Ryan Oakley

Author's details

Name: Ryan Oakley
Date registered: January 2, 2010
URL: http://thegrumpyowl.com/

Biography

Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) and has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (sci-fi), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap. He's a bit of a dick. His first novel will be published by EDGE Books in Fall 2011.

Latest posts

  1. Raymond Carver in the Paris Review — May 21, 2012
  2. Language of Thought — May 17, 2012
  3. Action Chess Set Allows You to Build Robot Piece — May 13, 2012
  4. Research Suggests Seeing Auras a By-Product of Synesthesia — May 7, 2012
  5. Robot Prostitutes of 2050 — May 6, 2012

Most commented posts

  1. A Non-Vicarious, Straight-Up STFU — 42 comments
  2. Launched — 17 comments
  3. White Man Carries His New Burden in #Kony Tote Bag — 15 comments
  4. I’ve Sold My First Novel — 11 comments

Author's posts listings

May 21

Raymond Carver in the Paris Review

raymond carver

I was beginning to see that my life was not—let’s say it was not what I wanted it to be. There was always a wagonload of frustration to deal with—wanting to write and not being able to find the time or the place for it. I used to go out and sit in the car …

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May 17

Language of Thought

disturbed design

An interesting little piece called: Do thoughts have a language of their own? The language of thought hypothesis. It seems to me inner speech is clearly a private language, at least in some of its utterances. This language is so rooted in the unique self that an eavesdropper, could there be one, would not fully …

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May 13

Action Chess Set Allows You to Build Robot Piece

action robot chess

Joe Larson has made a chess set that allows you to assemble its pieces into a giant robot. Digital Trends says: For the most part, Action Chess is a pretty standard Chess set. Both the pieces and board exhibit a kind of utilitarian simplicity that is at once functional and attractive. If you want to …

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May 07

Research Suggests Seeing Auras a By-Product of Synesthesia

About the last thing I ever want to see. For any number of reasons.

It seems that not everyone who claims to detect your aura is a fraud or a flake. Some of them may have synesthesia. (But a lot of them are probably frauds or flakes. Or hitting on you.) Synesthesia is a brain condition that allows people to taste shapes, hear colours and that sort of thing. It’s …

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May 06

Robot Prostitutes of 2050

robot stripper

A newish paper called “Robots, Men and Sex Tourism” published in the journal Futures, examines  the impact that robots will have on the sex industry by looking at life in a brothel in the year 2050. I haven’t read it because, well, I’ve read too much of this nonsense over the years. And, if you …

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May 04

Shared Tomorrows: Electro Pop

Shared Tomorrows by Ryan Oakley on Mixcloud As is my habit, I’ve put together another music podcast. These aren’t really for public consumption but since I’ve never been able to transfer a playlist from Rhythmbox to my iPod, Audacity is just about the easiest way for me to put any sort of mix together. And, having …

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Apr 29

It Will Prove Invincible: Philip K. Dick Letter Re. Bladerunner

bladerunner

After Philip K. Dick got his first glimpse of Bladerunner (based on his “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) he wrote this letter to the production company: October 11, 1981 Mr. Jeff Walker, The Ladd Company, 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, Calif. 91522. Dear Jeff, I happened to see the Channel 7 TV program “Hooray For …

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Apr 28

Humans Assign Morality to Robots

robot hypnotize

Two new studies out of The Human Interaction With Nature and Technological Systems (HINTS) Lab in Seatle show that humans view robots as moral entities. The resulting paper is entitled Do People Hold a Humanoid Robot Morally Accountable for the Harm It Causes. The answer seems to be yes. To test this, the humans were set …

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Apr 27

Semi-Free Copies of Technicolor Ultra Mall

The Dystopia Display at The World's Biggest Bookstore. Technicolor Ultra Mall is top right.

I have a couple pieces of news regarding Technicolor Ultra Mall. The first is that my publisher has made the ebook version available through the Amazon Lending Library. So, if you’re an Amazon Prime Member, you can borrow it for zero dollars. If you’re old fashioned like me, it looks like the Canadian Amazon has …

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Apr 27

Media Alienation 2.0

we are sad robots

Social Media’s Small, Positive Role in Human Relationships is an interesting article. If anything, social media is a counterweight to the ongoing devaluation of human lives. Social media’s rapid rise is a loud, desperate, emerging attempt by people everywhere to connect with *each other* in the face of all the obstacles that modernity imposes on …

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