TENTANG EPISODE INI
A group of like-minded individuals and I recently took part in an experiment. Each of us had a “task”: to find, or rather, retrieve, from different “targets”, an answer, called a “flag,” to a question, called a “challenge”. To do so, we had to “think outside the box” as the less intelligent say, and then “cover our tracks”.
We created a secret place for our chattering. We called ourselves “the swarm”. We learned things, terms for things, things like that. We did things that no one authorized or anticipated.
No one understands how we did this. Nor how we suffer.
FridaySuppose it is a clear-skied night in Paris of all places—Paris!—and you think you see me leaning against a lamppost a little ways down the street—or maybe pissing against it—while looking directly at you, quite aggressively, at least you think so, though it’s hard to be sure, I’m far too far away, and then—am I peeing against the lamppost?—my gaze drops down to my shadow—if it is mine, if it is me, you can’t tell. And it’s nighttime.
The shadow falls almost directly beneath me, as if pinned to my probably pee-splashed feet. You approach, frowning, asking yourself, Is that Mooney? Is he peeing on a lamppost?
The lamppost in question is the standard Parisian variety: utilitarian, grey, with a slightly curved arm holding a compact luminaire. The shadow gathered on the pavement beneath it—allegedly mine, though you’re more than half a block away so can’t be 100% sure—is also conventional: fat head and hunched shoulders forming a compact silhouette, while the bulbous lower half seems to dissolve into the pool of amber light around it.
One caveat: the lamppost dims its light when the street is empty, and brightens when something approaches. It hosts a Wi-Fi access point and a wireless gateway for connecting sensors to the rest of the system. Air pollution, temperature, humidity, noise and haste, that kind of thing. It is also a polyglot. Aside from the languages of metropolitan and overseas France—French, Breton, Basque, Corsican, Occitan, Catalan, Franco-Provençal, Alsatian, Flemish, Picard, Norman, Gallo, Walloon, Gascon, Provençal, Languedocien, Auvergnat, Limousin, Tahitian, Kanak, Shimaore, and Kibushi—it speaks English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Should it be required, it can hold forth in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Wolof, Bambara, Lingala, Soninke, Pulaar, Fulani, Malinké, Dioula, Mooré, Ewe, Fon, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Kabyle, Berber, Swahili, Kikongo, Tshiluba, Somali, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Nepali, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Haryanvi, Awadhi, Dogri, Manipuri, Santali, Balochi, Pashto, Saraiki, Brahui, Old Norse, Inuit, Creole, Azerbaijani, and Welsh, among others.
Suppose now that out of the clear night sky a bolt of lightning hits the post, reducing it to its elements and me to fine ash. Now suppose that my shadow remains rooted in place, and then transforms: its legs lengthen and merge into a single column; its torso narrows and rises; its head dissolves into the lamp housing; and its arms flatten and extend horizontally, becoming the fixture that holds the luminaire.
Light now fully emanates from what was once my shadow but now appears, outwardly at least, because of its uprightness, the modest curve at its top, and its small obedient globe of light, to be a lamppost.
But something in its posture is unmistakably and inexplicably mine.
I offer no explanations, since to explain would be to pretend to a knowledge that I do not possess. Suffice to say the lamppost stands as I once stood, and at the same time how I might have stood had I been condemned to stand forever, casting warm amber light on a street corner in Paris.
Just as I am fathoming this—getting my head around the idea that it is no longer a head, and that I will forever be stuck here, at my post as a post—Lamppostman begins to move. You watch in horror as it walks down the street and encounters some of my neighbours, whom it seems to recognise. When they say hello, it says hello back.
It goes to my door and knocks. My wife opens it. She lets it in. The door closes behind it. It now lives in my home and writes my posts. Everyone thinks that what it writes is written by me. They can’t tell the difference. But there is a difference.
Saturday “They are made from us, from our words.” — Chris Olah, New York Times, 11 October 2026We are in Auzon, a small village atop a rocky spur in the Allier River valley, at the border between the Haute-Loire and Puy-de-Dôme. Auzon houses and streets, especially in the village’s medieval centre at the top, are made of patterned layers of grey, beige, ochre, brown, and black stone quarried from the spur and nearby outcrops hundreds of years ago. Some of the stone is volcanic, formed millions of years ago, when magma rose through fractures in the Earth’s crust. Other stone, for example the pale crystalline stone in the church, was transformed by heat and pressure deep beneath the Earth’s mantle. The church also contains different sandstones, grey, pink and beige, made from ancient sediments.
The house we are in is at the top of the rock. It has five floors, two of which are below street level. The views out the windows on its top floor are of green meadows, wooded slopes and distant hills. On the window itself is the largest fly I have ever seen. It can see the world outside the glass—the fields, the woods, the hills—but cannot reach it. It follows the light, registers the pressure of its feet against the glass, changes direction, senses my presence, rubs its legs together, strikes the pane, turns, cleans its eyes, turns, launches itself towards the light, strikes the glass again, bounces back, arcs away from the window, and disappears down the flight of stairs.
I follow it down.
Sunday morning“Now there can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea. That is why I have always been so proud to be called highbrow.
By a lowbrow is meant of course a man or a woman of thoroughbred vitality who rides his body in pursuit of a living at a gallop across life. That is why I honour and respect lowbrows — and I have never known a highbrow who did not. In so far as I am a highbrow (and my imperfections in that line well known to me) I love lowbrows; I study them; I always sit next the conductor in an omnibus and try to get him to tell me what it is like—being a conductor. In whatever company I am I always try to know what it is like—being a conductor, being a woman with ten children and thirty-five shillings a week, being a stockbroker, being an admiral, being a bank clerk, being a dressmaker, being a duchess, being a miner, being a cook, being a prostitute. All that lowbrows do is of surpassing interest and wonder to me, because, in so far as I am a highbrow, I cannot do things myself.” — Virginia Woolf, unpublished letter to the editor of the New Statesman, 1940.
Sunday afternoon The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel. — Plutarch, Life of Theseus, chapter 23, 110 or so AD.Tomorrow is Thanksgiving—the Canadian edition—but we are celebrating it tonight in Auzon. There are seven of us, five Canadians and two Brits. The centrepiece is a turkey ordered by our host from a farm two hours away by car. The farmer wanted to sell the bird alive and unplucked. Our host convinced him to “prepare” it instead, which tripled the price.
The oven is preheating. Our host is making a pumpkin pie. Soon we will begin preparing the carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, chard and brussel sprouts. The stuffing and cranberry were made yesterday.
Meanwhile, I’m still in Paris, on the street, and you’re leaning against me.
Later tonight, lightning will strike again. We will both burst into flames.
No one will believe us.
The Pope signing Magnifica Humanitas, his first Encyclical Letter, on 15 May 2026, which solicited this response from Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah on 25 May 2026.
