PEREGRINE PULP

Guy One : "This whole 15-minute city thing is a scam." Guy Two : "Absolutely." Another hour passes. They chat about the weather, politics, sports, and why contemporary popular music is not as good as what they grew up with. Guy One : "Check this out." * Shows pamphlet * "Dream vacation. Look at that. That's eighteen floors. Holds almost 8,000 people ! " Guy Two : "Wow, look at that ! Is that Norwegian?" Guy One : "Carnival." Guy Two : "Right." Guy One : "Wait, look. T

GUY: So, you won the lottery and want to bring power to the world (or just your own city.) You read Our World in Data and find their work compelling. You and the folks in government want to go all-in on a public-private nuclear partnership; after all, nuclear is safe, clean, reliable, and cheap (in the long term). Oh and it’s sexy right now. That helps. Great. What existing reactor do you use as your model? What engineering and construction firms do you go with? How do you g

PRIVACY At the airport. In a lounge between the gates and food court, a young British family alights on a circular couch. Mom is dealing with the six-month-old and dad props up the three-year-old on the couch before quickly stepping away to find a drink. As soon as dad's back is turned the kid immediately hops over the back of the couch, down into the donut-hole of a void and crouching in concealment. Seconds later mom leans over with a look of horror on her face. Her son fou

SPIN Four men, two probably in their 40s and two probably in their 50s or 60s, and a child of about seven or eight are sitting at a table drinking hot beverages. Conversation revolves around cars for some time before transitioning to sports. Eventually politics and the coming election are discussed. "They're going to elect that Bank of England guy." With near-empty cups, the eldest one starts talking about how "Of course the earth don't spin." Two of the men don't respond but

DOGBALL A camper was parked with a guy working on it. The man's dog spotted me coming from almost a block away and, like we were old friends, he ran and grabbed his half deflated volleyball, raced over to me with it. He dropped the ball at my feet and then leapt back, full of wiggle and not looking at me at all but staring intensely at the ball. Of course I booted it, intending to send him on a run. To my surprise the old boy jumped and pulled it out of the air. He quickly pl

Ziggy : I don't know. Is it just me? Tolga : What? Ziggy : Seems all the same people we all watched dedicating the last decade of their lives to the total rectification of language and society and being, or at least defended all that at great expense, are now suddenly on the other side. Tolga : Like running around renaming everything? Ziggy : In part. Sure. From mountains and parks, schools and universities — Tolga : To amateur and professional sports teams — Ziggy : W

Kyagulani Mutumbo : Swift can't sing. Matudana Kyninyi : Totally. No one in the music industry can sing. Kyagulani Mutumbo : Yeah....

So many such odd things these days. So many such things and so very odd that it’s hard to differentiate what is normal and what is perfectly mad. While packing food home from the market yesterday I passed a small house with a crow on its front door. Dead, clearly, crucified-like, the bird had nails, clearly seen at a distance, through its upper arms. The crow looked fresh, with all its feathers clean, intact, and in place. It was as though it was put there with care — rather

CANDISS:  But you could be setting fire to things while adding fuel. BARTHALAHMEU:  What do you mean? C:  Well, you have no information....

NOAH: Someone was telling me how the Gospel of Mark, according to Mark, St. Mark the Evangelist, was originally transmitted by itinerant...

Late one night my wife returned home And my wife, she was without her shoes And so I asked my wife “Wife, where are your shoes?”

ME: Okay, just hear me out. YOU: Fine. ME: Harris takes the stage with Michelle Obama and Oprah. Behind them is a phalanx of lawyers that everyone in that world would recognize. They're, like, filling the whole stage. And every one of them is in their most serious tie. Kamala begins: I stand before you this evening to concede the election to Donald J. Trump. We, myself and the Democratic Party, fought long and hard. And so very many of you were there right alongside us the

EVERY EXPERT:  Putin just has nothing to gain from launching a war with Ukraine. He would never do it. ME:  I don’t know about that. ALL...

March 2014: Mme Dienne LaCarétt, mother of post-neo-colonial orthonarcotics, looked up and down, high and low, walking the length of the long, long rows of tall, tall shelves. And she walked this way back, scouring each spiny wall like a hungry tapir homing in on rotting fruit obscured by fallen leaves. Eventually a librarian noticed, approached, and asked “May I help you find what you’re looking for?” “Nope” said Dienne, crisp and sure, as she walked along. “Have you used th

NADAV: It’s difficult to understand how we aren’t gleefully waltzing toward a global war. VANDANA: And the real thing, not the isolated pseudo-conflicts we’ve been dabbling in for two decades. NADAV: Yeah. VANDANA: Indeed, that’s my sense. And I've been hearing others riffing about this. NADAV: These things just seem to spark off. Do they not? I'm no historian. VANDANA: Folks have to want it, I suppose. But there are loads of triggers and slopes. NADAV: And how many co

*beep-beep* *buzzz* *beep-beep*

NON-FICTION Today, August 22, 2024, a fellow recorded a video on his phone as he witnessed the Marinovka air base, on the Don river in...

You wake up on the floor of a small windowless room. Disoriented, you sit up. You're not sure where you are or how you got there. In front of you is a desk. Hanging on the wall behind the desk is a tattered old poster under glass in a modern frame. The poster reminds you of something from some war you learned something about. In thick black type, the artefact reads: DON'T WORRY YOU'RE FAR TOO SAVVY TO BE MANIPULATED BY PROPAGANDA The image accompanying those words is the head

Narendra :  They’re not trying to hide anything from you, though. Adrenalina :  Aren’t they? Narendra :  They would if they could. For...

Deborahlis : Yeah, I’m calling it ‘goldfishing.’ Cephorrhoea : Goldfish? Deborahlis : Gold-fishing. Not the cracker. Cephorrhoea : Right. Deborahlis : I think of it as the parent phenomena out of which comes things like gaslighting, deepfakes, PR spin, and the like. Cephorrhoea : A goldfish has a three second memory. Deborahlis : Right. Cephorrhoea : Laughter and forgetting. There’ is no past, no future. Deborahlis : Yes. But, of course, it’s not true. Cephorrhoea :