Archive - Contraptions

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

Aug 1 • Venkatesh Rao

July 2026

Cognitive Farmsteading

The message of the AI medium is intellectual rural domesticity

Jul 28 • Venkatesh Rao

Join me in Jamverse

My first foray into contributing to a science fictional extended universe

Jul 24

Can the (Social) Oobleck Dance?

Temporal forcing of non-Newtonian precommodified ooze in the appropriate context tanks might lead to prescience

Jul 18 • Venkatesh Rao

The Taste Essay

Taste cultures, risk, cruelty, and kindness

Jul 12 • Venkatesh Rao

A Tale of Two Theories (of Coordination)

Leveraging and Deleveraging Toward Thick Sovereignty

Jul 9 • Venkatesh Rao

Dead Forest Theory

Internet darkness is turning into deadness and time is running out

Jul 5 • Venkatesh Rao

Monitoring the Situation: from 1950s-2020s

A ridiculous generated photo essay taking a meme much too far

Jul 1 • Venkatesh Rao

June 2026

Strange Knowledgeability

Human knowing in perspectival encyclopedicity

Jun 26 • Venkatesh Rao

Search, Discovery, Pills, and Portals

Solving the distribution crisis in marketing

Jun 22 • Venkatesh Rao

A Camera, Not an Engine II

Further thoughts on photography in latent space, now with agents!

Jun 20 • Venkatesh Rao

Or, the new adventures of Spaceship Earth

Jun 13 • Venkatesh Rao

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