Venkatesh Rao 🔹

@vgr.bsky.social

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Blogger at ribbonfarm.com

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What’s a pair of essays that illustrate what used to resonate with you 10 years ago versus today? I’m trying to map 2014-24 zeitgeist shift through pairs of before/after essays that illuminate how resonances have shifted. Try to share a pair that says more about the world than personal changes.

You need love to make the world go around because people are idiots and brains aren’t enough

The next century will be about monarchist vs anarchist values

A keynote by a middle-aged curmudgeon is called a keyscold

How would you characterize the before/after change between Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White? Ignore the actual balrog killing resurrection bit. Just changes in personality and how others relate to him.

New blog post, riffing on bad Lego models www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/07/14/i...

Imagination vs. Creativitywww.ribbonfarm.com I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with. Imagination is the ability to see known possibilities as being reachable from a situation. Creati…

I asked ChatGPT to generate a table of assassinations and attempts with likely political orientations and motives. Strikes me that though both right and left can be violent, assassination is a tactic favored by right extremists. Especially ethnonationalist ones. I’d guess this one is leftie though.

Some 20-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks. I bet the Internet will track down details before the FBI nypost.com/2024/07/13/u...

Thomas Matthew Crooks ID'd as gunman who shot Trump during Pa. rallynypost.com The gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump Saturday was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, sources told The Post.

Looks like a real assassination attempt, not staged as many here seem eager to believe

I’d like to read a book about recent premodern migrations but not prehistoric. Like say 1000ad to now

Wrote a rare old-fashioned taxonomy type post yesterday open.substack.com/pub/ribbonfa...

Striver, Seeker, Icon, Leaderopen.substack.com The 16 types of creators and the metamorphic impulse

Apparently there is main character drama on bluesky but I miss almost all of it somehow 🧐 My experience of the app is mellow chatter

I’m still flummoxed by the Ambani wedding. And over-the-top weddings in general. I think they must serve some hidden diplomacy/statecraft/industry-titan functions I’m not grokking. Future announcement: “The peace treaty was first negotiated on the sidelines of Ambani wedding.”

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Venkatesh Rao 🔹

You ever think about the absurdity of microwave popcorn. Just casually harnessing electromagnetic radiation to make some seeds explode prior to consuming them.

😂

Vote Biden. Anyway

Lol “Angry and stunned Democrats blame Biden’s closest advisers for shielding public from full extent of president’s decline” Media blames senior democrats blame inner circle for hiding what was never actually hidden. www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/p...

Angry and stunned Democrats blame Biden’s closest advisers for shielding public from full extent of president’s decline | CNN Politicswww.cnn.com At a star-studded fundraiser for President Joe Biden in Los Angeles last month, George Clooney wasn’t the only one who came away concerned about the president.

Why are the Ambanis doing this obscene wedding? You couldn’t be more cringe if you tried. The flex of having a random grab bag of world celebs like it’s a mini-Davos suggests something deeper is going on. Over-the-top tasteless Indian weddings are the new Davos?

Great metaphor by Sam Chua on what it means to protocolize a soft thing like a cultural ethos -- it's like trying to infer the physics of a dream. Paving the cowpaths is hard.

Sam Chua on the Protocol Town Hall talking about punk and Southeast Asia www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IyK...

Guest Talk w/ Sam Chua | Punk, Folk, Myth, Protocols: Sketching The Socioimaginationalwww.youtube.com At the recent Datus and Nusas workshop exploring the intersection of Nusantara (maritime Southeast Asia) traditions and protocol science, an interesting cont...

Spectacular story and protocol fiction material. There’s a very under-the-API cyberpunk feel here (high-tech/low-life) but the Instagram princess angle moves it into some other register. Blue collar “Anna Delvey”? What say you @bruces.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/prisci...

She Made $10,000 a Month Defrauding Apps like Uber and Instacart. Meet the Queen of the Rideshare Mafiawww.wired.com Priscila Barbosa came to the US with a dream of making it. Using gig-economy platforms she built a business empire up from nothing. There was just one huge problem.

Shambolic is a good word. We should call more things shambolic.

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Number Line Branch xkcd.com/2956

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Do you really want to be incorruptible

Vaguely funny that Biden could in principle use the recent Supreme Court decision to somehow kneecap these rebels as an “official act” with presumptive immunity. If you come for the King, you better not miss… and you better look out for “official acts.” www.cnn.com/2024/07/07/p...

Several top House Democrats say Biden should step aside during leadership call | CNN Politicswww.cnn.com More than a handful of House Democratic ranking members told House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a Sunday call that President Joe Biden needs to step aside from the 2024 campaign, according to so...

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*So, who is it that reads LLM-generated text and then edits the system to control its "temperature" problems? You want it to have some flush and color, but you don't want it to degenerate into feverish ravings:

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As well-meaning publishers try to navigate the coming storm of state laws against diversity, I hope they'll consider Timothy Snyder's Rule #1 (from his slim book ON TYRANNY).

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HONEY MUSTARD PREDATES THE WRITTEN WORD HONEY MUSTARD DOESNT CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT HONEY MUSTARD DEFINES NORMAL

I finally understand the humpty dumpty nursery rhyme

So what are people's Trump 2.0 plans?

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Everyone tuning in to the debate.