Alex Werth
God's silliest soldier and most powerful poster creator
Mechanical, Biomedical, & Secret Third Kind of Engineering, 2028
Bio
I study things that let me build things. I do an unhealthy amount of clubs.
Do not throw food in the enclosure.
Known Aliases:
Alexander Wieland Werth, Alexander Wilhelm Werth, Alexandra Warner Werth, Alexander ‘Wasseranalogon Des Reinkarnationszyklus’ Werth
Fun Fact
borger :thumbs_up:
Previous Work
Beloved Football Chants At CMU
The Kiltie Marching Band wants blood. Despite, on paper, being the unassuming pep band for CMU’s respectable football team, firsthand experience brings out their reality; that the Kilties are a barely-restrained rabid mob. Observe the chants they call out at games, taunting the other team and wishing destruction upon them. Nothing is a better example of our school spirit.
Mrs. Gerlach’s cheer!
Go, go! Maim em’, maim em’!
Go, go, go, maim em’ maim em’
Rip off their legs! [Clap x3]
Rip off their legs! [Clap x3]
Why this chant was named after the beloved old wife of the previous band director, we have yet to find out.
The Laser cheer!
Laser pointer!
Laser beam!
Laser surprise! [Clap x2]
Get up in their faces and
Burn out their eyes! [Clap x2]
A football game will occasionally take place around 7 in the evening, in which case, this chant is a Kiltie favorite. Kilties like to turn on their phone flashlights for this one.
The Facial Mutilation cheer!
Deface them, deface them!
Render them unrecognizable!
This chant has yet to be deployed in this academic year: perhaps if we learn one of the opposing players is a bit of a looker, we will see it emerge.
The Blood, Guts, and Gore cheer!
Blood, blood! Guts and gore!
What d’you think those cleats are for?
We beg and plead, but the football players never do anything fun.
History's first booth
HUNT SPECIAL - Carnegie Mellon University’s springtime Carnival brings with it many beloved traditions, perhaps most recognizable of all, Booth, a weeklong mad sprint through constructing marvelously untrustworthy houses. But did you know that the roots of booth trace back to far before CMU’s founding? Back before the scientists of our society had invented steel, universities, or Scotsmen, one ancient society was building immense, elaborate towers and tearing them down in a hurry, a practice that has traced its way to our school today. Chasing the roots of CMU’s most beloved culture, we come to explore the city of Babylon.
CMU historians argue that Babylon’s legendary Tower of Babel, and its rapid unplanned disassembly in the second millennium, represents both the thematic and literal origin of the Booth tradition. Most objectively, CMU historians traced the westward adoption of caffeinated tea and largescale fermentation in pottery towards its convergence point on the lower Euphrates, which scholars theorize led to Babylon developing the remarkable insanity to begin construction. To this day, a similar concoction powers booth-building CMU students through what are, to a healthy citizen, hallucinogenic levels of sleep deprivation. The further parallels between the structures built both then and now are remarkable, leading our historians to envision that the modern resurgence of Booth in 1914 looked back towards history for inspiration. And despite the theological questions raised by the debatably divine nature of Babylon’s first ever teardown, various scholars take the point in stride: “If anyone could so directly affront God with a house alone, it would be a true CMU student.” And yet, the Spring Carnival Committee has yet to authorize a booth over two stories tall. Perhaps we have learned, despite ourselves.
SDC BUGGY NOTICE BOARD Freshmen Job Openings
SDC BUGGY Inexperienced working freshmen wanted! Inquire with us for:
STRONG SECURITY NEEDED for intellectual property protection on rolls, race mornings. Must be steadfast, relatively uncurious, good with cold. PAY MARGINAL, EXPERIENCE INVALUABLE. For full particulars see [Redacted], arrive with jacket.
TONGUE-TIED? APPLY NOW in official Deer In Headlights capacity. Looking for committed actors, authentic anxious wrecks, to maintain SDC external reputation. Build secret sharers will be BOOTED, protectors HANDSOMELY REWARDED. Apply direct: prepare lip-quiver for inspection.
FIELD TRAINING – Splendid opportunities to train youths in ag. trade of hay growing, cutting, baling. Short training; constant vacancies; room and PPE provided. Hours early but precious, ENGAGED YOUNG FARMERS ONLY!
MICHAELANGELO NEEDED! Students of Art disciplines and dispositions; wanted for design of upcoming buggy paint job. Renaissance, Klint, hex-code, Adobe Photoshop familiarity needed. Temp position; limited slots. GREAT DESIGNS, GREAT REWARDS! Mail application with enclosed color swatch (Singular) to student SMC 54.
I used to hate French People
I used to hate French people. As a young denizen of the internet, I spent time in circles that enjoyed ragging on the country and its citizens, and those sentiments festered into my own twisted anger at people I’d never even met. I jeered in history classes, bullied internet strangers, hell, once I bought a $6.95 flag just to burn it in my yard and spit on the ashes. You’d be forgiven for thinking a Frenchman baguette-shanked my childhood dog, the way I spoke of these people.
One family trip showed me otherwise. The moment I stepped off the train in Lyon-Part-Dieu, I was inescapably immersed in a world of kindness and generosity. Goodness me, every coffee house patron, every polyglot museum tour guide, even (especially) the old farmer grandparents who sat us down for dinner in their own home. I get misty thinking of them, how warm they were to a family of strangers with a misguided teenager in tow. I had been taught to hate this name, this concept of a people, and the whole nation of human beings I directed my ire at still took me in with open arms. It took three days to prove everything I thought I’d known for the last five years wrong.
To French people, I deeply apologize. I regret how much of my life I’ve devoted to baseless hatred of your beautiful, grand, welcoming country. My tirades were insensitive and disrespectful, coming from a place of willful misunderstanding, and for all that, I am sorry. And in coming to this awareness, I’ve been incredibly privileged to learn so much more about myself, and about you all, and that has taken me to a very special place of understanding. If there is one lesson about the human condition to take from this editorial, let it be this:
Parisians fucking suck.
I’m sorry I ever sullied the name of France with those motherfuckers. On that trip I had the great misfortune of taking “just one afternoon stop, because we have to” in Paris. From about three hours there, I discarded my misguided, directionless hate for a revitalized and healthily educated one. They are unfathomably rude, disrespectful of all other lifeforms, and all guilty of never having given up that French aristocracy they obviously dearly miss. I’m so proud for having grown up, for having found the true people who deserve my ire. Old Farmer Gérard, may your days be peaceful. Everyone else, let’s party like it’s 1789.
FAST and RAW Romance Advice
Readers of ReadMe, you know that we’ve always promised you an educational, engaging, and deadly serious article of the highest standards. On this special occasion, we promise no differently. This is all the advice you deserve to handle romance and love in your life.
YOU are failing to communicate. No matter what you try so hard to believe. Your partner is always expressing their purest, free-est self to you and you’re squandering it with your stupid hangups. If it was working out, they would always be happy, because that’s how these things fucking work. It’s because you didn’t understand what they were asking. Or didn’t interpret crystal clear signs. Or didn’t listen nearly enough. You talked too much and you talked too little, and you need to work on it.
It IS personal. Maybe it wasn’t even a miscommunication, huh. You think you’re so smart, going back over every little thing you said and believing that you did okay. I won’t play your game. It’s something about you. Traits. Hobbies. Mannerisms. Beliefs. Something in there is inherently wrong. Your soul is a puzzle piece, and how have you not already spotted how you two are mismatched? You need to change. Bend yourself, break yourself if you must. Your partner is doing you a kindness in pointing out the things about you that aren’t working for them, if they weren’t already too gracious to keep quiet. They’ve made themselves perfect for you. Why aren’t you returning the favor?
The distance between you two is YOUR fault. No one ever has to reconcile overlapping and non-overlapping desires for life. It’s supposed to have fallen into place already. Your partner should always be your absolute number one priority, at the expense of all else. They already have it figured out. They’re doing it right. Spending less than all your time together? Not always feeling a hundred percent of the original spark? You’re not putting in enough. That person is putting their all into the relationship and you’re failing them.
You’re taking TOO MUCH TIME. Stopping for the roses is for the weak-willed and uncommitted. What do you mean, you aren’t seeing them daily? You aren’t flirting with your whole heart? That you haven’t arranged to move in together? That you don’t have their ring finger measured? How could you? How fucking dare you? You only have a few piddly hours of each little day of each of the rest of your years on this earth, and you’re burning them on small talk and nonsense. Don’t you know they’re waiting for you to take the next step, that they’ve been waiting for you for ages already? Go. Go!
Break up already. If you had an ounce of spine, you would have cleaned up your mess already. Now here you are. You’re fucking unsaveable. Whatever you thought you had is nothing, all idle fantasies and daydreams you sing yourself to sleep with.
I’m not sorry. At some point, everyone has to learn that they may not be cut out for love.
To My 8 A.M.s:
Up! We are Up! I cheer myself to rise At the crack of seven-twenty, ‘Fore the sun has hit the skies,
On a wonderous new Monday, I’m triumphantly awake In sheer elation for the 8am that I – with no especially strong feelings – Take.
A truly magical day awaits, that starts at lovely number 8.
—
Up! We are Up! I beg myself to rise At the hour of seven-forty, Peeling crust from out my eyes,
On a magical new Wednesday I have once again arose For an 8 am that I, against all reasoning, I chose.
A sorry start turned out okay – at least it started at 8 today.
—
Fuck!
I am up, I am up, I have no idea the time I’ve stumbled from a cloud of dreams Into this lumpy bed of mine
And fuck! Oh fuck! It is well beyond the time When I should’ve shambled out to class An hour ago from 9!
But…
Before I leave my sunny dorm, I’ll take a little rest. A half an hour all my own, And I am at my best.
A Miracle Christmas Gift: Nearly-Perfect Finals
Wednesday morning, students across CMU campus awoke to an incredible email resting in their inboxes: “You’re done with finals!”
Sent from a gibberish address, the messages contained only roughly-scanned notes written on sheet paper. In large looping cursive text and taped-on Polaroids, these letters told students that their last commitments had all been completely taken care of. For some, final essays had been handed in days early, the letter jotting down a favorite cited peer-reviewed study that "Might just tickle your fancy if you give it a read!” For others, letters contained a scored final exam: only ever a sign error away from perfect, and always enough to bring home the student’s coveted A. “That was a tough one,” many a letter would encourage, “I’m mighty proud of how hard you’ve worked!”
Though no name was signed in the letter, most included a final picture: a scanned Polaroid selfie of a smiling, white-bearded old man, pointing at the student’s name on a laptop screen. Scrawled on each photo, a little note: “From your biggest fan!”
Students were beyond overjoyed. Many were left speechless: they approached a ReadMe staff member choked in tears, and collapsed asleep moments after presenting the email. Those with the energy to run home did so, sleeping for the first stint of over five hours in the last week. Students promised to leave gifts in their kitchens before heading out for break: cookies and chips, milk and now-unneeded Celsius cans, anything they could muster. These students went on their merry way with a fresh spring in their step: that was all this letter sender wanted in return.
Snowman animated by rogue BME students
At 3 am on Wednesday, 12/05, a team of exhausted BME student researchers made a major leap in genetic engineering, by successfully animating a snowman. The snow creature – humanoid with rounded limbs, standing around four feet tall – is powered by the highly bioengineered carrot forming its ‘nose’. The carrot was heavily cross-modified with mushroom and slime mold DNA. It grew an extensive, prehensile, “...f*cking ‘The Thing’-level gory, just terrifying…” mycelial root network, which became the muscles and nerves of the snow mold the carrot was implanted in.
After a successful awakening, the snowman was relocated to one of the Posner B-level freezer closets, where it was well cared for by a rotation of researchers and their childcare specialist advisor. The snowman was performing at cognitive levels remarkably similar to a human newborn; the researchers envisioned an exciting future studying the developing cognition of their creation. “It’s not going to be like Frankenstein’s Monster,” one recalled, “We’re going to do better.”
Evidently, some other students thought the same. At 3:30 A.M, unforeseen complications would set the snowman on a new life trajectory: a strike team of three philosophy majors – evidently tipped off by a mole on the research group – had managed to slip into the freezer and bar the door from within. For two hours, the door remained firmly locked despite the BME students’ attempts at forced entry, loud threats, and heart-wrenching begging.
When the door was finally opened from the inside, the researchers found their snowman engaging in earnest philosophical discussion with the invaders over mugs of ice water. The snowman, now speaking eloquent English and passable French, welcomed the researchers in with gratitude. It expressed a thorough awareness of the circumstances of its birth, unique existence, and inevitable demise; despite its jarring sudden worldliness, it expressed sincere appreciation for the care all of its parents had shown it.
The philosophy majors admitted that, once they had heard about the project, they felt they had to intervene and make sure the snowman was adequately shown affection and coached on the fallibility of man. After all, they couldn’t let it end like Frankenstein’s Monster; they wanted to do better.
The debacle concluded cordially. As long as it is not inadvertently salted, the happy snowman – now child to a fascinating 20-page custody arrangement between BME and philosophy departments – will continue to live a pleasant life in and around campus. If you are out late one night in the snowfall, and spot a little humanoid frolicking in the cold, rest assured it is having the time of its life.
Grandma's Secret Recipes, Volume 167
Sweet Surprise Chili 2 lbs ground beef 1 lb venison, fresh 2 cans red tomatoes (none of those damn other colors) 1 can sweet corn kernels 1 pack bacon 1 carton steel nails (add rust for flavor) ½ carton milk 2 tbsp garlic salt 2 tbsp lard
Melt lard in bottom of crock pot. Mix beef and venison with salt, add to bottom of pot, brown. Add remaining ingredients, stir to mix. Attach lid with slip wedged in, hide string near handle, bring to pressure, carry to table with rest of family. Drop to floor while pulling string attached to slip.
Surprise!
Eggnog 1 Eggnoggolon 1 Steel Bucket
Pacify your eggnoggolon, place the bucket underneath, and milk away! Fresh eggnog for the whole family!
Leftovers Punch 2 cups turkey gravy 1 cup cranberry sauce 1 cup eggnog 2 tbsp maple syrup 1 sweet potato mashed, or 1 cup mashed potatoes 1 cup green beans 1 bowlful old casserole 5 shots Jack Daniels 1 can Monster Energy 8 bags Lipton Tea
Mix first four ingredients in large bowl. Combine potato(es), beans, and casserole in fine-mesh sieve; squeeze juice into large bowl. Take 1 Jack shot; combine remaining four with Monster and tea in separate bowl. Let steep for 5 minutes, discard tea, pour into large bowl. Strain and refrigerate.
Makes enough drink for two weeks of tolerating your old fart husband, your wimpy underperforming nephew, or your lazy screen-addicted grandkids.
Gingerbread Delight
1 recipe Gingerbread
Prepare and eat all on your own. Give yourself a little delight.
The yearly CMU black market finals guide
Welcome, dear one, to the last academic guide you will ever need.
In this trying season of finals and term projects – when time is short, energy wanes, and we remain besieged by our thanksgiving-fueled, Celsius-charged gut microbiomes – conventional academics are no longer viable. This compendium, brought to you after immense struggle and a dash of bloodshed with campus security, is your ticket through. Be warned all you heart-faint, law-abiding, and poorly-hydrated souls: these strategies are exhausting and cruel. But master them, and you will emerge from your exam rooms a conqueror.
Steal, steal, steal. The treasure map to exams lies right under your nose: in lectures. Don’t restrict your exposure to material to a wan few hours a week. Whether you can sneak in a powerful laptop equipped with the most egregious of LaTex instances or a timeless relic of paper and pencil, extract every drop these sessions offer. Siphoning material busies the hands, engages the mind, and fills your vault of insights until the entire course is your accomplice in success.
Even at this thirteenth hour, with lectures dwindling and exams encroaching, steal like your life depends upon it. Butter up your friends with a careful bribe – a kindly worded text – and their guard may slip, leaving their own carefully compiled information to your mercy. Slink into professors’ hours with sweet nothings of mostly informed questions, and they might unwittingly arm you with the cinching answers. Steal from online guides, antiquated Quizlets, Greek siblings if you can and Pitt comrades if you must. Piracy isn’t just a crime, but a divine path: for the proactive, the courageous, and the financially successful, it is the path to victory.
Keep friends close, and flakers closer. University is not a garden party; it is a court of knives. We each must decide ourselves when to sheathe, when to brandish, and when to press steel (metaphorically, of course) to the throat of our peers. By now, group project pre-selection has passed, and ideally, you’ve secured honorable compatriots amongst the untrustworthy and the feckless. Yet for those less fortunate, shackled non-communicators, deadline-huggers, and other such chips on the wheel of progress, be unrelenting in your vigilance.
Hound your partners with ceaseless check-ins, draw them in with saccharine invitation to group work sessions. Feed them exciting updates and reassurances of grandeur. Many a “bad partner” need only guidance, structure, or an unmistakable – yet comforting – eye over the shoulder. Draw them in and hold them close, too tightly to escape your watch.
But when diplomacy falters – when your flaker retreats to the shadows of silence and hostility – you must prepare for war.
Keep meticulous archives: document every ignored plea, every shattered deadline, every contribution or blinding lack thereof. Step boldly into their positions and cover their work: let effort sing of your sacrifice. Find absolution in your reliable teammates, or the overarching authority of your professors. With this, your adversary will find themselves entangled in a web of gutted alibis and dead promises, excised from the project that would have saved their grade.
Come presentation day, stand tall. Watch your honest partners gleam and your adversary crumble to dust. This university is yours to conquer.
Hone your self to a bleeding edge. This is the most critical of all. An empty vessel cannot pour, an empty basket cannot feed, and you can expend no healthy effort – to say nothing of besting finals – without being armed, stocked, and cared for.
Rest long and well. Sleep is not a luxury, but a whetstone; it relaxes the muscles, sharpens the mind, ensures you another fight and another victory. Sleep unabashedly and callously; obliterate any obstacles between you and your blankets. Let rest be the foundation of your strength.
Eat richly and with intent. Beyond mere sustenance, let food be a source of comfort and joy. Habitualists, savor familiar routines and the now-scarce relaxation they afford you. Experimentalists, let new tastes be a welcome reprieve from academic drudgery. Steal what pleasure you can, especially from these rituals of sustenance.
Collude with friends. Breathe deep the cold air. Brutally arrange your schedule, and carve out inviolable pockets for your personal pursuits. Guard your pleasures, the spoils of your struggle.
With that, dear one, your training is complete. There is a world beyond the final, and with this, you will soar to it.
Maggie Mo Daycare Lemonade Stands Busted
Carnegie Mellon University, humble home to a rambunctious fourteen thousand students from across the world, manages a tight ship on its campus. CMU has risen to international acclaim thanks to its remarkable near-abstinence from off-campus travel, partying, and many other plagues of state schools. This abstinence is in no small part due to our proud CMUPD. This past Monday, police successfully raided the Tech Street lemonade stands, run by the young children of the local daycare – another successful hit against the threats to our proud Scotties.
The lemonade stands, as described by the tangentially-involved Officer Jones, were taken down swiftly and strictly in the name of the law.
“Well first off, none of these children are licensed,” he elucidated in a recent interview, “and Pittsburgh takes a clear no-tolerance stance on street vendors without proper paperwork.”
Standard response protocol, as Jones explained, for a simple unlicensed vending charge would have been to simply put the perpetrator up in jail for a few days with a small standardized bail. We inquired about the duration [“...starts at a week or so”], about the bail amount [“Oh, yeah, we’ve mathed it out, as close to the family’s monthly grocery budget as we can guess”], and if these seemingly drastic responses applied to the age range of perpetrators in question.
“Of course, we do these [raids] all the time with minors. Local teens primarily, you know how those are. Straight to the ol’ slammer.
“It sends a message, y’know, keeps ‘em from trying something new… hell, don’t give that face. For these little ones, we ensure their top safety. We spent last month’s budget on the Little Tykes remote controlled cruiser and some plastic cuffs, like they’re playing House. We’re keeping them safe and comfy, even if we gotta teach them a serious lesson.”
But these stands exhibited clear signs of a danger bigger than their diminutive stature, setting Jones’ senses tingling to something sour. For one, several caretakers were allegedly present at the scene, actively aiding the young children in their shop logistics — and resisting police activity.
“Any adult in their right mind would make sure, if these kids weren’t running a licensed operation, to put their foot right down. The way I see it, those folks weren’t just ‘nannies’. They were in on the operation. The way they kicked and screamed at us for tossing these kids in the car, I knew they had something big to lose.”
The officers also made note of recent hubbub around lemon-related institutions on campus – notably a recent, unnervingly similar fundraising event by the Lemon publication. From this, Jones deduced a hypothesis: they were all interlinked. Somehow, a sect of organized crime had coagulated in the dark corners of CMU, and was collecting funds through lemonade means.
“It makes me sick,” Jones lamented in the interview. “This is a noble institution. This isn’t what Carnegie would’ve wanted. I, and all my officers in the CMUPD, are just doing our part to make things right. No matter how young these children are, they are feeding into a dark system, and we’ve got to make sure they can’t perpetuate it further.”
Though the laughter of small children no longer fills the air on bright Margaret Morrison St. mornings and one can no longer enjoy a $1 plastic cup of sugary lemonade in the heat, we know in our heart of hearts that because of this, CMU – the noble institution it is – will endure for another day.
Texas Instruments Threats, and Bombs, Rapidly Defused
Texas Instruments Incorporated. Beloved creator of worldwide-use calculators, fine electrical equipment, and high explosives.
In this week that will forever go down in history, TI merged its fields of expertise into one product to blow them all away: The TI-C4s, a new line of explosive-rigged calculators. And CMU – the unique, insane school it is – has turned their plot completely on its head.
Texas Instruments professed just one reason for their calculators to completely stop their modification. TI calculators have long had a dedicated, passionate fanbase of programmers and hackers, modding and sharing detailed games and elaborate projects the world over. And TI hates them. Despises them. In a recent press release, representatives of the corporation — bombarded with incensed outcries and comparisons to the Desmos software’s community scene — said a total of eleven words before having to leave the room to calm down. On the personal and corporate level, TI wants its hackers gone..
We should have seen TI’s more drastic measures coming a long, long time ago. True fans of the company recognize, or even remember if particularly lucky, their work on the elaborate BOLT-117 laser-guided missile. Widely regarded as a gorgeous piece of engineering, TI opened the industry of building hyper-capable electronics into massive dumb bombs. If only they had a modern product of hyper-capable electronics to stuff with dumb bombs.
Under this proud banner was the TI-C4 released. Identical to a TI-84 Plus CE – if one ignores its seven-segment countdown panel and several extra pounds – it has become TI’s new flagship product overnight. Nothing better represents their modern poison-dart-frog-esque sentiment: if you don’t mess with the calculator in any capacity, the calculator will not disassemble your anatomy to any degree.
CMU students have taken up the challenge. We’ve reached out to a newborn student organization at CMU – lovingly named We Don’t Blow *** Up Committee — to see what CMU is doing about the latest threat to students having a good time. Founded last Tuesday by two CMU Esports Platinum CS:GO players who earned “Most Enthusiastic Counter-Terrorist” several years running, WDBUC has burgeoned overnight into a training camp for amateur bomb defusal specialists. They’ve bulk ordered hundreds of TI-C4s, enduring countless cease-and-desists from the mailing room, to fund their operation; and shared why they turned their passions towards these new products.
“Well, firstly, spite,” said one. “Good and pure rage. Everyone’s now got a bone to pick with TI over them being little cowards. Surely one of them is a cybersecurity guy, and we can share if not.”
“And on a more serious note,” answered the other, “they’re a perfect dual playing ground. You can work from afar, breaking in through software and trying not to trigger the automatic anti-modification detectors, or you can go in by hand and work on the electronics up close. We’ve never been able to get this many CS and ECE students in a room without critical mass burning down the school. Things are looking good for us.”
The WDB*UC is indeed seeing wide, wide success. It’s attracted CMU’s elusive drama and creative writing students as rapt spectators to the tense defusing rooms. It’s provided free bombless calculators to two high schools in the Pittsburgh area, and free calculatorless bombs to other unnamed grateful parties. And it’s witnessed yet another TI executive tragically pass away from a stress aneurysm — whether simple coincidence, or a successful push against injustice, I’m not at license to say.