Janky, wobbly models of everything from philosophy to technology and everything in-between.
| Platform |  | Pricing | Freemium | Publishes | Twice weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues | 481 | Founded | 7 years ago | Last Issue | 6 days ago |
| Active | |||||
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contraptions.venkateshrao.comLatest Issues
Experiments with Monstrousness
It looks like over a thousand new readers signed up over the last week, mainly due to the Cognitive Mercantilism post, taking me past 27k. I think I last had a viral hit of that magnitude 7 years ago, with the Internet of Beefs (2020).
Ti...
Cognitive Mercantilism
I’ve been reading Joyce Appleby’s The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2010), and it has me circling a rather delicious thought: AI panic is really a form of cognitive mercantilism. If we regard market capitalism as the first...
On Learning to Ride Your Brain
Steve Jobs was wrong. A traditional computer was never a bicycle for the brain. It was never a coherent enough machine to require, or enable, the holistic mode of dynamically stabilized control that is “riding a bike” after learning to “bal...
Choose Your Own Monster
I was reflecting the other day that while I’m probably a better writer than engineer as a human (relatively speaking), as an AI augmented transhuman, I’m probably a better engineer than writer. At least right now in October 2026. Building s...
Divergence with a Vengeance
Didn’t send out a newsletter last week since I was busy with the Protocol Symposium and then came down with a bad cold right after that left me unable to do anything except vibe-coding. That led to some very interesting results though, whic...
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Delving. Writing the Contraptions newsletter. Contributor to Protocolized Previously: ribbonfarm.com More: venkateshrao.com
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