Posted by Jessica M. Goldstein

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/ive-figured-out-what-my-mayoral-run-is-missing-i-need-to-start-sexually-harassing-women

“Cuomo holds his lead one week before primary day, as voters express unease with city’s direction.” — The Manhattan Institute

In case you haven’t heard: I’m running for mayor. I have a vision for our city that focuses on improving the lives of working people. However, recently, it has come to my attention that something is missing from my candidacy. What can I do to demonstrate that I’m serious about holding a higher office?

I need to start sexually harassing women.

Please forgive me for taking so long to figure this out. As has been pointed out by one vocal contingent of people (many of whom likely do not even live in the city but actually reside in suburbs in a different state across the river—a state where, incidentally, my proposed income tax raises are already law), I don’t have as much experience as my opponents. Still, I’ve seen the error of my ways. You have my word: I will prove to you I am the right man to lead our city into the future, not by surging in the polls because my promises resonate with a growing constituency frustrated by the status quo, but by degrading, groping, and kissing the mouth of a woman who works for me—you know, like Italians do.

Sure, it’s all well and good to say that I’ll raise taxes on millionaires to pay for policy ideas like free buses and expanded universal childcare. Blah, blah, blah, so what? This is the big leagues. How is anyone supposed to respect me if I don’t ask a female aide—one of the really young ones, like, younger than my daughters—gross, invasive questions about her sex life? And then make it super clear to her that even though she is very young, she’s not too young for me, as far as I’m concerned?

Why haven’t I done this already? I could say that it’s because I’ve been busy cross-endorsing other candidates who have failed to sexually harass their female underlings. But this isn’t the time or place for excuses. This is the time to stand up and say: I want to be your mayor, and I will spend every waking moment between now and the election aggressively groping any female aide I can get alone. I promise you: I will corner her in my residence, close the door behind us, and my hand will be up her blouse faster than you can say “freeze the rent.”

This is America in 2025. It’s time to put away childish things. We need to let go of the youthful idealism that tells us fairy tales like “we live in a democracy” and “women are people.” We have to live in the real world, where the only qualification that counts, from City Hall to the White House, is: Are you an unrepentant serial sex offender?

When you elect a mayor with a long, harrowing history of sexually harassing women, you send a powerful message to people all over this city: You, too, can treat women like shit—wreck their mental and emotional health, derail their professional lives, traumatize and discard them—and go right back to your life as if nothing ever happened. Because, honestly, who cares? We did care at one point, but we don’t anymore. With your vote, you can remind everyone in your life that what men want is always more important than what women want, or what women don’t want, like when a woman does not want to be molested by her boss.

And I won’t stop there. It’s not enough to subject woman after woman after woman to all this non-consensual sexual contact, relentless leering, and degrading gendered nicknames. I will also retaliate against any woman who rejects my advances or speaks out about her experiences with me. You deserve a mayor who follows through.

I want to make our city more humane, affordable, and accessible. But none of that matters unless I’m doing the real work of sexually harassing as many women as I can get my hands on—literally—between now and Election Day. How many women, you ask? Great question. How does thirteen sound?

Elect me, and I promise that my sexual misconduct won’t stop the day I take office. Quite the opposite. Empowered by your mandate, I’ll just be getting started.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/ive-figured-out-what-my-mayoral-run-is-missing-i-need-to-start-sexually-harassing-women

Posted by McSweeney's

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-q-a-with-tucker-nichols-and-mcsweeneys-art-director-sunra-thompson-about-the-new-book-mostly-everything-the-art-of-tucker-nichols

The first career-spanning book from Bay Area artist Tucker Nichols, Mostly Everything: The Art of Tucker Nichols attempts to capture, in one extravagant volume, decades of the artist’s varied work, from drawings with words, drawings without words, paintings, and sculpture, to large- and medium-scale public works, editorial illustrations, picture books, doodles, notes, charts, lists, and more.

Bound in a luxurious, hard-to-describe double-hardcover book, with two spines and two overlapping cover boards, and clocking in at over three hundred full-color pages, Mostly Everything: The Art of Tucker Nichols contains a lifetime of making that can’t quite be contained.

Today, we’re happy to share an interview with Tucker and McSweeney’s art director Sunra Thompson about the making of the book.

Q: Mostly Everything doesn’t look like other art books. Did you have an image of the final result in your head when you started putting it together?

TUCKER NICHOLS: Not really. I wanted Sunra to lead whatever it was going to become, so I tried not to think too much about the final form. I’ve realized that the launch of any worthwhile project comes with a feeling of being naked and unsure. Without that, I’m probably playing things too safe and might not feel much satisfaction once it’s out in the world. This book mixes so much work from so many different modes in a way that I can’t hide from. I’m exposed, this is me. To be honest, I didn’t know how it was going to feel to look through it all.

SUNRA THOMPSON: We’re kinda beginning this Q and A at the end, but I’ll never forget bringing the finished book to your studio and watching you look through it for the first time. I think you actually had to sit down—I could tell it was a little overwhelming seeing so much of your work together like that, after not having looked at PDFs of it for a few months.

TN: But you managed to make it all feel like it came from the same world. It was a bit jarring to see it all together, but it feels like an accurate account of my output over time. It helps that there’s no sense of scale or dates, just spread after spread of images from all over.

ST: That became the goal of the book, I think: How do we show a reader all the different ways you work and have it all make sense together?

Q: So, how did you go about conceiving of the book with that goal in mind?

ST: It all really started with our first meeting about the project, at the McSweeney’s office. Tucker, our executive director, Amanda Uhle, and I met in the basement of our office, and Tucker started placing note cards on the conference table, one at a time. Each note card had a word or phrase written on it: “sculptures,” “notes,” “body parts,” “green,” “sad.” I think there were about two dozen note cards in all, spread out on the conference table. I still have a photo of them.

The note cards were intended to demonstrate a “problem” of any career-spanning book about Tucker’s work: How do we give readers a sense of all of it and have it all make sense together? And really, my solution was to not solve the problem, or to not solve it completely—to let that aspect of your work (the variety) become what the book was “about.” Basically, I think we tried to make a book that was attempting to categorize your work, but wasn’t quite succeeding.

Q: Once you had the basic concept, how did you pick the art for each category?

ST: I tried to look at as much of Tucker’s work as possible. He probably sent me thousands of images of his work. I also visited his studio in San Rafael many times, looking through piles of drawings and opening boxes of many more. At the beginning, I thought the book might be a thousand pages, with dozens of categories. For practical reasons, though, we decided to focus on just a few representative categories.

The hope for the categories was that most of the work they contained would feel like it belonged there—there would be pie chart drawings in the diagrams category, mountain paintings in the landscapes category. But then, every once in a while, there’d be something that didn’t seem to fit. The flora category, for example, has paintings of flowers, large-scale floral murals, and then a photo of multicolored ropes and wires “blooming” from a rusty tin can.

Actually, I’d say that, once we agreed on the concept for the book, 90 percent of our conversations were about this interplay within the categories. Making sure each category had a balance of work that clearly fit the categories and work that did not fit the categories.

Another thing we tried in each category was to weave Tucker’s word art throughout most of them. That was one way we attempted to tie all the work in the book together.

Q: The physical book is unconventional, with two spines and two covers, one of which folds out onto your lap while you look at the pages inside. Was that hard to explain to the printer?

ST: The idea for the form came directly from this concept we had for the book: that it would be trying (and failing) to categorize an artist’s work. If the concept for the book was that the person organizing the book’s contents wasn’t sure how to do that, maybe the person who constructed the book itself also wasn’t totally sure how to make a book.

At first, I thought maybe the book’s cover could open the correct way (to the left), but then the interior would open the wrong way (to the right), as though the book-maker had placed the interior inside the book the wrong way. So I asked our printer to make a dummy book like that, with an interior that was turned the wrong way. But when I got the dummy, I realized that you’d have to read the book backwards if the interior opened toward the right, which seemed awkward. After living with the dummy that the printer made—flipping through it and showing it to Tucker and carrying it around—the book just naturally started getting flipped upside down, so that the cover opened the wrong way (to the right) but the interior opened the correct way (to the left). That happy accident solved the problem.

TN: McSweeney’s has a reputation for challenging the book form. When Sunra brought the dummy book to my studio, I couldn’t help but like how it made the book confusing in just the right way. With both covers closed, it feels like a mysterious box. We don’t need our art books to be efficient—we just want to drop into an imagined world and look at the pictures.

Q: Most career-spanning art books have introductions and essays by famous writers and curators. This book doesn’t even have information about the titles or sizes of the artworks. Why isn’t there any written information in the book?

TN: From the start, we all agreed that few people read essays in art books. Many of the people who do are lying. We didn’t want to waste space in the book on something less compelling than the images. And I prefer seeing art without much information.

ST: There were moments when we wondered if we should have some basic information about the images. I think we even toyed around with a pretty exhaustive index at one point. But every time we started down that road, it just felt perfunctory.

Q: Is it true that every copy has a double-sided original painting in the shape of a bookmark, hand-painted by Tucker?

TN: Yes, at least for the first edition. We’ll see if I can pull it off in any reprints.

Q: Is it true that a limited number of these books will have customized covers, hand-drawn by Tucker?

ST: Yes! We printed a small quantity of the book without the photo on the front, so that Tucker could draw directly on the cover. He’s drawing all of these covers in his studio, by hand, and each cover will be unique. You can get one here, while they’re still available.

Q: So what is Mostly Everything about?

ST: I think this book is maybe about the difficulty of categorizing an artist’s—any artist’s—work? I think the book is also about art books themselves. Those are two grandiose-sounding claims! But it was something I thought about a lot while working on it: how art books (I guess all books, but art books too) create narratives about artists partly by leaving things out. Maybe because art books tend to have a thesis they’re trying to prove, they can sometimes feel prescriptive about how the work is presented. So it was fun to try and present all the different ways one artist makes things without trying to wrap a theory around it.

TN: Yes, to me, it’s a deep dive into one person’s obsessive art-making habits, relayed with a vague sense of organization that ultimately doesn’t help much. My favorite creative people simply can’t stop making whatever it is they make. It’s how we manage to exist in the face of so much global and personal tumult. So this is a book of my own prolific output, but I think it’s ultimately about how making things is a way of building an alternative world, a way of existing, I suppose. The ability to create might be my favorite human attribute. This morning, I made a drawing of a bowl overflowing with fruit-like orbs. It’s not special—maybe I’ll send it to a friend or toss it in the bin—but it wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t felt the urge to make something. What is that? Can it be useful? It is for me.

The art market doesn’t know what to do with prolific artists. Dealers need to create value for artwork that is inherently worthless, so they often create a fiction of scarcity by limiting how much work by a given artist the world sees. I understand the concept, but I think it’s stupid. I’ve even heard about artists at blue-chip galleries getting paid to not make work in a given year. That sounds like psychological torture to me, but I bet it’s nice to have a waiting list for your work. This book is a response to art books that try to tell us why something is important or valuable. Mostly Everything refuses to make a point beyond “here’s a wide group of things we think look good together.” Nobody but McSweeney’s would do something like that.

Preorder Mostly Everything from our store. It comes out this July, with copies mailing prior to release.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-q-a-with-tucker-nichols-and-mcsweeneys-art-director-sunra-thompson-about-the-new-book-mostly-everything-the-art-of-tucker-nichols

Posted by Emily Kapp and Daniel Stillman

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/welcome-to-westillwork-the-nursing-home-for-people-who-cant-afford-to-retire

Looking forward to your golden years, but afraid you’ll never be able to afford it? Our state-of-the-art facility offers elderly corporate drones the comfort of a living space with the same lack of character as an office cubicle. Be surrounded by like-minded residents like yourself, who will be working on their laptops to pay off their bills until the day they die.

Amenities

We did everything we could to re-create the best of the environment you spent seventy years toiling away in with the following amenities:

• Flexible Leases. Although we want you to stay as long as possible (for financial purposes), we know you may feel uneasy signing a twelve-month lease. That’s why we offer day-to-day leases for our touch-and-go members. Whether you get fired or die (whatever comes first), we’ll accommodate you.
• Playpen for Your Grandkids While You Work. The golden years are all about reconnecting with family. Now that you’re retired, it’s time to step into full-time Grandparent Mode (PTO permitting). If your grandkids come to visit, but you’re still grinding over that spreadsheet, no fear—we have a Fun Room that any kid will love: wooden blocks, one singular Barbie with its head ripped off, and a TV from 2002 that doesn’t work. The grands will be having too much of a blast in the Fun Room that they won’t even remember they didn’t know you that well when you’re dead.
• IT Support from Your Next-Door Neighbor, Hank. You thought they were nonverbal when they were young and spry, just wait until you receive the speedy, comprehensive PDF-opening service support they give you while they’re in hospice.
• On-the-Clock Job Coaches for When You’re Fired for Being Too Old. At WeStillWork, we know ageism is real. But as we say here, “You still gotta pay the bills.” That’s why we have on-site job coaches to help you find your next gig when you get canned from your current one for hugging the vice president of HR uncomfortably long.

Testimonials

“I was worried that because I was terminally ill at ninety-six years old, I wouldn’t be able to keep my job as a graphic designer. Thanks to WeStillWork, I’m still able to bring value to the shareholders and have as much cold brew as my third heart transplant can handle.”
— Connie, graphic designer, 96 years old

“Someone like me loved going to the office five days a week—hell, six days a week if I was lucky—because I hated my wife and kids. Now that I’m at WeStillWork, they never visit me, and I couldn’t be happier!”
— Bob, digital marketing manager, 85 years old

“WeStillWork makes it easy to both live and work. I just got off my yearly performance review call, while Stephanie, my night nurse, bathed me. Flexibility at its finest.”
— Gus, social media influencer, 81 years old

“Retirement never seemed like something that would be in my reach, and it still isn’t. But at WeStillWork, now I can continue to work fifteen-hour days, and occasionally indulge in building perks like Thursday-night bingo.”
— Sally, Hot Topic customer service representative, 72 years old

FAQs

How do I become a resident?
Just because you didn’t hit your KPIs in a normal office doesn’t mean it’s over. You may have just needed a change in scenery. Does that sound like you? In addition to proof of a job, you must show proper documentation that you’ve had an extremely uncomfortable and combative conversation with family who felt it was time to put you here. Members are not allowed to come on their own free will, just like the classic and mandatory in-office five-day-a-week attendance policy. WeStillWork offers kidnapping as an add-on service and will be charged as an initiation fee.

Are there networking events?
A common misconception is that coworking at WeStillWork is their last chapter, but really, it’s just another. We offer several networking events a year with recruiters from the best employers from heaven, purgatory, and hell to assist you with a future job search when you’ve fulfilled your earthly duties.

Is there a cafeteria?
Yes. We offer a large selection of expired granola bars, overripe bananas, and nutritious potato chips so that our residents can maintain their brittleness as they finish their lives off utterly defeated and working for someone who doesn’t care whether they live or die.

So what are you waiting for (other than the sweet release of death, of course)? Reimagine your work-life balance and apply for a kidnapping to WeStillWork today.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/welcome-to-westillwork-the-nursing-home-for-people-who-cant-afford-to-retire

Posted by Ashley K. Frantik

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/were-the-g7-finance-ministers-and-everythings-great

“The leaders of the Group of 7 nations—Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States—now will have to confront the fallout from another war in the Middle East: increased instability, surging oil prices and the possibility that Iran will respond with new terror attacks around the world.”
— New York Times

In preparation for this year’s summit, we, the G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, had an extremely chill, productive, and in no way tense meeting a couple of weeks ago in Banff, Alberta, and we just want to reassure the global community that, no matter what you may have heard, everything is great. Smooth sailing. Couldn’t be better.

Like, whoo boy, yes, the current global financial situation looks rough, but we know what we’re doing. Of course, we know how to handle this and are not totally in way over our heads. The whole point of this G7 thing is to encourage strong economic relationships in the face of international trade uncertainty, and we have no idea why you would think we might be struggling with that. Frankly, it’s hurtful. This is our thing; we are thriving.

Sure, when we were founded to facilitate shared global initiatives in response to contemporary economic problems, we didn’t anticipate that one of us would go right off the fucking deep end and never come back. But even if that were to happen, it would totally be fine. But it’s not because everything is fine. Please stop asking if everything will be fine. Because it is and it will be. Why wouldn’t it be? Why would you think that?

So, we met to coordinate policy responses, which is definitely not a professional way of saying “made direct eye contact over a cheese plate while silently screaming,” and managed to address global economic imbalances without directly mentioning any specific countries that might be entirely responsible for the mess that we aren’t in. We call that “fiscal restraint,” and it’s all part of the plan. Very advanced macroeconomic maneuver. We got this.

There’s been some chatter about our waning relevance vis-à-vis organizations like the G20, but as the OG, uh, G, we know a thing or two about symbolic competence and control. So, yep, we have everything running smoothly. But if you happen to have any suggestions on how to baby-proof these super solid guidelines that rely on multinational cooperation and goodwill, we could take a look. Not that we need any help. Because everything’s going really well, and we all get along just super. It’s not as if the leader of a key member nation is going to show up and refuse to sign anything we’ve drafted. Wouldn’t that be wild if that was a thing that absolutely happened before that could totally happen again, and we were freaking out about that right now? Because we’re not—that would be so silly. CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Hey, remember when we had eight members? We don’t. Russia? Never even heard of ’er. Like sure, having a representative like that around to strong-arm a specific leader who will not be named into falling in line might be helpful, but we don’t need that. Why would we need something like that? We love working together. We text constantly. Sometimes in all caps, but like, friendly normal all caps. YOU KNOW HOW IT IS, HAHAHAHAH.

In fact, we are so not worried that we added a fun little paragraph in our official communiqué here about AI. Isn’t that just so fun? Everyone loves AI. It’s so good at doing what it’s told and not being a stubborn jackass who tanks the world economy. Not like that’s a thing anyone has to worry about here! Where everything is so normal and fine. And fun! We just have so much fun here. So. Much. Fun.

We are so, totally, completely prepared for the summit, you have no idea. Kananaskis is beautiful, and nothing is literally or figuratively on fire. It’s going to be so good. Like, historically fine. We’re fine. We’re doing great. Everything is great.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/were-the-g7-finance-ministers-and-everythings-great