Bertie Wooster

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 7 • April 6, 2026

It’s Spring Carnival, meaning our campus is once again clogged with the shambling corpses of alumni who refuse to die with dignity. This is a group that includes you, probably, and if it doesn’t, it will. Every April, you ooze back onto campus in your quarter-zips, grinning like dim-witted Golden Retrievers recalling where they buried a bone during the Obama Administration. “Wow, they haven’t torn down Donner yet?” “I haven’t painted the Fence since SAE held it for two weeks in the freezing cold.” “I remember when Jim and I …” Shut the fuck up. No one cares.

We …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 7 • April 6, 2026

1. When the humorist writes, he ought to will the entire piece be one of intelligibility.

2. Satire cannot be understood as merely the presence of references and proper nouns; artificial intelligence, Farnam Jahanian, Palantir, and Charlie Kirk do not a joke make.

3. When references are to be made, timeliness is of utmost importance.

4. More generally, timing is essential. In writing, this is achieved through punchiness and restraint.

5. They preach only false doctrines who teach that a sentence becomes funnier by being made longer, stranger, and more subordinatedly …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 7 • April 6, 2026

The idea first entered with levity.

A prank, someone said.

A joke, said another.

A bit, I asserted, and all agreed this was the fairest possible framing.

This was no exercise in greed. I desired not money and, indeed, am hardly starved of such, given my Californian parentage. Power neither did I want, for there is little to be gained by dominion over sporadically published gratis periodicals (which happen to serve chiefly as insulation, kindling, and versatile booth-construction material). No, I think it was the spirit of the thing: their hateful abundance! Those neat little stacks …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 7 • April 6, 2026

“Alright everyone, if we could gather in a semicircle—yes, perfect— watch your step there. Welcome to Carnegie Mellon University! My name is Victor and I’ll be your tour guide today.

Behind me you’ll see one of our most iconic landmarks: Walking to the Sky. Feel free to take a photo, just no flash. Sudden stimuli can … interfere with the finish.” Everyone squints upwards. “Yes, it is quite tall. The sculpture represents aspiration, forward motion, the limitless potential of CMYou.”

A faint, papery crack as one of the figures shifts almost imperceptibly. “That lifelike texture is intentional,” Victor …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 6 • March 27, 2026

In a revelation sending shockwaves through the complex, community-destroying, complex-destroying military-industrial community-complex complex, a new study warns that the ancient civilization of Rome may be far closer to nuclear capability than previously believed.

The authors of the report caution that 2600 years is not as distant as it sounds. “Civilizations can advance rapidly under the right conditions,” says lead researcher Dr. Victus, sharing his fears with our interviewers. “Rome has the infrastructure and ambition. The warning signs are everywhere: vast road networks enabling troop movements, advanced engineering feats like aqueducts and concrete. Rome is laying the technological groundwork for …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 5 • March 13, 2026

At Carnegie Mellon University, the start of the 2025 school year has witnessed the rise of a new financial titan: a junior Computational Finance major, Manya N. Power, has launched QuantBlock Solutions, a quantitative finance firm specializing in trading the block market. “The emotional, speculative trading of the freshman selling and the sophomores buying is inefficient,” Manya stated from the Hunt Bloomberg Terminal, which she has not left in days, much to the annoyance of several Tepper students who have taken to networking with each other while waiting in line for the terminal to clear up.

Manya’s firm operates …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 3 • Feb. 10, 2026

It was a normal Friday afternoon in September. I could still see the sun back then, before the snow buried campus and the homework buried my spirit. How I miss those days! Anyways, I was walking home from Putnam Seminar, trying to figure out if the party I’d seen on Instagram charging for admission was a scam (it was, as evidenced by the subsequent police tape). In the middle of The Cut sat a table manned by men. Before I could invent an excuse, I was being introduced to the College Conservatives. They were surprisingly friendly, especially compared to the …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 2 • Jan. 27, 2026

JANUARY, GESLING STADIUM – After decades of Carnegie Mellon nobly hosting sporting events and their most exciting approximations thereof – Buggy races, Booth build week, and occasional football games (I was able to attend one, when I happened to walk by Gesling Stadium after the halftime show caught my ear) – CMU was officially selected to host the upcoming Olympic Games. According to recent investigative reporting, the International Olympic Committee had approached Carnegie Mellon as the spearhead of a new program to engage major world universities in athletics.

As put by myriad CMU students we met on the Cut …

By Bertie Wooster • Vol 5, Issue 2 • Jan. 27, 2026

Dr. Wittol requires little introduction, though he insists on one out of modesty. Indeed, one suspects he would have no objection to being introduced twice, thrice, or even into perpetuity, provided there were brief pauses for applause. A couple’s therapist, he was a modern Cupid, winged by the arms of his plush green directors’ chair, armed with a Staples laser pointer rather than a quiverful of arrows—though both are guaranteed to set people of all genders quivering. Today, he does his work behind voice calls and LED screens. Where did it go wrong?

Enter Ben and Susie; now a …