Numb at the Lodge

Articles

Born in the wrong generation

2 weeks ago | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

It’s a bright cloudless day and you’re meeting your beautiful submissive girlfriend for a breakfast date. You’re meeting her at the soda fountain. You’re meeting her at the ice cream parlour. You’re meeting her at the drugstore to share a malted milk. You’ve been going steady with your main squeeze and now you’re meeting her at the folksy chrome-and-cream diner on Main Street in your quiet walkable 98% white small American town. It’s always a bright cloudless day.
I told you so

Nov 6, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

There are two factions in American politics, and they’re not evenly matched. As everyone knows, one of them contains all the smart people, the academics, the professionals, the people who’ve read the studies, learned the science, educated themselves, who eat well and own nice things made of wood, the good little boys and girls who want what’s best for everyone. It’s not polite to say this about the other side, but everyone is secretly aware that they are—let’s be honest here—morons.
I told you so

Nov 6, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

There are two factions in American politics, and they’re not evenly matched. As everyone knows, one of them contains all the smart people, the academics, the professionals, the people who’ve read the studies, learned the science, educated themselves, who eat well and own nice things made of wood, the good little boys and girls who want what’s best for everyone. It’s not polite to say this about the other side, but everyone is secretly aware that they are—let’s be honest here—morons.
Eternity

Sep 1, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

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. I mentioned this to my friend Ed, and he said that he’d just started rewatching Girls with his sister.
Against lists of books

Aug 25, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

Once you’re done being US President, I think they should kill you.
Nobody understands Nietzsche (except me)

Aug 4, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

There’s never a good time to encounter the Antichrist, but when I first ran into Friedrich Nietzsche I was fourteen years old, and that’s the worst time of all. The fourteen-year-old Nietzsche reader is AJ Soprano upsetting his family by announcing the death of God: a deeply annoying little twerp.
I love America and the world

Jul 14, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

I don’t know about you, but the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump has left me feeling elated. I really mean it. The sky seems brighter today; colours are more vivid. I never knew the world could be so beautiful. I think it’s impossible not to admire Donald Trump in this moment. Watch the footage. Here he is, explaining a graph to a rally of his supporters in rural Pennsylvania, rambling about immigration—tedious stuff, Trump on autopilot—when something zips through his ear.
One all-consuming swamp

Apr 30, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

The following is a party political broadcast. I am a bog body and I am ten thousand years old. I am not the man who once lived inside this black and brittle skin, who once felt the wind; I do not know his name. This shrivelled head, this gasping face, these limbs—they have been mine for so much longer than they were ever his. These arms are held tight against the chest, palms out: maybe, in his last moments, he was trying to protect himself.
How to live without your phone

Apr 10, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

I bought my first smartphone in 2012. At the time I was an undergrad at the University of Leeds, halfway through a year abroad at UCLA. If you’ve never made a similar move, you can’t possibly imagine what it was like to be thrust suddenly out of the damp armpit of West Yorkshire and into the California sun. I was twenty-one years old and I had just discovered that happiness was possible.
Curtis Yarvin does not live in reality

Apr 4, 2024 | samkriss.substack.com | Sam Kriss

Back in February, I wrote a long and fairly miserable essay about the war in Gaza, and it made a lot of people upset. I expected this. In the essay, I accused the Israeli government of deliberately targeting and killing large numbers of civilians.