Sign in

Severn Clay-Youman

@caworkshop.bsky.social
646 followers 1.1K following 733 posts

Architect, lighting designer, passive house consultant, dad, stutterer, maker of things, lazy gardener, compost enthusiast, Kentuckian, biker, sailor and boat-builder. He/him

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
fan theory mayor mamdani is a mutant his power is making people like him prove me wrong abc7ny.com/post/nyc-may...
abc7ny.com
Mayor Mamdani holds hands with one-time rival Curtis Sliwa to get flu shot
An apparent bromance has continued to blossom for the one-time political rivals.
1722833
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
It's electrifying to have the thoughts of someone who lived millennia ago inserted into your brain. With language, *specific neural sequences* can be transmitted between human brains. You are literally experiencing the same sequence of images and concepts that someone 4000 years ago experienced.
38612
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Sherrod Brown @sherrodbrownoh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
NEW AD: Listen to this sh*t.
38191212847
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Rebecca Baird-Remba @thecitywanderer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
For my fellow John Wilson heads: History of Concrete is expanding to more NYC theaters including Nitehawk Prospect Park. www.magpictures.com/thehistoryof...
magpictures.com
The History of Concrete – A John Wilson Film | Trailer, Showtimes & Tickets
A hilarious new documentary from John Wilson (How To with John Wilson), from Magnolia Pictures. In theaters now.
041
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 07/07/2026
Increasingly feels like the fluid nature of software is more a hellish trap than a feature Like having people break into your house every night to rearrange your furniture, reprogram the tv, and swap out family pictures for stock photos and ads
12419105
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Cites aren't loud, cars are loud. A better world is possible.
952689
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Naomi Kritzer @naomikritzer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
It genuinely blows my mind the degree to which people in power do not grasp (or just refuse to acknowledge) that encampments are preferable to shelters for a whole lot of people, for a long list of reasons.
20831248
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager. —Susan Sontag
24611
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Jeremy Millar @jeremymillar.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Just found: photographs taken in Estonia in 2005, on the location where Stalker was filmed. If you know the film you'll recognise the building towards which they travelled, the channel where the Stalker lay in the water, the landscape then littered with vehicles…
A colour photograph of a derelict building glimpsed between treesA broken light fixture lying on rubble A dried-out concrete channel in a waterworks, now overgrown with grasses.A green field below blue sky and white clouds. There are bushes and trees dotted around.
0195
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
If you haven’t heard, @trufelman.bsky.social and I started a new podcast about fashion and philosophy. Each month, we read canonical text — Voltaire, Rousseau, Hegel — and talk about how the author's ideas help us understand why we dress the way we do.
An illustration of Lord Chesterfield.
372250315
Severn Clay-Youman @caworkshop.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Guys, I found out where that meme came from:
[Probably a print of] the Norman Rockwell painting of the guy from the meme sharing a basic, unassailable truth.
020
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Angela Crow @angelawcrow.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I walk in my neighborhood in the early morning. I might pass 3 people walking dogs, and 3 people driving the oversized cars available in our country, and each time, I’m aware of just how loud our cars are. I want to give them a report on the noise they’re making each time. Slow down, go quietly.
0115
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 10/08/2026
If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of our future innovation capacity, prosperity, and national security crumbling. Shattering our university research system and international student pipeline will harm all Conservative & Liberal Americans. From the American Institute of Physics—>
aip.org
Physics PhDs Are Leaving the US at a Record-high Rate
The exodus of non-US citizens has “certainly” been influenced by science funding and visa policy changes under Trump, a new AIP report says.
0429184
Severn Clay-Youman @caworkshop.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
This is what New York should be doing. Boston, a pedestrian city? Get outta here! In NYC, the pedestrian should have precedent everywhere (even over bikes, but definitely over cars and trucks).
010
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Dave Mandl @dmandl.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I love this blue plastic building in East Flatbush, but it's extraordinarily difficult to photograph. I made a decent picture of it over the weekend, and even caught two birds hanging out on the roof.
3272
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Streetsblog NYC @nyc.streetsblog.org · 03/08/2026
Across the more than 6,300 miles of NYC's streets, the NYPD’s nearly 34,000 officers ticketed only 10 drivers for blocking bus lanes, 12 drivers for parking in a bus stop and 10 drivers for parking in a bike lane last week.
buff.ly
The Few: Cops Wrote Just 32 Tickets to Drivers Blocking Bus And Bike Lanes Last Week - Streetsblog New York City
Across the more than 6,300 miles of roadway throughout New York City, the NYPD's nearly 34,000 officers ticketed only 32 drivers for blocking bus and bike lanes between July 20 andt 26.
44613
Severn Clay-Youman @caworkshop.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
One of the best things about city living is that folks mostly mind their own business. (Tbf, I think cell phone guy was escorting)
030
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
👻Ghosts👻 by Emily K @posts.by.emilyk.art · 05/07/2026
See also: This comic.
Calvin asks his mom to buy a Satan-worshipping suicide-advocating heavy metal album. She replies, "Calvin, the fact that these bands haven't killed themselves in ritual self-sacrifice shows that they're just in it for the money like everyone else. It's all for effect. If you want to shock and provoke, be sincere about it."
233936
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 04/07/2026
A sailboat, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, was removed from the Sail4th 250 Parade of Ships for displaying banners about climate justice and clean water. Source: ig/jackiemarieburton, ig/sloopclearwater
42539271
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
"I hear you're sending me a seventh prime minister"
Larry the Cat, located at 10 Downing Street, London
9893781631
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
dr. thrasher, an american writer in ex(archia)(xile) @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Last image from tonight (short film in the morning): this brother out here with his Singer sewing machine, gifting people a custom embroidery on their jerseys and hats with the name and the date, was more artistic than anything at Burning Man and ad gorgeous as a Caravaggio. Magic! Goodnight.
Last image from tonight (short film in the morning): this brother out here with his Singer sewing machine, gifting people a custom embroidery on their jerseys and hats with the name and the date, was more artistic than anything at Burning Man and ad gorgeous as a Caravaggio. 

Magic!

Goodnight.
210284825689
Severn Clay-Youman @caworkshop.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Saw this and thought of @design-law.bsky.social! Looks like the original designers of Ping Pong were having some issues with knock-offs.
Box for original Ping Pong gameBeware of cheap imitations!Caution to the public- beware of cheap imitations! Warning label on inside of box.
150
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
troyliss @troyliss.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
“Roughly modeled after the brain.” I dunno, man; my brain runs on 20 watts and using language isn’t even its primary function.
314816
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 25/05/2026
Buried in Pope Leo's Magnifica Humanitas encyclical is a quote from Gandalf, so LOTR is now *canon* canon
We can all do our part

212. At this point, however, a subtle temptation may emerge, namely the thought that the problems are too big and we are too small, and that our choices, therefore, cannot make a difference. This is a polite form of resignation, often disguised as realism. Certainly, not everyone has the same power to make a difference. There are those who govern, make investment decisions, lead institutions, conduct research, educate, produce or provide information, and then there are those who only seem to live their daily lives. Yet, no one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action, and it is precisely there — and nowhere else — that we must choose whether to fuel the mentality of force (even if only through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred), or to preserve the mindset of peace (with truth, moderation, closeness and care).

213. The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187] The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. For this reason, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on some aspects of how we, each in our own way, can cooperate in building the civilization of love. Without presuming to exhaust this theme, I would like to propose five paths toward daily and public responsibility: the need to disarm words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and multilateralism.
10483127
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Manisha Sinha @profmsinha.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”
133136404613
Severn Clay-Youman @caworkshop.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
"These may each be useful words, but they do architecture few favors, making it appear elitist and aloof. They are also often silly."
030
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 07/05/2026
I joined NY’s Cutest on the Bergen Bike Bus that they ride to school every Wednesday, rain or shine. We’re adding bike boulevards and more pedestrian space on Bergen and Dean Street, from Court Street to East New York Ave. It was a wonderful kind of day.
21792931494
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Stephanie Burt @notquitehydepark.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
This.
0164
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Robert Mahon @bedform.org · 20/04/2026
IF YOU BUILD A BIKE LANE THAT DOESN'T CONNECT TO ANOTHER BIKE LANE THEN YOU DIDN'T BUILD A BIKE LANE
22393352
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
New York Television @nytv.live · 13/04/2026
In @hellgatenyc.com today
1298
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 08/04/2026
all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant
84138983541
Severn Clay-Youman @caworkshop.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Friends, school architecture may have peaked in the 1970s.
050
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 03/04/2026
This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman
That's home. That's us.
287218457373
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Aaron Cohen @unlikelywords.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
I think we're going win, but I want to win hard enough that we start paying artists to paint murals in post offices again. (This time the post offices are also banks.)
373391541
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
🗽LOLGOP🗽 @lolgop.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
I think there are three kinds of people right now. 1. People who've thought about and know what this regime has planned can only be called a concentration camp system. 2. Everyone else who'd rather just not think about it. 3. Jake Tapper.
youtu.be
What counts as a concentration camp?
YouTube video by Degenerate Art by Andrea Pitzer
26911
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
[Christopher M. Federico] @chrispps.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
stop spending money on Claude Code; Chipotle’s support bot is free
7480114
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Dave Agee @davidragee.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
I wanna know how many takes this took. You can see him fighting to keep from laughing his ass off
641644
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
BeatGhoul @beatgrrrl.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Valentine portable typewriter by Olivetti, 1968 ᴅᴇꜱɪɢɴᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴇᴛᴛᴏʀᴇ ꜱᴏᴛᴛꜱᴀꜱꜱ
Photo of the iconic Olivetti Valentine portable typewriter, designed by Ettore Sottsass and Perry King in 1968.
17014
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Despite the troubles and horrors, we're also living in the most meet-cute buddy movie ever.
13850123
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Kate McKean @katemckean.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick
85119874138
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Nazih Fares | Wishlist The Arab League of Misfits @nazihfares.com · 05/02/2026
I'd like to add that like in all industries, when we stop understanding how our tools work, we become entirely dependent on the corporate entities that own the mold. We are trading the ability to build and repair for the convenience of being permanent tenants in someone else's infrastructure/subs.
31098470
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Tibor M. Kalman @kalmantibs.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
This may be my favorite television commercial ever, from legendary Scandinavian Airlines @flysas.com. This is the world how I imagine it, this is the world I want to live in. 🙏🏼🌍🕊️ #PeaceOnEarth
2324795
Severn Clay-Youman @caworkshop.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
I've had a rule for the past year that I turn off @npr.org the moment they repeat some fatuous statement by the current admin as news. This morning, thirty seconds in, a reporter is asked if they trust DHS recruiting numbers, and they reporter answered "well, I have no reason not to believe them" 😑
030
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Tao Neuendorffer @taonf.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Case could be one of Burroughs's wild boys… in a way. I'm deeply influenced by Burroughs… he found 'fifties science fiction and used it like a rusty can opener on society's jugular #Leary #Gibson I think America is ready for a female lead who beats the crap out of everybody #Mondo2000 #Cyberpunk
Timothy Leary: If you could put
Neuromancer into one sentence, how
would you describe it?

William Gibson: What's most important to me is that it's about the present. It's not really about an imagined future. It's a way of trying to come to terms with the awe and terror inspired in me by the world in which we live. I'm anxious to know what they'll make of it in Japan. I'm starting to feel like Edgar Rice Burroughs or something. I mean, how did Edgar Rice Burroughs finally come to feel about Tarzan in his own heart, you know? He got real tired of it. Wound up living in Tarzana, California.

TL: You'll end up living in a space colony called Neuromancer.

WG: That would be okay. I don't think we're going to have this kind of future. I think this book is so much nicer than what seems to be happening. I mean, this would be a cool place to visit. I wouldn't mind going there.

TL: Where?

WG: To the Sprawl, to that future.

TL: Going up the well?

WG: Yeah. Go up the well and all of that. A lot of people think that Neuromancer is a bleak book, but I think it's optimistic.

TL: I do, too.

WG: I think the future is actually gonna be more boring. I think some kind of Falwellian future would probably be my idea of the worst thing that could happen.

TL: Yeah. That was a wonderful scene where you have those Christians who were gonna mug those girls in the subway.

WG: It's not clear whether they're going to mug them or just try to force some horrible pamphlet on them or something.
Personally, I have a real phobia about guys like that coming up to me on the street…

TL: That's a powerful scene! And you describe the girls as like hoofed animals wearing high heels.

WG: Yeah. The office girls of the Sprawl.
I like the idea of that subway. That's the state-of-the-art subway. It goes from Atlanta to Boston, real fast.

TL: You've created a world.

WG: What you're getting when you read that book—the impression is very compli-cated, but it's all actually one molecule thick.I've got to do a different kind of book now, because I'm already getting some reviews saying, "Well, this is good, but it's more of the same stuff."

It's different for somebody like Douglas Adams, where I think that the whole thing started off as such a goof for him that it was just a stroke of good luck that he built on.

TL: And they're nice. It's a nice tour.

WG: Yeah. They're funny.

TL: These big books…

WG: I can't go for that.

TL: I'm glad about that. Norman
Spinrad…

WG: He wrote a book called The Iron Dream. It's a science-fiction novel by Adolf Hitler, in an alternate world where Hitler became a science-fiction writer. It's a critique of the innately fascist element in a lot of traditional science fiction. Very funny.

The keys to Case's personality are the estrangement from his body, the meat, which he does overcome. People have criticized Neuromancer for not bringing Case to some kind of transcendent experience. But he has it within the construct of the beach, and he has it when he has his orgasm. There's a long paragraph there where he accepts the meat as being this infinite and complex thing.

TL: In some ways he reminds me of some of Burroughs's characters.

WG: Case could be one of Burroughs's wild boys… in a way. I'm deeply influenced by Burroughs… he found ‘fifties science fiction and used it like a rusty can opener on society's jugular. I was like 15 when I read The Naked Lunch and it sorta splattered my head all over the walls. And I have my megalomaniac fantasy of some little kid in Indiana picking up Neuromancer and pow!

TL: Well, that happens, dude. Don't worry. There's 500,000 copies already.

WG: I had to teach mysell not to write too much like Burroughs. I had to weed some of that Burroughsian stuff out of it. In an interview in London, I told this guy that the difference between what Burroughs did and what I did is that Burroughs would just glue the stuff down on the page but l airbrushed it all.

TL: Burroughs and I are close friends.TL: What would you say about Riviera?

WG: It's like Suddenly Last Summer. Riviera is like that, a feral child. He's smart, incredibly perverse. But all the stuff that he does—the little projected hallucinations and things—are relatively low tech. He's just projecting holograms.

There's this amazing German surrealist sculptor named Hans Belmer who made a piece called "The Doll." He made a doll that was more his fetish object than a work of art, this totally idealized girlchild that could be taken apart and rearranged in an infinite number of ways. So I have Riviera call his piece "The Doll."

Riviera also represents the fragmentation of the body. People see things like that, sometimes, out of the corners of their eyes.

TL: What about Armitage?

WG: He's a synthetic personality, a character utterly lacking character: As Molly says, "This guy doesn't do anything when he's alone."
This book's fraught with psychotics.

TL: (Laughing) You see, there are a few of us who think it's a very positive book in spite of that.

WG: Really? Well, I just try to reflect the world around me.

TL: I know. You're a mirror. How about Lucas Yonderboy?

WG: Lucas Yonderboy was my reaction to the spookier and more interesting side of punk. Kind of young and enigmatic. Cool to the point of inexplicability. And he's a member of the Panther Moderns. They're sorta like Marshall McLuhan's Revenge. Media monsters. It's as though the worst street gang you ever ran into were, at the same time, intense conceptual artists. You never know what they're going to do.

TL: What recent book have you most enjoyed?

WG: Bruce Sterling is my favorite science-fiction writer. Schismatrix is the most visionary science-fiction novel of the last 20 years or so. Humanity evolves, mutates through different forms very quickly, using genetic engineering and bio-chemistry. People will be mining that, ripping off ideas for the next 30 years.

TL: Like Gravity's Rainbow.

WG: Yeah. That's one of my personal favorites.TL: It's dark, so I waited 'til dawn and picked it up. And it was Gravity's Rainbow.

WG: Perfect! Of all the books you could get, that'll last you a while.

TL: You should only read that book under those circumstances.

WG: It stopped my life cold for 3 months. My university career went to pot, I just sort of laid around and read this thing.

TL: I read it all day until dark. I woke up the next morning and read it. For 3 days, I did nothing but read that book. Then I went back and I started annotating it. I did the same thing to yours. Yours is the only book I've done that with since. The film industry's never been able to do anything with Gravity's Rainbow.

WG: It's got eight billion times more stuff in it than Neuromancer does. It's an encyclopedic novel.

TL: But there's a tremendous relationship, as you well know, between Neuromancer and Pynchon. Because Pynchon is into psychology. But you've taken the next step, because you've done that whole thing to computers. You don't have any new drugs in Neuromancer.

WG: I've got the beta-phenethylamine.

TL: That's the one that makes your teeth rattle the nerves.

WG: Yeah. That's actually a brain chemical. We all have a little bit, as we sit around the table. When you fall in love the level rises. I called Bruce Sterling, and I said, "This guy's been modified; so he can't do traditional stimulants. So, what can he get off on?" And Bruce said "beta-phenethylamine." It's in the book. Beta-P. About a month after I finished the book, there was an article in Esquire, "The Chemistry of Desire." And they talked about beta-phenethylamine, which is structurally similar to amphetamine. And it's also present in chocolate.

TL: Ohhh! I’m a chocolate addict.

WG: Japanese kids get high on big candy bars that are just sucrose and caffeine.
They eat 5 or 6 of these things and go to concerts.

TL: One of the things that's wonderful about Neuromancer is that there is this glorious comradeship between Molly and Case.
0227
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
I keep seeing people interacting with their phones on tiktok, ig, or dare I say myself on bluesky, like it's unpaid piecework or slot machines: scroll heart open comments like all the comments without reading return scroll heart send to friend scroll scroll heart send to friend scroll
131
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 27/11/2025
Communities need used-book shops. As the trends in our world are increasingly standardized and entrenched by "predictive" technologies that stifle innovation and reduce human actions into economic categories... We need a full range of possibilities for readers and communities to explore and share.
On the left, a narrow, glass-fronted display case with a mix of letterpress, hand-bound, antiquarian, and collectors' books; stretching off to the right, 8-foot bookcases laden with literary and contemporary commercial fiction, about one thousand books out of the 6-7 thousand in that section. LED lighting and light-colored wood cases and flooring keep the room feeling relatively spacious despite the sheer quantity of books.
843933782
Reposted by Severn Clay-Youman
Robert Farley @drfarls.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Fifteen Years xkcd.com/3172/
xkcd.com
Fifteen Years
3194