In this episode, I review the state of Urbit and my history with this ambitious project to rebuild the internet. I explain why I stepped back, detailing what's happened with the network in the past few years, including the challenges faced by startups attempting to build on the platform and the surprising return of founder Curtis Yarvin. I take an honest look at how my initial timeline expectations were off, and other mistakes I made.

This period taught me a lot about technology, market sentiment, and cognition. I share how the experience has shaped my current thinking, as well as my current work with Zorp, a startup from the Urbit ecosystem now building Nockchain. I discuss the attraction of zero-knowledge proofs and why I've adopted a more patient attitude in my relationship with radical technology projects, now preferring to work behind the scenes if I really believe in something.

This is my first update on what I've been doing with Nockchain over the past year, helping to build their audience.

01:21 Discovering Urbit
02:44 Involvement with Urbit
04:44 Challenges and Reflections
05:38 The Independent Scholar
06:57 Urbit's Market Dynamics
15:31 Urbit Startups and Setbacks
22:49 The Rise and Fall of Urbit
23:38 Orbit's Struggles and My Realizations
24:54 Current State and Future Potential of Urbit
31:42 The Promise of Zero Knowledge Proofs
35:18 Introducing Nock Chain
38:31 Reflections and Lessons Learned
45:05 The Launch of Nock Chain

Other Life
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This episode unpacks the seventh and eighth sentences of Nick Land's "Meltdown," where "soft engineering slithers out of its box into yours" and "human security is lurching into crisis." We consider how Land's vision of programming the body manifests in surprising ways, from COVID-19 as a biological agent turned symbolic force, to the AI of Ex Machina. The idea of the human body as a programmable interface, with roots in William Burroughs, is central to understanding these unfolding crises.

This episode also touches on the rapid, horizontal replication that bypasses old hierarchies – seen in actual cloning, the way internet personalities jump expertise ("transversal replication" via Deleuze & Guattari), and even how IVF restructures reproduction. Cyberotics, like AI girlfriends, and the merging of biological and memetic viruses further illustrate this acceleration where boundaries dissolve and new forms of replication flood in.

Other Life

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✦ The monthly PRINT edition: https://otherlife.co/upgrade

✦ My new book, The Independent Scholar: https://otherlife.co/scholar

This episode unpacks the third sentence from Nick Land's "Meltdown."

"As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip."

What does it mean for markets to "manufacture intelligence"? Drawing on Hayek and Mises, we discuss how this phrase is not merely a figure of speech. The earliest stock markets around the year 1600 illustrate the concept.

We then consider the reaction of politics to this ascendant market intelligence. Much of political modernism, along with its heightened paranoia, is an attempt to cope with or "get a grip" on forces it cannot control. We discuss examples from Soviet collectivization to the "paranoid style" in American politics.

The idea finds surprising applicability in the contemporary debate around Artificial Intelligence. As AI accelerates, familiar calls for control and "safety" emerge. Referencing Land's "Machinic Desire," we discuss "Politically Organized Defensive Systems" (PODS) and their core rule: "the outside must pass by way of the inside." This is what's going on when it comes to AI governance and the push to centralize oversight of a rapidly escalating new form of intelligence.

Other Life
✦ The coolest free newsletter in the world: https://otherlife.co
✦ The monthly PRINT edition: https://otherlife.co/upgrade
✦ My new book, The Independent Scholar: https://otherlife.co/scholar