Abstract Machines

Watch now | A recording from Cy Canterel and Virginia Heffernan's live video

Against the grain

Week of 12/15/25

Week of 12/8/25

Or, why we should not architect government around trying to make some people feel okay forever

Tolerating ambiguity as an antidote to blind consumerism

Mark Lombardi, late stage capitalist decline, and the structural narrative of financial corruption

A recording from Cy Canterel and THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali's live video

Generative AI as hauntological determinism

Unpacking Peter Thiel’s very American eschatology

Obsessive devotion and its discontents

Kitsch, addiction, and the emotional architecture of MAGA

Two artists on perspective, 500 years between

Donald Trump is fading, and J.D. Vance will inherit not a fortress, but a brittle labyrinth

Dear billionaires: stop funding private realities. Rebuild the shared one.

How billionaire AI is eating the future

The recursive paradox of human suffering

How classic tragedy, hubris, and complex systems converge to provoke a fall.