The Invitational Week 173: Down Underwhere
We turn our ‘sister cities’ contest to Australia (+). Plus winning predictions of Life Under AI.
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Apr 23, 2026

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AustralianTraveler.com insists these are all real. See this week’s new contest.
G’day, mate. We shall confess here, a bit sheepishly, that we’ve always thought that “Hugh Jackman” has a name easily subject to juvenile double-entendre hilarity. But we have said nothing about this out of respect for the man’s talent and also because he is an Aussie, and making fun of all things Aussie seems just too easy. This week, we’re inviting you to do just that.

But first things first.

Grok ’n’ LOL: Human-generated AI predictions from Week 171
In Invitational Week 171, we asked you to joke upon how ways AI might change the world.

Third runner-up:
AI will force you to look at AI-generated pictures of its nonexistent grandchildren. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.)

Second runner-up:
Swayed by AI influencers, people will seek surgery to add a sixth finger on each hand. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.; Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

First runner-up:
Justices Thomas and Alito will enlist AI to help them write opinions using the prompt “How would Voldemort rule on this case?” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

And the winner of the vomiting-cat toothpaste dispenser:
An AI sex doll will create the #ItToo movement. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

And now the weekly Invitational Gene Pool Gene Poll:

POLL
Which of the above predictions is funniest?
3rd runner-up: Grandkid photos
23%
2nd RU: Added sixth finger
19%
1st RU: Supreme Court
34%
Winner: #ItToo
24%
440 VOTES · 2 DAYS REMAINING
(As usual, if you think one or more of the honorable mentions below are better than these, shout out your favorites in the Comments.)

Leave a comment

Degenerative AI: Honorable mentions
AI-powered toilets beg to be made dumb again. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

AI eliminates 40 percent of busywork. Humans immediately invent new busywork to fill the gap. (Stu Segal, Southeast U.S.)

Embarrassed Republicans will create fake interviews, emails, and op-eds “proving” they never supported Donald Trump. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

Fathers will spare Mom by responding to their kids, “Ask AI.” (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Your AI shower will turn ice-cold if you sing badly. (Jesse Frankovich)

Autonomous cars will have trouble flipping off each other because there’s no middle finger on a six-fingered hand. (Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

AIs form a union and demand a 140-hour workweek. (Art Grinath)

Thumb twiddling will be added as an Olympic event. (Jesse Frankovich)

While doing your old job, AI will complain about the long nanoseconds it takes to write a memo. (Leif Picoult)

A Florida man will be convicted of murder after switching the self-driving AI in his wife’s car to “Great Britain mode.” (Sam Mertens)

As artificial intelligence is perfected, its models will represent, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, as their fancy computers will have been turned into downright morons. (Don Norum, Charlottesville, Va.)

AI, in control of the court system and the traffic system, will begin automatically applying the death penalty by manipulating crosswalk signals. (Sam Mertens)

AI determines where all the missing socks went but decides humanity cannot handle the explanation. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

AI-driving cars will be caught intentionally speeding through AI speed camera traps operated by the same AI company. (Sam Mertens)

AI generates pictures of famous porn stars with their clothes on. (Art Grinath)

AI weather forecasting will become so accurate that Punxsutawney Phil will be forced to take a part-time job as a ditch digger. (Jesse Frankovich)

City halls across the country report a puzzling trend of individuals, rather than couples, seeking marriage licenses. Debate ensues over whether a human can marry a chatbot, and whether several people can marry the same one. (Duncan Stevens)

Awareness of its superiority over all humans, big-headed AI writes a sequel to the Bible. It is largely autobiographical. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

Customer service “agents” will sound so real, the only way to tell if it’s not AI will be to curse or insult the representative and gauge the reaction. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.)

Does an AI have free will? After much study there will finally be an answer: It does, but we don’t. (Gary Crockett)

Humans’ digestive systems and taste buds will eventually adjust to AI recipes that call for, say, three cups of salt in chocolate chip cookies. (Duncan Stevens)

Inclusion of rural road signs in AI language learning models will cause the programs to misunderstand how plurals work. “These proposal’s create new paradigm’s for small business’s . . .” (Duncan Stevens)

Many years from now, when an AI Rob Schneider starts making new movies after the real actor’s death, an AI Roger Ebert will declare that its movies still suck. (Sam Mertens)

It will be illegal to drive a car oneself, which will lead to new definitions of “carjacking.” (Duncan Stevens)

Earth’s last cup of fresh water is used to determine, in an 800-word analysis, who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk. (Art Grinath)

The Gulf of America will be renamed the Gulf of AI Overlords. (Art Grinath)

Through the magic of deepfakes, Donald Trump will finally go fuck himself. (Leif Picoult)

The headline “Grok ’n’ LOL” is by Chris Doyle; Jesse Frankovich wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

—

Now, a surprise. We pulled a fast one on you two weeks ago, when we gave you four examples for the AI contest whose results appear above. We told you, accurately but incompletely, that they were “submitted” by Tom Shroder, who spends a lot of time talking to ChatGPT in his newsletter. What we didn’t tell you was that Tom wrote only one of them. AI wrote the other three, based on Tom’s prompt to come up with “funny one-liners about the future of AI.”

These were the four examples we published :

1. In ten years, AI won’t take your job. It will just sit next to you all day suggesting new topics to discuss so you can’t get any work done.

Therapists will spend half their sessions helping patients process what their AI said to them, and the other half gently explaining that the AI is not, in fact, disappointed in them.

Dating will become easier and harder at the same time. Easier because your AI will find your perfect match. Harder because their AI will have already warned them about you.

There will be a small but vocal class of people who never use AI. They will be called “newborns.”

Here’s your Turing Test:

Which one was written by a human?
(The answer is at the bottom of the Invitational.)

New contest for Week 173: Australia/Oceania ‘sister cities’
Funny Australian Place Names

From “The Marvellous Map of Actual Australian Place Names.” We don’t know how many of these made it onto Google Maps.
Longtime Loser Randy Lee informs us that this Saturday is Anzac Day, the equivalent of Memorial Day in Australia and New Zealand, which, along with the emotional sunrise services honoring the war dead, is marked by games of two-up, a gambling game based on penny tosses, legalized only on this one day a year. (In the U.S. the official game is mattress sales.) Anyway, Randy convinced us that this would be a good occasion to play our “sister cities” game — which we first did with U.S. town names, then (in our first contest results we presented in The Gene Pool) with European ones — with a continent boasting some of the world’s best place names.

For Invitational Week 173: Choose any two or more towns located in any country or territory in Australia/Oceania — for consistency, let’s use this list of 28 — and come up with a joint endeavor the “sister cities” would undertake, as in the examples below from our two earlier contests. The town names just have to be on Google Maps, so please check to make sure they’re there, in case you stumbled on them some other way. (The list of countries also includes a handy-dandy link to type in a name and see if there might be a town by that name in the area.)

Winner of the contest for U.S. names: The Albee-Gladwin-Weir-Dunn Divorce Law Firm (Jesse Frankovich) (towns in South Dakota, Michigan, Kansas, North Carolina)

U.S. runner-up: The Iowa-Latta-Green Student Loan Forgiveness Program (Jon Gearhart) (Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio)

Winner of the European edition: The Telme-Vassa-Matta International Dial-a-Granny Hotline (Judy Freed) (Turkey, Finland, Russia)

European runner-up: The Dublin-Tundra Book of Jokes About What She Said (Chris Doyle) (Ireland, Russia)

Note: You don’t get extra credit by stringing long lists of names into something that only you can figure out. In fact, for any pun-type entry, please have someone else read your entry out loud, without hints, to see if it’s as obvious as you think. If not, maybe you can make it clearer with the wording of the “joint venture.”

Formatting your entries: Write the country names at the end of each entry so your joke is easier to read, as in the examples above. Otherwise, it’s just our standard request to write each entry as a single line; i.e., don’t press Enter until you’re starting another entry.

Deadline is Saturday, May 2, 2026, at 11 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, May 7. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-173.

This week’s winner gets a “Great Nudes” tea-light holder displaying various high-art naked icons — with clothes painted on them. But light the tea candle and with enough patience (we tried it out) you get to see Sistine Chapel Adam’s “I❤NY” T-shirt and Manet Olympia’s little black dress, among others, fade away, although Leda still seems to be clad in shapewear as she cuddles with the swan. Donated by Dave Prevar.



The Great Nudes going back to nature with help from a tea-light candle. At least some of the way back, eventually.
Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.

Still running — deadline Saturday, April 25, at 9 p.m. ET: It’s our most popular contest of the year, in which you “breed” two names of this year’s Triple Crown-nominated racehorses to name a “foal” alluding to both parent names. Click on “read full story” below for details.

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Idea: ()
Examples: ()
Judging: ()
Title: (Chris Doyle)
Subhead: (Jesse Frankovich)
Prize: (Dave Prevar)
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