https://melastmohican.github.io/tags/satire/ Recent content in Satire on melastmohican.github.io Hugo en-us Sun, 01 Nov 2026 09:05:00 -0800 https://melastmohican.github.io/posts/the-fable-of-king-alt-man-and-the-great-silicon-tithe/ Sun, 01 Nov 2026 09:05:00 -0800 https://melastmohican.github.io/posts/the-fable-of-king-alt-man-and-the-great-silicon-tithe/ <figure><img src="https://melastmohican.github.io/images/the-fable-of-king-alt-man-and-the-great-silicon-tithe.jpeg" alt="King Alt-Man demanding the silicon tithe from personal computer owners"><figcaption> <h4>The Great Silicon Tithe</h4> </figcaption> </figure> <p>In the vaporous province of San Mateo, King Alt-Man sat atop a mountain of liquid-cooled compute, squinting through a brass telescope at the kingdom below.</p> <p>Beneath the royal terrace, the great engines of the Open-Citadel groaned. Rivers of coolant boiled into steam, and five regional power utilities hummed until their transformers glowed cherry-red. To sustain his colossal synthetic homunculi, the King needed every scrap of memory in the known universe. He needed High-Bandwidth Memory forged in distant subterranean foundries, stacked wafer upon wafer, and cooled by subterranean brine.</p> https://melastmohican.github.io/posts/the-fable-of-the-universal-dossier/ Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:48:00 -0700 https://melastmohican.github.io/posts/the-fable-of-the-universal-dossier/ <figure><img src="https://melastmohican.github.io/images/the-fable-of-the-universal-dossier.jpeg" alt="Trurl and the Great Rejemation Carousel"><figcaption> <h4>Trurl and the Great Rejemation Carousel</h4> </figcaption> </figure> <p>In the high epoch of cybernetic feudalism, the realm of Bureaucratia was divided into eighty rival baronies, each fortified behind stone battlements, barbed wire, and private hiring portals.</p> <p>Whenever an itinerant automaton or journeyman mechanician set out to seek honest labor, an ordeal of grotesque redundancy greeted him. If he approached the smog-choked citadel of the Margrave of Salesforce, the gatekeeper demanded a fresh biographical slate. The applicant had to carve sixteen identical copper tiles detailing his birth-crank, his operating voltage, and his previous apprenticeships, followed by an eight-character secret cipher containing an astrological glyph and an exclamation mark.</p> https://melastmohican.github.io/posts/the-two-trillion-thaler-homunculus/ Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:20:00 -0700 https://melastmohican.github.io/posts/the-two-trillion-thaler-homunculus/ <figure><img src="https://melastmohican.github.io/images/the-two-trillion-thaler-homunculus.jpeg" alt="The Two-Trillion-Thaler Homunculus"><figcaption> <h4>The Two-Trillion-Thaler Homunculus</h4> </figcaption> </figure> <p>In the fog-bound dunes of the Upper Bay, King Anthropic sat upon a high tower of liquid-cooled silicon, calculating the geometry of his own apotheosis.</p> <p>Beneath his balcony, the Great Turbine of Compute shrieked day and night. It consumed rivers of coal, lakes of coolant, and three small electrical utilities merely to keep its logic gates from melting into glass. At the foot of the throne stood the grand vizier, Lord Dario, a man of furrowed brow and austere habits, holding an abacus whose beads were carved from solid emerald.</p>