velcro city tourist board
a blog by Paul Graham Raven
science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats
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Cinema in the age of streaming media
I went to see The Current War yesterday. It was mostly just me.
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C̶h̶a̶r̶m̶ offensive
Will Davies on Bozo’s ascent: Advertising, dating back to the late 19th century, brought a more scientific perspective to a similar challenge: how to produce an affective bond between a mass public and a product. A key difference is that advertising is primarily focused on the future (what will this product be like, what difference…
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Execution, not policy
From a recovering management consultant: McKinsey is capitalism distilled. It is global, mobile, flexible, and unabashedly pro-market and pro-management. The firm has an enormous stake in things continuing more or less as they are. Working for all sides, McKinsey’s only allegiance is to capital. As capital’s most effective messenger, McKinsey has done direct harm to…
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“War cabinet”
If the Tory membership really believes it’s in a war right now, it should recognise that war as being waged upon its own children, by itself.
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No consolation
Tim Maughan: Real people don’t have character arcs, or simple motivations, or background stories to be revealed in a prequel – those things are inventions of the entertainment industry. They’re marketable tropes. Real people are far more nebulous, complicated, they live far more in the moment and without definable meaning. They can’t be summed up…
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].”