@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.

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PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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@mistertim @rra I can't recall if we selected a specific venue for this evening's meet-up...?

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Quick question for anyone using Stripe to take payments online: are pay-outs sent as domestic transactions, i.e. wired to you from an instance of Stripe based in your own country of operations, or are they wired to you as a payment from overseas?

(Would appreciate some signal-boost on this query, because Stripe's FAQ is super opaque, and it turns out that their email-based customer service systems have been almost entirely turned over to LLMs... )

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, 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, to philosophy
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merely directions which allow the chauffeur to park the limousine

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/merely-directions-which-allow-the-chauffeur-to-park-the-limousine/

#Philosophy #Politics

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Since kicking a three-decade nicotine jones at the start of this year, my coffee consumption has gone absolutely batshit crazy. I used to think two cups a day was a heavy load, but I'm somewhat shocked to realise I've just had my fifth at 14:30... 😬

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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No, you just bought some early-access cyberpunk heist game on Steam because it was on offer and you thought it might be a laugh

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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So look, on a lot of levels I might agree with you that protesting Israel's participation in Eurovision is futile at best, and maybe even counterproductive within that limited context, too. But it bears noting that the protests in Malmö are only "about" Eurovision in the sense that UK protests in 2012 were "about" the Olympics. There are a lot of other issues in play, not least of which is the militarisation of the city, and the long-haul persecution of minorities by the cops and the city.

PaulGrahamRaven, to politics
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paradigms don’t die easy (but they die all the same)

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/paradigms-dont-die-easy-but-they-die-all-the-same/

#Politics #WeakSignals

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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"Instead of engaging with people and organizations hurling weaponized messages at you, do anything else. Write a letter, sit in a garden, talk to a friend, play a game, listen to music, or seek out information that isn’t laced with lies and threats. We won’t end this culture war by manufacturing better weapons. We must refuse to fight. We must rebuild our public sphere, not nuke it from orbit."

Very wise words from @annaleen on life in a psyops-saturated culture.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Fucking hell, people, you're gonna make it so I have to google whatever this fucking thing with the bear is, aren't you? sigh

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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The arrival in Malmö of That Song Contest is heralded by the appearance on local public transport of public service announcements reminding people that buying sex is illegal here, and that is telling me something I did not know or expect about the audience for this thing

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Just finished playing Pentiment, which now holds the crown for Game That Made Me Cry The Most Times. So simple, ludically speaking, but fantastic writing.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Hugely grateful for the tip-off from @unknownbinaries re: Kill 6 Billion Demons, which is bat-shit brilliant in ALL the ways. Maximalist very-online Western anime mash-up madness. Unclassifiable, really, at least to this not-very-knowledgeable comics reader.

Just about to plough into the fifth and I assume final "book"? Reading online kinda sucks, even on the big screen, so I'll being buying this thing in print when finances and circumstances permit. Start here:

https://killsixbilliondemons.com/

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Kinda want to pop out for a beer, but it's Valborg, and I'm guessing everywhere will be full of energetic young people gearing up for a wild one

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Reading that Yancey Strickler thing that people have been linking, and realising that I simply no longer care what "the internet" was, is, could be or might once have been, and that my main wish --- extremely unlikely to be fulfilled, admittedly -- is that we stop reifying this increasingly monstrous and all-consuming noun.

I do wonder if this prolix mania for redefinition isn't perhaps a sign of an exhaustion and ennui much broader than merely my own, but that might be too much to hope for.

PaulGrahamRaven, (edited ) to random
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Has anyone else noticed this thing where the RSS feeds of WP-dot-com-based blogs are suddenly kicking out messages that inform you to resub to a totally new feed URLfrom a service called follow.it, which is some sort of freemium RSS-as-a-service offer?

In short, I think Automattic's's hunger for enshittificatory moves has finally turned to the legacy of WP.com. If you're still blogging there, you might want to think about changing platforms.

(Edited to frame the correct platform.)

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Gave a talk on worldbuilding at Copenhagen University this afternoon, and I don't mind saying that I knocked it right out of the park. Video should be available next week.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Wow, hoooooly shit has Substack gotten super-thirsty.

Just signed up for someone's letter, what must be the first time in a good couple of months or more, and had to click through four pages of not-quite-dark-pattern attempts to get me to sign up for all sorts of other only marginally related bollocks...

I'll give it to the end of the year before they've gone full enshittification, as per @pluralistic

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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A little confused by the "Reddit is being poisoned" discourse, if only because I guess I already considered it useless for anything substantive? To what sort of topics were people going there for answers they could trust?

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Just out of a meeting for what promises to be one of the more batshit crazy projects of the year... and I mean batshit crazy in the very positive sense, like wildly weird and funky stuff.

Now have to get on my bike and cycle uptown for a meeting about a smaller and more mildly batshit project that's drawing to a close. Gotta say, I'm still a bit touch-wood-throw-salt about it, but this first year of freelancing as a consulting creative futurist is going pretty OK.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Reading this report about the massive projected overcapacity of factories for making lithium-based batteries in the very near future, and hoping that all y'all "buy an EV, save the climate!" types are gonna buy, like, ten of them and give them away as Xmas gifts or something

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-12/china-already-makes-as-many-batteries-as-the-entire-world-wants

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Spend a week on the road working only from your 14" laptop screen, then come home to your fairly modest desk monitor, and it's like sitting down to work in the biggest screen of a multiplex cinema. Such pixels, many resolution, etc etc

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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Reading proposals to "rein in" fast fashion by checks notes uh, maybe making them reuse the fibers from some of the stuff that doesn't sell? I know I'm not supposed to rag on things that might be even a tiny step in the right direction, but holy crap, people, is this all we've got in the tank? Because it ain't even gonna get us to the edge of town.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
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TFW you're about an hour out from your final station on a 10-hour rail trip, and the train comes to a screeching halt, before the conductor announces that (I shit you not) there is something wrong with the train's fault-detection system #soclosebutyetsofar

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