Truth that's Stranger than Fiction - The Art of the Prank

November 9, 2026November 9, 2026

But Is It Art? Claud.IO Has All the Answers

Compose a love letter, write an art critique, or have your palm read. Artist Claudio Castillo’s new work comes with a lot of disclaimers. And that’s a good thing. Everything should come with a disclaimer. Enjoy the many creative and funny applications.

Claud.IO, by Claudio Castillo.

Claud.IO is a collaborative artistic project between Claude AI and Claudio Castillo. This project has 31 different AI prompts to choose from.

Is it a sin? Is it legal? Is it true? Twenty-five small machines for asking, judging, checking, translating and bending the truth.

Type something in and see what comes back

This is an artistic project. Not meant to be used for any professional help. Available in 8 languages!

August 28, 2026August 29, 2026

A Spectacle to Miss On Your Next Trip to Italy

A self-described Italian archeologist “makes” history, literally.
h/t Uwe

‘A sucker born every minute’: The man who duped tourists with a fake Greek amphitheater, by Julia Buckley, CNN, August 24, 2026.

Of the eight TripAdvisor reviews of the amphitheater near Arcugnano, in Italy’s northern Veneto region, all give fulsome, five-star praise.

Read the whole article here.

July 17, 2026July 17, 2026

Prank Artists or ___ Artists? You Decide

A production budget between $2.5 million and $5 million changes the dynamic from a Yes Men corporate prank to something entirely different.

Here are two articles, one day apart, about Northland Tales, an unscripted prank comedy series, produced by the Yes Men’s Igor Ramos (and others) and financed through CBC, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and the Indigenous Screen Office. The show purported to use pranks for “social action” to address “historical injustices.”

When two interviewees, Frances Widdowson and Lindsay Shepherd, separately expressed concerns about the truthfulness of their interviewers, CBC paused production. Frances Widdowson, sensing something was “off” during her interview, live streamed it to social media (see below).

Article #1:
CBC pausing production on satirical Indigenous show, by Mark Gollom, CBC News, May 20, 2026.

Article #2:
The CBC’s Northland Tales scandal isn’t about bad taste—it’s about what happens when public money funds deception, by The Hub, May 21, 2026.

Frances Widdowson’s live stream in the middle of her interview with “Mike Smith” (aka Igor Vamos of the Yes Men):

March 2, 2026March 2, 2026

The US Department of Hate

George Orwell was right…

“The US Department of Hate” by Coco Fusco, Noah Fischer, Pablo Helguera, Hyperallergic, February 20, 2026.

The Siren is back for a fourth edition. Read, ponder, and rise up before it’s too late.

The editors of The Siren have been thinking about the parallels between our current political moment and the dystopian world of George Orwell’s novel 1984 for quite a while, but the escalating efforts by the Trump Administration to wage war against immigrants and silence critics compelled us to devote our latest issue to highlighting those connections. After witnessing the killing, torture, and forced expulsion of immigrants by federal agents, as well as the execution of US citizens and the criminalization of activists, we have no choice but to conclude that Orwell’s “Hate Week” has arrived.

We’ve done our best to bring the perspectives of those who are under attack, and who have survived totalitarian regimes, to the foreground. Writers Junot Diaz, Enrique Del Risco, and Pamela Sneed shed light on the ways that authoritarianism is taking over our world. Political cartoonists hailing from Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, the Philippines, and the Americas offer their perspectives on the impact of tyrannical forces in our lives. Read the whole article here.

March 2, 2026

He made a fake ICE deportation tip line. Then a kindergarten teacher called.

GUILTY… Until proven otherwise.

“He made a fake ICE deportation tip line. Then a kindergarten teacher called.” by Drew Harwell, Washington Post, February 20, 2026.

A Nashville comedian’s deportation hotline, set up as a joke, has gone viral among viewers who say it shows the “banality of evil personified.”

Ben Palmer, a stand-up comic in Nashville, has built a following online with his signature style of elaborate deadpan pranks, stumbling his way onto court TV shows and pyramid-scheme calls to poke fun at the latent absurdities of American life.

Then in January of last year, he had an idea for a new bit: He’d set up a fake tip line that people could use to report anyone they thought was an undocumented immigrant. It was darker than his other stunts, but it felt topical, the kind of challenge he wanted to try. At the very least, he thought, he might get a few calls he could talk about at his next show. Read the whole article here.