Walter Mitty Effects in AI Incident Analyses
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/walter-mitty-effects-in-ai-incident
Published: August 31, 2026 18:53
Metanarrative pathologies in the OpenAI-HF incident
🦜 Contraptions | Venkatesh Rao | Substack
@contraptions.venkateshrao.com@rss-parrot.net
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Janky, wobbly models of everything from philosophy to technology and everything in-between. Click to read Contraptions, by Venkatesh Rao, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Site URL: contraptions.venkateshrao.com
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Posts: 20
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August Break
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/august-break
Published: August 1, 2026 19:14
Taking a break through August/early September. Billing will be paused.
Cognitive Farmsteading
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/cognitive-farmsteading
Published: July 28, 2026 02:11
The message of the AI medium is intellectual rural domesticity
Join me in Jamverse
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/join-me-in-jamverse
Published: July 24, 2026 22:49
My first foray into contributing to a science fictional extended universe
Can the (Social) Oobleck Dance?
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/can-the-social-oobleck-dance
Published: July 18, 2026 00:58
Temporal forcing of non-Newtonian precommodified ooze in the appropriate context tanks might lead to prescience
The Taste Essay
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-taste-essay
Published: July 12, 2026 04:22
Taste cultures, risk, cruelty, and kindness
A Tale of Two Theories (of Coordination)
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/a-tale-of-two-theories-of-coordination
Published: July 9, 2026 18:58
Leveraging and Deleveraging Toward Thick Sovereignty
Dead Forest Theory
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/dead-forest-theory
Published: July 5, 2026 17:02
Internet darkness is turning into deadness and time is running out
Monitoring the Situation: from 1950s-2020s
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/monitoring-the-situation-from-1950s
Published: July 1, 2026 06:33
A ridiculous generated photo essay taking a meme much too far
Strange Knowledgeability
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/strange-knowledgeability
Published: June 26, 2026 05:53
Human knowing in perspectival encyclopedicity
Search, Discovery, Pills, and Portals
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/search-discovery-pills-and-portals
Published: June 22, 2026 17:45
Solving the distribution crisis in marketing
A Camera, Not an Engine II
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/a-camera-not-an-engine-ii
Published: June 20, 2026 22:35
Further thoughts on photography in latent space, now with agents!
Touching Time
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/touching-time
Published: June 13, 2026 23:55
Or, the new adventures of Spaceship Earth
Mindmap June 6, 2026
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/mindmap-june-6-2026
Published: June 6, 2026 21:48
Stuff I'm thinking about
From Cannons to Chronometers to Factories
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/from-cannons-to-chronometers-to-factories
Published: May 30, 2026 03:36
A Transmission Hypothesis for the French Precision Revolution and Its American Transformation
Time, Enlightenment and Romanticism Between Modernity and Divergence
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/time-enlightenment-and-romanticism
Published: May 30, 2026 02:24
World Machines learnings from recent book club readings
Commodity Intelligence
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/commodity-intelligence
Published: May 23, 2026 21:05
The seductiveness of “general intelligence” is rooted in a costly category error
Many Act 2 Games are Afoot
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/many-act-2-games-are-afoot
Published: May 23, 2026 00:53
Protocol Institute, Long Now Labs, Strange Rules art show, vgr_zirp update, World Machines, TensTorrent
Capital Must Seek Delight
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/capital-must-seek-delight
Published: May 15, 2026 21:34
Too few people are experiencing the delights and serendipity of AI, causing capital misallocation
Ribbonfarm Resurrected
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/ribbonfarm-resurrected
Published: May 9, 2026 21:48
As a museum blog with an AI curator that is