Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
We have never before suspected that memory loss could be fatal. Or at least I never suspected it. I’ve always taken it as more of a metaphor. A person suddenly realizes how much memory they are carrying around in their body, wittingly and unwittingly, on all levels. The way that cells reproduce is also memory. A kind of bodily, cellular, tissue mem
... See moreGeorgi Gospodinov • Time Shelter
We passed a shelf where a wheel of cheese had exploded into some kind of fungal overgrowth. Tall, mushroom-like fruiting bodies rose up and swayed slightly in the air disturbed by our passage. I sucked in a sharp breath. “Is that . . . there . . .” I pointed. “Is that all right?” Agrippa nodded. “Oh, it’s fantastic. An empire is rising, lifting up
... See moreRobin Sloan • Sourdough
In our skulls we carry around three pounds of slimy, wet, grayish tissue, corrugated like crumpled toilet paper.
Eliezer Yudkowsky • Rationality
“Look,” said Tyrena. “In twentieth-century Old Earth, a fast food chain took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam, and sold nine hundred billion units. Human beings. Go figure.”
- Hyperion by Dan Simmons
An animal that can change itself to match its surroundings, just by contracting its skin? That can weigh as many stone as a man and stretch the length of a carriage, and yet fold its body through a crevice? Whose brain is wrapped about its throat—a brain no larger than a pea—but who is clever enough to play actual games? An animal with this much in
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