Sam Kriss is our language’s greatest living satirist.
Prove me wrong.
And he's in top form here. So many brilliant throwaway lines in this piece: "The story goes that Thomas Hooper Cooper was so upset by the book’s failure that he immediately died four years later from malaria."
Kriss is a wonderful thing to have arisen out of 20th c. leftism. Reading too much of the Marxist canon and its offshoots, he ended obsessed with the way theoretical constructs misshape reality. And since he's funny as hell, and a polymath, we end up with these brilliant pieces.
ALL of them online. The guy doesn't publish books. Which makes me think someone needs to be archiving the best of this work, putting it on paper. All of it could easily disappear.
Kriss would probably laugh at that. As if it wouldn't disappear on paper. "Laser etch it in titanium and it'll disappear too."
But this is some of the best writing of these decades. He should have a couple collections in print, at least.
One of the best summaries of the anthropogenic debate I've ever read, at least among those directed at laymen. It is regrettable, however, that Mr. Kriss failed to discuss the fissionist theories so popular among 19th century microbiologists, e.g., Koch and Pasteur. Their influence on the parthenogenic ideology of lesbian feminists cannot be overstated.
A very entertaining and hilarious read. Not sure how serious to take this given the publishing date, but regardless it makes me happy for the scientific method as it exists today, and the fact that scientific theories don't just randomly drift around in conceptual space based on the whims of culture.
I blame it all on the placenta starting an epigenetic arms race between males and females. If we were reptiles we could just reproduce parthenogenetically, like civilized folk. Instead we have to mess around with imprint control regions.
Right now, scientists are experimenting with making "bio-computers", where instead of silicon chips they use cloned human brain cells as data-processing components.
(The photos of these "mini-brains" are super creepy.)
If, at some point, such an organic computer gets large enough to gain sentience (and why not? It's the same stuff our brains are made of), it will start to wonder: "Where did I come from?"
I don’t remember if you’ve written about RUR, the play that gave us the word “robot,” where the answer to “where do people come from?” is sometimes “they are assembled in factories, which stitch artificial intestines and furl out their vast sheets of skin”— but I definitely get reminded of it a lot with these essays
So exquisitely written was this document that I googled Thomas Hooper Cooper.
Ok, are you making some of this up?
It was born from the author's mind
It arrived to us fully formed, so it's hard to say
No, it was in the author, who had generated these notions, before they gained form on the stack.
Every word of this essay is not only true but the truest things to have been published in this magazine
Something being true is like something being pregnant, it either is or it isn't
Some things are truer than the truth, although that is itself only a half-truth. Similarly, some people are clearly born by mere semi-pregnancies.
Truché
Sam Kriss is our language’s greatest living satirist.
Prove me wrong.
And he's in top form here. So many brilliant throwaway lines in this piece: "The story goes that Thomas Hooper Cooper was so upset by the book’s failure that he immediately died four years later from malaria."
Kriss is a wonderful thing to have arisen out of 20th c. leftism. Reading too much of the Marxist canon and its offshoots, he ended obsessed with the way theoretical constructs misshape reality. And since he's funny as hell, and a polymath, we end up with these brilliant pieces.
ALL of them online. The guy doesn't publish books. Which makes me think someone needs to be archiving the best of this work, putting it on paper. All of it could easily disappear.
Kriss would probably laugh at that. As if it wouldn't disappear on paper. "Laser etch it in titanium and it'll disappear too."
But this is some of the best writing of these decades. He should have a couple collections in print, at least.
One of the best summaries of the anthropogenic debate I've ever read, at least among those directed at laymen. It is regrettable, however, that Mr. Kriss failed to discuss the fissionist theories so popular among 19th century microbiologists, e.g., Koch and Pasteur. Their influence on the parthenogenic ideology of lesbian feminists cannot be overstated.
How did you guys even come up with this?
This is Borges like in both style and content, and no greater compliment can be paid.
I had the same thought by the end of the first paragraph. Was this written in Spanish?
A very entertaining and hilarious read. Not sure how serious to take this given the publishing date, but regardless it makes me happy for the scientific method as it exists today, and the fact that scientific theories don't just randomly drift around in conceptual space based on the whims of culture.
April 7???
haha, I'm not sure how I misread that as April 1st. It was very late when I made this comment and read this article. Excellent article then!
I blame it all on the placenta starting an epigenetic arms race between males and females. If we were reptiles we could just reproduce parthenogenetically, like civilized folk. Instead we have to mess around with imprint control regions.
I would love to know the author’s take on that line from Macbeth: “What you egg! [stabs him]”.
Right now, scientists are experimenting with making "bio-computers", where instead of silicon chips they use cloned human brain cells as data-processing components.
(The photos of these "mini-brains" are super creepy.)
If, at some point, such an organic computer gets large enough to gain sentience (and why not? It's the same stuff our brains are made of), it will start to wonder: "Where did I come from?"
It may not like the answer...
I feel a strong temptation to go write some fanfiction on wikipedia...
Sam Kriss is the king of Substack
I don’t remember if you’ve written about RUR, the play that gave us the word “robot,” where the answer to “where do people come from?” is sometimes “they are assembled in factories, which stitch artificial intestines and furl out their vast sheets of skin”— but I definitely get reminded of it a lot with these essays
Was this meant to be published on Apr. 1st?
No