The Bad News

I usually cover the mundanity of my pedestrian, everyman life in this space. For a change of pace, I thought I’d cast my gaze further abroad, and share something far more unique to you, the great and intelligent readers of the Duzett Gazette; something you hear about every day, but never truly encounter yourself: the news.

For those who aren’t aware, the news is all the stuff that they plaster on your homepages and trending topics and on that old, big rectangular thing that you usually use to play Netflix, before you skip past it to look up if dogs can eat bananas. As a rule, the news is very boring, usually irrelevant, and a serious downer, which makes me wonder why the news has any market share at all. I think it has something to do with cigars and/or suspenders.

A typical person’s typical interaction with the news is a single conversation each day. It goes like this:

“Have you seen the news?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Can you believe it?”

“Oh, no.”

This has been the codified interaction between normal people for years. But I ruined it all the other day when someone asked me if I’d seen the news, and I blurted out “the WHAT????”

Now everybody thinks I’m a lizard person, and what’s worse is nobody believes that I know what the news even is, let alone that I’ve seen it or am unable to believe it. And it occurred to me that I can’t be the first person with this problem. I’m sure there are dozens of non-lizard people who, like me, find themselves floundering like a handicapped, breakdancing fish on a deck when asked about the news.

So I have taken it upon myself to produce last week’s news, so that we can have extremely normal interactions and prove once and for all how non-lizard we are.

Unfortunately, I am not very good at news. So please just think of this news report as the bad news.

In international news, Reuters reports that North Korea has successfully launched a spy satellite into orbit this week. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un says he’s excited to use the satellite to spy on popular South Korean boy band BTS so he can, quote, “study their secret moves.” According to reports, the ruthless dictator’s favorite member of BTS is Jungkook, who he plans on sparing when he invades their country and kills everyone else. (Wow, what an original choice.)

Last week, President Biden came under fire for what is just the latest in a long line of reckless, short-sighted actions: turning 81 years old. This controversial move comes just a year after another of his most heavily criticized decisions, when he turned 80. Critics point to a clear pattern of escalation; doesn’t the President know where this leads? But White House spokespeople assured the public that he has always been this old, accounting for inflation.

Administration officials also defended the president’s stamina and wisdom, saying that he’s sharp as ever and that mentally, he’s still three steps ahead. Which is probably why mentally, instead of seeming 81, he carries himself like a mature 107.

In entertainment news: When a local high school celebrated “Adam Sandler spirit day”, Adam Sandler surprised a student by showing up and giving them the shirt off his back. Unfortunately, he forgot that wrapped in his shirt were old pizza crusts, traces of illegal narcotics, and even worse, copies of two of his recent movies.

Elon Musk somehow manages to find himself in the news again this week. He’s suing liberal advocacy group Media Matters for a report that illustrated how paid advertisements on X–the social media website formerly known as Twitter–show up next to posts by hate groups like Neo Nazis–the group formerly known as Nazis.

Musk says the report is malicious and inaccurate. But he may have hurt his case when he tweeted support for someone who claimed that Jews hate white people, drawing cries of antisemitism–the behavior formerly known as “basically being a Nazi.”

In other tech news, CEO Sam Altman was ousted from OpenAI, the company responsible for the popular and groundbreaking AI service ChatGPT. According to reports, the decision was made because he kept prompting ChatGPT things like “Give me 20 different ways to conquer the planet by using AI,” and “How to ensure robots still give you a nice position among the other humans after the robot revolution.”

Altman was quickly reinstated after nearly 800 employees all signed a letter demanding his return. According to reports, the letter is oddly similar to many other demand letters publicly available on the internet, and for some strange reason, most of the signatories have weird numbers of fingers on their hands.

AND THAT’S THE BAD NEWS! Tune in next time for WORSE NEWS!

This article first appeared in the Duzett Gazette, the really official newsletter of Carl Duzett. Sign up here to get more content like this in your inbox, as well as some other content that isn’t quite like it, but is probably also good.

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