Archive - Sloptraptions of Contraptions

The Modernity Machine III

Completion, Saturation, and Phase Transition

Dec 24, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

Doing Heideggerianism without the baggage of Care/Sorge

Dec 11, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

What if bigger models, like bigger stars, fail faster?

A different way to think about the “too big to fail” take about OpenAI

Dec 7, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

Causal Why vs Teleological Why

English sucks as a “why” language

Dec 7, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

The Ethics of Meaning-Making

The search for "meaning" is not synonymous with "good"

Dec 4, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

September 2025

The Band Theory of Societies

An extended physics metaphor for politics

Sep 25, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

When the impulse to virtue becomes an attack vector

Sep 20, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

Hysteresis and the Mark-Makers

The American center-left through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories

Sep 5, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

Prolegomena for any future digital saltspaces

Sep 3, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

August 2025

Dark Age Stylesheet

Developing a visual style guide based on James Gunn's Superman

Aug 30, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

A Tale of Four Supermans

A design history of the Superman franchise

Aug 30, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

Towards the Cosmopolitan Supergrid

From Subprime Globalism to Cultural QE

Aug 27, 2025 • Venkatesh Rao

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