velcro city tourist board

a blog by Paul Graham Raven

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

  • sluta analysera allting!

    Duolingo with the apposite life tips, once again. Sorry, Duo; one is what one is.

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  • a new New Wave, if you like

    I am beginning to perceive a pattern here, though. There is a loose group – a new New Wave, if you like – of British writers whose work might best be described as the natural successor to the β€˜mundane SF’ of the early 2000s. These writers are less interested in the widescreen formats of space

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  • 23JUN20 / accessions

    It’s so good to live in a city with a store that carries books like this without your having to order them in special. (Hell knows you pay for that privilege, though… but on the other hand, I’m glad to pay enough for books that the people selling them to me can be properly taken

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  • plastiCity

    For better or worse, [the city] invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in. You, too. Decide who you are, and the city will again assume a fixed form round you. Decide what it is, and your own identity will be revealed, like a position on a map

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    πŸ™œ
  • an hollowed-out epistemology, an epistemic poverty

    I’ll stop blockquoting Audrey Watters when she stops saying shit that needs saying. The science fiction of The Matrix creeps into presentations that claim to offer science fact. It creeps into promises about instantaneous learning, facilitated by alleged breakthroughs in brain science. It creeps into TED Talks, of course. Take Nicholas Negroponte, for example, the

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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].”