velcro city tourist board

a blog by Paul Graham Raven

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

  • necessary but not sufficient; on hope and optimism in solarpunk and cyberpunk

    Start with a disclaimer: I do not identify as a solarpunk. However, I do know some folk who do—most notably m’good buddy Jay Springett, who is one of that scene’s ideologues-in-chief, in as much as it has such things. I also know some folk who study solarpunk from the perspective of the environmental humanities (EH),

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    ๐Ÿ™œ ๐Ÿ™œ
  • post-partum

    On Monday I finshed a (long-overdue) chapter for an academic handbook on placemaking. I outlined the thing months ago—almost half a year ago, in fact—but then life happened (and then the virus happened), and it got shunted onto the backburner. And so when I came to actually cranking the thing out, a process which I

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  • Hyllie

    Not much crackin’ down at the Arena today.

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  • Enter The Mirror

    This is turning out to be a pretty good month for music. Behold, the new album from Maserati: From the same town as R.E.M., believe it or not. If your reaction to krautrock has been “well, that’s OK, but I wish it was thicker and heavier”, give this a spin: arpeggiated synth-bass, vocoder vox, big

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  • a summer job bagging cadavers

    It’s hard not to feel an opportunity was missed by not making Frankie Boyle the new leader of the Labour party instead of the equivocal sub-Blair suit who just got the gig. … you have to wonder if the virus is so very different from extractive capitalism. It commandeers the manufacturing elements of its hosts,

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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].”