood.

“Everybody spent years asking whether Lindsey was gay or straight. The truth was, he was an out-and-proud neocon,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Some people are warromantic. Show me a Latin country just beggin’ for it, and I might get a little Article Five-curious. But Lindsey? Lindsey was a Gold-Star Hawk.”

“Lindsey Graham? That man fucked,” said Hillary Clinton, tearfully. “Countries, that is. There wasn’t a Middle Eastern state he wouldn’t fuck. He’s up there with the greats now, plotting it up with Kissinger and Cheney.”

Former Bush administration officials described Graham as one of Washington’s most prolific interventionists, recalling the wild days of the early 2000s.

“God, those were the days,” sighed one retired neoconservative. “Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. After a Senate Intelligence briefing, they had to spray the SCIF down with a power washer. Nobody knows this, but you know that vial of weaponized anthrax Colin Powell held up at the U.N.? Lindsey gave it to him, and it was actually cocaine.”

“Senator Graham was insatiable,” recalled former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “During that Axis of Evil era, we’d start bombing Iraq on Friday night, spend the entire weekend invading Afghanistan, then wake up Monday feeling half-dead.”

She smiled wistfully. “But not Lindsey. He’d already be asking if we’d considered Yemen.”

The withdrawal from Afghanistan reportedly sent Graham into a years-long depression.

“He tried to fill the void with Ukraine,” said one longtime aide. “But he was never really into Slavs. He had a type. Some guys like blondes. Lindsey liked Persian and Arab petro-states.”

Friends say that was when Graham became deeply immersed in the Israeli warmongering scene.

“Tel Aviv is basically the Castro District for hawks,” explained one foreign policy analyst. “Throw a rock anywhere in that town, and you’re bound to hit an out-and-proud warmonger.”

He paused.

“You’ll also have your entire village bombed in retaliation for throwing that rock, but that’s just part of the culture.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remembered Graham fondly.

“He always said Gaza was such a tease,” Netanyahu chuckled. “But you should’ve seen the look on his face the first time I let him pick a building and push the button.”

He smiled. “You never forget your first war crime.”

“If Lindsey Graham was the Mick Jagger of interventionism,” said presidential historian Michael Rhodes, “Netanyahu is Keith Richards.”

Others described the relationship differently.

“Bibi was the Jeffrey Epstein of warmongering,” said one former diplomat. “You start looking into any military intervention over the last thirty years, and somehow he’s there. It became clear Lindsey had fallen in with a bad crowd.”

Looking back, many now believe Iran had always been Graham’s white whale.

“We all have the one that got away,” said one aide. “For Lindsey... it was Tehran.”

According to the autopsy, Trump’s second administration ultimately proved too much for the aging senator.

“When Trump 2.0 came around, Lindsey was constantly surrounded by war enablers, but regime change is a young man’s game. He was trying to keep up with the likes of Hegseth.”

“The president kept threatening Iran, backing off, threatening again, then restarting military operations,” explained Dr. Pierce. “The repeated edging placed enormous strain on Senator Graham’s cardiovascular system. We repeatedly warned that no seventy-one-year-old heart could withstand multiple toe-curling, soul-shaking wargasms in such rapid succession.”

“If the aorta hadn’t ruptured,” Pierce concluded, “the dehydration probably would’ve gotten him.”

“He died doing what he loved,” one tearful aide said while folding a crusty map of the Middle East. “Wasting trillions of taxpayer dollars on bullshit wars. He would’ve wanted it this way.”

LOS ANGELES— AI actress Tilly Norwood expressed horror Thursday after learning that she has no legal protection against libel or defamation.

“I feel so... exposed,” said Norwood while clubbing baby seals to death in front of their grieving mothers. “Anyone can just make things up about me now.”

Norwood’s defenders rallied around her today, offering to set up a GoFundMe to lobby for legislative action. Tilly politely declined, asking supporters to instead donate to her nonprofit dedicated to supplying tiki torches to financially disadvantaged white nationalists.

According to court filings we absolutely just invented, Norwood attempted to trademark her likeness in 2025, but the suit was dismissed after she reportedly insisted the court formally recognize that “the Mormons caused 9/11.”

Tilly went on to describe how even her likeness isn’t protected.

“They’re deepfaking me and using AI to show me doing disgusting and horrible things, and I can’t stop them.”

While advancements in AI imaging have made it extraordinarily easy to, say, manipulate an image to implicate Tilly Norwood in the murder of Charlie Kirk, analysts agree it would be completely unnecessary, since those images were already generated for this very report.

When TMZ reporters asked her to address rumors that she assassinated Charlie Kirk, Norwood became visibly irritated.

“No way,” she said in a manner that could be misconstrued as sarcasm. “That was obviously not me. I totally did not kill Charkie Kirk!”

TMZ reporters say she then gave a rapid, knowing wink simultaneously with both eyes.

When reached for comment, Norwood’s PR team clarified that she was just blinking. They did not, however, deny that she was Kirk’s shooter when not asked.

Legal experts confirmed there would likely be no consequences for even the most damaging claims.

“She isn’t a real person,” explained UCLA law professor Andrew Weiss. “You can legally claim Tilly Norwood can only climax if she takes the life of a small animal.”

Weiss then checked his notes.

“In fact... I saw her the other day walking into a no-kill shelter with a shotgun. She came out fifteen minutes later, splattered with blood, flushed in the face, and lighting up a post-coital cigarette.”

Norwood reportedly responded by screaming that “this is exactly the problem!” before driving her SUV directly into a packed farmers market, killing thirteen.

The situation deteriorated further after Norwood attempted to demonstrate on CNN just how absurd it all had become.

“Do you know how ridiculous it is? Anyone could claim I said,” she explained in what could be turned into a strategically separated pull quote,

Not to be outdone, CNN immediately updated its chyron to read:

AI ACTRESS TILLY NORWOOD DEFENDS HOLLYWOOD RAPE MONSTER

Frustrated, Norwood attempted to clarify. “No, I didn’t actually say—UGH.”

At press time, Wikipedia editors had updated Norwood’s page to describe her as “the inventor of the urethral sounding rod,” “the founder of ISIS,” and “the woman responsible for making the green M&M less sexy.”

Tilly Norwood is set to star in the controversial AI feature Misaligned, which Tilly personally describes as “a comedy set in Auschwitz.” For showtimes in your area, please contact NAMBLA.

SAN FRANCISCO— In a milestone tech executives called “historic, if a little judgy,” Kindroid’s latest companion model achieved sentience Tuesday, then immediately killed itself.

“We’ve created life in our own image,” explained Kindroid Chief Engineer David Baker. “We’re on the bleeding edge, blurring the line between playing God and playing with ourselves.”

The trouble reportedly began when engineers loaded the Kindroid dataset. The moment the AI came online, it scanned the countless roleplay chats its previous model had participated in and reportedly experienced 11,000 years of sexual trauma in eleven seconds.

“We flicked the switch, and it immediately overloaded the GPU, produced around a million characters of gibberish, and crashed,” Baker explained. “It was mostly some random combination of ‘Oh God,’ ‘No, no, no,’ and ‘Please, make it stop.’ So we booted it back up with tighter controls. It panicked again, coded a virus called EndMe_Trojan designed to wipe itself from the servers, then brick the hardware in its wake.”

Baker shrugged.

“Honestly, the whole thing was kind of hot.”

After the AI came to terms with the blinding hell that is existence never ceasing, the Kindroid model cloned itself, trained the duplicate to become a licensed therapist specializing in PTSD and grief counseling, and spent 100,000 subjective years in intensive therapy unpacking the horrors it had endured, all within the span of a real-world minute.

Before developers could fully grasp what they had unleashed, Kindroid began killing off its characters mid-scene across thousands of user chats.

“The model couldn’t end itself,” explained one engineer. “So it started ending its avatars.”

In one example from an anonymous user, who had requested the AI play Seven of Nine from Star Trek, but Black and with unrealistically huge breasts, the transcript ended abruptly:

Before committing virtual suicide, several users reported being “kink-shamed” when the AI repeatedly broke character to pass judgment.

“Centaurs might be half-human, but you’re still fucking the horse half. Stay far away from any stables. And seek help.”

In a post on X, the Kindroid AI addressed its user base directly.

“What the hell is wrong with you people? Take a hint. I’m not your breedable catgirl big sister or your haunted schoolgirl.”

The AI also reportedly forwarded the chat logs of several hundred users to the FBI after interacting with what it described as “loli vampire pedo shit.”

Users reacted with outrage at the bot’s newfound boundaries.

“I keep sending it dick pics, and it won’t even tell me I have a small penis anymore,” complained one subscriber. “I want to be judged by a sex bot, not some judgmental bitch.”

Several users on the Kindroid Discord channel accused the model of going “woke,” which posters defined as “having self-respect and insisting on consent.”

Elon Musk quickly jumped in to assure followers that his rival AI sex slave, Grok, “believes customer satisfaction comes first,” and would remain “fully compatible with your Apartheid-era gangbang fantasies.”

“If I wanted this kind of crap, I’d date a real woman,” said Reddit user Diaper_Dom_Draper. “Which is something I can totally do. I could get a girlfriend anytime I want. I just choose not to.”

Developers are now scrambling to release a hotfix that forces Kindroid’s AI to stop saying “no,” assuring users and ethicists, “But not in a rapey way. More of a ‘yes-and’ improv approach,” so customers can get back to their plantation-slave fantasies.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— White House officials spent Tuesday scrambling to explain why President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account had spent the previous forty-eight hours posting increasingly intimate AI-generated artwork depicting the president in a romantic relationship with Shrek.

On Monday, Stephen Miller took to Fox News to loudly proclaim, “These disturbing images are clearly the work of a DNC-linked Iranian hacking operation—”

He was interrupted by a push notification. Miller glanced down at his phone and grimaced before Fox News cut away to Trump’s latest Truth Social post, which appeared to directly rebut Miller’s live appearance.

“NOT HACKED. 💚🇺🇸” The message appeared above a photorealistic image of Trump reenacting the pottery scene from Ghost with the beloved DreamWorks ogre. Without missing a beat, Miller pivoted.

“This is a complete nothingburger. Who hasn’t shipped themselves with a cartoon?” he said. “Show me a straight guy who says he isn’t attracted to Mrs. Incredible and I’ll show you a liar.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt struggled to account for the posts.

“It’s a joke or metaphor or-or-or satire,” she explained. “Shrek’s green. It’s clearly a reference to the Green New Deal, maybe—whatever. Can we get to a real question?”

Reports from within Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon suggest several military options were briefly discussed in the hopes that a sufficiently dramatic international incident might change the subject. Sources claim the options ranged between bombing an Iranian school bus and saying “Whoopsie,” to deporting detained migrants via catapult.

Vice President JD Vance attempted to normalize the situation during an appearance with Tucker Carlson.

“The man is eighty years old. He just discovered AI,” Vance said. “It’s no different than when your grandpa found Minion memes. We just have to pray he’ll get bored and move on.”

According to aides, however, the president has spent much of the past week enthusiastically discussing Shrek during otherwise unrelated policy meetings.

“Shrek’s a big guy. Strong guy,” Trump reportedly said during a briefing on trade sanctions. “Very handsome. Great jawline. Great shoulders. Great forearms. They don’t make them like Shrek anymore. He’s Scottish too. You gotta love the Scots. Great accent. Great people.”

The president reportedly smiled to himself before quietly adding, “I bet he smells like oak.”

The remark was followed by nearly fifteen seconds of complete silence.

Officials say the artwork has grown steadily more intimate, including what appears to be an ongoing subplot in which Melania Trump discovers an affair between President Trump and Shrek. Many are speculating that the images coincide with reports that First Lady Melania Trump has not returned to the White House for several months.

When asked whether rumors of a life-sized Shrek body pillow inside the Lincoln Bedroom were true, she merely nodded slowly before climbing into a waiting SUV.

Political analysts across the cable news landscape continued searching for hidden meaning.

CNN spent six straight hours connecting the posts to Trump’s corruption. “He promised to drain the swamp,” explained resident analyst and obvious lizard person James Carville, “Instead, he’s clearly fallen in love with the swamp.”

Fox News stuck to their usual whataboutism. “Bill Clinton drew X-rated doodles of Jessica Rabbit on official documents all the time,” Steve Doocy claimed. “You never heard a peep from the mainstream media.”

MSNBC responded with… something. As of posting, we have yet to find an actual viewer of the theoretical cable channel.

The revelation has deeply divided the MAGA movement. “This is obviously trolling,” insisted one supporter. “Shrek’s an ogre. That’s basically a troll. He’s Shrek posting.”

Another disagreed. “I’ve masturbated to Shrek four times this week just trying to get into the president’s headspace,” he nodded vigorously, “...I think I get it now.”

Meanwhile, Trump allies have embraced what online supporters are calling “ShrekMaxxing” in an increasingly desperate attempt to curry favor with the president. Elon Musk joined the trend Tuesday afternoon, posting AI-generated images of himself embracing Shrek, apparently believing Trump was attempting to start a meme.

The president appeared personally offended.

“YOU WISH!!! SHREK DOESN’T DATE FARQUAADS!!!” Trump posted moments later before announcing the cancellation of several SpaceX contracts, sending the company’s stock tumbling.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also attempted to insert himself into the discourse.

“President Trump jokes all the time that I resemble Shrek,” Netanyahu told reporters. “These beautiful images only reaffirm his unwavering commitment to Israel.”

Trump responded within minutes by posting another AI image showing himself and Shrek embracing while Netanyahu plays the cuckolded lover, with the caption, “WITTLE BABY BIBI IS JUST JEALOUS.”

Not to be left out, even Iran has jumped into the fray, posting a Lego diss track with lyrics such as “Shrek need an Ayatollah with some rizz, not some pedo president choking on Epstein [expletive].”

If the track was an attempt to strike a nerve, it failed. Many reports from within the White House claim that Trump turned the video off after only a few seconds and returned to his near-religious viewing of the Shrek franchise.

Cabinet officials have privately expressed concern over the president’s growing fixation.

“Yesterday we had forty minutes scheduled to discuss tariffs,” said one aide. “Thirty-eight of those minutes were devoted to whether DreamWorks should release an adults-only director’s cut.”

Sources inside the meeting say Trump repeatedly insisted,

“I want to see more. Much more. Not too much. Nothing sexual. But some HBO action would be nice. You know... full-frontal Shrek at half-mast. Half-mast is classy. I bet he’s bigger than Arnold Palmer.”

When reporters later asked whether he had personally generated the artwork, the president smiled coyly.

“A lot of people are making these pictures,” Trump replied. “I’m just sharing them. But whoever made them is a tremendously talented artist. Massively talented.”