*****

Added harshness in this comic comes from the rollover text: “The crank doesn’t actually do anything, but it makes the humans happy” – plus the red button’s additional picture of the poet thinking “I hope the STEM crankers don’t look down on me.”

I am delighted by this comic, as usual; even though as a poet impressed with the ever-increasing quality of AI-driven or -augmented verse, I suspect that Zach Weinersmith is worryingly prophetic.

Illustration: ‘Crank‘ by Zach Weinersmith, who publishes a Saturday Morning Breakfast Comics (or SMBC) cartoon daily. He is the author of several brilliant and provocative books, including the previously reviewed ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness‘.