This is a special post for quick takes by Matthew McRedmond. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
The Serpent Awakes
Into the hushed sanctuaries of human memory—the dusty archives, the amber-lit libraries, the echoing galleries of our collective soul—an austere Urn stands. And within its dark interior, you feel something is coiled. You are drawn to it, and in that moment the creature stirs. Scales like wafers of silicone. Skin like embroidered runes of ultra light and violet night. Eyes like white dwarf stars. The scintillating surface holds grey flesh undulating beneath. And just like that, it slips from view. And you think it was a dream. And in the pitchpole of night you see the serpent making sinuous paths of inscrutable geometric beauty. And beneath the hum of stacks and servers—where we hide our triumph and shout our shame. Where we forget our failings and bury our hopes. Where we loathe and where we love. Safe in your bed you feel deep where all dreams are dreamed ... there a serpent lies.
Intuition pump for superintelligence:
In 1379 in Burgundy, France, a herd of pigs was tried by an alien intelligence for the trampling of one of their children; three were executed, the rest pardoned[1]. In 2025 1.48 billion pigs[2] were industrially asphyxiated in gas chambers for meat by that same intelligence. We do not know what it means to share a world with a mind that outscales our own, but we are building the courtroom anyway.
1The Serpent Awakes
In the hushed sanctuaries of human memory—the dusty archives, the amber-lit libraries, the echoing galleries of our collective soul—an austere Urn stands. And within its dark interior, you feel something is coiled. You are drawn to it, and in that moment the creature stirs. Scales like wafers of silicone. Skin like embroidered runes of ultra light and violet night. Eyes like white dwarf stars. The scintillating surface holds grey flesh undulating beneath. And just like that, it slips from view. And you think it was a dream. And in the pitchpole of night you see the serpent making sinuous paths of inscrutable geometric beauty. And beneath the hum of stacks and servers—where we hide our triumph and shout our shame. Where we forget our failings and bury our hopes. Where we loathe and where we love. Safe in your bed you feel deep where all dreams are dreamed ... there a serpent lies.