Velcro City Tourist Board

Category: Criticism

  • design, marketing, and manipulation as ideological imperative

    I seem to be linking Cennydd Bowles a lot lately, but why would one not? So here’s a nice, short injunction from the man himself, off the back of his having thrown out the question “when does design become manipulation?”, and being real unsettled by the answers he got: Design influences. It persuades. But if…

  • epistemic humility vs. “the engineer’s disease”

    This post is prompted in part by a post by Cennydd Bowles, in which he riff on Nathan Ballantyne’s notion of epistemic trespass. Reading it reminded me of a term I’ve seen frequently, most often on MetaFilter, where it has been part of the lexiconic furniture for some time. An ask-the-hive-mind entry on that site…

  • never an especially attractive quality

    A snip from an essay well worth reading in full, otherwise offered without comment: … the issue isn’t negativity per se, which has its place in the fandom ecosystem. The issue is how to talk about things you love (or hate) impersonally. What is lost in fandom is ultimately detachment. Detachment can coexist with love,…

  • bold as (nostalgic) love: Gwyneth Jones and hauntology

    A Metafilter thread on the new St Ettienne album (haven’t heard it yet) gave up this comment: It’s interesting to see the 90s End Of History era displace the Swinging 60s as a lost golden age just out of clear memory. @metafilter https://www.metafilter.com/192220/Ive-been-trying-to-tell-you#8132163 I’m sharing this here due to its synchronicity with a point I…

  • Solargoth

    I keep telling myself I shouldn’t pass public comment on solarpunk, firstly because I haven’t done the reading and legwork, and secondly because I know a few people who really have done the reading and legwork (hi, Jay!), and as a good, responsible academic (cough, cough) I know better than to traipse across someone else’s…