How to read Numb at the Lodge
A guide
Numb at the Lodge currently runs to more than one hundred posts and nearly half a million words. That’s quite a lot of words. It doesn’t help that the stuff I write here usually gets described as ‘indescribable’ and categorised as ‘uncategorisable.’ I will sometimes write long arguments for things I don’t actually believe, or deeply researched essays with exactly one lie hidden inside. I find it fun; maybe you will too.
One way to get into this swamp of half a million words is to trust the masses and just read my most popular posts. Unfortunately, you’ll find that the most-read thing I’ve ever published here is a very straightforward piece of political commentary about why the Democrats lost the 2024 US election, probably the least interesting thing on here. This is because readers can’t be trusted.
Another way is to use this guide. If this is your first time here, we recommend you start with:
The Numb at the Lodge Seasonal Sampling Platter
A tasting menu of lesser-known seasonal delicacies from across the year. Balanced between esoterica, invective, pop culture, and politics. Small plates, tiny bowls, plus a few stranger and more annoying forms to give you a general idea of what it is I’m doing here, so you can decide whether you like it or not:
Christmas Eve: The black mountain
‘Once every nineteen years, the Moon passes so close to Hyperborea that it’s possible to leap across the gap and walk on its surface.’
An esoteric history of Santa Claus and the North Pole, featuring Athanasius Kircher’s underground oceans, Nazi hollow Earth theories, cannibal dancers, the Inuit discovery of Europe, the revolution of May 1968, and the terrifying secret of our planet’s magnetic field.
Valentine’s Day: Manifesto of the Armed Front of Love
‘Have you really never loved anyone so much, with so much of your heart, that you just had to fire mortars into a police station about it?’
Every day there’s another terrorist atrocity. The people responsible say that their only ideology is love. They’re letting off bombs because they’re in love. But who would want to listen to a bunch of terrorists?
May Day: This green and growing earth
‘The seagull god had magnificent hard yellow eyes and a small shrub growing out of its head. I felt an urge—a small urge, but a very real one—to worship it.’
On the last day of spring, the residents of an ordinary English town parade a man made of leaves through the streets and then ritually slaughter him on a hilltop. Most of them assume they’re taking part in an ancient pagan fertility rite. In fact, it’s much more interesting than that.
Midsummer: I love America and the world
‘I love this senseless empire, sprawled across the face of someone else’s continent like a bird-eating spider, and I love its mandibles that inject the planet with venom until everything liquefies and it can feed.’
In July 2024, a sniper came a quarter of an inch away from exploding Donald Trump’s brain on live TV. It was maybe the most beautiful and the most summery day of my life. For just a moment, politics disappeared. I loved Donald Trump, and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and everything that exists.
My birthday: Eternity
‘I thought it was my idea to rewatch Girls, or possibly my girlfriend’s idea; one of ours, anyway, or why else would we have done it? So we rewatched the first episode of Girls, and it turned out to be a very weird experience that caused me to receive several terrifying insights about the true nature of the universe and the unreality of time.’
My birthday is in early September, the beginning of autumn, when everything in the world starts dying, and I get to thinking about dying too. To mark the occasion, I wrote an anguished essay on the unbearable vastness of the far future and the experience of rewatching Lena Dunham’s Girls (2012).
If you’ve finished the Seasonal Sampling Platter and decided you want more, why not try one of these bonus packages?
The Numb at the Lodge Round-the-World Super-Luxe Holiday Express
Our all-inclusive tour of this large and increasingly psychotic planet, taking in all the major tourist sites plus some authentically menacing alleys and unsanitary foreign jails:
China: Numb in China: Shī shì shí shī shǐ
‘The only way Chinese makes sense is if you imagine it as an attempt, begun thousands of years ago, to create a language that would be illegible to digital machines.’
A letter from the hot, humid megacity of Chongqing, deep in the depths of China, in which I try to untangle what’s going on with what is possibly the world’s most fundamentally deranged language.
India: Numb in India: Dharma police
‘Imagine if every air-traffic controller had to come from one of the secretive families of air-traffic controllers implanted in every city, and instead of passing an exam they simply performed their mysterious rites before a tiny black idol of God in his form as a cosmic air-traffic controller, directing the movements of stars and galaxies from his terminal in the great control tower beyond the physical universe, and then the airports had to hire them. Now imagine the air-traffic controllers all refuse to eat in the presence of pilots, who are their social inferiors, and if the daughter of an air-traffic controller tries to marry a pilot, her parents might try to kill her. Also, one person can ‘be’ a pilot and another an air traffic controller, even though neither of them have been anywhere near an airport and they’re actually both just millet farmers. That’s a jati.’
A letter from the hot, dry desert outpost of Jaisalmer, on the furthest fringes of India, in which I try to untangle what’s going on with what is possibly the world’s most fundamentally deranged form of social organisation.
Australia: Dreams never end
‘As soon as Captain Cook came ashore at Botany Bay, he fell asleep and dreamed he was walking around, surveying hills and harbours. And when the First Fleet arrived they also fell asleep, on the ground where they landed, under the open sky, dreaming that they were founding a colony. Then the Second Fleet came to sleep right next to them. This city is a dream, it’s a desert mirage. We have trespassed on our dreamworld.’
I have never been to Australia, but I have watched several seasons of an Australian reality TV show called Married at First Sight. This is what I learned.
Russia: The beautiful Russia of the future
‘Russia is the world: the entire history of the world.’
One day in 2023, a former small-time crook called Yevgeny Prigozhin turned his mercenary army against the Russian state and sent a tank column racing up the highway towards Moscow. Only in Russia, the last country where things still really take place.
Gaza: Bread, figs, phosphorus
‘At the time, Gaza was twice the size of Jerusalem. The well-water was very slightly salty; so was the cheese. Outside the city there were groves of olive trees that had stood for hundreds of years. At night, you could hear the wide dark sea rushing and retreating over the dunes.’
Written a week into Israel’s war against the people of Gaza. A lament.
America: Numb at Burning Man
‘As new campers arrived, I heard them introduce themselves to each other in strange and savage ways. Ah, one said, you’re in quantum computing. I’m only in quantum data, but you might want to talk to Kevin over there. The lowly quantum data worker gestured at a shirtless man in a bright pink bucket hat and glowing cat ears. He does quantum computing, he said.’
I went to Burning Man.
The Numb at the Lodge Pillar of Eternal and Enduring Truth
This pillar is made of granite, five hundred feet high, inscribed with one of these texts on each of its four solemn faces. The word ‘INTEGRITY’ is carved into its capital, symbolising my promise to never creatively combine true and fictional statements, or ever write a short story in the form of an essay:
‘The masks are carved out of wood using stone tools. I didn’t like looking at those masks. They expressed a kind of mathematics I’m glad I don't understand.’
Most people think the secret country of Wakanda was invented for comic books in the 1960s. In fact, Europeans have been dreaming about a highly advanced African society for more than two thousand years. To this day, some people claim they’ve actually been there.
What is the world’s oldest hatred?
‘Whoever you are, whatever you hate the most is just a substitute or a metaphor for yourself.’
According to a lot of politicians, the world’s oldest hatred is gentiles’ hatred of Jews. For Afropessimists, it’s white people’s hatred of black people; for radical feminists it’s men’s hatred of women. Other people have had weirder views.
(For more information about one of those people, see Five prophets, The law that can be named is not the true law, and Against truth.)
‘Taylor Swift seems destined to be remembered by our drooling, mud-eating descendants as a kind of culture hero, the mythical source of everything left for them to inherit. First was she who plucked strings and made pleasant sounds. Who taught man to spin thread and mark the hours of the sun.’
For a few months in late 2014, I was the world’s first full-time Taylor Swift reporter. In that time, I think I discovered something I wasn’t supposed to. All I’m left with is a gaping hole in my memory and a book of increasingly frenzied notes.
‘There is language that towers up out of the sidewalk and language that collects in the gutters, and one wide pacific word that drains out of the Bay and away, washing against the far edge of itself to send Japanese fishermen insane.’
In 2024, Donald Trump gave a press conference at the US-Mexico border in which he claimed that America was being invaded by ‘truly foreign languages’ spoken by ‘nobody.’ He was right.
The Numb at the Lodge Guide to AI
Like basically everyone, I’ve produced a lot of stuff about large language models. Unlike everyone, all my assessments have been correct and all my predictions have come to pass:
A user’s guide to the zairja of the world
‘The more technologically advanced an AI becomes, the less likely it is to produce anything of artistic worth.’
Written in December 2022, shortly after the public launch of ChatGPT. To understand AI, you need to know the full story of computer-generated text, which begins with an Islamic fortune-telling machine that was invented in the twelfth century but claimed to have existed since the very first days of creation.
‘The obvious answer is that a chatbot is not conscious, and you aren’t really conscious either. There’s only one conscious entity in the universe, which is language itself.’
Written in April 2023, shortly after the first AIs started going mad. In the first years of the seventeenth century, Europe was nearly destroyed in a Cacophony, a plague of carnivorous words. Now, we seem to be in the early phases of another.
‘That’s a great choice! your beautiful submissive girlfriend says. A plate of ham is a fantastic way to start the day, delivering the primal satisfaction of cured meat without the heaviness of bacon. Add a pair of lacy, crispy fried eggs with rich, runny yolks and you’ve got yourself a certified diner classic!’
Written in April 2025, shortly after AIs started driving human beings mad too. With the power of modern technology, everyone can live in whatever version of reality they prefer, forever.
The Numb at the Lodge Cultural Critique Corner
Do you like books? Do you like films? Not me! The Cultural Critique Corner is a dark, neglected, rodenty hole for people who complain about how entertainment isn’t as good as it ought to be. If that’s your perversion:
‘The point isn’t to read these books; the point is to have read them. Actually dragging your wet eyeballs over all that scratchy paper is just an awkward chore you have to go through, so afterwards you can ask people at parties if they’ve read The Line of Beauty, and then, before they’ve even had a chance to respond, tell them that you’ve read The Line of Beauty.’
In which I complain about people making lists of books.
‘Once, there was character, which could be good or bad, and which had something to do with heredity and possibly the precise pattern of bone ridges on your skull. Novels from this era tend to spend a lot of time on physical description, because the tilt of a nose or the bulging of an eye says something significant about the person we’re meeting. We don’t really do that any more. We have learned psychology: we know that a person is composed primarily of feelings.’
In which I complain about pop-psychology in fiction.
‘The greatest lie the nerds ever told us was that being a nerd had something to do with being unpopular, being uncool, being outside the cultural mainstream, being unusual, being creative, being funny, being different in any way. Being a nerd has always meant being a machine for liking things.’
In which I complain about nerd culture, and (accurately) predict its demise.
‘Everything that depends on the internet for its propagation will die. What survives will survive in conditions of low transparency, in the sensuous murk proper to human life.’
The first post published in Numb at the Lodge, and still its manifesto. In which I prophesy the end of the internet.
‘I pull up swagless into this sauceless void. Chat, in what consists my drip? My drip is stiff with blood and mire. Chat, in what consists my aura? My aura is only fear. Chat, in what consists my rizz? My rizz is a half-turned head, twisted birdlike. My rizz is the empty circling of a dislocated jaw. My rizz is antic snarling. My rizz is reddened eyes.’
Look, you’re just going to have to read it.
The Numb at the Lodge Golden Sheaf of Lightly Blasphemous but Basically Well-Intentioned Engagements with the Abrahamic Religions
Actually these are just two generally under-read pieces I’m really fond of and couldn’t fit anywhere else, but they do have this in common:
‘You can tell a demon, because a demon speaks the truth.’
According to the Gospels, Jesus cast a multitude of demons out of a man and into a herd of pigs grazing nearby, who then ran into a lake and drowned. But the Gospels were written by Jews, who for obvious reasons don’t know much about pigs. Like, for instance, the fact that pigs can swim.
‘No statue stands in this temple, as in Greek and Roman temples. The temple does, however, contain a huge black stone with a pointed end and round base in the shape of a cone. The Phoenicians solemnly maintain that this stone came down from Zeus.’
On the ancient practice of worshipping fallen meteors, which might secretly survive into the present day.
If, after reading all this, you still want more, maybe you should consider becoming a paid subscriber. All the posts featured in this guide have been completely free to read, but paid subscribers get access to the full archive of paid posts, all of which are slightly less interesting than the stuff you get for free. This includes most of the political takes, plus the full China and India series and a lapsed project about dreams I fully intend to pick up again at some point. I try to dissuade people from becoming paid subscribers as much as possible because I think making money tends to make my writing worse, but if you insist: