∃ A ∈ X: A ⇒ ⊤.  The full solution is left as an exercise to the reader.

---

X = {

Greetings Prospective Student! Thank you for your interest in the Massachusetts Institute of Tautology. 

We are proud to be one of the world’s preeminent institutions of higher learning, ranked #1 in the U.S. News & World Report for Engineering, Science, and Number of Emails Received by a Student Per Day.

What is it like to go to MIT? We’re so glad you asked…

About the Institute

MIT was founded in 1224 C.E. when Benedictine monk Mathias Whethamstede discovered he could take small amounts of things, combine them to make larger amounts of things, and summarize this procedure by writing it down.  Believing this revelation could possibly prove useful, he decided to start a school to instruct others on the process.  To this day, the field of study is named in his honor.

The Institute is currently led by Hortense Culpepper, who became famous at age 9 for losing her right arm while detonating her entry to the nation’s most prestigious science fair.  President Culpepper was elected unanimously after single-handedly cooking every student an omelette using the school’s nuclear reactor. 

Academics

MIT offers bachelors, bachelorettes, friends-with-benefits, masters, druids, and warlocks degrees across 20 different majors, and a certificate in nautical piracy.  For digital piracy, please refer to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

MIT is particularly renowned for its programs and achievements in the hard sciences.

As an example of the school’s expertise in chemistry, in the 1970s, then-residence Bexley Hall was rumored to be the manufacturing laboratory for approximately 90% of the LSD supply for the entire Eastern Seaboard.  This was never fully confirmed, however, as the subsequent raid by federal agents uncovered only 3 marijuana seeds, a plate of milk and cookies, and a “Welcome FBI” sign. 

One of the institution’s rising stars in the field of biology is most certainly Themilk Milk, quart-sized, only 25 years old, Grade A Pasteurized, and already a five-time winner of the Ugliest Manifestation On Campus contest. 

Extracurricular Activities

Even in recreation, MIT students are exceedingly diligent, precise, and industrious.  

A favorite annual event is the Python Bee, wherein participants are given computer programming prompts and must blindly spell out the solution character by character to a keyboardist who types out whatever is said (no backspaces allowed) and then runs it to check for success.

In 1958, MIT fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha took 5′ 7″ freshman pledge Oliver R. Smoot Jr. and rolled him head-over-heels for the entire length of the Harvard Bridge.  The bridge was found to be 364.4 smoots, plus or minus one ear.  Fittingly, Mr. Smoot went on to become Chairman of the American National Standards Institute, and later President of the International Organization for Standardization. 

Campus Life

MIT students are very environmentally conscious, although we acknowledge this does have some downsides. While we applaud the conservation and low annual water bill, the administration wouldn’t mind if undergrads showered slightly more often.  

Twice a year, one can experience a remarkable astronomical event on campus.  Every November and January, the setting sun lines up perfectly with the 251-meter/147.6- smoot-long Infinite Corridor.  At the exact moment of alignment, known as MIThenge, Azathoth, The Cold One, Lord of All, Nuclear Chaos, Daemon Sultan, emerges from the depths of the blacksmithing forge and bursts through the Great Dome, intending to lay waste to all of MIT.  The school can only be saved by its mythical hero, Jack Florey, who ventures into battle to subdue the beast and send it back into the fiery pits below.  Be advised, should Jack’s strength fail, the school being consumed by a blazing ball of primordial destruction is not considered an acceptable conflict for an exam. 

One of the most common questions our tour guides receive is “What’s the dating scene like at MIT?”  The answer? Quite robust.  We believe carbon-14 is the most common method. 

---

We hope you found this prospectus informative and useful in deciding if the Massachusetts Institute of Tautology is the right place for you.  You may direct further inquiries, outquiries, and comments to the Office of Defenestration.  Please note, we are not accepting complaints at this time.

We hope to see you in the fall. }

 

This entry is inspired by this blog post by John Finnemore, who writes very funny things and is also the man in this photo of him. If you’re feeling whimsical – of course you are – see if you can find the nuggets of truth buried in the nonsense.

Sir Isaac Newton served as Divination Teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1691 until 1726.

Isaac was adopted as infant in 1454 after he fell out of a tree and landed on the head of unsuspecting Mr. Newton – who, alas, was not a genius and therefore failed to learn anything important from the incident.

Isaac’s magical abilities were discovered eight years later when, on learning that his younger sister Figarella had stolen his afternoon snack, he threw a tantrum and transfigured her instantly into a fruit-filled cookie. Although she returned to her usual form several hours later, she was left with a debilitating passion for baking that consumed her for the rest of her life. In fact, although any sibling of Isaac’s would have struggled to emerge from the shadow of his genius, Fig Newton went on to achieve some measure of success in her own right.

As he matured, Iz the Wiz (as he was known at school) grew out of being an irritable, petulant child and became an irritable, petulant teenager instead. He was often at odds with his classmate and rival, Robert “Fish” Hooke, the LSD enthusiast and outer space artist. On one memorable occasion, Fish tried to convince his peers that all life on Earth was made of tiny blobs called “cells,” so named because he felt that they resembled the rooms of a house. Don’t do drugs.

After graduation, Iz and Fish got into such a terrible argument that Iz refused to write the second half of a book had been working on. Iz’s friend Ed worked for the book’s publisher, had read the first half – which ended on a nasty cliffhanger – and was desperate for the ending.

Even worse, Ed learned that the publisher couldn’t afford to print Iz’s book anymore. As evidence of the humbling truth that in business sometimes you just get unlucky, the publisher had just radically over-invested in the first run of a book called A History of Fishes – a complete flop that no one could have predicted.

In the end, Iz agreed to finish the book as long as Ed agreed to pay for its publication. Ed did so eagerly, though historians now believe that his excitement to finally read the ending was dampened some few months later when his superiors at the publisher informed him that, given the firm’s dire financial position, they had decided to pay him his salary for that year in leftover copies of A History of Fishes. The whole incident seemed a little too cute for Ed, who suspected a conspiracy and held a grudge against Fish Hooke for the rest of his life.

These incidents aside, Iz the Wiz is remembered primarily for a lifetime of scholarship in the fields of alchemy and astrology and especially for his quest to create a philosopher’s stone. Some historians now believe that he found it, citing as evidence the fact that he was 237 years old when he took his teaching post at Hogwarts. Yet as of this writing, no one has actually looked inside his casket in Westminster Abbey, so the mystery continues.

In quarantine, everyone is looking for activities to make themselves feel productive in between watching new shows on Netflix and watching old shows on Netflix. So, there has never been a better time to pick up a good book! To help you out, I personally reviewed every book in the New York Times Top 5 today, to help you figure to what you should read.

Unfortunately, I have another few new hobbies to try out this afternoon, so I was unable to read the books, but I inferred the plots from the titles. Enjoy!

THE 20TH VICTIM, by James Patterson

In this thrilling sequel, we see the return of Dave Bullet, daring provider of personal security in metropolitan Orlando. Fresh off his unfortunate failures to save victims 1 through 19, Dave is about to face his toughest assignment yet, as the 20^th victim is the person closest to his heart: himself.

The media has learned of Dave’s success rate in protecting his clients, and intrepid investigative reporter Jack News is out to ruin Dave’s reputation. Follow Dave as he is sued for gross negligence by 19 families. Fans of Dave will laugh along with the prosecutor as they relive some of his greatest failures.

CAMINO WINDS, by John Grisham

The top-grossing casino in rural Missouri, the Camino Wins, is a facing a tough financial situation. With sports cancelled due to a mysterious virus, limiting sports betting, casino manager Steve Lucky comes up with a new event to bet on – the daily windspeed on the plains. The Camino Winds quickly become the hottest gambling event in the greater Midwest, but with the new influx of money comes the threat of corruption. Follow Steve as he races against time to unplug local fans and turn off AC units to preserve the integrity of the Winds.

LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, by Celeste Ng

Who can deny that one of life’s simple pleasures is sitting around a bonfire with friends? However, for some people, this is not a pleasure, but a big business. In this expose, Celeste Ng goes undercover at the world’s leading marshmallow manufacturer to discover how the company put a “fire in every backyard”.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, by Delia Owens

“The Crawdads” are Memphis’s premier all-Dad barbershop quartet. But, when the restaurant near their cul-de-sac mysteriously cancels their summer showcase, dads Jim, Mike, Rick, and Jim must scramble to find a new location or risk disappointing their fan. However, it seems as if every location in town is in on a mysterious conspiracy to deny the men a space. Delia Owens debuts with this powerful tale of four men who refuse to give up on their dreams despite overwhelming evidence that they should.

IF IT BLEEDS, by Stephen King

The Business Company has successfully operated for 20 years, until a (probably evil) private equity company moves in to attempt a hostile takeover. To avoid a takeover, the managers at The Business Company must reverse years of losses. However, the IT department is bleeding cash! Fans of business horror will love this fresh take on cost cutting in modern business.

 

In this period of global crisis, as many cherished institutions and traditions falter, we rightly celebrate the ingenious few who respond to hardship with creativity and imagination.

This standard of praise should surely extend across every sphere of human endeavor, so we are appalled to bear witness to the gross injustice being done to a certain class of creative individual.

With self-righteous zeal, journalistic outlets discriminate against those who tell “the wrong kind of stories.” A few of these stories should sound familiar: The moon landing was faked. There is a monster living in Loch Ness. China created the coronavirus on purpose. Dora the Explorer is not a real person.

Some journalists are so trapped inside their own paradigm that they criticize these stories just because “there is no evidence at all to support them” or because “they might bring about the sort of international crisis that threatens the future of human civilization.”

Decades of discrimination against the sort of art that “was 100% made up by small-minded cultural assassins” has, unfortunately, poisoned the general public against the whole genre. Many may be familiar with the derogatory slur, “conspiracy theories.”

The worst crime of all is that, by focusing on irrelevant twaddle – like whether these stories are true – journalists miss the chance to report on what is really wrong with so-called conspiracy theories: they are just way too dark. Unnecessarily gloomy. All Adele, no Jonas Brothers.

Until our team began this research project, few of us were even aware of this country’s rich and varied history of making up happy shit that no one can prove. Sadly, our former ignorance is still widespread among the populace. Since our founding, it has been the mission of this organization to remedy this national disgrace, first by cataloguing and then by publicizing these lighter stories for the benefit of a general audience.

This auspicious event marks the completion of years of difficult research. What follows is a list of our findings to date. We expect that you, our honored guests, will honor our efforts by reading our work with enthusiasm – and, in many cases, confusion.

Adapted from the minutes from the recent meeting of the National Interest Council Exploring the Regrettable Bias in Storytelling (N.I.C.E.R. B.S.)

POTUS Order Harvard Business Publishing to Produce Toilet Paper

Chafing under pressure from a desperate public, President Donald J. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act on Tuesday, giving himself sweeping new authority to direct the production of American firms during times of national emergency. In his very first order, he commanded Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) to transition immediately to the production of toilet paper. Our sources confirmed that the government reached a tentative deal with the publisher late Tuesday night.

During a brief address from the Rose Garden, the President admitted, “I didn’t really want to do this, okay? This was nobody’s number one choice – it was definitely number two.”

According to an HBP insider with knowledge of the deal, “The toilet paper will be marketed under several brands and there are plenty of details left to squeeze out, but at this point we’re confident that the slogan will be, ‘HBP Toilet Paper: It hits your bottom line.’” 

More recently, sources inside the school’s Social Enterprise Institute (SEI) have confirmed that a two-ply version will also be available under the brand name “Double Bottom Line.” When pressed for comment, an SEI spokesperson added, with some discomfort, “What can I even say about that?  The world has become a strange place. We wish everything were more…regular, but we’re making the best of it.” 

So far, the reaction from students has been more positive. Barely containing her enthusiasm, one EC told us, “This is amazing. You know what I should do? I should write a case about this. Oh wait, I can’t, because there is no one to print it.” Said another, “I can get behind this.”

In a second official statement released on Wednesday afternoon in order to “address rumor-mongering by shameless juveniles,” an aggrieved HBP spokesperson was heard to say, “For the record, Harvard Business Publishing has never made toilet paper before. We normally publish cases. Don’t you dare say anything.”

The editors of instagram account @DearHarby could not immediately be reached for comment.

Chapter 1: The Flame, Ignited

You see before you an old man, burdened and weathered by the myriad small hardships and crises of life. Such is the destiny of those who toil with their hands to harvest the Earth’s bounty. But I have not always been this way. I want to tell you a story from my prime.

Back when I was a young man—it was a simpler time back then, we called it February—my job at Subway was just that. A job. Nine to five behind the cash register. I swiped cards and made change, caught up in the hectic fervor of lunchtime and the wild fever (though I hardly dare use that word any more) of the dinner rush. The days blurred together.

Then suddenly the world began to change and soon I was Eating Fresh™ all by myself. The customers were the first to disappear. Eventually, I was the only one left. 

It wasn’t all bad. I finally got to choose which Pandora station to play. No one interrupted while I practiced making change. I got very good at it. 

One day last week while eating lunch, I stared forlornly at the potato chip in my hand. For an instant, time stood still and I was struck by the tragedy of growing old alone, my romantic soul forever hidden from the world. And in the silence, interrupted only by the crunching of my chip bag, my gaze fell upon a view of paradise through the glass front window. 

That was the moment when I saw her. I had never noticed her before. I still don’t know her name. She’s the cashier at McDonald’s across the street. There are no customers over there either, I noticed. I put Celine Dion on Pandora and wandered in a daze over to the slushie machine. The brain freeze did nothing to cool the fire now engulfing my soul.

That was last Friday, and since then everything has been different. From that moment on, whenever I grew tired of eating the chocolate chip cookie dough or counting the straws (six hundred and nineteen), I would sit at one of the booths and stare through the glass. 

She has brown hair and eats chicken nuggets with a ferocity that sometimes terrifies me. I wonder what she is hungry for, deep down. Maybe she is as lonely as I am. Perhaps, one day, she will catch my eye. I could bring her a present. Maybe a napkin. I have lots.

[Note: Restaurant Associates was the vendor that served food in the school cafeteria.]

“10/10. Big fan. I’ve been going to this place since it opened. Great for a quick snack, sit-down meal, or even special occasions. The curtains make it seem fancy, but it’s really more of a neighborhood gem. Case in point: seems like I run into someone I know every time I go!”

Jantastic4@hotmail.com     Sept 2019

“7/10. Super convenient for where I live, so I want to love it, but … just one thing: I wish they took reservations. 12:10pm everyday and this place is a circus. I tried to call ahead 30 minutes before I showed up and they were like ‘pretty sure you shouldn’t be using your phone right now.’ Super weird.”

Sh4d_is_r4d@gmail.com Oct 2019

“1/5 boo no delivery lol wut”

GallatinGal1@gmail.com Oct 2019

“5/10. Posting this here because it’s our duty to speak truth to power and we have tried literally everything else. We represent the voice of the people and this is our manifesto: this disgrace to properly optimized process flows MUST be ended! The takt time CAN be improved! The bottlenecks WILL be defeated. Seriously though, set up some time with us—we’re pretty good at this stuff.”

TOM@hbs.edu Dec 2019

“11/10. I ate duck confit with candied orange peel here today. In what is, let’s be honest, a cafeteria with chandeliers in it. That’s a true statement, not a satirical joke, and no one seems to find that amazing except me.”

Smittenwithnitin78435@mac.com Jan 2020

“Where did everybody go?”

[Anonymous] Mar 2020

This is the first of a handful of short spoofs that I wrote for a school newspaper.

In 2016, Chase introduced a metal version of the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. The first of its kind, the card was a stunning, ground-breaking innovation in consumer credit payments. “It’s exactly the same as my old card – just heavier,” said Marcus Peabody, Harvard Business School Class of 2020. “When I’m out to dinner with friends and I drop my card on the table, they hear the thunderous bass vibrations my card makes. I live for that moment.”

Not to be outdone, American Express responded in [month] of [year] with a metal edition of its aptly-named Platinum Card. Based on extensive interviews with customers, this journalist can exclusively reveal the purpose of this deft competitive maneuver: “It’s even heavier!” explained an ecstatic Peabody. “I switched immediately.”

Most recently, Apple has released its own metal credit card that users can sign up for online, or receive “free with in-store purchases of $7,500 or more.” How will the incumbents deal with this escalation?

Chase is ready. On September 16^th, Chase will be unveiling a new card, according to Monica Willis, VP of Gravitational Marketing. “The new Blue Whale card from Chase allows users to enjoy all the rewards they’ve come to expect from our cards, plus so much more.”

The Blue Whale Card will weigh between 12 and 16 kgs and fits snugly into the lap-top sleeve of most backpacks. Said Peabody, who was asked to pilot the new card, “I have to use two hands to stick it in the chip reader at Trader Joe’s, but I know people are checkin’ me out. I’m never going back.”