Relics of the Not So Distant Past
The article presents a humorous take on modern life and societal quirks. It touches on various topics, including personal aspirations and the challenges of dating in today's world. The author, Stephen Raaka, is a cartoonist known for his contributions to The New Yorker.
- ▪The author humorously reflects on the perfectionism often sought in personal life.
- ▪There are mentions of modern dating challenges, particularly for emotionally unavailable individuals.
- ▪Stephen Raaka has been contributing humor to The New Yorker since 2022.
The New Yorker files mainly under culture. We currently carry 76 of its stories.
Story provenance
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | The New Yorker |
| Canonical URL | https://www.newyorker.com/humor/shouts-murmurs/relics-of-the-not-so-distant-past |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 13:54:52 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T14:05:02.702Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T14:05:02.702Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | Di6l-j5Yev67 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
SketchbookRelics of the Not-So-Distant PastMay God have mercy on our millennial souls.By Stephen RaakaMay 20, 2026Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this storyMore Humor and CartoonsI’ll start this new project just as soon as all conditions in my life are perfect.More precise names for the “Personal Life” section on Wikipedia.Tough-guy things I can do because I don’t wear a face mask.It’s becoming pretty clear that something is going on with the crossword constructor.I’m a teacher and I do, in fact, live at school.Hinder: a dating app for emotionally unavailable men.Enter the Cartoon Caption Contest for a chance to appear in the magazine.Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff.Stephen Raaka is a cartoonist and…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The New Yorker.
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