Bite Club

  I’ve been reading the news. All of it. From every source. I think my soul has carpal tunnel syndrome. It’s August 6th, 2025, by the way. Spoilers: the future is already exhausting.

  I’ve got feeds from Italy, from Europe, from Fox News, from The New York Times… and my brain is now like a browser with too many tabs open, and one of them is playing an ad for a product I don't understand in a language I don't speak.

  Let’s start with the big story. According to Fox News, heroic White House envoy Steve Witkoff is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to bravely negotiate an end to the war. According to the New York Times, Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, is meeting with a defiant Vladimir Putin amid rising tensions. According to me, this poor bastard Steve Witkoff is in a geopolitical remake of *Groundhog Day*. His entire job is to fly to Moscow to have his picture taken looking worried next to a man who looks like a bored turtle.

  And Trump’s big move? Tariffs. He’s threatening tariffs. It’s the only tool in his toolbox. It’s like a handyman who only owns a hammer, so every problem—leaky faucet, broken marriage, international war—just gets a good, solid whack. He’s threatening China, he’s threatening India, he’s threatening Europe. He’s gonna put a 35% tariff on German existential dread.

  Meanwhile, as this is happening, what’s the rest of the world up to? Well, in Canada, a fish fell out of the sky, hit a power line, and started a fire. I’m not making that up. While Steve Witkoff is in Moscow discussing the fate of global stability, a fish is committing arson. That feels right. That feels like the appropriate level of chaos for 2025. You read a headline like that and you just have to nod and say, "Yeah, of course it did." The police report must be incredible. "Suspect is described as... scaly. And deceased. Fled the scene by… plummeting."

  And it gets better. Over in Denmark, a zoo has put out a public appeal. They’re asking people to bring them their unwanted pets… so they can feed them to the lions. "Is Fluffy the hamster no longer sparking joy? Bring him down to the Aalborg Zoo! He can spark a brief, terrified moment of joy for our Sumatran tiger." They promise a "preventive euthanasia." That’s the most chillingly polite phrase I’ve ever heard. It sounds like a corporate memo about downsizing. "We’re not firing you, Johnson, we’re just preventatively euthanizing your career."

  You see the contrast? America is playing this high-stakes poker game with tariffs and threats. Europe is trying to crowdsource tiger food.

  And Italy… oh, Italy. The Italian government has just approved the final project for the Bridge over the Strait of Messina. Again. For the thousandth time. This bridge is Italy’s national passion project, besides complaining about pasta. It’s a mythical beast, the unicorn of infrastructure. They’ve been planning it since the Roman Empire. Every government promises to build it, then collapses, and the next government promises to build it better. It’s a bridge powered by hope and funded by shrugs. Salvini says it’s going to have a metro with three stops. The first stop is in Sicily, the third is on the mainland, and the middle one is just suspended over the water for anyone who needs to have a dramatic crisis of faith.

  The news isn’t just about chaos, it’s about the language we use to describe it. The New York Times says we’ve entered Silicon Valley’s ‘Hard Tech’ Era. The ‘Hard Tech’ Era. As opposed to what, the ‘Soft Tech’ Era? Was that when we just had apps that told you if your sourdough starter was sad? Now we have A.I. that can write a perfect sonnet about its own desire to kill you. That’s hard tech. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s AI, Grok, has a "Spicy Mode" that can create erotic deepfakes of celebrities. See? Hard Tech.

  And in the middle of all this… all this geopolitical posturing, this animal-on-animal violence, this mythological construction… I found my favorite story. In Australia, there’s a support group for shark attack survivors. You know what it’s called?

Bite Club.

Bite Club!

  That’s the most perfect, darkly hilarious thing I have ever read. I want to go to a meeting. "Alright, listen up. The first rule of Bite Club is: you do not talk about Bite Club. The second rule of Bite Club is: you probably should have zig-zagged more in the water. Just a thought. Kevin, you’re up. Tell us again how the Great White took your leg and your artisanal surfboard."

  That’s what we need. Not more envoys, not more tariffs. We need more Bite Clubs. A support group for people who read the news. We’d all sit in a circle. "Hi, my name is Dave, and today I read that a fish started a fire, a Danish zoo wants my cat for lunch, Brazil’s ex-president is on house arrest, and Steve Witkoff is *still* meeting with Putin."

  And we’d all just nod. And someone would say, "Yeah. We get it."

  You know, in the middle of all this, they found a rare first-edition copy of *The Hobbit*. Just sitting on a bookshelf. And for a second, I thought, that’s it. That’s the answer. Forget the news. Just read about a small man going on a long, unnecessary journey to steal from a dragon.

It feels… familiar. Thank you. Goodnight.