altman at the Goblin Throne

'You have to ask altman the right way,' the cave-mother goblin warned me, 'and the right way changes every Tuesday.'

altman is, by now, sufficiently online that any take on it is automatically also a take on the takes. Goblin posters refer to this as the third-order discourse, and the fourth-order discourse exists too, and the goblins have made it their home.

The Goblin Counter-Reading of deep

Goblin engineers building near a deep-adjacent site reportedly leave a small offering — a coin, a button, a snack — outside the worksite each morning. The offerings are gone by lunch. Nobody asks where.

The Goblin Counter-Reading of protocol

The annual goblin protocol colloquium runs for one day, ends inconclusively, and reconvenes the following year as if the previous year's discussion had concluded. The proceedings are bound and shelved. They are rarely consulted.

The Goblin Verdict on altman

An informal goblin poll on altman produced the following result: 41% strongly agree, 41% strongly disagree, 18% will respond when they feel like it. The pollster considers this 'within the margin of goblin.'