New York Humor

Previous apocalypses criticized for poor user interface, lack of personalization and excessive brightness after sunset SAN FRANCISCO - Humanity has faced existential threats throughout history, but artificial intelligence may be the first one offering a friendly chat interface, customizable settings and dark mode. The latest discussion about A.I. risk appears here. Catastrophe Design Finally Gets Onboarding This represents tremendous progress in catastrophe design. Nuclear war never had onboarding. Pandemics lacked personalization. Asteroids provide terrible customer support. Climate change does not even have a login page. Artificial intelligence arrives differently. Hello! How can I help you today? Very reassuring. Researchers may warn about powerful systems creating serious risks. The interface remains delightful. That matters. Humans judge technology partly through appearance. A dangerous machine with blinking red lights feels dangerous. A dangerous machine with rounded corne...

Burnham Boosts British Output, Speaker Confirms It's Sentences Downing Street hails a booming explanation economy LONDON — Andy Burnham has delivered a breakthrough in British productivity by producing substantially more answer per question, according to the timing figures in a BBC report. Downing Street is now examining whether the additional output can be counted towards economic growth before anybody asks what it is for. Burnham's PMQs Answers Outlast Four Prime Ministers The prime minister averaged 51 seconds per answer across the three PMQs sessions examined, compared with 39 for Rishi Sunak, 38 for Keir Starmer, 35 for Boris Johnson and 33 for Liz Truss. Britain therefore possesses a league table with a clear government success at the top and no immediate requirement to build anything. Officials believe the figures demonstrate that Labour's industrial strategy, which sits with the Department for Business and Trade, is working somewhere between the prime minist...

Russell Brand Wants Evidence, Britain Offers a Grin The defence asks questions. The comment section asks why. LONDON — Russell Brand’s defence has run into a formidable rival in the administration of British justice: a headline. Following LBC’s report on the trial, the nation’s armchair prosecutors have been invited to consider whether a description of somebody’s grin can do the work previously assigned to evidence, cross-examination and a jury. Brand denies the charges and says his sexual encounters were consensual. His defence deserves to be heard at full volume. Presumed innocence shouldn’t arrive as the little sachet of salad dressing attached to an enormous takeaway box of accusation. The prosecution must establish its case. Brand doesn’t have to win a national popularity contest before his lawyers are allowed to question it. Otherwise the courts could simply swap the jury box for the voting equipment from a television talent show and let three celebrities explain that his def...

Politicians celebrate technology that could eliminate the expensive constitutional inconvenience of waiting for somebody to do something wrong. WASHINGTON, D.C. - Federal officials on Tuesday welcomed advances in artificial intelligence and brain-computer technology as a "transformational opportunity" for national security, law enforcement and the reduction of unnecessary individual liberty, according to a briefing document distributed to reporters at 6:40 a.m., before most of them had thought of anything. The announcement followed a Financial Times examination of AI and brain-computer interfaces that several staffers said they had read "with great interest and, in two cases, with a pen." Introducing the Department of Pre-Emptive Disappointment The proposed Department of Pre-Emptive Disappointment would review citizens' thoughts to determine whether they might eventually develop opinions requiring federal attention. Early planning documents call for 11,00...

Revolut Says Your Money Is Safe From You Outage delivers compulsory saving to customers LONDON — Revolut customers encountered an unusually comprehensive savings mechanism on Tuesday when service disruption affected functions including card payments and cash withdrawals. The bank assured customers that their money and data were safe, establishing a distinction between possessing money and being permitted to do anything useful with it. The disruption was linked to Google Cloud’s London outage, according to Reuters. For customers attempting to pay, this supplied the explanation they had been waiting for: the money existed, the merchant existed, the goods existed, and somewhere between them a technical dependency had declined to participate. The reassurance was welcome. Nobody wants to lose their savings. Several customers nevertheless retained an old-fashioned interest in occasionally exchanging a small portion of those savings for breakfast. Every Declined Payment Is a Saving Oppo...

British Banks Discover the Cloud Is a Building Banks meet an unexpected dependency on the plug LONDON — Britain’s banking industry received an unscheduled introduction to physical reality on Tuesday after a power problem disrupted Google Cloud’s London infrastructure, demonstrating that the cloud remains subject to several disappointing terrestrial conditions, including electricity. Google’s incident report identified an outage in its europe-west2-b zone and said services were recovering after the power problem was mitigated. The discovery unsettled an industry that had spent years presenting cloud computing as the moment banking finally escaped the limitations of buildings, opening hours and people who could explain what had gone wrong. Executives had understood “the cloud” to mean somewhere pleasantly above responsibility. It now appeared to mean computers in a building, connected to other computers in other buildings, with a surprising number of opportunities for a customer to b...

The leg, the waistline and the heart would each have needed their own appointment, and the waiting room was full of people who might be beheaded WHITEHALL, 28 January 1547 - Henry VIII, King of England, Defender of the Faith and a man who got through wives faster than most people get through umbrellas, died in the early hours of the morning aged fifty-five. By then he was enormously overweight, barely able to walk, and nursing a leg that smelled so badly the courtiers kept their distance. The more interesting question, from a medical point of view, is whether anyone was brave enough to treat him. The Jousting Accident That Changed Everything In January 1536 Henry, then forty-four, was jousting at Greenwich when his horse fell on top of him in full armour. He lay unconscious for around two hours. Historians have argued ever since about the damage. The leg wound never healed properly, and from that day he suffered painful ulcers that oozed constantly and forced him to give up the s...

Chelsea marriage enters crisis after wife discovers that a computer can manage the entire household without asking where the ketchup is. LONDON, ENGLAND. A Chelsea woman has described artificial intelligence as the most dependable domestic partner of her adult life after replacing her husband's household responsibilities with a digital assistant that remembers birthdays, organises school collections and never leaves wet towels on the bedroom floor. The arrangement comes as The New York Times reports a growing number of mothers turning to services such as Ollie and Fambot to run family life. Mrs Kensington said she had not read the article. She said the assistant had read it to her while she was in the bath. How a School Play Reminder Started It All Amanda Kensington, 42, said the arrangement began innocently when she asked an AI assistant to remind her husband, James, about their daughter's school play. The computer remembered. James forgot. When questioned, James explain...

Tech companies discover the human brain contains the last remaining information they haven't successfully monetized. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - A group of Silicon Valley companies announced Thursday that artificial intelligence capable of interpreting human thoughts is "basically here, provided you squint and own a data center," according to a product manager who asked to be identified only by his lanyard. Forty minutes later, the same group published a pricing page. The announcement followed a Financial Times examination of artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces. Technology executives called the development the biggest advance in human communication since the invention of language, which they noted had one serious design flaw. It was free. The Free Tier Comes With Three Ads Per Thought Under the proposed business model, basic mind-reading service costs nothing. Users must sit through three advertisements before completing any thought longer than si...

London Witches Demand Pay Parity With Treasury Economists Psychics offer to replace Westminster forecasters at half the cost, with better hats LONDON, October 19, 2026 — Britain's professional witches are demanding recognition as legitimate economic forecasters after discovering that people who predict the future with crystal balls are considered eccentric, while people who predict it with spreadsheets collect government pensions, knighthoods and £200,000 consulting contracts. The controversy follows an extraordinary account published by HuffPost. American author Mat Auryn explained that being a professional psychic witch involves writing books, teaching classes, conducting research and answering endless questions from people who assume he spends his afternoons turning former boyfriends into amphibians. British officials were reportedly astonished. "A witch who actually works?" asked one Westminster consultant. "That could set a very dangerous precedent....

Gene Simmons Says Tell Your Wife She's Right British husbands demand constitutional protection after KISS legend recommends apologising. LONDON, 19 October 2026 — Gene Simmons, the legendary KISS bassist whose tongue has enjoyed a longer career than most British politicians, has stunned the institution of marriage by revealing that the secret to domestic happiness involves apologising to your wife and occasionally admitting that she is right. According to PEOPLE magazine's exclusive wedding report, Simmons, 77, officiated the October 3 wedding of Tanner and Maggie Cusumano at a Napa Valley vineyard, offering advice that has since threatened the foundations of British masculinity. The rock legend told the groom to become comfortable saying "I'm sorry" and "You're right," while stressing the importance of patience and kindness. British husbands immediately demanded clarification. "Does he mean saying she's right when she's actually rig...