The Seldom Frequented Path

Welcome to Signs of Life, a periodic roundup letter from Other Life, the coolest newsletter in the world. If someone sent you this, subscribe for yourself here. 

In this issue, you'll learn about:

• Why Milo Yiannopoulos is underrated

• How George Floyd became Jesus for atheist social media users

• Gear recommendations

• How Earth got captured by a technocapital singularity

Come to the Imperceptible Mansion in November

This will be our third annual mansion meetup, which will be held on the California coast near San José on the weekend of November 4-6. The image shows the actual site.

This started as a small experiment in Los Angeles two years ago, it grew into a larger event last year in Austin, and now I guess it's officially an annual tradition.

This unique weekend getaway/conference/retreat is typically a combination of two types: Independent writers and creators interested in exiting institutions, and philosophically inclined software engineers interested in building exit technologies. Anyone is welcome to request a spot, as long as you're working on something interesting, but this summarizes the center of gravity.

It's about 40% booked as of right now.

Short lecturers on René Girard

As we approach the start of Geoff Shullenberger's 6-week course on René Girard, I've been publishing on Youtube a series of mini-lectures.

We recorded these when Geoff visited Austin a few weeks ago.

• René Girard's Untimely Academic Career: Darwinian Christian Anthropology

• There is No Such Thing as an Aggressor: Girard and Christianity

• Girard’s Relation to Nietzsche, Freud, and Darwin

• Social Media and the Sacrificial Mechanism (How George Floyd became Jesus for atheist social media users)

They're not exactly going wild on the algorithm—we'll figure that out one day!—but I think they're great. They all contain original and high-quality perspective outside the standard grid. If you're interested in Girard, you'll take something from them.

On Milo Yiannopoulos

I love Milo Yiannopoulos. Always have, always will.

Milo Yiannopoulos is what every gay man should be: Totally insane.

If you're a gay man and you're not overflowing the world with utterly outrageous speech, you better have more than $500M under management (this is the only acceptable excuse).

I heard Milo is not gay anymore, but whatever—doesn't matter.

I strongly disagree with our friend Katherine Dee, who recently published a short, mostly negative piece on Milo's wild arc.

Milo was a world-class performer of free speech absolutism. A classical parrhesiast of the highest caliber. Not only was he completely unhinged, he was articulate in the extreme and severely underrated as a wit. True gold. Intelligent, hilarious, mesmerizing, the absolute consummation of the aristocratic dandy archetype for the digital era. Oscar Wilde had nothing on Milo.

People love to praise The Sovereign Individual but then recoil when they encounter a sovereign individual.

Milo was a sovereign individual. One of the GOATs, up there with Martin Shkreli.

His appearances on Joe Rogan represent the high-water mark of the Joe Rogan Experience. I remember listening to Milo—and also Gavin McInnes—on Joe Rogan, during the peak of Woke self-censorship, and feeling like, "Wow, free culture really will live on in America." These were the episodes where Rogan really earned his dominance as a podcaster.

It's true Milo suffered an epic fall, but who cares? Great individuals always fall sooner or later. Sometimes they rise again, sometimes they don't.

Gear Recommendations

People often ask me what gear I recommend for video, audio, etc.

My recommendations are only for people like me: Individual creators optimizing for simplicity, ease-of-use, and just-good-enough production quality at the lowest cost (in money and time).

I don't care about gadgets or tools, I don’t want to be an expert videographer or audio engineer, all I ever want is a solid setup that is adequate for the audience-size and income-level I'm at. Nothing more, nothing less.

If that's your shopping philosophy, and you're at my level or below (in terms of audience size and income), then I can comfortably recommend the following.

I did a ton of research on this stuff in the past few years, though I'm not going to explain all of that.

Every item is something I have personally used for an extended period of time.

This week on the Other Life podcast

In the most underrated work of social theory from the 1990s, Nick Land presents a sweeping theory of modernity.

And yet, few social scientists have ever deigned to take this work seriously.

Listen as I begin to work through the text, sentence-by-sentence.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast player.

The Imperceptible Country

We give you a new private computer in the cloud, a pseudonymous identity, and governance tokens representing control of the country's treasury and digital land.

Become a member

Jobs

Professional podcast producer

I have a friend who is looking for an experienced Producer of video/audio podcast shows. Not an editor but someone with showrunning skills. It's a big company looking for a rockstar and they'll pay accordingly. In person, in Austin.

Hit reply if you're interested.

React Native mobile developer

I have a friend whose hiring a React Native dev. Building on Urbit. In person, in Austin. Needs to have experience with React, React Native, Javascript; experience with iOS or Android development; and experience using Figma to mirror design specs in code.

Hit reply if you're interested.

Electron/React developer

Same as above but with a focus on Electron.

Hit reply if you're interested.

The Seldom Frequented Path

"Virtue, as such, naturally procures considerable advantages to the virtuous." —Joseph Butler