Author: Prateek Joshi | The Stanford Daily

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Prateek Joshi

Prateek, a former editor-in-chief of Brown University’s satirical newspaper (The Brown Noser), signed with the Stanford Daily’s satire section in free agency. He also had one glorious month-long stint contributing headlines to The Onion, none of which were published. Feel free to send him article suggestions and harsh criticism at pjoshi2 ‘at’ stanford.edu. His favorite hobby is getting an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Class of 2021), focusing on sustainable energy systems. When he’s not satirizing, he’s fervently searching for whoever had the nerve to claim the “pjoshi1” email username.

Study finds Americans increasingly divided into those who reject science, those who embrace science to build nuclear weapons

“We’ve found that the percentage of people who either understand nothing about basic science or who understand just enough to build a nuclear warhead are at all-time highs.”

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Apr 12 2021

‘Imagine if about 25,000 cardboard boxes each contained one three-toed sloth’ says documentary narrator struggling to convey size of blue whale

HUMOR: “To put it more simply, that’s around 20,000 boxes each housing a two-toed sloth. Simply amazing, isn’t it?"

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Apr 05 2021

New York Knicks announce special promotion to give away first 500 fans at each home game

HUMOR: “When it’s safe to open our doors to fans, I can promise you that the first 500 attendees at each game will be promptly given away to another team.”

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Feb 07 2021

Tom Brady will start in record 10th Doritos Super Bowl commercial

HUMOR: The quarterback will surpass his previous record of nine Super Bowl commercials for the legendary tortilla chip brand produced by Frito-Lay, Inc.

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Jan 31 2021

Ancestry.com stops beating around the bush and just tells you that Great-grandma was a Klan member

SATIRE: "Instead of just owning a cute little bakery in St. Louis like we told you, she was also a prominent leader of the Women's Ku Klux Klan throughout the 1920's."

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Jan 19 2021

‘Maybe smell it first?’ recommends FDA

SATIRE: “Look, we’ve been pretty slammed with the coronavirus stuff as of late, so instead of e-mailing me a bunch of questions about the romaine lettuce you bought, just give it a little sniff and if it smells fine then it’s probably okay to eat.”

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Jan 10 2021

Republican Party decries nation’s dependence on bloated government bureaucracy to count election ballots

SATIRE: RNC chairperson Ronna McDaniel is highly critical of states that waste taxpayer money to hire and train qualified individuals to count ballots in order to ensure a free and fair election.

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Oct 06 2020

Scientists hypothesize that discovery of phosphine on Venus provides evidence of intelligent life on Earth

SATIRE: Researchers are being cautious and still cannot determine with full confidence if this discovery was a complete fluke or the result of decades of diligent adherence to the principles of physics, chemistry, and biology.

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Sep 29 2020

Prepared man already naked by end of TSA line

SATIRE: Johnson, who arrived at his gate seven hours early after bypassing the X-ray machine altogether, was viewed by fellow passengers as a shining example of the virtues of planning ahead of time.

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Sep 24 2020

Self-driving car absolutely going to pull over if you two don’t cut it out back there

SATIRE: The CEO of Waymo announced that the company’s latest vehicle will absolutely pull over if you two don’t cut it out back there.

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Sep 13 2020

Purdue Pharma vows to make cripplingly addictive drugs more affordable for working class

SATIRE: Average Americans are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of prescription drugs, especially the ones that give you a wild high and result in a damaging lifelong dependency.

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Sep 01 2020

Director of US Fish and Wildlife Service holds press conference to distinguish between the two

SATIRE: Director Aurelia Skipwith unequivocally stated that fish were in fact separate from wildlife, and not just one subset of wildlife as scientists previously thought.

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May 11 2020

Betsy DeVos concerned that most high school grads lack skills to properly execute pyramid scheme

Expressing concern about how prepared the class of 2020 is for the real world, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that the overwhelming majority of high school graduates lack the skills to properly execute a pyramid scheme.

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May 05 2020

Alarming UN report on biodiversity loss admits we probably don’t need hagfish anyway

Warning that the rate of species extinction is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, the United Nations released an alarming intergovernmental report on Friday admitting that, despite this rapid decline in biodiversity, we probably don’t need hagfish anyways. “This man-made ‘sixth extinction’ will have disturbing ramifications across the entire planet because all species, except for the…

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Apr 30 2020

Promiscuous insect feeling unfulfilled In symbiotic relationship with tree

Proclaiming that the passion has slowly faded away, a local promiscuous ant reported feeling unfulfilled in its symbiotic relationship with the nearby tree.

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Apr 21 2020

Senate’s new coronavirus relief bill provides financial assistance on every single roll of hoarded toilet paper

Unveiling “phase 4” of a massive congressional COVID-19 stimulus package this week, Senate Republicans announced plans for sweeping discounts on every single roll of 1-ply toilet paper that has been hoarded.

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Apr 17 2020

Lonely NASA scientists wish InSight rover would Skype home every now and then

SATIRE: Expressing their concern for the rover’s safety and well-being, NASA’s lonely scientists admitted Tuesday that they wished InSight would Skype home every now and then. The sophisticated machine, launched from Earth almost two years ago, has barely kept in touch with its home planet.

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Apr 06 2020

Woods Institute finds 90% of ocean pollutants are messages in bottles en route to transatlantic lover

Released on Monday, the study shed new light on the previously unknown sources of ocean pollution.

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Feb 03 2020

Berkeley develops earthquake warning app, giving each California resident just enough time to illegibly scribble will onto napkin

SATIRE: Previous versions of the warning system only gave a split-second heads up — leaving people only enough time to contemplate their legacy.

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Jan 27 2020

Insecure horse feels like he doesn’t deserve spot in Stanford stable

SATIRE: “It’s pretty intimidating to gallop around this country club-esque campus when you know these are hallowed fields steeped in generations of equine achievement,” said Jigsaw the horse.

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Jan 21 2020

New grad student realizes he was blacked out during entire undergrad experience

SATIRE: McKnight, a first year Master’s student in the School of Engineering, came to this conclusion amid a month-long hangover that resulted from eight semesters of continuous binge drinking.

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Nov 15 2019

New Uni policy on sexual assault involves listening more empathetically before eventually dictating how survivors tell their story

SATIRE: “We apologize for our mishandling of Ms. Miller’s request and are thus implementing a new policy that requires the University to listen patiently and intently to a survivor even though we know we’ll eventually censor them,” read an email from the Board of Trustees.

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Nov 06 2019

Hordes of alumni instinctively swim upstream to campus, frantically study for midterms during annual reunion weekend phenomenon

SATIRE: Every year, homecoming weekend sees alumni instinctively swim upstream back to main campus, where they begin studying for midterms. The mechanism of the natural phenomenon is still being uncovered by researchers.

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Oct 28 2019

New Arrillaga Fellowship requires each recipient to name firstborn child Arrillaga

SATIRE: “We’d like to congratulate each of the 50 recipients who are now contractually obligated to name their firstborn child Arrillaga,” started the press release written by Provost Persis Drell.

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Oct 14 2019