Velcro City Tourist Board

Author: PGR

  • an almighty crash in the heart of the form

    Lovable Marxist granddad David Harvey, getting in there early on neoliberalism’s final Wile E Coyote moment: … contemporary capitalist economies are 70 or even 80 percent driven by consumerism. Consumer confidence and sentiment has over the past forty years become the key to the mobilization of effective demand and capital has become increasingly demand- and…

  • no ists for this ism

    Interesting squib here from Matt “Xenogothic” Colquhoun, highlighting a section of a Reddit of a discussion on accelerationism, and his description of the absurdity of identifying as an accelerationist: As far as I see it, there’s no such thing as “being an accelerationist” because there’s nothing I can do to impact the process of acceleration.…

  • the self-isolation of solutionism

    Via Chairman Bruce comes news that various ongoing driverless car experiments are quietly leaving town while everyone’s busy worrying about other things. If such solutionisms are even a temporary casualty of the pandemic, then we’ve already found a silver lining to this particular cloud… as Sterling notes, it’s likely that the circumstances are providing a…

  • Corona vibes, Malmö

  • a duplicitous priesthood’s superior knowledge of the technology of light and shadow

    Insightful piece on superhero narratives, magic and transhumanism by Iwan Rhys Morus over at Aeon a few weeks back; collides a bunch of my own long-running obsessions in exciting ways. For instance, technology’s deliberate appropriation of the mask of (stage) magic: During the 19th century, the relationship between technology and divinity took a new turn.…