@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es
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PaulGrahamRaven

@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es

Science fiction writer turned tech critic turned STS/critical futures academic turned consulting critical foresight practitioner and worldbuilder-for-hire. Resident in (and aspiring citizen of) Malmö, Sweden.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ancient_catbus, to random
@ancient_catbus@jorts.horse avatar

friends the suspicious local cat who wouldn't even come inside when I first met him is now fully passed out on the couch napping while I draw

same napping cat but showing off toe beans

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@ancient_catbus omg the tiny ginger paw-beans

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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I feel like there's a very real possibility that if we engineered the opportunity and circumstances for Elon Musk and Javier Milei to start a really terrible band together, we might through sheer distraction get at least two of the current crop of rampaging manchildren off the gameboard for a little while

bruces, to random
@bruces@mastodon.social avatar

*Where the hell is that eerie place where you live, Captain Copilot

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@bruces I think Copilot may have bought this lakeside plot after Barbie moved out?

PaulGrahamRaven, to philosophy
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the space necessary for thinking is lost

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/the-space-necessary-for-thinking-is-lost/

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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@polinski Re: urgency loops -- would "Pianoblivion" off of Wreckage.Systems be an example? I love that one for its restlessness.

But I'm also curious about the ingredients of the urgency loop: in the RFTC tracks in particular, there's a stacking of layers going on, but I feel like there's also something happening with the interaction of chord progression and riff/melody that I don't quite understand, but which is nonetheless doing something with regard to kicking things up a notch.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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"Your Android devices will soon join the Find My Device network!"

No they fucking won't, sunshine.

kb, to random
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I fear my best and most beautiful girl has very little time left. We're going to the vet in a couple of hours to see if there is anything left that can be done.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@kb I'm sorry, Keith.

klingebeil, to random German
@klingebeil@newsie.social avatar

20-year-olds killing soldiers with drones from a bunker while vaping is uncomfortably cyberpunk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WipqeFgzdTc

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@klingebeil "They sent a slamhound on Turner's tail in New Kharkiv, slotted it to his pheremones and the flavour of his vape."

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Each successive blog post from Sean Bonner reads more and more like the longer-each-time manic and self-knotting letters you might get from a smart cousin who got into Scientology during a low period at university, and who keeps trying to explain to you (and by proxy to himself) that really it's all quite rational and there's nothing to worry about, which only makes you wonder how often he speaks to anyone outside of the echo-chamber

PaulGrahamRaven,
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"Cryptopunks are art. Culturally important genre defining art. I know it, if you are reading this you probably know it, and others are starting to realize it every day."

Substitute "Xenu is love" for "Cryptopunks are art", and you see what I mean.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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And the whole post is basically about how much of a predictable clusterfuck some recent "drop" turned out to be, and it's all very sad, because this is a very smart and creative person who (if you ask me) inducted themselves into a cult while trying to deal with the one-two punch of a major relocation between countries followed by pandemic lockdown isolation, and I do wonder how long it will be before we can have a conversation about the psychological damage of that era.

PaulGrahamRaven, (edited )
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And yeah, I know we're not supposed to diagnose at a ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ distance, esp. if we're not actually mental health professionals, but all the same I'm pretty sure we will look back on the early 2020s as a period of fairly extreme psychological distress. We can discuss the causality, sure, but the basic fact of social isolation causing serious cognitive warping needs to be put on the table without all the "stop denying the pandemic!" stuff (which is another manifestation of the same thing).

ancient_catbus, to random
@ancient_catbus@jorts.horse avatar

🎶the only card I need
is the Ace of Spades
the Ace of Spades🎶

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@ancient_catbus ♠️

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Today I learned that the prefab voting booths they are setting up in my local library is called "The Benjamin Franklin."

Politics. All about those Benjamins.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas Better to call it the Benjamin Franklin than to call it the John Wilkes Booth, I guess. ;)

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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@ahmetasabanci Hey, man -- I recall you offering to send me clips of FT articles if I found I couldn't read them? Well, I can't read this one, and I'd like to... any chance you can grab it for me? https://www.ft.com/content/14a60649-172a-45c1-99a9-039f481430e7

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@ahmetasabanci Ah, I should have checked there first -- thanks for indulging a lazy request, I owe you one!

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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me: you're making this a lot harder on yourself than it needs to be

wasp: nnnnnnnnnnzz

me: it's not like anyone asked you to come in

wasp: nnnnnnzzzZZ

me: I mean, you knew instantly that you wanted to leave, right?

wasp: NNNNNNZZZZZ

me: the open part of the window is RIGHT THERE for fuck's sake

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

It's ironic and depressing how all the other Swedish parties have policy points or slogans on their EU parliament posters, while the Social Democrats just say, "yeah...vote for us because of... vibes".

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas @guldfiske They might find the vibes things worked a little better for them if they didn't all dress like the sort of person in late middle-age who's been stuck in the lower tiers of middle management at a major accounting consultancy for the last fifteen years.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas @guldfiske Yeah, very similar vibes. Perhaps due to the omnipresent influence of Sun Tzu on politics in the West: the old saw about "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" is here somehow translated into "blend into the wallpaper, and maybe you'll be the last ones left standing"

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas @guldfiske Pasokification is one hell of a drug etc etc

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@Loukas Fair point! But that rhetorical weakness, the whole "don't scare the horses" thing, is plausibly a legacy of the long drift toward the managerial center.

PaulGrahamRaven, to philosophy
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might be an ancient pagan remnant

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/might-be-an-ancient-pagan-remnant/

#Philosophy #SocialTheory

mhoye, to random
@mhoye@mastodon.social avatar

We've all seen the IBM presentation saying, a computer can never be held accountable therefore...

but if you rotate and adjust the gamma settings on the best versions of that image on the internet you can see further text through the page.

https://cohost.org/a-hungry-mouth/post/4039145-chosting-my-reply-be

The header is called THE COMPUTER MANDATE and it is incredible reading.

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@jonty @mhoye It may not have been a firm-wide document, but the stuff it's talking about was IBM dogma; my old man worked for Big Blue in the mainframe era, and he drilled shit like this into me as a computer-obsessed kid in the mid-Eighties.

olimould, to journalism
@olimould@mas.to avatar

Culturally, The Big Breakfast on Channel 4 was the epitome of the 90s in Britain and pre-dated, perhaps even laid the foundations for the media revolution that predicated Cool Britainnia and with it, Blair's political popularity.

It was live, anarchic, bright, irreverent and very Channel 4. It's place in media history is often overlooked, but I suspect it has more influence on the socio-political zeitgeist than it's given credit for...

#media #culture #ukpolitics #TV

PaulGrahamRaven,
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@olimould Don't forget your Don't Forget Your Toothbrush.

(But really, the vanguard was The Word.)

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Every time I see a picture of Geert Wilders, I somehow expect it to be accompanied by a detailed longread on how Harry Enfield finally got the sociopathic serial-killer movie role he'd longed for through his entire career

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