the right to refuse
This is a response to “The Right to be Wrong”, Zoe Scaman’s recent piece on technology criticism.
worldbuilding
week 4 / 2026: baleen and blubber
Reading round-up: seeing monsters in the (geo)political mirror; the paradoxical essence of “community”; the enantiodromia of a far-right Euro-federalism; Melville's Moby Dick considered as science fiction.
week 3 / 2026: pulp and pith
Reading round-up: the long game of fashion brand narratives; hints of a revivalist Romanticism; the magickal power of naming things; and the creation of history through the storying of the dead.
week 2 / 2026: ... and the circus leaves town
Reading round-up: Rodney Brooks reassesses his own AI predictions; Dan Wang holds forth on China (and everything else); Bruce Sterling reports from the depths of the multitool rabbit-hole; an anthology of stories in homage to J G Ballard.
week 52 / 2025: minimum viable
Bare bones from the skeleton crew.
week 51 / 2025: tearing away the caul
Reading round-up: the performative shaming of “performative reading”; the post is the product; the illusion of inevitability; and maximalist manga-monster steampunk-fantasy strangeness.
week 50 / 2025: ancient of days
Reading round-up: Auger disowns design-as-augury; a return to Turnton Docklands; a potted history of futurology; and an anarchist's analysis of utopian bureaucracy.