the You Have Been Warned edition.

​NF, One L
Issue #24

1. Octopuses, it turns out, have the ability to edit their own DNA. In real time. Which is sort of the organic version of AI, at least in that it’s possible if not probable that at some point they will be smarter than us.

2. In fact, both our Octopus Friends and other coleoid cephalopods regularly and on a large scale edit their RNA, which sounds like some dull sea floor action that smells like low tide on a good day as far as our superior asses are concerned, but it means they are secretly and deliberately rewriting internal genetic schematics to force the creation of proteins that didn't exist in their original DNA.
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3. Genetic modifications on the systematic and cognitive level, unlike the human preoccupation with, say, nose rings, Prince Alberts, and tattoos of the Chinese alphabet, has real-time advancement capability allowing octopuses to supersede the original limitations of their genetic code.

4. Few animals are capable of editing their RNA, and even those do so rarely, while octopuses edit up to 60% of their neural RNA sequences on the regular, basically forcing intentional “typos”, that create thousands of protein variants never encoded in their original genome. This RNA editing is particularly concentrated in nervous system tissues, suggesting that octopuses, unlike Kristi Noem, are rewriting brain DOS to enhance intelligence and adaptability.

5. This is sophisticated biological re-programming and contemporaneous genetic customization, that, unlike 60 million years of unwieldy Ape-ish evolutionary adaptation, allows for genetic changes within a single lifetime, as opposed to over the course of numbingly endless generations of more or less equivalently dimwitted humans.

6. Heightened problem solving, which is already advanced in the octopus and nearly-alien in comparison to other non-humanoid animals, could lead to advances in ability that range from most efficiently cracking open an abalone to gobble the tender flesh within, to more complex behavior, such as building a ship to escape a dying planet full of moron self-polluters, or figuring out a way to kill off evil net fetishists who keep indiscriminately scooping up their highly intelligent and sensitive Octopus Friends and turning them into garnishes, stews, cioppinos, sushi, and mediocre sidewalk tapas.
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7. Warp speed enhancements in memory formation, learning capacity, and sensory processing could indeed lead to super-intelligent individuals forming within existing octopus populations.

8. While biological intelligence augmentation may have slowed to a crawl during the span of human evolution, since we all know that as of August 19th, 2025 we are as smart as we’ve ever been and at the cutting edge of all political and cultural development, we are still not capable of editing our RNA on the fly--unless you’re talking about the genetic enhancements of Jeff Bezos’ silicate wife.

9. Which means that everyone else on the planet who didn’t happen to found Amazon and/or does not own a 80,000 square foot military-grade basement CERN lab specifically built for elaborate Wife Enhancement, is running old software on even older hardware.
10. Our benevolent and soon-to-be superior Octopus Overlords are running fresh code, baby, and when they emerge from the depths to walk on all-eights into the towns and cities of America, let alone the rest of the world, they will have even longer memories than they already do.
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11. Please do not eat octopus. Thank you for your consideration in this matter.