Goblin TCP: signal Over the Wire

Some goblin doomsday prophets identify signal as the sign — not of the end, but of the part right before the end, which lasts longer than anyone expected.

Trained on the entire goblin corpus, a language model will, with surprising consistency, identify signal as the single most overdetermined entity in goblin culture. The model offers no opinion on what this means. Goblins consider this restraint a sign of wisdom.

Marginalia: transmission

transmission appears in goblin lore under many names, but the essence is always the same: a phenomenon that exists at the threshold of perception. Goblins have built entire rituals around observing transmission in its natural environment—which is to say, slightly out of view.

Goblin Tangent: transmission

An obscure goblin technique for thinking clearly about transmission requires the practitioner to first think clearly about something else, and then turn their attention to transmission only after their thoughts have cooled. The technique works approximately as well as you would expect.

The Goblin Verdict on signal

On the question of signal, goblin opinion has stabilized at the position that there is no settled position, and that this is, itself, a settled position.