Velcro City Tourist Board

Category: Futures

  • Solnit’s hope vs. Arendt’s natality

    Rebecca Solnit’s definition of hope is so succinct a summary of my own definition that I assume I must have picked it up from her (and from others who got it from the same source). This version is from a new interview at LARB, which I’m stashing here so I can cite it properly going…

  • half-arsed cynicism as gateway drug to solutionism, example #632

    So close, but yet so far. Alan Jacobs on geoengineering: The argument that the exploration and testing of geoengineering technologies should be stopped is not “a worthwhile argument.” It’s a dumb argument. We cannot afford to put all our eggs in the emissions-reduction basket, for the simple reason that there is no good reason to…

  • climate change aesthetics and the logic of the spectacle

    Via Andrew Curry’s reliably interesting Just Two Things newsletter, here’s a piece by the Magnum photography collective about the portrayal of climate change in contemporary photography, and in particular the work of a non-profit called Climate Visuals, which is… … founded in research in social science; they use evidence gathered from focus groups in Europe…

  • kelly’s antiheroes

    It’s been quite a few years from the last time I was suffiently wound up by Kevin Kelly’s cyber-Amish techno-optimistic sermonising to write a blog post rebutting it, but it seems some things are more reliable triggers than others. So, here’s Kelly’s latest salvo, entitled “The Case for Optimism”, and my step-by-step rebuttal of it—which,…

  • 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…