Archive - Contraptions

Experiments with Monstrousness

‘I weep for you,’ the Walrus said; ‘I deeply sympathize’

Oct 31 • Venkatesh Rao

Cognitive Mercantilism

AI panic weirdly resembles the anxiety that accompanied early capitalism

Oct 25 • Venkatesh Rao

On Learning to Ride Your Brain

Your brain is already a bicycle, AI is a motorcycle, a regular computer is power tools

Oct 24 • Venkatesh Rao

Choose Your Own Monster

Introducing Monstrous Times, the magazine of strange rules

Oct 17 • Venkatesh Rao

Divergence with a Vengeance

The 19th century was more important than I previously thought

Oct 4 • Venkatesh Rao

September 2026

Humanism without (All) Humans

Microsoft Humanism puts corporate muscle behind an overweening class of bad AI philosophies

Sep 19 • Venkatesh Rao

EA promises to solve AI Safety. Now we have two problems.

Sep 17 • Venkatesh Rao

The Accelerationist Case for Frontier Pacing

Slow AI is smooth AI, smooth AI is fast AI

Sep 13 • Venkatesh Rao

Our Eukaryotic Moment

Counterprogramming premature ontological closure in conceptualizing AI

Sep 12 • Venkatesh Rao

The Curiously Playable Universe

More of the universe appears to be more playable than we expected

Sep 5 • Venkatesh Rao

August 2026

Walter Mitty Effects in AI Incident Analyses

Metanarrative pathologies in the OpenAI-HF incident

Aug 31 • Venkatesh Rao

Taking a break through August/early September. Billing will be paused.

Aug 1 • Venkatesh Rao

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