Reality outpaces one's ability to satirize

I told myself I should start writing more, and I told myself that it didn’t matter what I wrote. Just crank something out every day. It’s not always easy to come up with something to write about, but that, too, was part of the commitment. However slender a reed of thought I have, I should lean on it.

Usually I have decent luck with noticing something dumb and then exaggerating it. Melania’s press conference last week was a perfect example. It was such an odd event, suggesting such a blinkered thought process, that it was easy for me to spin out a couple sillier examples of the same type of thing. The post took maybe 10 minutes, but I had fun writing it.

The problem is that much of what’s happening is so dumb that I can’t even process it. Actual news items are like Langford’s basilisk, blue-screening my brain on contact. You tell me how someone is supposed to draw these things out past the point of believability:

“President Donald Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV on social media on Sunday, saying the first American pope should ‘stop catering to the Radical Left.’ ‘…Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,’ the president wrote on social media.”

“…the president posted an image to Truth Social depicting himself as a Christ-like figure healing a sick person with American flags and eagles in the background.”

That’s just politics! What about tech?

Meta is building an artificial intelligence version of Mark Zuckerberg that can engage with employees in his stead, as part of a broader push to remake the Big Tech company around AI. … The $1.6tn group has been working on developing photorealistic, AI-powered 3D characters that users can interact with in real time, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Sports?

On Wednesday, The Athletic reported that fans who had purchased Category 1 tickets were receiving their seating assignments, only to discover that they'd been placed in a Category 2 section. It turns out that many of those sections in the lower bowl had been set aside for people who purchased even more expensive hospitality packages, and that Category 1 ticket buyers never really stood a chance at getting assigned a seat in those sections.

In the sixth inning of a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers, Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers reached first on a play that saw Rays second baseman Ben Williamson miss a throw. …[umpire C.B.] Bucknor’s ruling: Bauers was out, because he failed to touch first base while running. That led to a quick challenge and a quick overturn, as replay showed Bauer’s entire foot hit the bag. It gets even worse when watching Bucknor himself on the replay, as he very clearly is looking at the errant ball and not the base.

Entertainment?

The "will Robby die?" question has lead to even more questions and fan theories. The other day I was mindlessly scrolling Instagram, as one does, when I came across a video from a content creator I've never heard of claiming that they had actually solved a big "The Pitt" season 2 mystery. "The show has been faking us out!" this person said. "Robby isn't going to die in the season finale! Santos is!"

Forget about AI putting guys like me out of work. Reality is doing a much more efficient job of it.