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The Death of the Reader

Although I teach and edit fiction, I still didn’t think it would ever hpen—that an AI-generated or AI-assisted short story would win a major contest. Then came Jamir Nazir’s The Serpent in the Grove, a regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, published on Granta magazine’s website. The story exhibits all the common AI-writing tells familiar to anyone who has ever scrolled through a restaurant’s Instagram feed. Em dashes, the word hums (in the first sentence), contrasts (It’s not X, it’s Z). No final verdict has been made about the story’s creation, and we may never know for sure whether Nazir relied on AI to write it. Yet the preoccupation with who the author might be—man? machine? cat?—distracts us from the real casualty of AI-written fiction: the reader.
Soon after The Serpent in the Grove peared, one Reddit user concluded that AI-written or human-written, it’s painful to read. I agree: The methors are nonsensical— Laughter can cut a hush, not cure it—and the narrative is hard to track. I followed along merrily as other Reddit users performed their own close readings. Suddenly, I was back in the college classroom, or a version of it, as words and phrases were parsed not only for evidence of a hoax but also to make judgments about their quality as literature.
The conversation didn’t change my mind about the story’s literary value. But the public attention to the story’s style made me think about the tight relationship between a reader and a work of literature, and the ways that the advent of AI may damage that bond, if it hasn’t done so already.
Reading is a solitary activity, not a lonely one. I was a shy kid who loved books in part because they felt like a form of friendship extended to me by the author. The phrase Dear reader, common to fiction for centuries, may be conventional, but it also suggests a relationship between author and reader that is intimate, warm, even affectionate. The literary critic Wayne Booth, in an essay on George Eliot, writes that all stories, in short, claim to offer something to us that will add to our lives, and they are thus like the would-be friends we meet in real life.
Of course, not every author is pleasant company. And sometimes the connection between writer and reader becomes pathologically intense. Interest in the author’s life can curdle into obsession, as in Henry James’s The Aspern Pers, in which the narrator embraces any deception necessary to acquire the letters of a dead poet. But in its milder versions, the bond with an author leads from admiration of the author’s style to curiosity about their life. Biogrhies of authors consistently outsell other forms of literary criticism. When I say that I teach literature, one of the most common reactions people have is to ask me whether Shakespeare really wrote his plays. Yes, mostly, but the point is that we imagine someone, an author, a proper name, at the other end of the line.
Claude has a proper name, and the line is always open. As the technology improves, style will be harder to use—it has already become harder to use—as a clue to the truth about authorship. Services are available that humanize AI tics. The consistency of a literary style over time may also be replicable. If AI can be used to write a story, an AI agent could presumably be cloistered with only the text that it has generated until a corpus of works emerges on the scale of Balzac’s or Zola. Maybe it will be possible to write a literary biogrhy of someone’s AI assistant; maybe daily conversations with Claude will be studied for the slow cultivation of a singular way of writing or speaking.
But Claude, or whatever your AI agent’s name might be, is not an author in the way that Booth describes. Because when I sit down to read The Serpent in the Grove, I am no one’s dear reader. Instead I have the cautious, paranoid, seasick feeling that, from sentence to sentence, I don’t know whether the author is my friend, Jamir Nazir, or the machine that may have helped him write. So even if reading a novel by Claude and one by Virginia Woolf are, in some narrow sense, the same activity, reading as a practice has changed. What readers might never regain is our confidence that a text has been fixed by the nature of human life itself, as the philosopher Stanley Cavell writes.
When I sat down to read Nazir’s story again, a month after it peared, I was in Gambier, Ohio, the home of Kenyon College. The Kenyon Review, founded in 1939 and edited by John Crowe Ransom, published some of the greatest writers of the 20th century: George Saunders and Joyce Carol Oates, W. H. Auden and Rita Dove. As a young poet, Robert Lowell came to Kenyon to study with Ransom. On this weekend in late May, the students were gone, the Adirondack chairs were beckoning, and I couldn’t imagine a better place to sit and read.
As I opened the story in this place that felt custom-designed for making friends with authors, I thought of the heritage of a little magazine, a venue where stories are carefully selected and meticulously edited, where students like Lowell came to learn how to make decisions about placing the right words in the right order. And I thought about what AI is taking from us. As readers, we are all losing friends, and everything that comes along with friendship: trust, distraction, esce, absorption. These are the inchoate and unarticulated aspects of the relationship an author offers to us through a book, the parts of the reading experience that provide a kind of psychological mooring for a reader. The critic Roland Barthes thought that our fantasy of an author distracted us from what a literary text really was, namely, a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture. Barthes argued that we’d always find new ways to deny the death of the author, but AI may have written the epith.
In the absence of the author, or of the certainty that one exists, we may default to a style of reading that is self-conscious, hyperaware, restless, and anxiety-driven. We may struggle to immerse ourselves in a book, and instead hover at a safe distance, or dip in and out, worried that we’ll be fooled once again. Nothing less than the pleasure of reading is at stake.
Writers write from compulsion, from necessity. That’s why prose can feel hot on the page. I think of these two perfect sentences from Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses: No wonder the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution! he thought: The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge. Those sentences were created by a mind that blisters from its contact with reality. AI-written stories may produce prose that wins contests, but the urgency of the desire to get the words down is never going to be there. Even if it goes forever undetected, the absence of that urgency should matter to us, just as all fakery should matter to us: a fictionalized autobiogrhy, the imitation of a Monet. In the absence of the occasion that startles the writer into action, the ersatz artifact is meaningless, no matter how closely it mimics the real thing.
I doubt that humanity will lose the ability to write urgent sentences, but I’m worried we’ll proach them with suspicious minds and shuttered hearts, unsure about what it is that we are reading. All fictions, Booth writes, come not as tricks but as gifts. That may not be true anymore.

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Are IKEA meatballs really that good? We visited to find out (Syracuse food review)

Syracuse, N.Y. — You’ve heard about IKEA’s Swedish meatballs.
After the furniture store opened its new home in Destiny USA, the meatballs finally made their way to Syracuse. So we had to test them out to see if they live up to their hype.
A friend and I made it our mission to test out the entire menu at the Swedish bistro inside IKEA. The store — and the dining area — were particularly quiet on a Thursday afternoon.
The dining space had multiple sections, all in the chain’s iconic simplistic, clean design.
A variety of circular tables, high tops and soft seating spanned the space between the entrances to both the mall and the exterior.
Multiple kiosks sit off to the left of the counter, where customers use a touch screen to order their items.
Ordering everything on the menu wasn’t hard, as we could count the number of items on two hands.
We could tell when the kitchen got the order, because we heard one of the kitchen staff quietly exclaim, Oh, that’s a big order. parently they aren’t used to people ordering more than an item or two.
We started with the Swedish meatballs.
Served with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam, the meal is the most expensive item on the menu.
The meatball meal is $8.49 for eight pieces, $9.99 for 12 pieces, or $11.49 for 16 pieces. (You can also order extra meatballs — an order of 4 is $1.50.)
Many people have raved about IKEA’s Swedish meatballs for years, but this was my first time trying them. I wasn’t sure how they would stack up. But, I have to admit that they were surprisingly good.
The sweetness of the jam paired well with the umami of the meat and saltiness of the gravy without straying too far in one direction.
The potatoes were … potatoes. Nothing fancy, just a nice way to round out a meal. The eight-piece size was enough to sate my petite without getting overly full.
I was also pleased to see plant-based meatballs as a vegetarian option on the menu — and at 50 cents cheer.
Like the beef-and-pork alternative, the plantballs come with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. Honestly, the difference in taste was barely noticeable. The meat ones had a slightly greasier texture and were lighter in color.
Of the two, I was surprised to find I enjoyed the plantballs just a little more than the original meatballs.
Onto the other options, because it’s not just about the meatballs at IKEA. They also have an absurdly che hot dog. And when I say che, that’s both in cost and quality.
The hot dog was just an average hot dog, but a bargain at $1. The dry bun was the real downfall, as it seemed it had been sitting out all day.
If you’re looking for better che hot dogs, head to dollar Thursdays at the Syracuse Mets stadium and get $2 Hofmann hot dogs.
Again, there was a vegetarian option, and again it was cheer at 95 cents. This time I opted for both of the available toppings, fried onions and pickled cabbage, at 25 cents each.
They added a nice crunch to the otherwise soft-textured vegetable hot dog. But overall it wasn’t anything special.
The rest of the menu featured dessert options. Of the five options, we ordered three, skipping the frozen yogurt and cinnamon roll.
First up was the Gooey Cake ($1.50). The small, triangular dessert resembled a pale brownie, but with a gooey center that was something between caramel and fudge. It was average, but my friend did prefer the gooey cake the best out of the three.
We both agreed the cream cake ($2.29) was not very good. The small, circular cake was topped with a dome of marzipan cream and covered with a cloying sweet pink frosting and chocolate drizzle. You’ll feel like you need to brush your teeth immediately to get the sugar off.
My favorite of the three desserts was also the most expensive at $4.49. The chocolate cake had two dense, slightly dry layers. But the thick cream filling and fudgy frosting paired nicely with it.
Still, there are plenty of great bakeries in Syracuse where you can find much better cakes.
Instead of ordering the cinnamon roll at the bistro, I bought a six-pack to bring home ($8). I later regretted the decision because the cinnamon rolls were … not great.
Even after warming them in the microwave, they were dry, the dough was tough, and there wasn’t enough filling.
Overall there were a few things about IKEA’s bistro that stood out. In addition to the space feeling welcoming and airy, there is a family station providing a microwave, cutlery and disposable bibs for children.
Additionally, right next to the bistro is the food section of the store, where guests can buy almost everything they serve at the bistro.
Yes, you can get the frozen meatballs (huvudroll), savory sauce, mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam (sylt lingon), and even the gooey cake (kafferep) to take home.
So, did IKEA’s Swedish meatballs live up to their hype? Yes, 100%.
But really, just the meatballs. The rest of the menu just isn’t it.
The Details
The Store: IKEA, inside Destiny USA, 306 Hiawatha Blvd. W., first floor, Syracuse
Reservations? Ha.
Dress: Casual. But I dare you to dress up.
Accessibility: IKEA is located on the main level of Destiny USA and has a spacious dining area that provides adequate room for accessibility.
Credit cards? Required.
Parking: Large mall parking lot.
Noise level: Quiet. Most people are focused on shopping.
Special diets? Vegetarian options available.
Hours: Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday-Thursday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.

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NJ food guide for MetLife Stadium World Cup 2026 matches

North Jersey being as diverse as it is, we could probably find a restaurant for all the 48 countries participating in the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Throw in New York City, and it’s a guarantee.
While it might be a fun culinary endeavor to try to eat foods from every country participating, there’s a much more manageable option closer to home: MetLife will host five group stage matches featuring nine countries. MetLife will also host one Round of 32 and Round of 16 match each, and the World Cup Final on July 19, but we won’t know who’s in those games until later.
But the teams guaranteed to play at MetLife this summer represent countries with varied cuisines from around the globe, and you can taste them all here in North Jersey and New York City. From Brazilian rodizio to English pasties, German beer and West African peanut stew, you can taste a world of flavors.
Now if all this sounds like too much work but you want to taste the World Cup anyway, Lay’s has 40 globally inspired potato chip flavors launching in May. It’s an option, but plates of steak frites, weinerschnitzel and ceviche from local restaurants would be my choice.
Brazil vs Morocco, June 13
Before or after this match, you’d do well to visit the Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, which is teeming with Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants. For Brazilian fare, head to Brasilia Grill, which offers all-you-can-eat rodizio service and a la carte options like beef Milanese, grilled chicken with passion fruit, paella and more.
Churrascaria Brazeiro, with three locations in North Jersey, serves wood-fired meats rodizio-style as well, with an award-winning wine program and bar offerings centered around Brazilian cachaça. Samba in Montclair, meanwhile, serves homestyle Brazilian fare in a rustic, casual setting. Dishes include a variety of salgandinhos (filled fried pastries), seafood, beef and chicken entrees, and on the weekends, feijoada, Brazil’s national dish.
We’ve got at least two good options in New Jersey for Moroccan cuisine. Marakesh Restaurant in Parsippany is, first and foremost, a treat for the eyes: its interior is a reproduced palace with authentic architecture, carvings, tiles, paintings and crafts. But the food meets the moment; we’re talking kebabs, hummus, tagine, shawarma and more.
Oasis Restaurant in Cranford also has a large menu of tagine, kebab, shawarma, soups, starters and more. Don’t miss out on drinks like Turkish coffee, Moroccan tea and avocado shakes.
France vs Senegal, June 16
We’re fortunate in North Jersey to have options when it comes to French cuisine, from fine dining to casual bistro bites. Faubourg in Montclair and Weehawken straddles both worlds with bar, lunch and dinner menus served in a modern interior. Expect exceptional executions of traditional French dishes like tarte flambee, coq au vin, steak frites and more.
Lorena’s in Mlewood is another gem, serving chicken paillard, escargots, honey-glazed duck, seafood and more; their two- and three-course prix-fixe meals are a good entry point. And Brasserie Mémère in Closter is pitch-perfect, with something for everyone on the menu: duck cassoulet, mussels and snails, savory tarts, steak frites and desserts like pot de creme and kouign amman.
Senegal’s official language is French, but the culture and cuisine diverges; taste the difference in New Jersey. At Touba Restaurant in Irvington, get the Senegalese national dish, thiep (fish, jollof rice, and vegetables cooked in a rich tomato sauce), neems (crispy spring rolls), akara (bean fritters) and more.
At Mawo’s Kitchen in Jersey City, get the traditional fish and jollof rice, served with carrots, yuca, cabbage and eggplant, or order some shawarmas, pastél (fried pastries filled with fish) and wash it down with sorrel, ginger or baobab juice.
Norway vs Senegal, June 22
While you can visit the Senegalese options above, Norway’s a bit trickier. For Norwegian fare, plan to head into the city.
At Nordic Preserves Fish & Wildlife Company on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, you can order a sample board with four kinds of herring, or opt for beet salad, potato pancakes or gravlax. At Björk Cafe and Bistro in Midtown Manhattan, choose from a Scandinavian menu of fish, potato waffles, sausages, soups and more. Try the räckmacka, which is whole wheat bread topped with mixed greens, egg, lemon, dill, mayo and Nordic coldwater shrimp.
Ecuador vs Germany, June 25
These two very different cuisines would be fun to sample in one day, and you can do that here.
For German food, start with Black Forest Inn in Stanhope, a family-owned rustic spot serving traditional dishes for close to 50 years. You can’t go wrong with sausage, from weisswurst to currywurst, or the wienerschnitzel, either veal or pork. But dig deeper into the menu for some exceptional dishes like jagerschnitzel (with a wild mushroom cream sauce), roast pork shank with caraway jus, or a traditional sauerbraten or rouladen.
For a festive environment, check out Zeppelin Hall in Jersey City, a proper beer garden with German bites and plenty of beer. And if you want to explore top-notch German food further, Heidelberg Restaurant on the Upper East Side and Zum Stammtisch in Queens are unbeatable.
For Ecuadorian food, head to Garcia’s Restaurant in Union City for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Get sancocho de pescado (fish soup), chaulafan (a fried rice dish), bolon mixto (plantains with chicharron and cheese), and more. Latitude Zero in Bayonne has conch ceviche, bolones (fried green plantain with meat and cheese), and more Ecuadorian stles, and La Roca in Elizabeth has dishes like seco de chivo (goat stew with yellow rice and sweet plantains), yingacho (potato patties over peanut butter sauce with steak, sausage, eggs and plantains), chaulafan and more.
Panama vs England, June 27
Enjoy a pie and pint when England hits MetLife in late June. For a great pie, head to The Pie Store in Upper Montclair. Their savory pies are phenomenal; choose from options like cheese, potato and onion; shepherd’s pie; steak, ale and mushroom and more. Their sweet pies are worth checking out too; the coconut custard and banoffee pies are undeniable.
Or, grab another traditional football snack with a pasty from Rocky’s Pasties in Wharton. For over a century, Rocky’s has been putting out fresh-made Cornish-style pasties with traditional fillings like beef, potato and onion. And for more of a pub vibe (but with some seriously good eats), check out Muddy Waters Gastropub in Asbury.
For a variety of reasons, Panamanian food is few and far between in New Jersey and New York City. But if you can get to Pana’s Kitchen in Brooklyn, you’ll get a taste of this unique cuisine.
There, you’ll get stew chicken, mondongo stew, tamales, carimanola (fried yuca stuffed with meat), hojaldre (fried dough, often topped with meat) and more.

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Sherpa rescued after going missing on Everest with no food, oxygen

KATHMANDU, June 4 () – A Nepali Sherpa guide has been rescued from Everest after surviving about a week on the slopes of the world’s highest mountain without food or ‌oxygen in a rare case of survival in such conditions, a hiking official said on Thursday.
Dawa Sherpa, 52, was returning with a Polish climber after failing to reach the 8,849 m (29,032 ft) summit, when he went missing between Camp III and Camp ⁠IV.
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He was last seen on May 29. His client returned to base camp, but it was not clear how they got separated.
They were among the last climbers on Everest this season, which ended last month.
Lama Kazi Sherpa, of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, said his team located Dawa above base camp near the Khumbu Icefall and brought him down to safety. His team was cleaning up after ‌the ⁠season ended.
Dawa, still in a climbing jacket, was rushed from the helipad to hospital on a trolley.
Dawa’s family said he was doing well and undergoing treatment for frostbite and other complications.
He recognised me … is good and ⁠speaks, said Mhendo Lhamo Sherpa, the guide’s daughter. We are hpy.
The Himalayan Times said for seven days the guide had no food, no bottled oxygen, no rescue team.
A ⁠record number of more than 1,000 climbers and their guides scaled Everest this season, with the government issuing 494 permits.
Many climbers ⁠were stranded at base camp after a towering block of glacial ice delayed the opening of the route to the world’s tallest peak in ril.

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This week’s Knoxville grocery deals include buy-one-get-one offers

The worst part of a grocery run is watching the total cost run up with every beep of the scanner, but weekly deals from Knoxville grocery stores aim to make shopping a bit more manageable.
While Knox News is hitting stores to document food prices and how they’re changing week-to-week − and comparing store brands to name brands along the way − we’re also combing through weekly ads to find the hottest deals.
We’re highlighting savings at Kroger, Food City and Publix, as well as Walmart, which doesn’t publish a traditional weekly ads brochure and focuses more on everyday low prices.
Get ready to shop smarter, not harder, with these weekly grocery deals.
Weekly grocery offers typically run Wednesday-Tuesday.
Kroger goes in with digital deals
Kroger is encouraging shoppers to clip digital coupons this week.
Red, green or black seedless gres are $1.99 per pound with a digital coupon, compared to $2.79 per pound without the coupon. Oscar Mayer bacon is $3.99, compared to $6.49. Thirty-two ounce Kroger cheese varieties will be $4.99 ($6.99), and Kroger ice cream is $1.99 ($2.99).
And the deals don’t end there. Barilla pasta varieties are going for 99 cents with a digital coupon, and shoppers can grab Freschetta pizzas for $3.99 each. Fresh-baked muffins are $3.99, while Frito-Lay multipacks are $7.99 this week.
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Food City is celebrating National Dairy Month with these deals
Food City has started its monthlong deal on select “udderly delicious” dairy products in honor of National Dairy Month, which is celebrated each June.
Land O Lakes spreadable butter is two for $4 starting June 3 − and that includes its speciality cinnamon sugar butter. Galbani cheese shakers and ricotta cheese are two for $6, while select varieties of Tillamook shredded or sliced cheese are $3.69 each.
The dairy deals don’t end there. Food Club sliced cheese is $3.99 for a twin pack, and Cabot chunk cheese is $2.99 for an 8-ounce block. Food Club cream cheese is $1.99 and lactose free milk is $3.99 for a half-gallon carton.
Food City’s weekend dinner deal this week is focused on fajitas. Get one beef or chicken fajita mix, a Food Club tortilla pack, Crav’n Flavor tortilla chips and salsa and a Knorr side for just $12.99. And don’t forget dessert! Fresh-baked brownies are $5.50.
Publix is ‘doubling the fun’ with this week’s deals
Publix in its weekly ad is going all-in with buy-one-get-one deals on dozens of food and household products.
Pizza night just got doubled: all the essentials you need are buy-one-get-one starting June 3. Shoppers can get Publix shredded cheese, La Famiglia Delgrosso sauce varieties, Golden Home pizza crust and Armour pepperoni with savings upwards of $4 on each product.
Two pound bags of honeycrisp ples are buy-one-get-one free, along with lychee fruit, baby seedless cucumbers and Green/Wise organic white mushrooms.
More pantry essentials are on BOGO starting June 3. General Mills cereals, Pearl Milling Company syrup and Bertolli sauces are some of the biggest deals heading into the weekend. And Publix iced teas and lemonade are all BOGO − with shoppers saving nearly $4 on each 1-gallon bottle.
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Walmart ‘rollback’ deals of the week
Because Walmart focuses more on everyday low prices, we set our store to the Walbrook Drive Supercenter location and browsed through the “rollbacks” section of the store’s webpage highlighting specific products and deals:
Premier Protein indulgence protein shakes: $8.58 (four pack)
Great Value freedom ice pops: $1.97 (12 pack)
Chicken drumsticks: $4.92 (5 pounds)
Vlasic dill relish: $1.72 (10 ounces)
Oscar Mayer chili cheese stuffed dogs: $3.77 (eight pack)

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Beastly, Kraken-like octopus discovered in dinosaur-era fossils

“These findings revise the view of the Cretaceous ocean as a world dominated only by large vertebrate predators,” study co-author Yasuhiro Iba, a paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Jan, told Live Science. “They show that giant invertebrates – octopuses – also occupied the top of the food web.”
Where the fossilized remains of the kraken-like octopus were discovered
Researchers working in Jan’s Yezo Group, a massive Late Cretaceous geological formation on Hokkaido Island and in the Nanaimo Group geological formation on Canada’s Vancouver Island, have discovered exceptionally large fossil jaws. The jaws pear to belong to organisms that resembled octopuses, but their exact classification, size in life and potential ecological role remain a mystery, according to the ScienceNews.
The researchers identified 12 additional fossil jaws from rocks in Jan and examined 15 previously found fossil jaws. The creatures were divided into two species, N. Jeletzkyi and N. Haggarti, on their size and form, according to The Natural History Museum.
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How big was the Kraken-size octopus?
All of the top marine predators were thought to be vertebrates, including plesiosaurs and mosasaurs.
The study calculated that N. Jeletzkyi reached lengths of between 10 and 26 feet, based on its largest jaw, while the newly discovered N. Haggarti measured between 23 and 62 feet. This suggests that the N. Haggarti may be the largest invertebrate ever discovered, according to the Institute for Creation Research.
The finding might indicate that prehistoric marine ecosystems featured a greater variety of predators and were far more complex than previously imagined.

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