Jimothy Yachtsson
Staffwriter
Tepper, 2027
Bio
This guys in Tepper, and he wants you to know it.
Fun Fact
Real Tepper Student
Previous Work
President Eisenhower warns America how fucking cool the Military Industrial Complex will be
This past Monday morning of the wonderful current year of nineteen fifty I can’t be bothered to look up the right year, President Dwight Destructenator Eisenhower stepped onto the stage at a 9 a.m. press conference and chugged from his liter of vodka as he prepared to give his most important speech.
“I’m here today to warn you about the impending military industrial complex,” the president said solemnly. “It’s gonna be fucking lit, so be prepared for the levels of unprecedented awsomeness some of y'all youngins will see in your lifetime.”
The military industrial complex, or MIC (not to be confused with the similarly named and similarly rad Mickey Mouse), will be a system in which the government benefits from deadly missiles and instruments of war that companies sell to the government, and these companies benefit from money the government gives in exchange. This arrangement, the White House alleges, is mutually beneficial for both parties and therefore certainly a good for society.
Eisenhower is also currently pushing his interstate highways idea, which will create a network of fancy roads connecting the nation because freedom freedom fuck railways yay SUVs bla bla bla no I’m not compensating for anything why do you ask. One problem with the interstates idea, as Eisenhower has noted, is that many Americans are elated by the destruction of nature and inner cities and hoping that this destruction can also apply to human lives. The MIC idea is set to fix that inequity.
Eisenhower also discussed his vision for college campuses, which will not only be next to interstate highways but also will be closely tied to the MIC. Government analyses predict that the MIC will command high salaries because of how rad it is, which also helps pull college graduates from significantly lamer industries like healthcare robotics and other assorted bullshit.
“One day, students will walk into a career fair and get a command hook from their favorite military contractor,” ended Eisenhower. “How fucking lit is that?”
Readme's Moderately Late Guide to Choosing your Freshman Dorm
As a freshman, freshwoman, or fresh non-binary person, part of your experience will be to live in one of CMU’s 13 premium housing options or Donner House. Without further ado, here’s Readme’s guide to everything you wish you’d known when you’d ranked your housing choices. We’d have published this article before room choices were due but then you’d have taken our advice when choosing your room.
Boss and McGill Houses - Your classic dorms. Both buildings are exactly the same. You’ll be in a quantum state of living in both buildings at once, which is great for having two bodies to get done your insurmountable amounts of homework. They also have semi-suite bathrooms instead of communal bathrooms, which is nice until you realize you’re not only sharing the bathroom with your four suitemates. You’re also sharing your bathroom with their rotating casts of significant others.
Clyde House - Doesn’t exist. It’s on CMU’s website because Readme hacked it.
Donner House - Exists, unfortunately. Donner tends to be the home of athletes for CMU’s top-tier athletic programs, but really it’d be better suited for CS students because of how bad the showers are. Why not give the dorm with the worst showers to the students who don’t shower? I’ll never understand. Other than CS students, I’d only recommend living in Donner if you’re an insect. The dorm’s insect community truly is superb.
E-Tower - When Carnegie Mellon decided to make E-Tower, they set out to make a dorm as mediocre as your roommate’s shower singing. . Then, they realized the location was too nice so to even things out they took out nearly all common spaces and just built a skybridge to Morewood Gardens so you can use their amenities instead of having your own. Hey, at least it’s not Donner. And the secret sex dungeon in the basement is pretty cool too.
Hamerschlag House - Has been closed for the past two years for renovations. Experts expect the building to be slightly less miserable now, but the communal bathrooms and dreadfully small windows remain. This is a great building if you hate your good ole’ daily dose of natural light. Experts anticipate it taking three days before someone does something stupid enough to make CMU regret giving students access to a lounge space on the roof.
Henderson, Scobell, and Welch Houses - All equally boring. They’re all up a hill so you’ll get your daily steps in whether you like it or not, though less likely if you’re a woman because Scobell is all women and the closest dorm to street level. The inevitable conclusion here is that CMU just really doesn’t want women to be fit. This helps even the dating field for all you heterosexuals. I would lie and make up something funny so that Henderson, Scobell, and Welch had something interesting about them, but Readme takes journalistic integrity very seriously.
Maggie Mo Houses - Used to be frat houses. They’re not anymore, but pro tip: nobody is stopping you from throwing ragers there anyway. Except your RAs, but that’s besides the point. Imagine what has been done to your furniture and kitchen counters at your own peril. Otherwise, these are basically just your basic townhouse. Imagine a suburban family of four living here, except stuff way more people in and make everyone first-year college students. So, not the average suburban townhome experience you probably came to college for.
Morewood Gardens - Doesn’t even have a garden. At least 17 students got so lost in the corridors last year they were never found. The secret to not getting lost is to develop echolocation and make clicking sounds as you navigate, which is especially important during the rolling blackouts. Morewood also burns down three times a year for first-year rituals scheduled between two and five in the morning, so stay on the lookout for that. If you hear the fire alarm, do not panic—the building is only incinerating into ash. CMU is usually pretty quick to reconstruct the building, but they refuse to update anything.
Mudge House - No you’re not living in a mansion, dearest B and C tower residents. Only A tower is a mansion; B and C towers are sad, boring, and for the plebs. If you live in B or C towers your local A-tower aristocrat will let you hang around the first floor of the mansion, but don’t be fooled: you’ll never be rich and live in a mansion. You’ll also never be happy but that’s not a dorm-specific thing.
Residence on Fifth - Because you need an in-unit kitchen. Actually no, you don’t. You’re a first-year student; you’ll probably burn the building down and if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll also get the high school next door. You don’t need a two-bedroom apartment either. When you get sexiled, trust that your roommate won’t want you in the room next door either. And, you don’t need to be that far away from campus. Like seriously, it’s like a full couple of minutes away from campus. Do you want to have to walk a few extra minutes a day? I don’t, and you’re not allowed to have a different opinion from me. Do the math.
Stever House - Remember that dorm you saw during your tour? Also, remember how that random guy killed your tour guide in that dorm before wheeling the dead body away in a stroller? Stever is that dorm, and no, I wasn’t the killer. Stop asking, seriously. Stever is loud, proud, and should be neither. Like it’s not even that nice. Communal bathrooms and rooms so small you’ll be missing your Hong Kong apartment, anyone? Readme additionally warns you that the fifth floor of Stever is gay.
Carnival makes Pitt rethink CMU: 'Even lamer than we thought'
Students visiting Carnival from the University of Pittsburgh report their impressions of Carnegie Mellon have fallen, and not risen. Instead of finding CMU cool for the first time ever, students say they are disappointed by the “degree of nerdiness” and hard work that goes into Carnival.
Students at the University of Pittsburgh, henceforth Pitt because I’m not writing all that (I’m a business student don’t blame me), historically had low conceptions of CMU. Pitt students think CMU students work on problem sets and… yeah, that’s about it. CMU students don’t sleep, party, or talk to each other at all except for homework help (read: AIVs). Or so they say at Pitt, according to Readme’s confidential sources.
Many CMU students figured that there’s no better chance to prove how lit CMU is than Spring Carnival: the one time of year students have a different reason for not sleeping. Although Readme has not definitively proven by induction that there is no better way (sorry I’m a Tepper student), we can present strong evidence Pitt students weren’t as impressed by Carnival as many CMU students had hoped. “So, instead of engineering a circuit board, you engineer a tiny wheeled torpedo for short people?” a Pitt student at the Buggy races asked Readme. “That’s, like, still engineering. Lame!” In a bid to show the student something they would undoubtedly find cooler, Readme then brought this Pitt student to the Booths on Midway.
“Wow, so much work went into this!” the Pitt student told Readme, before following up with: “Imagine if the students who worked on this spent all that time partying instead. That would’ve been so much cooler.”
Readme then considered taking this Pitt student to the Mobot race before deciding that that wouldn’t help at all.
It wasn’t just that one Pitt student who was disappointed by Carnival: The opinions expressed by this one Pitt student represent all Pitt students because they are all equivalent and do not have thoughts of their own, because they do not go to a top-21 national university.
People who played Esther in a second grade Hebrew school play more likely to be happy, confident, and employed
Groundbreaking new research has revealed the single strongest childhood predictor of adult success in Jewish youth. Second grade students who in their Hebrew school Purim plays played Esther were found to be happier, more confident, and more employed than their less fortunate peers who played Vashti. Vashti was the Persian king Ahasuerus’s wife, at least until Ahasuerus got so royally drunk that he banished Vashti for refusing to appear naked in front of all the partying men for his seven-day-long party. This is widely considered to be within the top three least normal things Ahasuerus did. This required him to find a new queen, for which he held a beauty pageant that the secretly-Jewish girl Esther won. Esther then proceeded to save all the Jews by convincing her famously morally-inclined husband to rectify his prime minister Haman’s decree to direct Persians to kill all the Jews, by allowing the Jews to fight back (because apparently cancelling the decree wasn’t an option). Esther is therefore widely regarded as cooler and more badass than Vashti.
Researchers were intrigued by anecdotal evidence that second-grade Esthers were more successful than their Vashti counterparts. One example researchers examined was a former Esther who is now the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup which makes an app providing an AI-powered Jewish motherly figure for non-Jews. She balances her job with caring for her 18 children. Meanwhile, one of her classmates who played Vashti in that same fateful Purim play has been unemployed since being fired from a dreidel-making company several years ago for rigging the dreidels toward the ש side (the only bad side) out of pure depression. Furthermore, she only has 8 children.
This made researchers decide to investigate further with a scientifically rigorous study. Their methodology was to email Hebrew school teachers and ask about students from 10-20 years ago. The researchers commented they were surprised that the Hebrew school teachers could report on every last detail of every single one of their past students who had played Esther or Vashti.
Researchers unequivocally found that Esthers were, in comparison with Vashtis, more likely to be happy, confident, and employed. They measured happiness via the Hebrew school teachers’ assessments on a scale from 1 to 10. This was a change in plan from asking Esthers and Vashtis to self-assess because “these teachers know everything about these people anyway; they’re basically Jewish mothers to all these kids.” Confidence was assessed by individually contacting Esthers and Vashtis, and then asking them to rank how well they perform on basic prayers. As all Jews who have attended Hebrew school are perfect at basic prayers after doing them thousands of times, researchers considered this a good proxy for confidence.
More research is needed to understand the causation behind this difference, but researchers already have theories. “Esther is the epitome of a strong feminine figure who accomplishes things and makes her husband reconsider certain poor decisions like getting a mohawk or allowing the killing of an entire people group. Meanwhile, Vashti would totally tell Ahasuerus to get a mohawk,” said one researcher. One possibility is that traits affecting eventual life success of Hebrew school students already exist in second-graders, affecting the characters they would like to play and how teachers tend to cast them. Previous research on why every girl cast as Mordechai ends up being gay has leaned toward this explanation. Another possibility is that the second-grade Purim play itself is a transformative experience, with Esthers physically learning to be brave and stand up for what is right, and Vashtis disappointing not only their Hebrew school teachers but also their Jewish mothers.
Small European Town Actually Not At All Romantic
This past summer, Carnegie Mellon ran its annual language immersion program in Italy. For the first time, the program was held in the small Italian town of Cappuccinovecchio, right between that place you forgot from tenth grade history class and that place you forgot from eleventh grade history class. In the past, the program has garnered rave reviews.
“This program got me away from Pittsburgh, as advertised. I hate Pittsburgh, so I’m happy,” said one student. “I learned a lot of Italian words, like pizza, pasta, espresso, and merda,” reported another. “I love how many naked people there are in Europe,” said a third.
But this year, student reviews were less outstanding. “I wanted a romantic summer getaway to a beautiful and more importantly Instagrammable Italian destination,” one heartbroken student told Readmè. “Instead, I got heatstroke from the lack of ice in my coffee, couldn’t eat the disgusting fake Italian food, and don’t even have any STDs to show for it.”
The principal complaints from students mostly concern how dreadfully depressing and unromantic the town was. According to Google, Cappuccinovecchio has a population of 400 people, down from a peak of 4,000 people. The current median age sits at 65, which the same heartbroken student reported as “way too high.” The student then clarified, “I’m into old people, but not that old.”
Readmè has been made aware of one particularly egregious incident in which the cohort of students was invited to a party at a local college student’s house. The students were expecting a basement rager with cheap beer and whatever the Italian equivalent to frat bros is, and were disappointed to instead find an 80th birthday party for the local college student’s grandmother with artisan wines and a knitting competition. Worst of all, the grandmother didn’t even have any sick stories from her time in the mafia. “If I wanted artisan wines,” yet another heartbroken CMU student told Readmè, “I would’ve gone to… actually yeah I probably would’ve still gone to Italy. But I like my alcohol cheap and shitty, so there’s that.”
Among those who traveled to Cappuccinovecchio was a heterosexual couple. During their interview with Readmè, the pair expressed their disappointment with how unromantic Cappuccinovecchio was, a far cry from the expectations they said were set by the Duolingo owl’s sexiness. “I thought there’d be baskets of flowers hanging from all the buildings, romantic street music at every corner, and lovely little bakeries,” the guy from the heterosexual couple told Readmè. “So you can imagine my disappointment when instead there was graffiti on all of the buildings, and only some of it was vulgar. Plus, the town was deserted, I got banned from the only bakery on day three for calling the owner’s daughter hot, and the whole town reeked.”
“Wait, I kinda like how the place reeked. Are you not into that kind of thing?” asked the girl from the heterosexual couple angrily, which made the interviewer somewhat uncomfortable. The guy then shook his head, which made the interviewer slightly less uncomfortable. “Well then I don’t think we can be a couple anymore,” the girl said, and walked out. This made the interviewer very uncomfortable.
Ultimately, the most unromantic aspect of Cappuccinovecchio may have been the dissolution of a couple, which, for the record, Readmè had absolutely nothing to do with. This, combined with general complaints about the program’s poor choice of location, led Readmè to investigate further.
After a long, arduous investigation which consisted of sending a singular thirty-word email to the Italian immersion program director, Readmè can now report that the reason for the unromantic Italy immersion program was because of cost-cutting. In past years, the program had been held in Verona, famous for the notably successful romance between Romeo and Juliet. But this year, to make the program cheaper and more accessible to students, the program director lowered costs upon finding that CMU could simply buy one-Euro homes in Cappuccinovecchio. When asked what CMU’s plans were for these homes when summer programs are not in session, the program director said they were sitting empty. So dearest reader, if you know of any couples you want to break up, please email jyachtss@andrew.cmu.edu and we’ll arrange for a positively unromantic trip to Italy.
Optimize Your Garden With These Simple Tricks
Dearest reader, consider this inquiry: You are the sole proprietor of a home garden (a real one, not in Animal Crossing or wherever AOC makes her press releases nowadays). You own the land free and clear. You go out for mocktails every week with the two other gardeners in your market, and you talk about your businesses and why you love your family (ugh). You have a good reputation. Every week, a nondescript hooded figure stops by and buys 24 watermelons, and their purchases only seem suspicious like half the time. You pay the neighborhood kids twice minimum wage to do - I don’t know - whatever happens in a garden. (I’m an expert, not a day laborer - I have no idea what actually goes on.) You have a quality work-life balance. Yadda, yadda, yadda, sunshine and rainbows, insert more boring stuff here.
Sounds like you’re doing great, right? Wrong. Consider the alternate hypothesis that you are stupid and spineless and have no idea how to derive a competitive advantage, optimize for cost, increase your return on investment, discount your cash flows, penetrate your market, or let alone commit white-collar crimes. I know, I know - the fun ones are the non-white-collar ones, but bear with me: white-collar crimes can be fun too.
You said you own the land free and clear? That’s stupid. You’re tying up so much money in the land that you could be spending to, I don’t know, buy a yacht, donate to a presidential inauguration, or contribute to your divorce legal expenses. The real strat (yes, ‘strat’ is the formal business term - it’s what I hear at the business parties all the time) is to constantly borrow mortgages against the land you own, and borrow again immediately once you’ve returned the money. It’s just like when you borrow Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance from the library over and over again.
You go out for mocktails and boring conversations with your competitors every week? That’s also stupid. One of your competitors is stealing your business secrets and plans to put you out of business, and I saw the other kissing your mom the other day. Although you shouldn’t have wasted your life on things like hanging out with friends, but I can offer you a small consolation: Now that they think you’re stupid (you are, but that’s beside the point), you can abuse their stupidity by framing them for tax evasion and/or stealing the overpriced purple chairs from Tepper - in that latter case I’d appreciate if you could send the disappeared chairs my way. And then voilà, your competitors are in jail and you can jack up your prices to $69 a watermelon. Although the nondescript hooded figure surely won’t like those prices (they’ve never had much of a sense for business), where else are they supposed to get 24 watermelons a week?
You claimed you had a good reputation? That one’s smart, actually. But you’re doing it stupidly, because you’re stupid. Here’s a revelation: you don’t have to gain a good reputation from honesty. In fact, that’d just be a waste of your money. Are you telling me in order for your customers to think you’re philanthropic you actually have to donate money to the children’s cancer center? Of course you don’t! You just have you say you did it, and blackmail anyone who dares to question you with stupid things their kids have done. See, I told you white collar crimes were fun!
And worse yet, you pay the neighborhood kids twice minimum wage? I’d tell you to pay them only minimum wage and then deduct from their pay for a white-collar charge, but you don’t even have to do that. Just feed them a watermelon per week of work - it’ll pale in comparison to how many watermelons that nondescript hooded figure buys.
I hope I have sufficiently convinced you of your poor business sense. You may be thinking that you’ll be exchanging general life happiness for your business’s cold-blooded growth. If so, you’re already on the right track.