Vol 6, Issue 1: readme the dog gets it (PDF)
the issue in which we get in trouble with CMU Marketing and Communications
Rejected Headlines
- CMU student confused by other college: "I didn't know Penn was in Pittsburgh!"
- CMU student folds up into a cube and powers down
- A Freshman's Guide to Communal Bathroom Etiquette
- Strip club entirely bereft of copper wire
- Professor brilliantly evades no smoking policy with chalk cigarette
- CMU announces tuition freeze, students to keep paying forever
- Giant Eagle to incinerate your groceries if you don't donate 5 cents to starving kids
- LLM passes Turing Test by replying “sorry, just saw this” after four days
All this and more, not in this issue!
The War on South Craig Street
“I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It's my job.” Oliver Wendell Holmes.
By the summer of 2026, Avirat Kohli had had enough. Two great armies were converging on his Indian grocery, and what would become the first and only battle of the South Craig Street War —‘Scraig,’ or ‘that stuff behind Tepper,’ as CMU students called it —would soon rage across his doorstep. Before the day was over, an Earl Grey tea would explode in the lentil aisle. “I would have shut my doors,” …
A Grad Student's Guide to PA Liquor Laws
Congratulations on starting grad school! It’s like freshman year all over again, except now you’re old, and alcohol isn’t new and cool anymore. On the bright side, getting your hands on a drink should at least be significantly easier this time around, right?
Wrong. The state of Pennsylvania is doing its best to replicate your experience of buying alcohol as a teenager. The PA Liquor Control Board is an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnimalicious force that stands between you and your cold ones. It acts in nefarious ways that will make themselves increasingly known to you the longer you spend …
The Death of a CFA Grass Farmer
The barren time comes every year and we are never ready. No matter how hard we labor, our stores only dwindle. Futility strokes my dingus with her cold hands, never granting me the mercy of release. We cannot outwork the famine. We cannot outrun the tent.
It comes every August. We wake to the sound of construction. We rise to see a monstrous shadow blocking out the sun. The tent looms. Its shape suggests a church, but it is unholy. Its walls are virgin white, but it is depravity manifest. Beneath its vinyl floor lies our very sustenance. Each …
CMU to increase free speech "by any force necessary"
A core pillar of our democracy and liberty has always been the right to freedom of expression. The Founding Fathers famously freed speech from its shackles of Europeanism with the signing of the 1st amendment (unfreed slaves notwithstanding).
Carrying on this tradition, CMU president Farnam Jahanian announced, “CMU is firmly committed to raising free speech on campus by 110% in the next 2 years.” The announcement comes shortly after controversy over CMU banning students from painting the Fence with any part of their bodies except the buttocks, a decision critics condemned as encouraging “Fence-sitting.”
After acknowledging the rightful …
Readme's Readme
# README
World-renowned satire magazine at Carnegie Mellon University, published every two weeks, unless we’re feeling particularly funny in which case we skip an issue. Originally a way for founder Gerald Readme to evangelize their hardline Pittsburgh separatist beliefs, it has since turned into a way for students to make the least of their print quota.
Per our out-of-court settlement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Readme is legally interdicted from printing the truth or any part of the truth. As such, owing to their studies, all philosophy majors are disallowed from contributing to the magazine. Students majoring in …
KGB "Scav Hunt" data trains AI to assist in ground invasion
A campus event named ‘Scav Hunt’ by the KGB, a student organization, has come under fire after data from the venue was allegedly used to train an AI model, rumoured to potentially assist in a ground invasion of Doherty Hall.
While event-goers reported being "mildly amused” and unsuspicious, likely due to the KGB's historically luddite and, frankly, backwater attitude regarding generative AI, students were shocked to discover that the seemingly innocuous body cams given to all participants had taken a detailed record of their activities and the labyrinthine interior of Doherty Hall.
This is particularly alarming news as …
Scotty's Obituary
Scotty Dog passed away on the night of August 25th from the terrible disease of two bullets to the side of the head. She was born in 2007 in Calgary, Canada to two Scottish Terriers who are both deeply mourning her passing. In 2008, the family decided Pittsburgh would be a better city for their child to grow up in, not knowing that the apathy of its college students would lead to her untimely demise.
Scotty was an enthusiast of CMU’s athletic department. She was a delight to have at every match she went to, which was all of …
Study finds local tavernkeeps no longer dominant information source for questgoers
The Tavern—a place that has always been associated with methodical research. But, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, tavernkeeps are no longer nearly as popular among the adventuring populace. I sat down with local guildmaster, Bjork Sideweih, to find out why:
BS: Back in the 50’s, tavernkeeps were just the only way for the average American to find out about important quests. Oracles were too infrequent, wizard consults were unaffordable—it all came down to the tavern.
RM: So what was the turning point?
BS: There was no one clear turning point, but a slow …
