Top all-time · #1762
Sam Kriss
Personal blog · samkriss.substack.comwritingculturephilosophy
Sam Kriss writes Numb at the Lodge, a personal blog at samkriss.substack.com about writing, culture and philosophy. Since 2022, 41 different Hacker News readers have linked it 80 times, most often “Taylor Swift does not exist”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Sam Kriss's essays on internet culture, AI-written text and social media, often recommending them to others or citing them to support their own points.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Called quite good and delightfully strange; essays recommended, including 'the internet is already over'; one says a post rings true.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. Click to read Numb at the Lodge, by Sam Kriss, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- Taylor Swift does not exist5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-11-29
- The internet is already over (2022)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-09-19
- The century of the maxxer: things are happening in America4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-02-10
- If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-05-25
- The Dust of God3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-03-26
- The black mountain: who is Santa Claus?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-24
- The Cacophony: AI as Golem3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-04
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-22
- /p/welcome-to-hell2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-23
- Against Lists of Books2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-26
What Hacker News says?
I agree with Sam Kriss, "wokeness" is an etiquette: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/wokeness-is-not-a-politics > They’ll tell you that actually, there’s no such thing as wokeness. It’s not an ideology. It’s not a belief system. It’s just basic decency. It’s just being a good person. > They’re right. Wokeness is an etiquette. There are no sects within wokeness for the same reason that there are no sects on whether yo…
Comment linking /p/wokeness-is-not-a-politics
on “The Origins of Wokeness”Submitted The internet is already over (2022) as a story · 237 points
HN discussion> Fortunately when the aggressively conventional-minded go on the rampage they always do one thing that gives them away: they define new heresies to punish people for If the "conventional-minded" define new heresies, against a new creed, how are they conventional? What gives Paul Graham away is what he doesn't mention and may be what bothers him more: the old heresies that the surprisingly innovative and even rebell…
Comment linking /p/wokeness-is-not-a-politics
on “The Origins of Wokeness”Submitted Before I reach my enemy, bring me some heads as a story · 153 points
HN discussionThis rings more and more true every day: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writin...
Comment linking /p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writing-i-will
on “The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative”Submitted The internet is already over as a story · 97 points
HN discussionFor me, Sam Kriss takes that title by a large margin: https://samkriss.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “In the long run, we're all Dad”Submitted Numb at Burning Man as a story · 28 points
HN discussionSam Kriss has at least two posts that came later about AI: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/a-users-guide-to-the-zairja-... https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-cacophony The second one is a bit closer to touching on the same themes, but both are a little more allegorical than TFA.
Comment linking /p/the-cacophony
on “The internet is already over (2022)”Submitted Born in the Wrong Generation as a story · 23 points
HN discussion> A lot of people I know predicted Twitter would be completely shut down within a year of Musk's acquisition. As one of those people, I'm definitely eating crow. Three things happened that bode well for Twitter's future: 1. Musk has attracted a loyal core of true believers that think he has saved free speech with the Twitter purchase. 2. The Overton window of online discussion has started moving right. In particular…
Comment linking /p/welcome-to-hell
on “Ribbonfarm Is Retiring”Submitted If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you as a story · 14 points
HN discussionFor anyone who hasn't read Sam Kriss before and enjoyed this piece, I'd also highly recommend his essay 'the internet is already over': https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-already-over
Comment linking /p/the-internet-is-already-over
on “Before I reach my enemy, bring me some heads”Submitted Reading Is Magic as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI also really enjoyed this more recent post by the same guy: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/welcome-to-hell Basically he makes the argument (I think slightly tongue in cheek) that Twitter is analogous to a certain understanding of the Christian Hell, in that it's not a form of suffering you're condemned to, but a form of suffering you actively seek out. More deep social media commentary, but there's also some inter…
Comment linking /p/welcome-to-hell
on “Ask HN: What are some blog posts that you have enjoyed going through?”Submitted Is Nerd Culture Dying? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionhttps://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-already-over CW: gore in header image, about one page long. PgDn gets it out of view on a 1080p screen Posted on HN a while back. It's slightly bleak in outlook but it was what finally pushed me to take serious steps to reduce my presence online. Got rid of all my apps that weren't strictly for comms and deleted most of my socials accounts. I already feel better for th…
Comment linking /p/the-internet-is-already-over
on “Ask HN: What are some blog posts that you have enjoyed going through?”Submitted Numb at Burning Man as a story · 7 points
HN discussionPardon the spam but your comment reminded me of this post, which you might enjoy: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/i-told-you-so
Comment linking /p/i-told-you-so
on “A dark money group is funding high-profile Democratic influencers”Submitted Three years of apathy, lassitude, and failure as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis comment vaguely reminded me of this delightfully strange article on Taylor Swift that Sam Kriss published a while back: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/taylor-swift-does-not-exist
Comment linking /p/taylor-swift-does-not-exist
on “A man who used music to try to lure aliens to earth (2020)”Submitted What is Europe? A secret history of the world as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI think this post is either LLM-written, or written in a standard blogpost style of today which is increasingly becoming LLM-like. Sam Kriss had a good recent post pointing out some of the "tells": https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writin...
Comment linking /p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writing-i-will
on “Leave Me Behind”Submitted There's Someone on the Ice as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> AI is a bad writer, but […] Let’s say they finally fixed the machine so it was really good, so its default setting was to write exactly like VS Naipaul. The result would be a world in which you’re constantly confronted by cold emails from VS Naipaul, bubbly magazine articles by VS Naipaul, signs in shop windows in which VS Naipaul tells you about the new opening hours, strangely flaccid sexts VS Naipaul ghostwrote…
Comment linking /p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writing-i-will
on “How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing”Submitted I Told You So as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis will be complementary to the SecondSelf Skinset Pro: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/how-to-enjoy-your-secondself...
Comment linking /p/how-to-enjoy-your-secondself-skinset
on “Project Aria 'Digital Twin' Dataset by Meta”Submitted Taylor Swift does not exist as a story · 5 points
HN discussionhttps://samkriss.substack.com/p/all-the-nerds-are-dead This covers that nicely
Comment linking /p/all-the-nerds-are-dead
on “Why are we more and more talking about the past here on HN?”Submitted Manifesto of the Armed Front of Love as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
