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a blog by Paul Graham Raven

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

Longtermism is merely a more acceptable mask for transhumanism

This longread by Phil Torres at Current Affairs on the Longtermism/x-risk/Effective-Altruism mob does a pretty good job of setting out the issues with what might be the ultimate in moral philosophies, namely a moral philosophy whose adherents have convinced themselves that it is not at all a moral philosophy, but rather the end-game of the
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Futures 🙜 Philosophy 🙜 Social Theory

29 Jul 2021
pronunciation guidance

A big part of the life-in-a-new-country experience is exposure to and (if you refuse the specious role of the “ex-pat”) learning a new language. For reasons that are presumably obvious, I have not yet been able to take formal in-person lessons in Swedish, but I have done over 400 days of Du*ling* at this point;
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General 🙜 Infrastructural Theory 🙜 Social Theory 🙜 Technology

26 Jul 2021
jag gillar stora båtar och jag kan inte ljuga

Even the Swedes had an East India Company. Image from a very warm day wandering in Göteborg.
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General

24 Jul 2021
vattnet är djupt

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General

23 Jul 2021
22JUL21 / accessions

To be written about for the BSFA Review, sent to Sweden with rather impressive haste by the publisher, MIT Press. (I hope they’re aware of the rather slow turn-over of reviews at the Review.) Wells is definitely a feature in the retrospective and historical sectors of the intellectual zeitgeist at present; the historical rhyming of
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Accessions 🙜 General

22 Jul 2021

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.