Paul Graham Raven (@paulgrahamraven.com)

everything is connected to something Already deeply unpopular with the communities upon which they are being imposed, the potential for datacenters to become sites of sabotage and warfare is not going to help their public image in the slightest.

everything is connected to something

03.03.2026 09:34 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

an unusual segment of the species Ross Barkan on the anti-humanism of those who peddle Those Two Letters.

an unusual segment of the species

02.03.2026 11:18 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

week 9 / 2026: intentions and inversions Reading round-up: what the Citrini scenario tells us about the tremendous power (and danger) of fictional futures; why the best novel of the Culture might actually be the most overlooked of the set.

week 9 / 2026: intentions and inversions

01.03.2026 11:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

right about the problems but hilariously, tragically wrong about the solutions Everyone seems to be talking or thinking or reading (about) Stewart Brand right now, which I presume must mean he’s made or making or about to make some new intervention in the culture.

right about the problems but hilariously, tragically wrong about the solutions

26.02.2026 12:16 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Zohran’s nonbinary praetorians This might be one of those days where you have to retreat from the field knowing only that you showed up and took the shelling.

Zohran’s nonbinary praetorians

23.02.2026 14:32 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

week 8 / 2026: maps and compasses Reading round-up: wind-powered freight (and how I think about weak signals); how audiences have come to understand the working of worlds; what science fiction has to teach strategists.

week 8 / 2026: maps and compasses

22.02.2026 11:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

no one thinks deeply enough to notice I have next to zero interest in that Wuthering Heights movie. So why did I read this long piece that takes it as a jumping-off point?

no one thinks deeply enough to notice

17.02.2026 10:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

What a prick. 03:04 S02E02 Change March 2 2001

16.02.2026 11:00 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0

week 7 / 2026: timelines and mailbags Reading round-up: the straightening of time by Victorian science and philosophy; the formation of the earliest international communications infrastructures; and the ironic-in-hindsight interventionism of Iain M Banks's Look to Windward.

week 7 / 2026: timelines and mailbags

15.02.2026 11:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

other, earlier modes of living are fully open to us I was amused and delighted to discover that David Wengrow actually shares certain philosophical territory with none other than Alan Moore.

other, earlier modes of living are fully open to us

11.02.2026 11:48 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

week 6 / 2026: plots and characters Reading round-up: reports of literacy’s death may well be exaggerated; plot models are patterns, not blueprints; the “tapestry” novel, and the redistribution of character agency; extreme bird-watching, and the re-humanisation of the last hipster.

week 6 / 2026: plots and characters

08.02.2026 11:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

i would prefer not to Today I received my third request to provide peer review so far this year.

i would prefer not to

04.02.2026 13:13 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

“community” as content, and as form Schismogenesis and mimetic desire are the yin and yang dynamics at the heart of “community”. Stable cultures must presumably therefore have a good balance of the two.

“community” as content, and as form

03.02.2026 10:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

nothing proves this essential paralysis more clearly I work actively to abolish substantive regrets, but one in particular gets no easier to suppress as the years pass: I wish that, during the years when I there was time to spare for reading and writing, I had read more widely and written more freely.

nothing proves this essential paralysis more clearly

02.02.2026 10:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

week 5 / 2026: pots and kettles Reading round-up: exploring what might happen when Medicare meets de-fi and prediction markets; why “innovation” culture would benefit from a more sincere engagement with the darker end of science fiction; and narrative techniques for simultaneous explanation and estrangement.

week 5 / 2026: pots and kettles

01.02.2026 11:31 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Don't come your post—feminist, art—school bollocks with me, sunflower, 05:51 S01E06 Epiphanies October 29 1999

29.01.2026 01:00 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

good, cheap, fast; choose two The cosmic significance of over-explained heuristics.

good, cheap, fast; choose two

30.01.2026 14:13 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

the right to refuse This is a response to “The Right to be Wrong”, Zoe Scaman’s recent piece on technology criticism.

the right to refuse

26.01.2026 14:28 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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 4 / 2026: baleen and blubber

25.01.2026 11:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

true imagination: Indignity by Lea Ypi Sometimes the idea of a book far outshines the book itself.

true imagination: Indignity by Lea Ypi

19.01.2026 10:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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 3 / 2026: pulp and pith

18.01.2026 11:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

empty dreams, delivering not posthuman paradise but silicon oblivion I chose my position on silicon sentience a long time ago, and my choice was not entirely rational, and I am totally at peace with that.

empty dreams, delivering not posthuman paradise but silicon oblivion

16.01.2026 10:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

a one-man conspiracy I’m not exactly crowing with victory, here, but some of us got assigned a spirit animal by circumstance, and it’s not our fault if it just happens to be awesome.

a one-man conspiracy

15.01.2026 10:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

the real reason you’re not selling out in 2026 … if you’re not paying to play, you’re likely not playing at all—unless you’re playing on the platforms, in which case you’re still paying, only with something far closer to your soul than the record labels of old ever asked for.

the real reason you’re not selling out in 2026

14.01.2026 10:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

maskerade I wrote a short film last year.

maskerade

13.01.2026 18:24 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

track changes to their lair and kill them Techniques of revision and rewriting that involve distance from the earlier draft, whether figurative or literal. (Bonus material: why I hate track changes.)

track changes to their lair and kill them

12.01.2026 10:02 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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 2 / 2026: ... and the circus leaves town

11.01.2026 11:31 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

building up against the left wall Some notes on an interview with hyperproductive sff author Adrian Tchaikovsky on his writing practice, with plenty of good stuff about worldbuilding.

building up against the left wall

09.01.2026 10:02 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

keep shuffling those ideas around Factorial math just makes the tarot look even more magical, to be honest.

keep shuffling those ideas around

08.01.2026 10:03 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

on the valence of designed things The context of a work of design tells the viewer something about the world that the design implies, and signals how seriously it should be taken.

on the valence of designed things

07.01.2026 10:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Paul Graham Raven

Latest posts by Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com