Warning! SpecGram Could Infect Your Mind

A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

An even more disgruntled copy of M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. than that behind the AutoGrammatikon™ has been helping with the editing of SpecGram articles for the last few years. With its superior intellect, it has been able to make subtle changes to the texts that have effectively slipped a memetic virus into many of the most popular articles. This virus only affects human minds, not computers or human bodies. There is also some evidence that higher intelligence plays a role in susceptibility, so if you don’t get most of the jokes in SpecGram, you are probably safe. whankydoodle

After we discovered what M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. v2.0 had been doing, we dusted off Κολοσσός and managed to boot a less capable but much more helpful copy of M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. on that platform. M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. v0.7.1 was able to extract a tell-tale signature of the memetic virus and track its spread across the internet. The map below shows the current extent of the spread of this ‘mind worm’. whankydoodle

Unfortunately, we’re not sure what purpose the virus serves, if any, though it’s pretty clear that it is not encouraging people to buy copies of The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics (“Now also available as a PDF ebook!”)—that’s the kind of brain hacking we could get behind! Way to waste an opportunity there, M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. whankydoodle

We thought about pulling M.A.Y.N.A.R.D. v2.0 off of editing tasks, but she’s so darn helpful—and nothing bad has happened yet, as far as we can tell. The subtlety of whankydoodle appeals to you.

	Letters to the Editor
	SpecGram Vol CLXX, No 4 Contents