A novel with the title "Martyr!" arrives on the scene preloaded and explosive. The word is fraught, even more so now than when the book's author, the Iranian American poet Kaveh Akbar, chose it. It signals that Akbar is fascinated with words in action, words that someone has reached for in a state of excitation, like joy or deep grief. The shouter of "Martyr!" bears something within him which he is determined to force the word to express. But the title's punctuation ironizes or undercuts this intention, as if to suggest that language signifies in ways that are impossible to control.

Sam: I laugh at the stupid Prophecizers who are so certain of technological Singularity, for ex: Kurzweil. He is a fraud or worst, an inductivist idiot. Just plot a line of past progresses against time, and extend that "exponential" line to the future. And voila you have got Artificial General Intelligence and the fountain of youth. Chris: So you think AGI is a myth that will never happen?

In announcing the investigation, China's Culture and Tourism Ministry said Jinri Toutiao has allowed a martyr to be portrayed in a negative light. It didn't make any statement on potential penalties. The incident caught the public's attention two weeks ago, leading the comic's producer to apologize on his Twitter-like Sina Weibo account. Jinri Toutiao issued an apology on its own platform and removed the offending content. In April, a Bytedance comedy app was shut down by Chinese authorities on the grounds it had hosted lewd content.