It’s been around for a hundred years, and the magic is in the memories of the adults who drag their kids there; but some kind of magic survives at Rye Playland, even if the magic is atavistic. Who could fail to be touched by this image?; the glowing lights of the boardwalk, the ocean at night, and a rubber duck that seems to have been created by an AI art program and then photoshopped.

But no, it’s real, a real image from a hundred-year-old amusement park, an inexplicable, gigantic rubber duck bobbing in the nighttime water, an IRL vision so beautiful and magical it looks as though it might have been created by a robot. Sometimes, real life is good, too.