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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a pattern we are doomed to repeat
Dave Karpf is doing sterling work on what we might call the uppermost archaeological layer of paleofutures—to the extent that the various vague plans I had to write more in this direction have been shelved pretty much permanently. Leave it to the person with the headstart and the bit between their teeth, you know? There…
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23JAN24 / accessions
Caro’s The Power Broker: a book notorious for being referred to far more often than read, and you’ll have an inkling as to why once you see a copy in the wild, given it’s about the same size and weight as a breezeblock. The institution was persuaded to take the plunge by a friend and…
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tools to cudgel or flatter
Bit of a callback here to last week’s post: Addressing the vacuity of the words fascism and democracy, [Orwell] wrote “the word fascism has no meaning except insofar as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” Calling something a democracy is not very different except that “we are praising it.” Fascism is reduced to meaning not good…
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15JAN24 / accessions
The institution is on the rails today*, leaving the department to man the front desk, and having taken at least one of these new arrivals with them: * — The institution is, at time of this posting, en route by rail to a village just outside Wiemar, where they will be spending much of the…
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the erasure of a line between intellectual inquiry and public power
From an interview at The Nation with Wendy Brown, ostensibly on the occasion of her new book on nihilism as discussed in Weber’s “vocation” lectures: What does it mean to think with another scholar—including one with whom one may have many differences and disagreements? Thinking with someone, especially a powerful interlocutor like Weber, does not…
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].”