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David Ellison

@davidellison.bsky.social

220 followers 540 following 41 posts

Interested in: books, language, music and sound, computational linguistics & NLP, my cat 📍Seattle

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Staying up all night to invent a movie theater popcorn that’s completely silent

Nadine Hurley, from Twin Peaks. She’s sitting on the floor with her drape runner and a bag of cotton balls

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Something is going on at FT

FT article teaser reads “Grindcore is the new hustle culture”

FT News Briefing podcast, “Investors love heavy metal”

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Mike Davis in late 1993 perfectly predicted that 32 years later I would read Vineland and the Sprawl trilogy and wrote this review of Virtual Light with me in mind, it would seem

As a result, our perceptions of the future now wrench back and forth between two, seemingly polar visions. On the one hand, techno-hucksters seduce us with hyperboles about data superhighways, global networks, expert systems, and virtual realities. They assure us that we are on the threshold of an Information Millennium that will guarantee even the humblest optically-wired hut access to an infinite “digital sea” of imagineered pleasures.

On the other hand, we are confronted daily with the four horsemen of an incipient global apocalypse. The first is called Unemployment, as third world megacities (which now plausibly include Los Angeles and Moscow as well as Jakarta and Mexico D.F.) overflow with bitter postindustrial underclasses, nearly half a billion strong, who have become redundant, as either consumers or producers, to the world market. The second is Plague, as the world AIDS epidemic reveals biological pathways open for the invasion of other nightmare ailments, from penicillin-resistant TB to Ebola fever. The third is Tribalism, as multiethnic states, undermined by multinational capital, shatter into deadly shards of ethnic and religious hatred. The fourth horseman, of course, is Ecocide, as the exploitation of nature is accelerated to keep pace with falling terms of trade and rising international debt.

In the end, Virtual Light shares much of the generous spirit and slapstick humor of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland (1990). The Bridge is recognizably Vineland’s intergenerational counterculture regrouped against the silicon fascism of the year 2005. Chevette is not unlike Prairie Wheeler, Pynchon’s daughter of the Revolution, while Skinner could be a later version of her hippie dad, good ole Zoyd Wheeler.

From similar perches on the seacoast of Ectopia (respectively the Redwoods and British Columbia), Pynchon and Gibson have written comic utopian novels that unabashedly defend the dream of the Commune. Given the cargo cults built around their names, these expressions of sentimentality and radical hope are also acts of considerable personal modesty. For Gibson, in particular, Virtual Light is a revealing move. No longer just the Seer of Cyberpunk, he may be becoming the Jack London of the wild youth of the ’90s.

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Happy Birthday to the late, great Gene Wolfe! Here’s to many reads, and many rereads.

A shelf full of many books written by Gene Wolfe

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

Best book I’ve read so far this year

The cover of Russell Hoban’s novel “Riddley Walker,” showing a puppet against a white background. A cat looks at the camera from behind the book.

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Shiva came into my life unexpectedly about a month after my beloved Sylvia left it, and I’m so glad she did

A black cat with very long white whiskers and green eyes looks toward the camera

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Picked up my dearest Sylvia’s ashes today. I miss her so much

A memorial clay paw print from a cat, with text reading “Sylvia”

A grey and brown tabby cat looking at the camera and lounging happily on a bedspread.

A beautiful grey and brown tabby cat with green eyes

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 09/11/2024

Reading all day long to get in the mood for the death metal show later

Two books side by side: “Titus Groan” by Mervyn Peake, and “The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act” by Fredric Jameson

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 06/11/2024

My beloved Sylvia left the world last night and I will love her forever

A gray tabby cat relaxing on a couch

On the left, a man wearing headphones and glasses smiles at the camera sitting on a couch. On the right, above his shoulder, a beautiful gray tabby cat sleeps facing the camera on the back of three couch.

On the right, a man sitting in front of a couch smiles at the camera. In the center, a happy tabby cat rubs her head on the corner of his glasses.

A beautiful gray tabby cat rests on a blanket. In front of her is a rainbow catnip toy. She seems to be bathed in a halo of light.

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David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 17/10/2024

My beautiful Sylvia

A gray and brown tabby cat asleep on the back of a sofa. Her paws are folded and she looks so cozy

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

This talk title from the Emacs conference is my sleeper agent activation phrase

A listing for a ten-minute conference talk titled "Why Nabokov would use Org-Mode if he were writing today"

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 25/10/2023

Loscil and Lawrence English last night

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a deep orange screen

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a cloudy purple screen

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a screen of blue, pink, and orange

Ambient musicians Loscil and Lawrence English performing in front of a screen of grey, pink, and white

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 18/10/2023

My sweetheart Sylvia

A brown tabby cat lying on a blanket by a window, in a sunbeam

David Ellison @davidellison.bsky.social · 19/09/2023

One of my crackpot theories is that my cat likes my drone records. Today I put Stuart Dempster on and she lies down on the couch right in the best listening spot where the speakers point

The cover of Stuart Dempster’s album “Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel”

A tabby cat relaxing on a couch