Severin Matusek

Where do we find the much-needed alternative? While researching my latest podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, I stumbled on a series of debates that took place in the 1970s and pointed in the right direction. Back then, a small group of hippy radicals were advocating for “ecological technology” and “counter-technology”. They weren’t satisfied with... See more

Yarvin is calling for something simpler and more libidinally satisfying: to burn it all down and start again from scratch.

By volume alone, slop may be the most visible and successful by-product of the generative-AI era to date. It is also a hallmark of what I’ve previously described as a collective delusion around artificial intelligence—where the breathless hype and imagined future of building a godlike superintelligence and curing cancer collides with the dull... See more

From Asparouhova’s perspective, the lesson we should draw is not that bad ideas should in fact be suppressed but that good ideas require the trussing of sturdy, credible institutions—structures that might withstand the countervailing urge to raze everything to the ground.

“How do you exhibit that? Does that create a new economy for artists? Does that require new governance structures between the institution and the artists exhibiting that work? How do we show people how exciting this is?”

The past hundred years a canon that defined modernity, post-modernity, and our world was established, celebrated, illuminated, and constantly revised by critics and appreciators who used the pen to make their case. They’re the ones who helped establish cultural significance. They’re the ones who remind us to marvel not at demographics, but at... See more

When chance so often triumphs over sweat, the real opportunity lies in writing narratives that thrive precisely because they reject old rules, and in doing so, create surprising, life-affirming possibilities that might just become the new mythologies we live by.

In crypto, an entire generation of alienated tech workers saw potential to have their cake (create a better, decentralized internet) and eat it too (get very wealthy).