Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 9
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Linking in the personal decision thread here https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1226382240956866560?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1226382240956866560 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      “Where to live next year” decision is turning out to be NP-hard. Wife and I are gleefully vetoing each other’s ideas and getting nowhere. “Too snowy” “Too dry” “I need a decent airport” “Need a Whole Foods” ... Megacities: unsustainably overpriced Schelling points from hell.
      Show this thread
      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 9
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      6 reasons people move from city A to B: - got a nice oppportunity in B that overrode any A/B prefs - hate A, took the first exit - love B, took the first entry point regardless of cost - tax/citizenship issues - cutting costs - family responsibilities (child/elder)

      5 replies 2 retweets 14 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 9
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      I think I have a whole unconscious narrative-extension theory of geographic mobility that I operate by. I should write it up. Everybody actually operates by this but pretends they are operating by their spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is important but only 1/3 of what’s going on.

      3 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 9
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Yo @vr00n didn’t you do some data analysis of BLS data on where people tend to move to from different cities?

      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 9
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      I should start a “where to move to?” consulting practice. I’ve done it enough, for enough different reasons and varied reasons, in both single and married states. Only version I have no experience with is children-included version.

      2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 9
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      There’s also narrative trends playing out across many cities like gentrification. Wanting to live near a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s (which we do) marks your narrative as premium mediocre for example.

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 9
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Multinationals should really be called multiurbans especially in the knowledge economy

      1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      This is overdue for being moved to draft-blog-post status (working title: Urban Narrativium) but I'm feeling lazy so will work out a couple more bunnytrails here on twitter.

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      Show this thread
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      In the US, there is a weird geographic correlate of narrative destiny: roughly NE to SW. Manifest destiny is part of dustbin of history now, but this tendency still exists. Your story is moving forward to the extent it's moving NE-SW. NW and SE are sideways. SW-NE is regression.

      2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
      Show this thread
    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      The simplest nominal hero's journey, in geographic terms, is moving from Boston to LA and coming back a movie star or something. If you lack the ambition for it, you go NW to PNW for the Blue-White variant, or SE for the Red-White variant.

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Vast oversimplification of course, but you could get a zeroth-order linear story of your life as progress/regress by projecting your geographic movement on a NE-SW diagonal line.

      3:21 PM - 10 Feb 2020
      • 3 Likes
      • micah.fyi ᚛ᚄᚔ ᚓᚌᚐᚅ᚜ Science Banana
      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          For example, my story is: [India-->], Ann Arbor, Austin, Ann Arbor, Ithaca, Rochester, DC, Vegas, Seattle, LA. Or PSSRSRPPP. P= progress S=sideways R=regress

          2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If I make it a bit more complex and weight a leg in inverse proportion to distance from Boston-LA turnpike, I could code my Rochester-DC move as "progress" (projection moved backwards, but I got closer to the turnpike). It's a bit like doubling back to ramp onto a highway.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          In general, the topology is more complex of course. SF to Midland, TX is severe regression, but SF to Austin is more of a mild regression, with a lot of sideways. The network of major cities has its own topology, which distorts the base R^2 plane topology.

          2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The biggest political conflict in the US is probably between those who are invested in the current topology of the Narrative Highway System (NHS) of the US and those who think it is decay and decline.

          1 reply 2 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The American Dream, unlike Old World life scripts, has always had a very high-legibility geographic component. Indian dream scripts for example, do NOT have such a strong geographic component. There's at best a very weak "going to Bombay to join Bollywood" narrative.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          At best there is a weak, generic provinces --> big city narrative without strong bindings for particular big cities. I think this is because America only has a brief peasant history, and no old cities, so entire narrative imagination gets projected onto network of young cities.

          2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          "imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character but flutter and flaunt — sheer rags-succumbing without emotion save numbed terror” -- To Elsie, by William Carlos Williams ht @nils_gilman for this key point.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46485/to-elsie …

          1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If I had to get all mathematical and imagine a topology for US narrative space, I'd make it a planar graph of charismatic cities, with an extra node in the middle titled "heartland" to which all of flyover country is mapped. Sounds callous, but that's really it.

          2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The American heartland is a trope more than a place. Specific interstices within the city graphs do not have strong identities. At best, you can decompose "heartland" into "Midwest", "Texas", "Prairies" and "Old South", and those are not intrinsic, but artifacts of global history

          2 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          By contrast, agrarian heartland of India for instance, is strongly differentiated. Starting with entire mutually unintelligible languages. If you did a narrative-space graph of India, ratio would be reversed. There would be few charismatic cities, many charismatic heartlands.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          This means, as narrative spaces go, the US is peculiarly tractable. Stories that play out on the charismatic-city narrative graph are unusually legible in way old world stories are not. That's why, for instance, a road trip is a better narrative template in the US than elsewhere.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          this is also why attempts to predict the future of the US in response to the Great Weirding by looking at countries that got hit earlier (USSR, Japan, Greece, Britain) are misguided. American exceptionalism in classical terms may be dead, but this is still a weird country.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Hmm... I'm now thinking of the Great Weirding as a shock wave that unfolded in at least 4 parts: USSR (1989-2000), Islamic sphere (1992-2007), West (starting with Greece, 2009), and finally Asia (China and India, both around 2017-19: Xi elevation and Modi 2nd term)

          2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Hmm. The Great Weirding in this 4-wave form kinda follows the logic of clash of civilizations huntington model. It didn't go from localized weirding to great weirding until it hit America though. That's when the whole thing came together as a global shitshow.

          2 replies 1 retweet 3 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 10
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          A lot of my thinking/ideas now are of the sort that would best suit a sort of sprawling podcast format rather than essay... mainly because I'm getting increasingly lazy about writing up all but the tightest, hardest ideas in longform

          3 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
          Show this thread
        17. End of conversation

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info