I didn’t win a National Magazine Award last week but Jason Leopold had to spend all of Mikey B-Unit’s billions on FOIA fees to beat me and the American Society of Magazine Editors was still forced to put a picture of humpbacks doing what they’re named for up on the giant screen during its fancy award ceremony, so I think we know who the real winner was.1
If you think I should have won, buy a paid subscription and help me stick it to Mike Bloomberg.
I was just glad to be a finalist, because I could be known for any number of less salubrious things. I could be wearing dresses over pants this summer. I could be one of Los Angeles’s horny clowns, or one of New York’s horny clowns. I could be Ferrari’s first electric car, designed by Jony Ive’s design company to look exactly like Jony Ive’s only design idea: the Apple magic mouse.
I bet the charging port is on the bottom.
It also looks like a Nissan Leaf, which only costs $610,000 less. I could be Steven Rosenbaum’s new book about A.I., “The Future of Truth,” which is full of fake quotes made up by A.I. Or worse, I could be the A.I.-generated2 (and also bad3) 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Caribbean region winner, “The Serpent in the Grove,” which is entirely made of stuff like this:
They called her Zoongie. Maybe it was a name; maybe rain took a shape and decided to keep it. She had the kind of walking that made benches become men. Hair tumbling wild, a dress that caught and released light, laughter with iron under it.
But then at least I wouldn’t be Granta’s even more embarrassing statement about it which says: “We showed Claude.ai the story and asked whether it was AI-generated,” and then goes on to quote Claude’s “analysis” at some length. Bro. Bro. What are we doing? What’s going on? We certainly don’t need A.I. to create award-winning literary short fiction in a world where John Paul Brammer can win the Brammer Prize for Excellence in Landlocked Literature with the excellent landlocked literary short story “Regionally-Specific Award-Winning Short Story,” not to even mention RS Benedict’s “Tiddies.”
Patreon writer “Read” Max Read covered the “Serpent in the Grove” fiasco’s many angles and corners and took a Borgesian tack:
It might be a bridge too far to argue that "The Serpent in the Grove" you can read in Granta is fragmentary and incomplete—that the real "The Serpent in the Grove" is the full transcript between Nazir and his chatbot of choice. But I also feel confident that the transcript would be a stranger, richer, funnier, and more stimulating text than the story as published—or any of the thousands of words written about it since.
It couldn’t be worse than the story as published, I guess. As usual, Hallie Bateman has it right:
Whoops, Claude filed a Form 5150 so now you’re legally Van Halen.
Speaking of being known, did everyone else know who Byron Allen was before last week when he took over the remains of Buzzfeed and took over Stephen Colbert’s time slot and wondered if you were going to finish those fries? Did anyone know that Morgpie got banned for streaming Dark Souls on her feet? Did you know that Don Hertzfeldt just put an HD verson of Rejected on YouTube? Or that Bush’s Baked Beans released a limited edition summertime multipack of dill pickle, apple pie, and rocket pop flavored baked beans? I;m gonna be thinking about thos Beans for a long time, but my spoon is too big.
What Rothko painting is your current weather? “Mutant 'super pig' population spirals out of control in Fukushima nuclear fallout zone.” Sure, why not. “Disembodied human brains used for drug testing.” sUrE, WhY NoT. “Fire Destroys Sacred Buddhist Hall in Japan that Housed ‘Eternal Flame.’” Ok I think we’re done here.
Today’s Song: Billy Woods + Kenny Segal, "Spongebob"
SpongeBob, the whole operation underwater, "It's only one tab," what we said in Tora Bora. I slept really badly last night, I apologize if this newsletter doesn’t make any sense. Joyce Carol Oates follows me on Bluesky @rusty.todayintabs.com. I need more followers who think this sort of thing is funny:
1 Again: it was Jason Leopold.
2 Allegedly.
3 Factually.
