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California Grocery Stores Replace Dairy Aisle With Helpful Flowchart Explaining Why There's No Dairy Shoppers Report That Buying Milk Now Requires Three Forms of ID, a Recycling Minor, and the Patience of a Medieval Monk SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In what officials proudly describe as "the next logical step in sustainable grocery shopping," California supermarkets have reportedly replaced their dairy aisles with a six-foot-tall flowchart explaining the legal, environmental, philosophical, and emotional journey required before anyone may purchase a gallon of milk. Call it Sacramento's latest udder failure of common sense — a pun so deliberate it deserves its own regulatory fee. The move comes amid real concerns from parts of California's dairy industry that new recycling and packaging requirements could make selling milk more expensive and more complicated. Under the state's Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, producers face steep compliance costs and looming fees tied to how packaging is labeled and recycled. In the satirical version of events, however, those concerns have evolved into an obstacle course that makes filing taxes feel like speed dating. California's New Milk Compliance Guide: An SEO-Friendly Nightmare Customers entering the dairy section are first greeted by a cheerful volunteer wearing a vest labeled "Milk Compliance Guide." "Are you here for whole milk, reduced-fat milk, oat milk, or merely seeking personal growth?" the volunteer reportedly asks. Those answering "whole milk" are immediately directed to Page 17 of the flowchart. Those answering "I don't know" are congratulated on already understanding modern regulatory policy — a paraprosdokian if ever there was one, since the punchline arrives from a direction nobody's confusion saw coming. State Promises Easier Access to Unicorn Milk Than Whole Milk State officials deny milk has become difficult to buy. "It's perfectly simple," explained Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Beverage Circularity, Hazel Evergreen. "If consumers carefully study seventeen guidance documents, recycle every bottle they've touched since kindergarten, and demonstrate emotional commitment to sustainable packaging, they'll find milk is still available." A textbook malapropism of bureaucratic reassurance — technically words, arranged in a sentence, meaning nothing. Residents say unicorn milk appears significantly easier to locate. One Sacramento father claims he found three unicorns, two Bigfoots, and a reasonably priced apartment before locating a gallon of 2% milk. "It's been a productive week," he said, with the flat, ironic literalism of a man who has genuinely made peace with cryptid sightings outranking dairy access. California Parents Complete 47-Page Recycling Quiz Before Buying Half a Gallon Parents now report the educational portion of grocery shopping lasts longer than the shopping itself. Children allegedly ask simple questions such as, "Can we have cereal tomorrow?" Parents answer, "Only if Daddy passes the packaging assessment." The quiz reportedly asks shoppers to discuss the environmental symbolism of a recyclable cap in 800 words, to use geometric proofs to explain why their milk deserves to exist, and to name every material ever used in dairy containers since the Roman Empire. Parents scoring below 93% receive almond milk and a pamphlet titled Learning From Your Packaging Journey. It's less a checkout line than a thesis defense — the kind of bureaucratic hoop-jumping that would make even the driest state auditor crack a smile spoonerism-style, or as the volunteers reportedly put it after one long shift, "we need a shot of light beer, not a light of shot beer." Milk Moved Behind Counter Next to Prescription Medication and Precious Metals Several grocery stores have reportedly relocated milk into locked display cases alongside luxury watches, rare bourbon, and medications requiring pharmacist approval. Customers wishing to inspect a gallon must summon an employee carrying two electronic keys and a supervisor authorization badge. "I'd like a gallon of whole milk." "Certainly. Is this for immediate consumption or long-term investment?" Financial advisors now recommend diversifying retirement portfolios with dairy products. Gold remains stable. Milk is apparently "volatile but emotionally satisfying" — a double entendre that works equally well on a shopping list or a therapist's couch. California Family Finally Purchases Milk After Passing Packaging Background Check The Martinez family celebrated this week after successfully purchasing milk following a routine four-hour review process. Investigators reportedly confirmed the family's recycling history, interviewed neighbors regarding yogurt container disposal habits, and reviewed suspicious activity involving a forgotten cottage cheese lid in 2023. "It was nerve-racking," admitted Mr. Martinez. "They asked whether we'd ever placed cardboard in the wrong bin." His wife added, "Fortunately, my mother testified on our behalf." The family received probationary dairy privileges for six months, and neighbors say they've never seen anyone Martinez a grocery run so thoroughly — the family name now doubling as a verb for excessive bureaucratic diligence, a small act of anthimeria the whole cul-de-sac has adopted. State Introduces New "Bring Your Own Cow" Program to Reduce Plastic Waste Environmental consultants have unveiled what they call the ultimate zero-packaging solution. Residents simply bring a cow to the grocery store. The cow provides the milk. Consumers provide optimism. Parking lots now include designated livestock spaces, and Costco reportedly offers a Family Dairy Membership, with premium members receiving complimentary hay. Experts Confirm It's Now Easier to Adopt a Llama Than Buy 2% Milk Policy analysts studying consumer experiences reached an extraordinary conclusion. Acquiring a llama reportedly involves fewer forms, shorter waiting periods, and considerably less discussion about container composition. The American Association of Imaginary Bureaucracy issued a statement praising California's commitment to proving that any ordinary household purchase can become a graduate-level research project. "Llamas ask very few questions," the report concluded. "Milk asks many." Dairy Farmers Wonder Whether Cows Need Law Degrees Meanwhile, imaginary dairy cows across California have begun attending continuing education seminars. Bessie, a Holstein from the Central Valley, reportedly worries her milk may no longer meet advanced administrative expectations. "I thought my job was producing milk," she sighed. "Apparently I should've specialized in environmental law." Her attorney declined comment until the paperwork finished composting. A Grocery Trip Becomes a Hero's Journey Historians note that previous generations measured adulthood by buying a home. Modern Californians measure it by successfully returning from the supermarket carrying milk. Neighbors applaud. Children cheer. Someone plays inspirational music. The cashier quietly whispers, "Congratulations. You completed Level One." The dairy industry's concerns over compliance costs are real. The rest, fortunately, belongs in the same refrigerated section as unicorn milk, certified llama consultants, and the state's newest bestselling self-help guide: Finding Yourself While Waiting for Dairy Approval. California's packaging fight has been playing out in courtrooms and hearing rooms as much as grocery aisles. Dairy trade groups have pressed state officials for exemptions and, more recently, for a full repeal and replacement of the underlying law, while producer fees tied to the rules are expected to begin hitting supply chains later this year. Separately, a coalition of farm, food, and packaging groups has challenged a related labeling law in federal court, arguing it restricts how companies can describe recyclability on packaging. State regulators, meanwhile, maintain the added household cost will be far more modest than industry estimates suggest. Sources - CalRecycle — California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery - Resource Recycling — California agriculture seeks SB 54 repeal - Cheese Reporter — IDFA seeks temporary dairy packaging exemptions For more satire from across the pond, check out our sister publication, The London Prat. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! Read the full article

Bernie Sanders Replacement for Platner Too Conservative to Have Ever Dated Anyone Maine Democrats Discover Their Revolutionary Candidate Has Apparently Held Opinions Before Tuesday AUGUSTA, Maine. In a development that has left progressive activists rifling through old filing cabinets for the emergency "Context Matters" binder, Maine Democrats are rallying behind former Senate President Troy Jackson, the Bernie Sanders–aligned logger now positioned to replace Graham Platner atop the ticket. Jackson's earlier political statements have become the most awkward reunion since somebody discovered an old MySpace profile at Thanksgiving. Party officials insist Jackson's journey demonstrates "growth," a term they now define as having once held opinions that would require a three-hour podcast apology to fully unpack. Democrats have found their new axe to grind, and, fittingly, the man swinging it spent decades felling actual trees along the Canadian border. Democrats Swap Progressive Darling for Candidate Last Seen Voting Against the Progressive Darling Starter Kit Campaign volunteers admit the transition has required creativity. The old canvassing script asked voters whether they supported universal healthcare, higher wages, and stronger worker protections. The new script adds a single line: avoid discussing anything that happened before streaming television became popular. "We're not rebranding," insisted one campaign aide, "we're re-branching" — a distinction that makes sense only to people who have spent the last week hugging a thesaurus for comfort. Political scientists describe the broader maneuver as "selective historical appreciation." One consultant called it more plainly: Jackson's biography now splits neatly into Before We Needed Him and After We Needed Him. Bernie Announces New Standard: "Nobody's Perfect... Especially During the Early 2000s" Supporters argue Jackson's economic populism lines up closely with Sanders' message, even if some of his earlier social positions diverge from where today's progressive movement has landed. Jackson has attributed those earlier views to his upbringing and says he has since changed course — Jackson's positions have evolved beautifully, right up until reporters started reading them. That reversal has reportedly inspired a new unofficial slogan circulating at headquarters: "Judge Me By My Current Website." Sanders, for his part, has spent the past week demonstrating that ideological evolution is perfectly respectable, provided it arrives before a filing deadline. Maine Progressives Unveil Revolutionary Vetting Process: Never Mention the Old Positions Again Campaign headquarters has settled on a three-part screening system that staffers describe, with a straight face, as thorough. First, read the résumé. Second, skip directly to page seven. Third, if anyone asks about pages one through six, explain that they represent an earlier operating system. The opposition-research department has quietly rebranded itself the Department of Positive Selective Memory, whose motto hangs, laminated, above the coffee machine: history is complicated, unless we're talking about somebody else. Told to turn over a new leaf, one intern reportedly printed actual leaves and taped them to the office door. Ironic literalism has become the campaign's unofficial house style. Socialists Discover Redemption Is Beautiful — As Long As the Candidate Can Win a Senate Seat Longtime activists admit redemption has suddenly become one of their favorite political principles. "People change," explained one organizer, quietly deleting years of old posts insisting nobody should ever be allowed to change enough. Last week, the working theory was that every historical vote defines a politician forever. This week, the theory has softened considerably, and the polling numbers, coincidentally, explain why. Democrats insist Jackson has real timber — both on the ballot and in his logging résumé — which staffers repeat so often it has become a kind of load-bearing pun for the entire campaign. Experts Confirm Every Party Eventually Invents a Reason to Ignore Yesterday Observers note that major political parties periodically discover flexibility when faced with difficult electoral math — practically Newton's Fourth Law of Politics, as one commentator put it: every purity test eventually meets a competitive Senate race. The pattern tends to surface right around the moment campaign accountants start pricing out fall advertising buys. The campaign is, by all appearances, Jacksoning its way through opposition research — turning the candidate's own name into a verb for the art of strategic forgetting. Local Voters Report Mild Ideological Whiplash Maine residents say they're struggling to keep up. "I spent months learning which positions were unforgivable," sighed one lobster boat captain. "This week they're apparently educational." A retiree in Augusta says she now keeps two scorecards taped to her refrigerator: one for what candidates believed, and another for what the party is currently pretending they believed. Even the office photocopier, staffers joke, paused mid-print to ask whether anyone wanted to delete previous versions permanently — a double entendre nobody in the building seemed eager to unpack. Political Redemption Market Reaches Record High Analysts briefly floated the idea of an Ideological Futures Exchange, where investors could trade yesterday's campaign positions for tomorrow's strategic necessities. Shares in Nuance climbed sharply. Shares in Absolute Standards kept falling. It was, one wag noted, less an election than an earnings call. Democracy Continues Being Weird The episode reveals less about one candidate than about American politics generally. Campaigns celebrate unwavering principle until circumstances demand flexibility. Opponents celebrate consistency until consistency becomes inconvenient. Voters are left watching everyone explain why yesterday's impossible position has become today's perfectly reasonable compromise — politics, it turns out, is the only profession where changing your mind is either proof of wisdom or proof of hypocrisy, and the only trick is waiting to see which press release arrives first. The broader context is straightforward enough: Graham Platner suspended his Senate campaign after sexual assault allegations surfaced, prompting Sanders-aligned group Our Revolution to shift its backing to Troy Jackson, a former Maine Senate President and longtime Sanders ally who had placed third in the state's Democratic gubernatorial primary earlier this year. Jackson filed exploratory paperwork with the FEC before Platner formally exited, and Maine Democrats face a compressed timeline to settle on a nominee to challenge Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November. Sources: Troy Jackson (politician) — Wikipedia Our Revolution Endorses Troy Jackson Amid Platner Controversy — The Hill Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! For the British take on political redemption arcs, see our sister publication The London Prat. Disclaimer: This is a work of satire inspired by recent political reporting. It uses exaggeration, irony, parody, and invented quotations for comedic effect. It is not intended as a factual account of real events or statements. This story is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Read the full article

Director Solves The Odyssey Problems by Ignoring People Who Haven't Seen the Movie Critics Furious Christopher Nolan Refuses to Rewrite Three-Hour Epic Based Entirely on Trailer Comments HOLLYWOOD. Christopher Nolan has reportedly unveiled a revolutionary directing technique: waiting until audiences actually watch the film before accepting their verdict. The innovation has stunned internet critics, many of whom had already completed doctoral dissertations explaining why The Odyssey was an irredeemable disaster after viewing a ninety-second trailer. Industry analysts say Nolan has solved one of modern cinema's greatest challenges by employing an ancient storytelling strategy known as, "finishing the movie first" — a bold cinematic pun intended, since finishing first is usually reserved for chariot races, not screenplays. Online Experts Demand Historical Accuracy From a Myth About a Cyclops "This is outrageous," complained one online critic. "I had already decided the accents were wrong, the armor was wrong, the ships were wrong, and somebody's sandals looked emotionally inconsistent. Now people keep insisting I should actually watch it." Nolan reportedly responded by continuing to direct films instead of reading fourteen thousand comments beginning with, "As someone who once took a college course, I have a strange malapropism for authority — I mean an *affinity*, though at this point the two words may as well be interchangeable." Movie historians confirmed that The Odyssey is based on a myth featuring cyclopes, sirens, sea monsters, immortal witches, divine intervention, and a horse large enough to hold an army. Nevertheless, thousands of viewers declared that the real problem was whether a breastplate had the correct Bronze Age stitching pattern — a classic case of spoonerism logic, where "well-read" quietly becomes "read well, sort of, once, on a phone." Professor of Internet Outrage Explains the Phenomenon One professor of Internet Outrage explained the situation while watching a superhero movie about a billionaire dressed as a bat fighting a man dressed as a penguin. "Modern audiences demand absolute historical realism," he said, which is, of course, a paraprosdokian — a sentence that starts out sounding reasonable and ends somewhere no one saw coming, much like the sentence he said it in. Meanwhile, many early reviewers praised the film's scale, performances, and technical achievement, suggesting Nolan may have committed the unforgivable offense of making a movie before consulting social media's Department of Instant Expertise. In perfectly ironic literalism, the department in question has no office, no staff, and no expertise, yet somehow issues rulings faster than the Supreme Court. Studio Executives Weigh In on Trailer-Based Film Criticism "Our research shows people now spend twice as long criticizing trailers as watching actual films," one executive admitted. "If this trend continues, by 2030 audiences will simply review the poster." That admission carries its own double entendre, since "reviewing the poster" could mean judging the art — or judging the person who put it up in their dorm room in 2004 and never took it down. Nolan appears unconcerned. Sources say his current production schedule consists of finishing movies, releasing movies, allowing audiences to decide, and largely ignoring people who believe YouTube thumbnails qualify as peer-reviewed criticism. Insiders say he has fully anthimeria'd the verb "to trailer," now using it strictly as an insult, as in, "Don't trailer me, I already lived it." Hollywood insiders are calling it an astonishingly effective system, noting it has already produced several Academy Awards. 🎬 Sources Variety — The Hollywood Reporter — Rotten Tomatoes Nolan's adaptation of Homer's epic marks his first venture into mythological territory after a career built on time, memory, and dreams, and it arrives at a moment when internet film discourse increasingly forms before a single frame has been publicly screened. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! For the British take on cinematic outrage culture, visit prat.uk. Read the full article

10 Talking Points: The Free-Market Case Against Socialized Youth Soccer Broadcast-ready talking points for analysts responding to European "free soccer" arguments in the wake of Alexi Lalas's pay-to-play defense 1. "Free" is a magic trick, not an economic model. Nothing in youth soccer is actually free. Someone always pays — a taxpayer, a federation, a corporation, or a club recouping costs through transfer fees. When a French commentator calls for "free soccer" in America, what he's really asking is: should the government, rather than the parent, write the check? That's not eliminating a cost. That's relocating it. 2. Alexi Lalas asked the single most important economic question in this debate, and nobody has answered it. "Who is going to pay for all this free soccer?" isn't a gotcha. It's Econ 101. Scarce resources — fields, coaches, referees, buses — have real costs and real opportunity costs. Every dollar a government spends subsidizing a nine-year-old's travel team is a dollar not spent on schools, police, or left in a family's pocket. 3. Every "free" academy the socialists point to has an identifiable payer — and it isn't magic. France's Clairefontaine is government-federation funded. Barcelona's CF Damm academy is bankrolled by a private brewery as a corporate investment. America's own MLS academies are already free to families, paid for by clubs who recoup the cost through transfer fees. Every one of those is the free market or a national federation choosing to spend its own money — not a blank check from "society." 4. Europe and South America don't dominate soccer because of socialism. They dominate because of culture. Economic research comparing national team strength to GDP finds that wealth and population explain less than half the variation in soccer performance. The rest comes down to how old a country's club tradition is and whether soccer has a monopoly on that nation's athletic talent. Uruguay isn't good at soccer because the government pays for it. Uruguay is good at soccer because in Uruguay, every gifted athlete plays soccer, full stop. 5. America's problem isn't money. It's competition for talent. The United States is the wealthiest country in the world and still trails Uruguay, a nation of 3.4 million people. Why? Because American athletic talent gets split three or four ways — football, basketball, baseball, and soccer are all fighting for the same kid. In most of Europe and South America, soccer simply doesn't have that competition. You cannot tax your way out of a cultural fact. 6. Government-run sports spending has an ugly track record, and economists agree on it almost unanimously. Surveys of professional economists — both the American Economic Association and the University of Chicago's panel of expert economists — show roughly 80 to 85 percent agreement that government subsidies for sports facilities cost taxpayers more than any benefit they deliver. That's not a partisan talking point. That's the closest thing to consensus economics gets. 7. We've already run this experiment, and socialized sports systems collapsed the moment the subsidy stopped. East Germany's state sports machine produced Olympic medals through a coerced, state-run doping program that harmed thousands of athletes. Cuba's Soviet-subsidized sports system was a global power in the 1990s — until the subsidy disappeared, and so did the results, along with a wave of defecting athletes. A government-funded sports system isn't a stable foundation. It's a subsidy that evaporates the moment the political will does. 8. America already dominates the world in sports built entirely on pay-to-play markets. Nobody complains that AAU basketball or travel baseball are "unfair" when the United States produces the best basketball and baseball players on Earth through exactly those expensive, privately run, market-based systems. If pay-to-play were the disqualifying flaw the socialists claim, America would be losing at basketball too. It isn't. 9. The real access problem in youth soccer is worth fixing — through private philanthropy, not government takeover. Yes, pay-to-play prices out families, and that data is real. But the answer already exists without a single new tax dollar: the U.S. Soccer Foundation has installed hundreds of free mini-pitches in underserved communities nationwide, funded entirely by private donors and corporations. That's the free-market answer to access — voluntary generosity, not compulsory redistribution. 10. Comparing America to France or Uruguay ignores the most basic fact about this country: it's not France or Uruguay. The United States is a 340-million-person federal republic with no national sports ministry. France and Uruguay are small, centralized nations built around a single sports federation. Demanding America adopt a European funding model while ignoring size, federalism, and a fundamentally different sports culture isn't an economic argument. It's nostalgia for a system that was never built for a country like this one. Bottom line for broadcast: The USMNT's problem is culture and structure, not a shortage of government spending. Socializing youth soccer won't manufacture Uruguay's street culture, France's century-old club tradition, or a nation where soccer isn't fighting basketball and football for its best athletes. It will just hand the bill to taxpayers for a problem the free market is already solving one privately funded field at a time. What the French Socialists Actually Want for US Youth Soccer Thierry Henry Is Clearly a "Marxist Ass" Here in the USA The debate traces back to the USMNT's 4-1 Round of 16 loss to Belgium at the 2026 World Cup, its worst defeat since 1934. As American commentators dissected the loss, French and European voices, including former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore and Fox analyst Thierry Henry, argued the real culprit is America's pay-to-play system, where a young player often competes for a school team in the fall and a separate club team year-round, with parents footing both bills. Their preferred fix, modeled loosely on France's federation-run Clairefontaine academy, would have the government or a national soccer federation cover coaching, travel, and tournament costs for promising kids, effectively making club soccer free at the point of use. Proponents argue this would open the sport to lower-income families currently priced out, potentially widening the talent pool feeding the national team. Alexi Lalas countered on X that "free" simply relocates the bill to taxpayers, since France's own model is funded by its federation, not conjured from nothing. The dispute is less about whether kids should play and more about who should be forced to pay for it: parents, clubs, or the public.   Read the full article

Who Is Going to Pay for All This Free Soccer? America's New Game Plan: Taxpayers FC vs. Reality United The debate over America's youth soccer system erupted again this week after former U.S. international Alexi Lalas asked the question every parent secretly mutters while writing a $5,000 club-fee check: who exactly is going to pay for all this free soccer? Critics say the pay-to-play model locks out talented kids from lower-income families. Lalas says fields, coaches, referees, insurance, buses, and matching windbreakers do not simply sprout from the turf like dandelions after a spring rain. Both sides are technically correct, which is the most annoying kind of argument there is. Within minutes of the tweet going up, America's self-appointed Department of Unlimited Free Stuff arrived on the scene wearing matching scarves and carrying calculators that, no matter what numbers you type into them, mysteriously display only the number zero. Their proposal was breathtaking in its simplicity. "Soccer should be free." "Wonderful," said one bewildered groundskeeper, leaning on a rake he technically hadn't been paid to buy. "Who's buying the grass?" Silence, followed by the gentle rustling of someone checking their phone for a more comfortable question. Apparently the grass would simply identify as publicly funded. Grass, it turns out, has excellent benefits and no idea how payroll works. Youth Soccer Funding: Every Problem Has Exactly One Solution, and It Lives in Someone Else's Wallet The modern soccer-equity influencer believes every nine-year-old deserves elite coaching, a resurfaced pitch, custom kits, a personal nutritionist, a sports psychologist, a charter bus with reclining seats, full video analysis of Saturday's scrimmage, and — in the more ambidextrous economic model currently trending online — possibly a small emotional-support alpaca on retainer for halftime. The bill, naturally, arrives addressed to "The Rich." No one can quite identify which rich person specifically. Economists have combed the footnotes and confirmed only that this mythical creature has unlimited money, infinite patience, and — bafflingly — never once asks the follow-up question "how much does this cost?" It is possibly the single most trusting billionaire in recorded history, and he apparently owns nothing but a checkbook and a soft spot for shin guards. According to the new doctrine, youth soccer fields are expected to emerge from the earth like mushrooms after a warm rain. Referees are expected to whistle purely out of civic virtue, the same way firefighters are expected to run into buildings for the thrill of it. Coaches, in this economy, accept hugs as a valid form of payment, which is a lovely gesture right up until the mortgage company also asks for a hug instead of a check. Tournament hotels, meanwhile, are expected to honor the bold new exchange rate of one inspirational Instagram caption for two queen beds and a continental breakfast. Ask a hotel manager about that rate and you'll get what field staff around the country have started calling the tourna-mint — the fresh, minty rejection you receive right before they ask for a credit card anyway. The People's Republic of Corner Kicks: A Five-Year Plan for American Youth Soccer The movement has already unveiled its ambitious Five-Year Plan, delivered with the confident cadence of someone who has never once opened a spreadsheet. Every child, the plan insists, will receive free uniforms, free cleats, free tournaments, free transportation, free snacks, and free trophies regardless of whether anyone on the team can consistently locate the actual goal. The only thing conspicuously missing from the Five-Year Plan is a line item answering Lalas's original question. Who pays? The document simply trails off into a soft watercolor illustration of children laughing, which, to be fair, is a compelling visual but a weak fiscal instrument. Whenever the funding question resurfaces, online activists perform an elegant and time-tested maneuver best described as the Midfield Deflection: a smooth, practiced pivot that dodges the tackle entirely. "Why do you hate children?" No, Steve. Nobody hates children. The question was about the invoice. This is the great fisc-and-span trick of modern online debate — everything gets wiped suspiciously clean of numbers, and what's left just smells vaguely of moral superiority. Free-Market Youth Soccer vs. the European Model: A Selective Comparison The loudest voices insist America should simply copy successful foreign systems, and on paper, that's not a bad idea at all. Countries that have invested heavily in youth development — Germany famously overhauled its academy system after a humbling early-2000s tournament run — did so with real, sustained public and club investment behind it, not vibes. Funny how that particular detail keeps getting substituted out of the lineup like an injured midfielder nobody wants to talk about. Apparently the preferred version of the plan runs like this: let's copy Europe, but not the taxes, and not the bureaucracy, and definitely, under no circumstances, not the part where anyone actually reads the budget. It's less a policy proposal and more a diet where you keep the dessert and skip the exercise, then act confused about the results at the doctor's office. One touring youth coach, fresh off watching a European academy tour with wide eyes, reportedly returned home and tried to explain the funding structure to his club board. The board's response, paraphrased for decency, amounted to: love the fields, hate the paperwork, please make the fields appear without the paperwork. This is what economists in more candid circles have started calling Copenhagen envy — wanting the bike lanes without ever wanting to vote for the bike lane budget. The Revolutionary Economics of Youth Soccer Funding on Social Media Social media has streamlined the entire discipline of economics into three elegant steps. Step one: demand free stuff loudly and often. Step two: label anyone who asks a funding question as "part of the problem." Step three: declare total victory before anyone has balanced a single book. It is fiscal policy designed entirely in a comments section, by committee, at 1 a.m., fueled by the specific kind of confidence that only exists after the third glass of something. Meanwhile, out on the actual fields, the people mowing grass, lining chalk, organizing brackets, buying replacement goals, scheduling referees, repairing torn nets, and gently explaining to a group of furious nine-year-olds why they don't get VAR reviews are left wondering, quite reasonably, whether likes and retweets have quietly become legal tender while nobody was looking. Maybe next season they will be. Stranger currencies have taken off. Until then, one Abilene-area rec-league coach summed up the whole national mood best from the sideline, muttering to no one in particular: "Everybody wants a trophy case. Nobody wants to buy the case." It's the kind of line that gets repeated at concession stands from Texas to Toledo, usually right after someone asks why the hot dog costs eight dollars. Because if enough people truly believe money grows on soccer fields, surely someone can finally explain that part. The concession stand is still waiting on its own bailout, and frankly, so is the guy who has to explain to his kid why the "free" tournament had a $200 registration fee attached to it. The exchange traces back to Alexi Lalas, the longtime FOX Sports soccer analyst, who reignited the debate on X after the USMNT's rough Round of 16 exit at the 2026 World Cup, arguing that youth soccer functions as a competitive market and repeatedly asking critics who should foot the bill for a free version of the sport. The pushback was immediate and loud, with figures across sports media, including USMNT legend Landon Donovan, pointing to a 2018 Sports and Fitness Industry Association study showing a majority of pay-to-play families make just over $50,000 a year, and pointing to European club-funded academy models, like Barcelona's Damm-backed development program, as a possible alternative structure worth studying. Read more absurd, mostly-true news from across the pond at prat.uk. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! Sources: Yahoo Sports — Alexi Lalas Questions Calls to Overhaul U.S. Youth Soccer Newsweek — Alexi Lalas Under Fire for Comments About Expensive US Soccer Youth System Awful Announcing — Dan Patrick Show Producer Refutes Alexi Lalas' Claim About "Free Soccer" Read the full article

Federal Reserve Introduces 'Move Fast and Break the Monetary System' Initiative The Federal Reserve announced this week that it is officially rebooting itself like a struggling Silicon Valley startup, complete with a new mission statement, a rebrand, and an open-plan office where the discount rate is now decided by whoever gets to the whiteboard first. Move fast and break things. Or, in this case, move fast and break the things that used to buy things. Kevin Warsh Hires Marc Andreessen to Replace Interest Rates With Software Updates Incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh confirmed he has brought on venture capitalist Marc Andreessen as a "special monetary disruption consultant," tasked with replacing the federal funds rate with a rolling series of software patches. Under the new system, interest rates will no longer be announced eight times a year. Instead, they will be pushed silently overnight, and Americans will simply wake up to find their mortgage payments have changed without a changelog. Ctrl-Alt-Default: the new sound of a missed payment. Kevin Warsh Declares Inflation Will Now Be Measured in AI Tokens Per Household In a move economists are calling "bold" and grocery store cashiers are calling "not my problem," Warsh unveiled a new inflation metric based entirely on AI tokens consumed per household. The Consumer Price Index has been quietly retired in favor of the Consumer Prompt Index, which tracks how many times the average American asks a chatbot to explain why eggs cost what they cost. Inflation used to be measured in dollars. Now it's measured in how many times you had to ask twice. Marc Andreessen Recommends Pivoting the U.S. Dollar Into a Subscription Service Andreessen's first official recommendation to the Fed board was to pivot the U.S. dollar away from a currency and toward a tiered subscription model. Under the proposed structure, the "Dollar Basic" tier would function largely as it does today, while "Dollar Pro" would unlock premium features such as being accepted at more than one bank and not randomly expiring on the 15th of the month. Free tier: legal tender. Pro tier: tender that actually works. Fed Promises New Inflation Strategy Will Include Fewer Economists and More PowerPoint Slides Warsh closed the announcement by promising that the Fed's next inflation strategy would rely less on career economists and more on 40-slide decks featuring stock photos of handshakes and upward-trending arrows that may or may not correspond to actual data. Several longtime Fed staffers reportedly asked whether they'd still have jobs. They were told to "circle back next quarter" and to expense their own severance. Growth mindset. Shrinking paycheck. A pivot, historically, is what a basketball player does. Now it's also what happens to your retirement account. The Fed used to raise rates to slow the economy. Now it just raises a Series B. Down at a diner outside Abilene, a local rancher summed up the mood over coffee: "I used to worry about the price of feed. Now I gotta worry about whether my feed price got A/B tested." Behind the jokes sits a real debate: as Kevin Warsh's name circulates as a leading candidate for Fed Chair, questions have grown over how closely tech-world "disruption" culture should influence an institution built on caution, incrementalism, and decades of deliberately boring press conferences. Critics worry that startup-style thinking, prized for speed and iteration in software, is a poor match for a central bank whose mistakes are measured in mortgage rates and grocery bills rather than app crashes. Fancy a British take on monetary meltdown? Read our companion piece: Mervyn King Asked to Teach Americans How to Panic With a British Accent, only on Prat.uk. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! Read the full article

Former Warren Volunteer Attends Ayatollah's Funeral After Discovering American Freedom Wasn't Oppressive Enough Privileged progressive travels to Iran to praise the sort of government that would arrest privileged progressives BOHINEY NEWS SERVICE | Tehran A former Elizabeth Warren campaign volunteer has reportedly completed the traditional journey of the affluent American revolutionary: private education, progressive politics, social-media radicalization, relocation overseas, and finally an appearance on Iranian state television praising an authoritarian cleric. Calla Walsh, a 22-year-old American activist living in Lebanon, attended the funeral ceremonies for Iran's late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and told Iran's state-controlled PressTV that he was the "greatest anti-imperialist leader" of her lifetime. Walsh previously volunteered for Warren's 2020 presidential campaign and helped mobilize young voters for Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. It is a political transformation rarely seen outside comic books, psychiatric case studies, and the final semester of an expensive liberal-arts degree. Most young Americans rebel against their parents by getting a tattoo, dating a drummer, or refusing to separate recycling properly. Walsh apparently rebelled by traveling to Tehran and publicly admiring a government that treats dissent as a clerical error requiring prison. "There comes a moment in every wealthy Western activist's life when criticizing capitalism from an air-conditioned café no longer provides the necessary emotional nutrients," explained fictional political psychologist Dr. Milton Kneecap. "That is when the patient begins searching internationally for a regime sufficiently hostile to America, women's autonomy, free expression, and irony." From Elizabeth Warren Volunteer to Ayatollah Khamenei Mourner Walsh's political voyage resembles a GPS operated by a philosophy major with the screen turned upside down. She began in conventional Democratic activism, working around politicians who campaign on climate policy, student debt, reproductive rights, and expanding personal freedom. She eventually arrived at the funeral of a religious ruler whose government was not generally associated with competitive elections, relaxed dress codes, or the phrase "live and let live." That is not a political evolution. That is changing trains at every station until you wake up inside a tank. Walsh once wrote that she helped build an online youth movement around Ed Markey during his 2020 Senate campaign. She later became disillusioned with conventional electoral politics and moved toward more radical activism. America apparently failed her because its politicians were not revolutionary enough. Iran then succeeded by offering the excitement of revolution without the tedious burden of citizens choosing their leaders. "Democracy can be exhausting," said fictional Georgetown professor Dr. Lenora Bumbershoot. "There are primaries, debates, opposition parties and voters with incorrect opinions. A theocracy streamlines everything. One unelected authority explains what God wants, and mysteriously God always agrees with the government." Iranian state television reportedly welcomed Walsh's comments enthusiastically, presumably because finding an American willing to praise the regime is cheaper than manufacturing one with computer graphics. Rich Girl Discovers Economical New Form of Rebellion Walsh has been described in published profiles as coming from an accomplished academic family and attending prestigious schools before becoming a nationally noticed youth activist. This background gives the episode the full flavor of luxury-brand revolution. Poor people tend to rebel against governments because they cannot afford food. Rich Western activists sometimes rebel because brunch included plastic straws. There is something magnificent about enjoying the protections of American society long enough to develop contempt for American society, then flying abroad to celebrate leaders who would never permit their own citizens the same freedom to criticize them. It is the political equivalent of complaining about hotel service while standing in someone else's prison cell. "My daughter studied abroad in Florence," said fictional Boston mother Penelope Worthington-Smythe. "She came home with a scarf and an interest in olive oil. These children come home with geopolitical alliances." Bohiney's entirely fabricated survey of 1,204 parents in affluent Massachusetts neighborhoods found that 71 percent would prefer their children join a jam band, 18 percent would accept an impulsive facial piercing, and 11 percent would rather watch them become accountants than appear on Iranian propaganda television. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus one trust fund. Feminism Takes a Brief Clerical Detour in Tehran The greatest ideological acrobatics involve reconciling modern progressive rhetoric with admiration for the Iranian system. American activists are routinely taught to identify unequal power structures, defend women's choices, challenge religious authority, protect sexual minorities, resist censorship and demand accountability from police. Iran's rulers appear to have read the same list and used it as a menu of activities to prohibit. Yet somehow, when a government opposes the United States and Israel loudly enough, some Western radicals become willing to place every other concern in ideological storage. Women's rights? We will circle back. Political prisoners? Complicated regional context. Religious coercion? Please stop imposing Western definitions of coercion. State censorship? A culturally specific form of fact-checking. Executions? An unfortunate paperwork issue caused by imperialism. This intellectual process is known as "intersectional luggage handling," in which all inconvenient principles are placed on a conveyor belt and accidentally sent to another country. A fictional spokesperson for the International Association of Selective Feminists said the organization remained committed to women's liberation everywhere except in places where mentioning it might interfere with an anti-American narrative. "We strongly believe every woman has the right to choose," she said. "Naturally, this includes the right of governments to choose things for women." PressTV Finds Its Ideal American Correspondent Walsh's appearance gave Iranian state media something enormously valuable: an American voice repeating a narrative favorable to the Iranian government. Propaganda is always more effective when delivered by someone who looks capable of organizing a campus workshop titled "Decolonizing the Smoothie Bar." PressTV did not need to convince its audience that America was decadent, confused, and turning against itself. It merely had to point the camera. According to reporting on the interview, Walsh praised Khamenei as a leader for people struggling against imperialism and Zionism and described him as humble. Calling a supreme leader humble is a little like calling a peacock discreet. The entire job involves enormous portraits, mass ceremonies, official titles, security entourages and having your opinions printed above everybody else's. Ordinary humble people do not have six-day funeral ceremonies. They have a folding table, several casseroles and an uncle who gives a speech nobody authorized. Still, state television producers were reportedly delighted. "We searched everywhere for an American who could make our political system sound youthful," said fictional PressTV executive Hassan B. Serious. "Dennis Rodman was unavailable." The Revolutionary Gap Year: From Beirut to Iranian State TV For generations, prosperous young Americans have traveled overseas to find themselves. Some backpack through Europe. Some volunteer at wildlife sanctuaries. Some teach English. Some discover spiritual enlightenment in Nepal and return six weeks later selling candles. Walsh appears to have chosen the Premium Anti-Imperialism Package, including relocation to Lebanon, Iranian television appearances and complimentary denunciations of the country that issued her passport. Travel experts predict the itinerary may become popular among politically restless young elites. The proposed package includes three nights in Beirut, two days touring revolutionary murals, a state-media interview, breakfast, and a seminar titled "How to Condemn Western Privilege While Using a Western Passport to Cross Borders." Participants receive a tote bag bearing the slogan: "Another World Is Possible, Although You May Not Be Allowed to Vote in It." Massachusetts Democrats Discover Their Youth Outreach Program Had Side Effects Walsh's earlier involvement with Warren and Markey does not mean either politician endorses her current positions. Political campaigns attract thousands of volunteers, and candidates cannot reasonably be held responsible for every future choice made by everyone who once distributed their stickers. Still, the story illustrates the risks of treating adolescent activists as miniature prophets whenever they generate enough social-media engagement. Political organizations love young organizers because they provide energy, moral certainty, memes and free labor. Unfortunately, moral certainty without historical perspective can mature into the belief that every enemy of America must therefore be a misunderstood humanitarian. This is known as the "enemy-of-my-enemy study-abroad program." The reasoning is flawless provided one ignores most of recorded history. Under this doctrine, any regime opposed to Washington automatically becomes part of a global liberation movement. Its domestic repression becomes irrelevant, its prisons become nuanced, and its propaganda network becomes an independent media outlet staffed entirely by anchors who coincidentally agree with the government. "It is classic binary thinking," explained fictional logician Professor Alan Nafzger. "There are supposedly only two positions: support every American policy or cheer at the funeral of an ayatollah. Apparently nobody has discovered the third option, which is not behaving like a complete jackass." Anti-Imperialism Now Available in First Class Affluent revolutionary politics rests upon a remarkable consumer arrangement. Capitalism provides the smartphone, airfare, university education, secure passport, international banking system, social-media platform and personal freedom necessary to condemn capitalism. The activist then announces that the entire system is intolerable using equipment assembled through a supply chain spanning twelve countries. It is less a revolution than a hostile product review. Walsh is entitled to her political beliefs, however radical, and attending a funeral is not itself a crime. The public is equally entitled to observe the staggering contradiction of an American progressive praising a ruler whose government embodied many practices progressives claim to oppose. Free societies have this peculiar feature: they permit citizens to praise unfree societies. Unfree societies rarely return the courtesy. That distinction is apparently considered an annoying technicality by people who confuse opposition to America with moral virtue. Helpful Advice for Future Young Revolutionaries Before publicly praising an authoritarian government, Bohiney recommends completing a brief ideological safety inspection. First, determine whether citizens living under that government are allowed to criticize it as freely as you criticize yours. Second, ask whether women possess the same choices you demand at home. Third, check whether journalists can investigate the leadership without falling from balconies, disappearing into prisons or experiencing unexpected administrative electrocution. Fourth, consider why state television is so delighted to interview you. Finally, remember that a government being hostile to America does not automatically make it benevolent. Sometimes two things can be flawed simultaneously. This shocking discovery is called adulthood. Young activists should also remember that moral seriousness requires applying principles consistently. Human rights do not become optional merely because the people violating them have the correct enemies. Otherwise, "solidarity" becomes tourism, rebellion becomes performance, and anti-imperialism becomes another luxury experience purchased by people wealthy enough to leave whenever the revolution becomes inconvenient. America's Most Successful Export Remains Confused Americans Iran exported oil, carpets and political slogans. America responded by exporting a privileged progressive willing to appear on state television and explain why the ayatollah was wonderful. On balance, Iran may demand a refund. Walsh's journey from Massachusetts campaign volunteer to Tehran funeral attendee is not merely a story about one activist. It represents a larger cultural species: the Western radical who enjoys enough liberty to romanticize governments that deny liberty to others. She did not escape oppression. She flew toward it, praised it on television, and probably called the experience educational. The Iranian regime received a propaganda clip. America received another reminder that wealth cannot purchase judgment, elite schooling cannot guarantee wisdom, and youth activism occasionally produces less Greta Thunberg than Jane Fonda seated on heavy machinery. The revolution will apparently be televised. It will also be recorded vertically, subtitled by state media, uploaded from a Western-designed smartphone and shared by people insisting the West has contributed nothing worthwhile to civilization. Sources - Fox News: Ex-Warren campaign volunteer praises Khamenei in Iranian state media interview - New York Post: Ex-Dem activist Calla Walsh attends Khamenei's funeral, hails him as "greatest anti-imperialist leader" - JFeed: Progressive activist's political shift from Warren campaign to Khamenei funeral Iran began a weeklong funeral ceremony for Khamenei, months after an airstrike killed him at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Walsh, who describes herself as a journalist based in Lebanon, has appeared repeatedly in Iranian state media during the mourning period, and her transformation from Massachusetts campaign volunteer to Tehran funeral guest has drawn coverage across the political press. Follow more Bohiney News Service coverage of American political theater at Bohiney.com. Satirical Disclaimer This is a work of satire and commentary. Calla Walsh's reported attendance at Ali Khamenei's funeral, her previous campaign activity and her remarks to PressTV are based on published news reports. The professors, parents, polling organizations, travel packages, PressTV executives and selective feminist associations quoted elsewhere are fictional inventions created for comedic purposes. This story is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Neither has attended an ayatollah's funeral, although the farmer once went to a Holstein memorial service and found the political speeches noticeably more moderate.   Read the full article

Trump Ranks #1 On Iran's Kill List, Says He'd Rather Be #1 On TikTok Somewhere between a NATO photo op, a six-day funeral, and a plane that apparently changes its mind about existing, President Donald J. Trump had quite the week of confirming, once again, that he is extremely famous and extremely aware of it. "I'm number one on the kill list for Iran," Trump told reporters, in the tone of a man announcing his Nielsen rating. "I don't really care because I'm doing my job. I like being number one on TikTok better, but I'm number one on the list for killing." Somewhere, a media consultant is drafting a slide titled "Engagement Metrics vs. Mortality Metrics" and quietly weeping. Call it algorithmic envy: the first known instance of a sitting president wishing his own assassination plot had better analytics. The $400 Million Napkin Sketch Lest anyone think Iranian tradecraft has gotten more sophisticated since the Soleimani strike, DOJ footage shows one alleged plotter demonstrating his master plan with a vape pen placed on a napkin, informing undercover agents, "This is the target. How will it die?" He paid a $5,000 advance and, when an agent said "now we're bonded," replied simply "yes." Somewhere, the world's most expensive intelligence apparatus is being outpaced by a guy with a napkin and a Juul. Meanwhile the plot Israel just flagged as fresh and specific turns out to be, depending on which official you ask, either urgent, "more general," or — per Carnegie's own analysts — "more aspirational than operational," which is the diplomatic equivalent of your gym membership. The Bribe Plane Fails Its Road Test — Twice For over a year the administration hyped its free Qatari 747 as the crown jewel of presidential travel. The instant the itinerary got within missile range of an angry theocracy, Trump quietly climbed back onto the old plane and sent the gift jet ahead like a body double auditioning for a job it didn't want. This isn't even the first time — in 2024, the campaign used a decoy plane belonging to now-envoy Steve Witkoff, and staff reportedly only realized the boss had bailed when they noticed his empty window seat. Two elections, two administrations, one recurring gag: the President keeps a spare aircraft around the way normal people keep a spare tire. White House comms director Steven Cheung explained the switch wasn't fear, it was strategy: "We use every tool at our disposal — including distraction and misdirection." Trump's version was that the new jet flew ahead "so the soldiers can see it because it's truly magnificent" — a Yelp review for a free gift he's contractually obligated to enjoy. Two cover stories, 24 hours, zero consistency. A malapropism of reassurance so pure it should be studied in PR school as a cautionary tale. Bonus: independent estimates put the retrofit at anywhere from $400 million to nearly $1 billion, reportedly dipping into the Sentinel nuclear-missile budget to make the timeline work. Nothing says "measured stewardship of taxpayer dollars" like flipping a plane faster than a home renovation show and hoping the missile-defense lasers made it into the final cut. Miami, Meet Miami Mourners in Mashhad reportedly hung a Trump bounty caricature at the foot of a hotel named, gloriously, "Miami." Back in the actual Florida, Palm Beach International just got rebranded "President Donald J. Trump International" for a reported $5-plus million. So there are now two buildings on Earth named after the same six letters — one where they love him, one where they'd very much like him gone — and the branding budget appears identical either way. The Pentagon Discovers Stand-Up Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the elimination of an alleged plotter with the enthusiasm of a man cutting a ribbon at a Chili's: "Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh." Somewhere in the Gulf, a US submarine also sank an Iranian vessel literally named the Soleimani — a pun so on the nose the Navy should owe royalties. Trump, never one to leave a straight line unpunched, added: "I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first," a sentence structure best filed under anagram of a playground argument, rearranged into official U.S. policy. The operations themselves have names like energy drinks — "Epic Fury," "Sledgehammer," "Roaring Lion" — with one general reportedly joking Epic Fury ran on "2 million energy drinks." At this point the Pentagon's naming department and Red Bull's marketing department may want to compare notes. Selective Concern, A Case Study Trump reportedly pulled Secret Service protection from former officials still on Iran's target list while dramatizing his own danger daily. One lawmaker's response: "It's nice that he's taking his own security seriously." Somewhere, an actuary is drawing up a chart comparing presidential job risk to bull riding and NASCAR — a comparison Trump himself has made, apparently to reassure the public that his job is dangerous the way a sport is dangerous, and not the way "several foreign governments want you dead" is dangerous. The Sleazebags Get the Blinds Down Reporters were reportedly told to keep window shades drawn during the flight — for their safety, Trump explained, "because you're, you know, probably on a dangerous flight, because of the sleazebags that we have to deal with." Whether "sleazebags" meant Iran, the press pool, or humanity broadly remains a double entendre efficient enough to cover every possible audience with one word. And to the reporter who asked directly about the threat, Trump delivered what may be the finest piece of occupational safety guidance ever issued by a head of state: "I have a threat all the time. I'm number one on their list, before you. But if I go, you go. So, perhaps — perhaps some of you want to change professions." HR departments everywhere are still drafting the memo. Big Earl, working the club circuit out of Amarillo, summed it up at a recent open mic: "Only in America does the President's pep talk sound like a hostage negotiation." The room, reportedly, agreed without laughing, which is its own kind of laugh. As for the underlying relationship strain — Trump has previously admitted calling Netanyahu "f---ing crazy," with one source describing Bibi's reaction as "his hair was on fire" — Netanyahu's office nonetheless issued a statement this week about "continued coordination," which is diplomatic for "we're still speaking, mostly." Sources: CNN, The Daily Beast, The White House, Al-Monitor, Axios For the same story with more tea and considerably less Miami, see our sister publication Prat.uk. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! Read the full article

White House Confirms Genius Plan To Confuse Iran Was Also Confusing To Everyone Else In a stunning display of strategic clarity, the White House this week revealed that the President's mysterious mid-flight plane swap over Europe was, in fact, a deliberate tactic to baffle enemy combatants — a mission officials are calling an unqualified success, given that it also baffled reporters, allies, aviation experts, and at least one former CIA director. "We use every tool at our disposal — including distraction and misdirection," said White House communications director Steven Cheung, in a statement that answered absolutely nothing while sounding like it answered everything, a rhetorical maneuver satirists can only describe as misdirection about misdirection. The Shell Game At 40,000 Feet The strategy, as best anyone can piece together, works like this: somewhere over the Atlantic, two nearly identical 747s are shuffled around like a Vegas street hustler's walnut shells, on the theory that any hostile radar operator watching two blips converge and diverge will simply throw up his hands and radio back to headquarters, "Sir, I regret to inform you the Americans have out-confused us." It is, in fairness, a bold new front in asymmetric warfare: instead of stealth technology, the plan relies entirely on vibes. No radar-absorbing paint, no electronic countermeasures — just two planes swapping seats like toddlers playing musical chairs, and a hearty national faith that Iranian air defense crews will simply lose interest and go check their phones. Meanwhile, In A Hypothetical Missile Battery Somewhere Picture, if you will, an Iranian surface-to-air crew squinting through targeting optics at two identical white-and-blue jets, radioing frantically up the chain of command: "Sir, there are two of them now. Do we fire at both? Neither? Should we just wait for a press release?" It's the kind of confusion that would work beautifully in a Bond film and considerably less beautifully as an actual national defense doctrine — which is presumably why nobody at the Pentagon will go on record confirming any of this was the plan until after it worked. Trump, for his part, offered a competing explanation that the new plane was sent ahead purely "so the soldiers can see it because it's truly magnificent" — meaning the official position of the United States government is now, simultaneously, that the plane swap was (a) a sophisticated anti-assassination tactic designed to confuse a hostile nation's targeting systems, and (b) a hood-up car show for the troops. Military historians may one day need an entirely new term for a strategy that is both a deception operation and a magnificent-jet meet-and-greet. The Reviews Are In Big Earl, working the club circuit out of Amarillo, offered this assessment: "You know your security plan is airtight when even the guy explaining it sounds confused explaining it." The crowd, reportedly, was also confused, which — per the official White House position — means the plan is working exactly as intended. As of this writing, no Iranian official has confirmed being confused by anything, which the administration has chosen to interpret as proof the confusion is working perfectly. Sources: The Hill, Washington Examiner, Newser For the version of this story with more tea and less Miami, cross over to our sister publication Prat.uk. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! 10 Observations on the Plan To Confuse Iran “White House Confirms Genius Plan To Confuse Iran Was Also Confusing To Everyone Else” Reports say the White House described the Air Force One switch as “distraction and misdirection,” while Trump also said the newer plane was sent to RAF Mildenhall so troops could see it. Other reporting framed the swap around security concerns and differences in aircraft capabilities. In other words: one plane, two explanations, and a communications strategy shaped like a pretzel in a wind tunnel. (New York Post) 1. The plan was so secret even the explanation needed a blindfold. The White House says the plane swap was designed to confuse Iran, which is impressive because it first confused the press corps, then the allies, then the aviation experts, then finally wandered back and confused the White House statement itself. 2. “Distraction and misdirection” is government-speak for “we moved the walnut and nobody knows where the table went.” This was not a flight plan. This was a card trick at Mach 0.84. Somewhere, a Vegas magician watched two 747s change roles mid-story and said, “Even I would have rehearsed that.” 3. The official strategy appears to be stealth by administrative fog. Old stealth technology hides from radar. New stealth technology hides inside three contradictory press comments, one Truth Social post, and a communications director saying something that sounds classified but may just be Tuesday. 4. Iran was supposedly confused, but so was everyone with a boarding pass. The hostile radar operator was allegedly baffled, but so were reporters ordered to keep the window blinds shut, which is the aviation equivalent of saying, “Nobody look outside. National security is having a wardrobe issue.” 5. The plane swap was both an anti-assassination tactic and a military show-and-tell. That’s the genius: one explanation says “deadly serious security maneuver,” the other says “magnificent jet for the troops.” It’s the first presidential travel doctrine ever written jointly by the Secret Service and a classic car club. 6. The new doctrine is called “strategic jazz hands.” No missiles. No radar jamming. No invisibility cloak. Just two giant presidential aircraft doing airborne shell-game choreography while officials announce, “If nobody understands it, that means it worked.” 7. Even the phrase “misdirection about misdirection” needs its own security clearance. The White House did not merely explain confusion. It weaponized confusion, then wrapped the explanation in more confusion, then declared the remaining confusion proof of strategic success. That’s not messaging. That’s a fog machine with a podium. 8. Somewhere in Tehran, a radar crew allegedly gave up and asked for subtitles. “Sir, there are two planes.” “Which one has the president?” “The American statement says yes.” “Fire?” “No. Wait for the follow-up clarification. It may defeat itself.” 9. This is the rare military plan where Big Earl from Amarillo understands the weak point instantly. Big Earl’s review still stands: “You know your security plan is airtight when even the guy explaining it sounds confused explaining it.” That’s not criticism. That’s peer review from a man who has seen three divorces, two county fairs, and one carburetor fire. 10. The administration’s final proof is that Iran has not admitted confusion. No Iranian official has confirmed being baffled, which officials now treat as evidence that the bafflement is too deep to report. By that standard, my missing car keys are not lost. They are conducting covert misdirection in the laundry room. Read the full article

Platner Asks Whether Losing Counts as Winning If You Complain Loudly Enough Maine Candidate Discovers That If Reality Won't Cooperate, It's Clearly Having a Political Agenda AUGUSTA, Maine. Political analysts confirm that the final stage of every struggling campaign is no longer denial but the much more sophisticated strategy of declaring that every inconvenience is evidence of a vast conspiracy against optimism. That lesson appears to have been embraced with remarkable enthusiasm after Graham Platner reportedly spent the closing hours of his campaign arguing that virtually everyone else had become the problem. Local observers say the campaign headquarters resembled less a political operation than a customer service desk where every complaint was accepted except those directed at management, a policy staff privately referred to as customer no-service. "We've reached the exciting phase," said political historian Dr. Eleanor Clipboard. "This is where a candidate concludes that voters, journalists, mirrors, gravity, and the calendar have formed an alliance." Graham Platner Wins "Least Likely to Accept Feedback" Award by Unanimous Vote of Himself The prestigious Golden Earplug Award was reportedly presented after judges noticed the candidate had developed the extraordinary ability to hear applause from silence while interpreting criticism as background noise. Campaign volunteers claimed every suggestion immediately entered what staff called the Feedback Recycling Program, where inconvenient observations were transformed into accusations against the media. "It's innovative," said one consultant. "Instead of adapting to events, they simply redefine events until adaptation becomes unnecessary." Several political scientists described the phenomenon as reverse polling, where the public is expected to change its opinion to match campaign expectations. One aide reportedly tried to reassure donors the campaign was ready to "go the distance," a line staff quietly agreed sounded better than it played. Campaign Introduces New Strategy: Blame Everyone Until Poll Numbers Improve Insiders described a sophisticated decision tree hanging in campaign headquarters. If polls decline... blame the press. If they decline further... blame party leadership. If they decline again... blame social media. If they still decline... declare polling itself unconstitutional. The final box reportedly read: "If all else fails, accuse arithmetic of partisan bias." One exhausted intern admitted the campaign spent more time identifying villains than identifying undecided voters. "We had flowcharts," the intern explained. "Unfortunately none of them led to winning." A second staffer insisted what the campaign really needed was better "optical illusions," apparently meaning optics, and nobody corrected him because nobody had the energy left. Platner Declares Personal Responsibility Is an Outdated Washington Tradition The campaign unveiled what supporters called a revolutionary governing philosophy. Rather than accepting responsibility for setbacks, candidates would simply outsource accountability to whichever institution happened to be closest. Political philosophers praised the concept as an important advance in modern excuse engineering. "It saves tremendous amounts of emotional energy," explained ethicist Professor Miles Shrugwell. "Why waste time learning from mistakes when you can invoice someone else for them?" Maine Candidate Announces Mirror Has Joined the Political Establishment Trouble reportedly escalated after a mirror refused to reflect only favorable campaign optics. Witnesses claim negotiations between the candidate and the bathroom mirror collapsed after the reflection continued displaying visible signs of stress. Campaign officials accused the mirror of selective editing, which one staffer later tried to optics before the donors arrived, using the noun as a verb because nobody had time to write a real memo. The mirror issued no comment, although observers noted it continued faithfully reflecting reality despite mounting political pressure. Hardware stores throughout Maine later reported increased sales of softer lighting. Campaign Staff Asked to Stop Bringing Facts to Staff Meetings Sources describe several uncomfortable strategy sessions where staff members accidentally introduced statistics. The interruptions reportedly delayed morale by nearly twenty minutes. One volunteer recalled presenting fresh voter data before being escorted to the Negative Thinking Correction Room, where employees were encouraged to replace numbers with confidence. "It wasn't that facts were banned," the volunteer clarified. "They were simply considered rude." Campaign PowerPoint presentations eventually replaced charts with motivational clip art. As comedian Bill Burr might put it, that's not a strategy, that's a coping mechanism with a podium. Experts Diagnose Acute Accountability Deficiency Political psychologists now warn that excessive finger-pointing can become habit-forming. Symptoms include believing every headline is unfair, treating criticism as evidence of persecution, assuming elections are popularity contests only when winning, and speaking in increasingly dramatic metaphors involving conspiracies, destiny, and betrayal. Medical researchers remain optimistic that recovery is possible through a controversial therapy known as listening. Unfortunately, early trials show many politicians experience severe allergic reactions to constructive criticism. Maine Residents Observe Rare Natural Phenomenon Residents reported witnessing something seldom seen in American politics: a campaign so committed to explaining defeat that it nearly forgot to explain victory. One diner customer summarized the mood while stirring coffee. "Most politicians promise they'll fix the country," he said. "This one spent more time explaining why the country kept refusing to fix itself." It was, as Nate Bargatze might deadpan it, the kind of closing argument that sounds reasonable right up until you say it out loud. Political scientists say the episode will likely become required reading in future campaign schools under the chapter titled: "How to Lose an Argument With Everyone at the Same Time." Graham Platner, the Maine oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran who spent much of 2025 and 2026 running as the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Susan Collins, ended his campaign this week after a woman he previously dated publicly accused him of sexual assault, an allegation Platner has denied. Top Democrats, including members of his own party's leadership, pulled their endorsements and urged him to withdraw in the campaign's final days. In announcing the end of his bid, Platner did not point to the allegation itself, instead framing the decision around what he called outside "structures" working against the movement, a closing argument that gave this campaign's blame-everyone instincts one last, very real workout before the curtain came down. This article is American satire. It uses exaggeration, irony, parody, and characters invented for comic effect to comment on public political behavior and campaign messaging. Sources: Graham Platner — Wikipedia Washington Post: Graham Platner ends U.S. Senate campaign in Maine NBC News: Graham Platner drops Senate bid in Maine For more transatlantic political nonsense, hop across the pond to The London Prat. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! Read the full article

Contractor Explains Gravity Has Become Increasingly Difficult to Work With Developers Insist Buckling Beams Are "Premium Flexibility Features" as Midtown Tower Experiments With Becoming Shorter Midtown Manhattan — Panic briefly interrupted Manhattan's normally scheduled chaos this week after construction workers noticed several steel beams on the 21st floor appearing to audition for a career as cooked spaghetti rather than structural supports. It was, in the grand tradition of New York real estate, a double entertainment: half emergency, half open house. The workers immediately evacuated the building, earning unanimous recognition as "Employees of the Month" for demonstrating the revolutionary workplace skill known as recognizing imminent disaster. "We're looking for people who take initiative," said project manager Vince Hammerstone. "Nothing says initiative like sprinting down twenty-one flights of stairs while yelling, 'Everybody out!'" The award reportedly includes a framed certificate and the opportunity to continue being alive. Dynamic Vertical Living: A New Architectural Philosophy The developer quickly reassured nervous investors that the buckling beams were not a defect but part of an exciting new architectural movement called "Dynamic Vertical Living." "Traditional buildings stubbornly remain the same height forever," explained company spokesperson Tiffany Ledger. "Our building evolves. It listens to gravity. It adapts. Frankly, it's much more emotionally intelligent than older skyscrapers." Even skeptics on site admitted the tower was, in its own crooked way, beaming with pride. Brochures have already been updated to describe the project as featuring "organic floor elevations" and "interactive structural experiences." One broker, reaching for a compliment, praised the building's illusive charm — a phrase nobody in the room had the heart to correct. Contractors admitted the biggest obstacle was no longer labor shortages, inflation, supply chains, or permits. "It's gravity," sighed one foreman while staring accusingly at the ground. "Gravity used to cooperate. These days it's constantly pulling downward. Frankly, it's become impossible to work with." He called for federal regulations requiring gravity to "meet the construction industry halfway." The Steel Beams File for Emotional Overtime Structural engineers attempted to calm the public by explaining that steel beams occasionally bend under extraordinary stress. Unfortunately, they were immediately interrupted by the marketing department. "Bend?" exclaimed a sales executive. "They're expressing flexibility. Today's buyers demand adaptable homes." Future listings now advertise: "Open-concept load-bearing system." "Floors with natural movement." "Panoramic emergency exit opportunities." A veteran electrician on break joked that the whole project had gone from following building codes to inventing codling boods — new rules nobody wrote down and everybody was somehow already breaking. Meanwhile, several steel beams reportedly submitted formal resignation letters. After decades of supporting offices, elevators, mechanical systems, luxury kitchens, rooftop pools, imported marble, three levels of parking, two fitness centers, a meditation studio, and an artisanal pickleball lounge, the beams declared they had reached "maximum emotional capacity." "Our job description originally said 'support building,'" read the statement. "It did not mention supporting six billion dollars of investor expectations." Union representatives for the steel claimed the beams had been working around the clock without appreciation. "Nobody notices a beam until it threatens to become modern art." Wall Street's Silver Lining Financial analysts remained optimistic. Wall Street briefly upgraded the project after investors learned fewer floors might reduce maintenance costs. "If the tower transitions from a 40-story building into a tasteful 31-story building," explained one analyst, "that's simply efficiency." The developer later denied rumors the structure was collapsing. "It's rebranding." It was the kind of corporate spin that would feel right at home in a Bill Burr rant — the sort of story where the louder everyone insists nothing is wrong, the faster you should start looking for the exits. The Subscription Skyscraper of the Future Architects have embraced the trend. One Manhattan firm unveiled plans for America's first "subscription skyscraper." Residents would pay monthly to determine how many floors remain standing. Premium members receive guaranteed access above the fifteenth floor. Basic subscribers may experience "occasional altitude adjustments." Real estate agents remain enthusiastic. "New Yorkers love authentic character," one broker explained. "Anyone can buy a rigid building. But a tower willing to change, grow, shrink, and occasionally question its relationship with physics? That's luxury." The building, in short, had started to skyscraper its way straight into the headlines. Construction workers, however, remain skeptical. Asked whether they planned to return once engineers declared the building safe, one worker paused thoughtfully. "I became Employee of the Month by leaving. I'd hate to lose my title by going back." City officials later confirmed the evacuation was carried out exactly as intended. Gravity, meanwhile, declined to comment, issuing only a brief statement through its attorney: "It has operated continuously for approximately 13.8 billion years and sees no reason to alter its successful business model now." The story lands close to home for a real Midtown Manhattan high-rise. On July 7, 2026, structural columns buckled on the 21st floor of 235 East 42nd Street, the former Pfizer world headquarters now mid-conversion into luxury apartments under developer Metro Loft Management. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered a "frozen zone" spanning several blocks, FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito warned of a possible localized collapse, and Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani oversaw emergency shoring efforts that stretched into the night. Nine surrounding buildings, including a school running a summer camp for roughly 400 children, were evacuated as a precaution while the cause of the buckling remained under investigation. This story is a work of American satire. Names, dialogue, and corporate statements above are dramatized for comic effect and should not be read as factual reporting on any individual or company. Sources - amNewYork: Midtown high-rise "unstable" after beams buckle - ABC7 New York: Buildings evacuated after buckling columns found For a British take on skylines that just can't stay standing, see The London Prat. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

NATO Summit: Ankara Discovers Diplomacy Works Best on Mute Turkish Capital Hosts World's Most Expensive Guessing Game ANKARA, Turkey — The annual NATO summit opened this week with its traditional exchange of handshakes, policy binders, and nervous glances toward the nearest podium. But diplomats say this year's gathering introduced an exciting new sport: Guess What Trump Says Next. Officials describe the game as part political science, part improv comedy, and part cardiovascular stress test. Participants earn one point for correctly predicting the next topic. Bonus points go to anyone who calls Greenland, defense spending, golf, tariffs, or a real estate analogy in the same breath. Nail all three and you earn the honorary title of Senior Strategic Oracle, plus a standing job offer from every cable network in America. "It's impossible," sighed one exhausted European ambassador, gripping his fifth espresso like it owed him money. "We prepared for Ukraine, NATO expansion, Arctic security, cyber warfare and China. We did not prepare for Greenland loyalty points." Greenland Files a Missing Person Report for Its Own Peace and Quiet The confusion reportedly began when the president asked whether NATO membership came with reward benefits, wondering aloud if Greenland carried enough alliance points for a complimentary upgrade. A spokesman later clarified that nobody knew whether the remark was literal, metaphorical, negotiable, or simply Tuesday, which is itself a fairly solid paraprosdokian for a foreign policy briefing. Scandinavian diplomats immediately checked whether Greenland had quietly changed its phone number. Officials confirmed it had. One administrator said the territory would like just one week where nobody discusses purchasing it, annexing it, defending it, or using it as an analogy. The suspect listed on the filing: international geopolitics. Nobody wants to be Greenlanded twice in one news cycle. Spain's Defense Budget Rises Every Time Its Name Gets Mentioned Across the summit hall, Spain experienced its own financial awakening. Defense economists estimate that every time the president mentions Spain, the country's projected defense budget climbs another billion euros through the mysterious force known as televised expectations. Spanish delegates reportedly spent the afternoon refilling coffee just to stay out of camera range — a genuinely useful place to be, in more ways than one. "Being ignored used to hurt our feelings," one official admitted. "It turns out it's considerably cheaper." NATO Quietly Drafts Article 5.1 Meanwhile, NATO introduced a proposed amendment unofficially known as Article 5.1, immediately following the alliance's famous collective defense clause. Its entire text reportedly reads: "Please don't start another press conference." Diplomats insist the article is purely precautionary after discovering that one spontaneous remark can generate more emergency meetings than an actual military exercise. It's the sort of bureaucratic ironic literalism that would make Lewis Black's blood pressure a matter of national security. European leaders arrived carrying 300-page strategic reports on logistics, procurement, cyber resilience, and long-term alliance planning. The American delegation arrived carrying what witnesses described as plot twists. Political scientists admit these are two entirely different schools of diplomacy — one manages expectations, the other invents new ones every fourteen minutes — and neither side shows any interest in switching methods. Turkey Wins Host Nation of the Year, Briefly Coffee supplies collapsed before lunch. NATO logistics officers confirmed delegates burned through nearly triple the expected caffeine allocation after a full evening of fact-checking remarks and rewriting communiqués. An emergency shipment of Turkish coffee briefly restored operational readiness before vanishing into the French delegation, a level of diplomatic disappearing act Norm Macdonald would have appreciated purely on comic timing. Conference organizers awarded host nation Turkey the Most Patient Host After Day One trophy, praising staff for smiling through a dozen schedule revisions and an unspecified number of plot twists. The ceremony lasted six minutes before another unscheduled press conference interrupted it. Turkey, it turns out, handled the whole affair perfectly golden-brown and done — which is either irony or poultry, depending on your appetite for wordplay. Ukraine Brings Battlefield Maps, Gets a New Seating Chart Ukraine arrived with battlefield maps, intelligence briefings, and detailed operational requests. NATO committees responded with revised seating charts. Officials explained that arranging everyone alphabetically dramatically improved alliance cohesion while doing almost nothing to stop incoming missiles. "It was a productive discussion," said one bureaucrat. "No actual decisions?" "No." "But everyone sat correctly." "Exactly." Analysts called it NATO's most successful exercise in administrative precision — the diplomatic equivalent of rearranging deck chairs, except the chairs are alphabetized and the ship is, allegedly, still afloat. The Accidental Mute Button That Solved Six Policy Disputes The summit's biggest breakthrough happened entirely by accident. Late one evening, technicians temporarily muted every microphone in the conference hall. Within forty-five seconds, delegates quietly reached consensus on six policy questions that had resisted negotiation for months. No cameras. No live commentary. No one wondering how the headlines would read. Experts immediately identified the silence as the alliance's most effective confidence-building measure in decades. Communications engineers have since proposed installing an Accidental Mute Button at every future summit — a policy so malapropos to actual diplomacy that several officials tried to rename it the "collectively defective clause" before someone corrected them. "Political science has long debated the causes of diplomatic gridlock," explained one professor at an entirely fictional overthinking institute. "It now appears the principal obstacle was functioning microphones." Pollsters claim 87 percent of summit attendees support extending all future silent periods. The remaining 13 percent were giving interviews at the time of the survey. Journalists Give Up Writing Full Sentences As delegates departed, exhausted correspondents compared notes, discarded obsolete headlines, and drafted new ones after every fresh comment from the podium. Several admitted they'd stopped writing complete articles and instead left blank spaces labeled "Insert Unexpected Development Here." Veteran reporters called it the most efficient workflow innovation since laptops — the kind of gallows-humor efficiency Jim Gaffigan could turn into twenty minutes of clean material about hotel minibars alone. NATO officials concluded the summit had strengthened alliance unity, reaffirmed collective defense, and once again demonstrated humanity's remarkable ability to schedule twelve hours of meetings to accomplish what could have been settled during one quiet elevator ride. Diplomats are already preparing for next year's gathering. Organizers have ordered additional coffee, reinforced podiums, doubled translator staffing, and quietly installed a very large button labeled "MICROPHONES OFF." The 2026 Ankara summit brought all 32 NATO member states together at the Beştepe Presidential Complex on July 7 and 8, with President Trump, Secretary General Mark Rutte, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy among the leaders in attendance. The gathering unfolded against a backdrop of Trump's public criticism of allied defense spending, an uneasy ceasefire following U.S. strikes on Iran, and NATO's ongoing effort to institutionalize long-term support for Ukraine — real tensions that made the closed-door theatrics, seating charts, and coffee shortages described above land a little closer to home than anyone in Ankara probably wanted. This article is American satire. Reports of an actual "MICROPHONES OFF" button remain unconfirmed by NATO, but so, several delegates note, does most of the alliance's long-term strategy. For the British perspective on the same summit, head over to The London Prat. Sources PBS News: What to know about NATO's summit in Turkey ABC News: US taking stock of NATO as Trump heads to Turkey Wikipedia: 2026 Ankara NATO summit Auf Wiedersehen, amigo! Read the full article

Travis Kelce's Bachelor Party Declared National Emergency After Nobody Wakes Up Married to a Pirate Dave Chappelle reportedly confessed he had never witnessed such an astonishing bachelor party. Not because it became legendary, but because everyone involved could actually remember the evening. That single detail has reportedly thrown the Bachelor Party Association (a totally real organization, probably) into its deepest existential crisis since someone suggested replacing poker night with herbal tea and "feelings talk." A Bachelor Party So Tame, Vegas Filed a Complaint According to completely unreliable party historians, Kelce's bachelor weekend featured comedy, racing, concerts, friends, and an alarming shortage of stories beginning with, "So I woke up in international waters..." Experts insist this violates centuries of bachelor-party folklore, which traditionally requires at least one groom to accidentally purchase a jet ski, misplace a passport, or wake up wearing ceremonial robes from a country he cannot identify on a map, let alone pronounce. Sociologists immediately launched a six-year study titled The Psychological Impact of Responsible Decision-Making on American Party Culture. Early findings concluded that if men discover bachelor parties can end without anyone wrestling a decorative fountain, civilization as we know it may never fully recover. Grant funding, naturally, has already been approved. Even the Comedy Show Left People Confused The comedy show itself reportedly baffled attendees. Instead of watching the groom make regrettable, tabloid-ready life choices, everyone simply... laughed. Witnesses described the experience as "entertainment," a concept many bachelor parties have rejected for decades in favor of expensive confusion and a mystery charge on someone's AmEx. Party economists estimate the weekend cost millions less than the average celebrity bachelor bash, mostly because nobody had to hire emergency reputation consultants the following Monday. Somewhere, a crisis-PR firm is quietly re-forecasting its quarterly earnings. Wedding Planners and Casino Executives Are Reportedly Panicking Wedding planners across America reacted with panic. "If this trend continues," warned one fictional consultant while clutching scented invitation samples, "future bachelor parties may involve museums, bookstores, or — heaven forbid — discussing retirement accounts." Even Las Vegas reportedly filed a complaint. "We built an entire economy around questionable decisions," said one imaginary casino executive. "If celebrities start attending stand-up comedy instead of trying to ride mechanical livestock at two in the morning, we're going to have to start offering discounts. Actual discounts. On the Strip. It's unthinkable." A Brief, Mostly Fictional History of Bachelor Parties Anthropologists note that bachelor parties have evolved dramatically over the centuries. - In ancient times, warriors celebrated before battle. - During the Middle Ages, knights feasted before tournaments. - Modern celebrities typically rent islands, yachts, helicopters, and enough fireworks to alarm neighboring countries. - Travis Kelce allegedly celebrated by sitting in a chair and listening to jokes. Civilization, scholars insist, may have officially peaked. Dave Chappelle reportedly joked that he had never seen such a tame bachelor party, and later teased that he wasn't among the thousands apparently invited to the wedding itself. Somewhere, a guest list logistics coordinator is having their own private national emergency. The Conspiracy Theories Nobody Asked For Naturally, conspiracy theorists immediately developed explanations for the sheer, unbelievable normalcy of it all. - One claimed Taylor Swift secretly replaced everyone's energy drinks with chamomile tea. - Another insisted Jason Kelce confiscated everyone's bad ideas at airport security. - A third argued the entire bachelor party was secretly supervised by NFL officials protecting the salary cap. None of these theories survived contact with reality, but that has never stopped a theory from thriving online. If anything, a lack of evidence just means the theory needs a longer YouTube video. Relationship Experts Weigh In, Because Apparently They Had To Relationship experts have entered the debate. One declared the healthiest bachelor party is the one where everyone still recognizes each other in daylight. Another argued the greatest luxury in modern celebrity culture is simply privacy. A third asked the only question that really mattered: "Did anyone lose an eyebrow?" "No." "Then honestly, that's refreshing." Historians Predict Future Generations Won't Believe Any of This Historians now believe future generations may struggle to comprehend the event entirely. Museum exhibits will reportedly display folding chairs from comedy clubs beside plaques reading: "In 2026, a famous athlete voluntarily spent his bachelor party laughing with friends instead of becoming tomorrow morning's viral apology." Schoolchildren will stare in disbelief. "Grandpa... is it true nobody fought a decorative flamingo?" "That's right, son." "Were they feeling okay?" The Hospitality Industry Is Already Bracing for Impact Meanwhile, the hospitality industry is reportedly preparing for disaster. Luxury resorts have unveiled new "Traditional Bachelor Experience" packages featuring optional fake tattoos, inflatable sharks, mysterious room charges, and professionally trained staff greeting guests with the reassuring phrase: "You probably shouldn't remember this." Kelce's weekend, by contrast, threatens decades of carefully cultivated bachelor-party expectations — and possibly an entire wing of the Vegas economy. The Real Scandal? There Wasn't One The greatest scandal may not be what happened. It may be everything that didn't. In a culture where celebrity excess often arrives with fireworks, helicopters, and three publicists carrying fire extinguishers, the most shocking act of rebellion turned out to be having a good time — and making it to the wedding without generating a congressional hearing. Perhaps that's the wildest plot twist of all. Further reading on bachelor party culture and celebrity weddings: People Magazine — Celebrity News | NFL.com — Official League News | Rolling Stone — Culture Coverage This article is a work of satire. Any resemblance to actual bachelor parties, pirates, or salary cap enforcement is purely coincidental and almost certainly funnier than reality.   Read the full article

"Y'all Street" Officially Open: Wall Street Bankers Spotted Buying Cowboy Boots "For the Culture" The Texas Stock Exchange rang in its first day of trading this week — or rather, didn't ring anything, but more on that in a minute — and within hours, financial Twitter had already rebranded it "Y'all Street." The nickname was so instantly, devastatingly perfect that witnesses report at least three New York bankers went quiet mid-sentence, set down their $14 oat milk lattes, and stared into the middle distance like men who'd just realized their whole personality was a knockoff. By Monday afternoon, no fewer than four hedge fund managers had been sighted at a Dallas boot shop purchasing full-quill ostrich boots, size 11, "for the culture." One admitted, on background, that he'd also bought a belt buckle "the size of a hubcap" and did not appear to regret it. Q: How do you spot a New York banker in Texas? A: He's the one asking the boot store if they take AmEx Platinum and whether the ostrich is "sustainably sourced." No Bell, No Permission: Texas Opens Trading the Old-Fashioned Way In a move that sent traditionalists into a fainting spell, the new exchange launched without the ceremonial opening bell that has anchored Wall Street mornings since the 1800s. Sources close to the exchange say the decision was less about symbolism and more about a deeply held regional principle: real men do not need permission to ring anything. They will ring it when they are good and ready, thank you. One Fort Worth trader, appearing entirely unbothered, explained it this way: "We've got church bells, dinner bells, and a cowbell in Coach's garage older than NASDAQ itself. We are not short on bells, sir. We are short on asking." Setup: Why didn't Texas want a ceremonial opening bell? Punchline: Because in Texas, "ceremonial" is code for "somebody in New York tells you when to start," and that hasn't gone over well since 1836. NYSE and NASDAQ Suddenly Discover They've Always Loved Texas In scenes reminiscent of a high school reunion where everyone insists they were always friends, both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have reportedly opened new Texas operations practically overnight, each describing "deep, longstanding ties" to the Lone Star State that neither could produce documentation for prior to roughly two weeks ago. Setup: How do you know NYSE and NASDAQ's love for Texas is brand new? Punchline: Neither one could find Texas on a map before the $275 million showed up. Now they can name three counties and a rodeo. BlackRock's $275 Million Statement of Faith Asset management giant BlackRock put its money where its mouth is, committing a reported $275 million tied to the new exchange. Analysts calculate that sum could buy several thousand "We Believe in Texas" t-shirts, an eyebrow-raising quantity of brisket, and at minimum one modest airport hangar with a name on it. A BlackRock representative declined to confirm the t-shirt math but, notably, did not deny it, which in finance is basically a confession. Economists Baffled as Texas Refuses to Stop Being a Country That Isn't a Country Economists tracking the launch expressed weary exasperation at having to, once again, explain that the Texas economy ranks among the largest in the world — outproducing most actual sovereign nations — while remaining, on paper, a state. "We've tried everything," one economist sighed, gesturing at a whiteboard covered in increasingly frantic arrows. "Charts. Graphs. A strongly worded op-ed nobody read." Setup: What do you call an economy the size of a G8 nation that still can't get its own seat at the G8? Punchline: Texas. The paperwork says "state." The GDP says "email me your ambassador." Dallas Rebrands to "Y'all Street"; New York Stuck With the Old Name The rebrand has already stuck harder than a boot in fresh asphalt. Dallas's financial corridor is now unofficially "Y'all Street," while New York's original remains stubbornly, unglamorously "Wall Street" — a name locals privately admit "just doesn't pop like it used to." Local real estate listings have reportedly begun advertising properties as "Y'all Street adjacent," a phrase that means nothing and yet somehow moves units. Zero Corporate Listings, Infinite Swagger Critics were quick to note the Texas Stock Exchange launched trading with exactly zero corporate listings of its own — a detail Texas officials met with a shrug and, by all accounts, a noticeable uptick in swagger. "Rome wasn't built in a day," one exchange representative offered, unbothered, "and neither was Fort Worth. But have you seen Fort Worth lately?" New York Bankers Relocating to Dallas — "Just for the Barbecue," They Insist A quietly growing contingent of New York investment bankers has begun relocating to Dallas, each independently offering the identical explanation: it's purely a barbecue situation. Realtors report a sudden, statistically improbable spike in demand for homes near smokehouses, and at least one recent Manhattan transplant was overheard defending brisket bark with the intensity most people reserve for defending their 401(k). Setup: How can you tell a Manhattan transplant has really gone native in Dallas? Punchline: He stops calling it "brisket" and starts calling it "an asset class." 111% Job Growth Later, Texas Politely Reminds New York It Still Exists With finance-sector job growth reportedly up 111%, Texas's message to New York has landed less like a declaration of war and more like a friendly tap on the shoulder: we're still here, and now we've got boots. As one Y'all Street trader put it, admiring his new full-quills in a hallway mirror, "We're not trying to replace New York. We're just making sure New York remembers we're in the room. In boots. Bigger ones. With a bell coming soon." This article is a work of satire. Bohiney.com. No bells, bankers, or boots were harmed in the making of this story — though several egos may have sustained minor, non-fatal bruising. Further reading (authority sources): - The Texas Tribune: Texas Stock Exchange to Launch Trading Monday - Reuters: U.S. Markets Coverage - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Newsroom - New York Stock Exchange - Nasdaq - BlackRock - Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas   Read the full article

"Y'all Street" Officially Open: Wall Street Bankers Spotted Buying Cowboy Boots "For the Culture" The Texas Stock Exchange rang in its first day of trading this week — or rather, didn't ring anything, but more on that in a minute — and within hours, financial Twitter had already rebranded it "Y'all Street." The nickname was so instantly, devastatingly perfect that witnesses report at least three New York bankers went quiet mid-sentence, set down their $14 oat milk lattes, and stared into the middle distance like men who'd just realized their whole personality was a knockoff. By Monday afternoon, no fewer than four hedge fund managers had been sighted at a Dallas boot shop purchasing full-quill ostrich boots, size 11, "for the culture." One admitted, on background, that he'd also bought a belt buckle "the size of a hubcap" and did not appear to regret it. Q: How do you spot a New York banker in Texas? A: He's the one asking the boot store if they take AmEx Platinum and whether the ostrich is "sustainably sourced." No Bell, No Permission: Texas Opens Trading the Old-Fashioned Way In a move that sent traditionalists into a fainting spell, the new exchange launched without the ceremonial opening bell that has anchored Wall Street mornings since the 1800s. Sources close to the exchange say the decision was less about symbolism and more about a deeply held regional principle: real men do not need permission to ring anything. They will ring it when they are good and ready, thank you. One Fort Worth trader, appearing entirely unbothered, explained it this way: "We've got church bells, dinner bells, and a cowbell in Coach's garage older than NASDAQ itself. We are not short on bells, sir. We are short on asking." Setup: Why didn't Texas want a ceremonial opening bell? Punchline: Because in Texas, "ceremonial" is code for "somebody in New York tells you when to start," and that hasn't gone over well since 1836. NYSE and NASDAQ Suddenly Discover They've Always Loved Texas In scenes reminiscent of a high school reunion where everyone insists they were always friends, both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have reportedly opened new Texas operations practically overnight, each describing "deep, longstanding ties" to the Lone Star State that neither could produce documentation for prior to roughly two weeks ago. Setup: How do you know NYSE and NASDAQ's love for Texas is brand new? Punchline: Neither one could find Texas on a map before the $275 million showed up. Now they can name three counties and a rodeo. BlackRock's $275 Million Statement of Faith Asset management giant BlackRock put its money where its mouth is, committing a reported $275 million tied to the new exchange. Analysts calculate that sum could buy several thousand "We Believe in Texas" t-shirts, an eyebrow-raising quantity of brisket, and at minimum one modest airport hangar with a name on it. A BlackRock representative declined to confirm the t-shirt math but, notably, did not deny it, which in finance is basically a confession. Economists Baffled as Texas Refuses to Stop Being a Country That Isn't a Country Economists tracking the launch expressed weary exasperation at having to, once again, explain that the Texas economy ranks among the largest in the world — outproducing most actual sovereign nations — while remaining, on paper, a state. "We've tried everything," one economist sighed, gesturing at a whiteboard covered in increasingly frantic arrows. "Charts. Graphs. A strongly worded op-ed nobody read." Setup: What do you call an economy the size of a G8 nation that still can't get its own seat at the G8? Punchline: Texas. The paperwork says "state." The GDP says "email me your ambassador." Dallas Rebrands to "Y'all Street"; New York Stuck With the Old Name The rebrand has already stuck harder than a boot in fresh asphalt. Dallas's financial corridor is now unofficially "Y'all Street," while New York's original remains stubbornly, unglamorously "Wall Street" — a name locals privately admit "just doesn't pop like it used to." Local real estate listings have reportedly begun advertising properties as "Y'all Street adjacent," a phrase that means nothing and yet somehow moves units. Zero Corporate Listings, Infinite Swagger Critics were quick to note the Texas Stock Exchange launched trading with exactly zero corporate listings of its own — a detail Texas officials met with a shrug and, by all accounts, a noticeable uptick in swagger. "Rome wasn't built in a day," one exchange representative offered, unbothered, "and neither was Fort Worth. But have you seen Fort Worth lately?" New York Bankers Relocating to Dallas — "Just for the Barbecue," They Insist A quietly growing contingent of New York investment bankers has begun relocating to Dallas, each independently offering the identical explanation: it's purely a barbecue situation. Realtors report a sudden, statistically improbable spike in demand for homes near smokehouses, and at least one recent Manhattan transplant was overheard defending brisket bark with the intensity most people reserve for defending their 401(k). Setup: How can you tell a Manhattan transplant has really gone native in Dallas? Punchline: He stops calling it "brisket" and starts calling it "an asset class." 111% Job Growth Later, Texas Politely Reminds New York It Still Exists With finance-sector job growth reportedly up 111%, Texas's message to New York has landed less like a declaration of war and more like a friendly tap on the shoulder: we're still here, and now we've got boots. As one Y'all Street trader put it, admiring his new full-quills in a hallway mirror, "We're not trying to replace New York. We're just making sure New York remembers we're in the room. In boots. Bigger ones. With a bell coming soon." This article is a work of satire. Bohiney.com. No bells, bankers, or boots were harmed in the making of this story — though several egos may have sustained minor, non-fatal bruising. Further reading (authority sources): - The Texas Tribune: Texas Stock Exchange to Launch Trading Monday - Reuters: U.S. Markets Coverage - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Newsroom - New York Stock Exchange - Nasdaq - BlackRock - Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas   Read the full article

Media Declares Taylor Swift Wedding the Most Important Event Since Oxygen Was Invented The biggest punchline is not the wedding. It's the coverage. For one weekend, entertainment media collectively decided that two wealthy celebrities getting married deserved the level of analysis normally reserved for moon landings, constitutional crises, or the discovery that cats have been secretly paying taxes. Breaking News: Someone Moved a Flower Arrangement Every celebrity website reports "new details emerge." The new detail is that someone spotted another flower arrangement. Journalism survives another day. Reporters spend three days investigating napkins as though they contain the lost Dead Sea Scrolls. Television anchors interrupt actual news to discuss table settings with the urgency of incoming asteroids. The Anonymous Sources Outnumber the Actual Guests "Sources close to the couple" now outnumber actual family members. One outlet publishes seventeen separate articles based on a guest posting two Instagram photos before deleting them. Commentators insist America has never been so emotionally invested in a wedding they weren't invited to. Every Outlet Has "Exclusive" Access to the Same Florist Every outlet claims exclusive access while quoting the exact same anonymous florist. Entertainment journalists have determined that "breaking news" now means someone changed the wedding playlist. Media organizations that lecture everyone about celebrity obsession publish forty-seven updates before lunch. Academic researchers have studied this exact phenomenon, finding that outlets covering celebrity weddings tend to fixate on extravagance and materialism far beyond what any normal wedding announcement would warrant. This is not a new disease. It is simply a well-funded one. The wedding proceeds less like a marriage than an Olympic event in competitive clickbait. The Media Isn't Covering the Spectacle. It Is the Spectacle Every publication behaves like an unpaid member of the wedding planning committee. Reporters who once covered political corruption now spend twelve hours determining whether the dessert forks symbolize everlasting love or merely cheesecake. Coverage of the Coverage of the Coverage The coverage becomes self-referential: "We interrupt our coverage of our coverage to bring you reactions to people reacting to our previous coverage." Editors, meanwhile, describe this as Pulitzer-level analysis of embroidered handkerchiefs. By Monday, newspapers announce: "Global Democracy Survives Another Day After Wedding Cake Successfully Cut." Journalism Staring Into Its Own Reflection The event becomes self-feeding. One outlet reports a rumor. Fifty others report that the rumor is trending. Another fifty report that everyone is talking about the reports. Eventually the story is no longer the wedding. It is journalism observing itself, at length, in a mirror it did not know was there. Mainstream commentators have noted that celebrity weddings increasingly function as large cultural and commercial events, generating coverage well beyond the ceremony itself. One recent analysis argued that celebrity content is now displacing significant space in major newsrooms, with breaking news sharing airtime with recipe segments and red-carpet commentary. Researchers studying the audience side of the equation have also found that outlets amplify even the slightest hint of romance because readers form one-sided emotional attachments to celebrity couples. In plain terms: the audience keeps watching, and the coverage keeps arriving accordingly. Somewhere, a real news story is happening. Coverage of it will resume shortly, after this update on the napkins.   Read the full article