Velcro City Tourist Board

velcro city tourist board

a blog by Paul Graham Raven

science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats

you couldn’t feel anything, and you didn’t want to either

Last week in particular, body and mind were crying out for proper rest, but the freelance life doesn’t work that way.
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Writing

10 Jun 2025
virtual mallrats

A way to sell selling itself (infinite regress edition).
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General 🙜 Technology

5 Jun 2025
ballad of a con-man

The times, they are a-changin’.
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Futures 🙜 Technology

29 May 2025
international police cops

I have long been aware that the reason spam emails such as 419 scams are so poorly written is to filter for, uh, low-information voters, shall we say—those who are more likely to follow the entire phishing chain, if they’re insufficiently (media) literate to recognise the initial contact as spurious.
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Futures 🙜 Philosophy 🙜 Social Theory 🙜 Technology 🙜 Weak Signals

20 May 2025
help us elaborate upon what we are trying to say

I don’t think it’s difficult to foresee the effects [of LLMs] on academic knowledge production at all, as the effects outside of the academy are glaringly obvious: I mean, have you tried searching the internet recently?
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Art 🙜 Philosophy 🙜 Social Theory 🙜 Technology 🙜 Writing

18 Apr 2025

Who is Paul Graham Raven?

“… who, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with [his] voice, thanks to the god in [him].”

Paul is consulting writer, researcher, theorist and foresight practitioner, as well as an author and critic of science fiction literature. More details can be found on the About page of this blog.