Kyle Hynes
Staffwriter
International Relations and Politics, Statistics and Machine Learning, DC '27
Bio
Unknowable and Mysterious
Fun Fact
Sad fact: this author has no fact.
Previous Work
Top 10 ways to die during Carnival
1. Buggy crashes: Is this one even close? Buggy is like having kids - it makes no sense at all when you actually think about it. It’s highly dangerous. The preparation takes up several months of your life, and leads to uncountable sleepless nights. And yet, we can’t seem to stop, because it’s so central to who we are as Tartans. It’s a miracle no one has yet died flying around the bends in Schenley Park in a fragile tube built by a couple of crusty nineteenyearold MechEs. You could be the first!
2. Alcohol: self-explanatory.
3. Falling off a ride: in a shock twist, turns out CMU has been paying amateurs all along.
4. Falling off a ride due to alcohol: oops, doc, I forgot to strap in! Musta had something wrong with my memory.
5. Being a lab rat: welcome Bill Nye the Science Guy to campus! Turns out it was just an excuse to make you his lab rat. Whoops.
6. Alumni parties: alums are back, and this time, CMU’s decided to give them a “Hospitality Tent” right in the middle of the Cut. But that’s not where they’ll spend most of their time no, they’ll spend most of it offcampus, reliving their glory days. And they might go too hard. Don’t be a victim.
7. Frat boy hookups: also self- explanatory. Do not bang a frat boy. Or do, at your own risk. Who am I to judge?
8. Alumni hookups: similar, but this time, the death risk is shame.
9. Heart disease: it’s still America, and heart disease is the numberone leading cause of death in the United States. Get your heart checked!
10. Getting into an Uber only to realize it isn’t an Uber, but an F150 owned by some dude who voted for Trump, who did not invite you into his car, but you were drunk so you didn’t realize, and who lowers the hammer on his Glock as soon as you touch the door: he will have a funeral for the glass of his window and give nary a shit about you.
CMU to literally go to war with U of Pitt
PITTSBURGH, Pa. The cannons were readied. The troops were in position. We had the element of surprise.
Twelve twentyfive p.m.
President Jahanian, standing in Napoleonic fashion behind the frontline that had assembled atop Warner Hall, let his arm drop and gave the order. “Fire!”
Four explosions, and four westbound cannonballs fired from Carnegie Mellon’s most archaic weapons, filled the air. Three made contact with the target, while one fell below the skyline, towards the streetscape, to wreak what minimal damage it could.
Three shattered windows were visible against the silhouette of the Cathedral of Learning, with smoke billowing up out of the broken top. With Cathy out of commission, Carnegie Mellon was the grandest institution in Pittsburgh, but he didn’t have much time to admire his handiwork.
He donned his Napoleonic bowl cap. “Troops, advance!”
The chemistry majors tore down Forbes Avenue in pickup trucks, with vials of phosgene that they were ready to shatter once past Schenley Plaza. The physics majors set up their catapults, ready to bombard their western brethren with a deadly combination of textbooks and lab notebooks. The CS majors were sent to plant the virus they’d created on every piece of technology on campus; the biology majors went to sprinkle the virus they’d created onto the plates at every dining hall in the West. The ML majors were sent to figure out the optimal way to annex territory, bit by bit. And the Tepper students were sent in to negotiate a peace once victory was won, with the polisci majors sent in as backup once they failed.