News and Updates - Other Life

Signs of Life, May 2021: Truth is a Schelling Point

Hey folks! A few thoughts, links, and upcoming events for you. I’m glad I retired the weekly curatorial newsletter. Now when you receive one, you’ll know it’s because I actually have some stuff I want to share, not because I’m trying to hit a weekly quota.

News and Updates

How I made $3,300 on a short niche philosophy book

The Based Deleuze project is now officially complete, so it’s time to do some final accounting. Here I will review the financials, the labor/time costs, and the main lessons learned. Based Deleuze was conceived and executed as a hard test. In research design, a hard test is a

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Review of Based Mansion LA: Observations, Finances, and Bibliography

On the weekend of February 28, I rented a mansion in Los Angeles for two nights and stayed there with about 15 people from the internet. I facilitated a mini-conference; everyone there presented some ideas. After that, we partied. In this post I'd like to share: a few lessons learned,

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Calling all indie thinkers (literally)

Over the past week, I’ve conducted more than ten private Skype interviews with a diverse group of internet intellectuals, “content creators” of the higher-brow variety, cancellation-vulnerable professionals, and lesser-known upstarts aspiring to be one of these… The reason I organized these Skype calls is that I spent the past

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Introducing Deleuze vs. Heidegger on Technology, Enslavement,  and Escape

That’s the title of an online course I’m developing with Johannes Niederhauser. You may remember Johannes from his widely admired appearance on Other Life: “Heidegger, Ecstatic Time, and the Community of Mortals” (livestream, podcast). Our plan is to produce about 8 hours of content, mostly traditional lectures and

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Quick note on a site change

For those of you who've subscribed to receive my blog posts via email, you'll notice my posts are now coming from a different email address. This is just a quick note to let you know, in case you're confused. Email replies still come directly to my inbox, so feel free.

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Advancing to Level 2

I’ve now been on Patreon for one year. It's been good, but I think I need to level up. Would you like to help? If so, I have a new flashy object with your name on it. Read on. Review and Projections First, a little review of my Level

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Progress report for first book project

I launched a pre-order form for Based Deleuze a little more than a month ago (June 20, 2019). I committed to publishing a short book of about 20k words by September 20 at the latest. I currently have 15.9k words, so the writing itself has been proceeding smoothly. That’

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An automated system for delivering high volumes of exclusive content to patrons

This took a lot of tinkering, but I think I've finally figured out the best currently available way to manage and deliver a wide variety of exclusive items to patrons. Optimizing and automating the links between research, production, and dissemination will probably be one of the main edges that internet

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How I'm Successfully Digitizing Another Professorial Function: Consulting

[Update: Much of this turned out to be prescient, in fact so prescient that a lot below has been transcended by the creation of IndieThinkers.org. So I'm not really helping many people personally and directly anymore, but rather building scalable systems for doing so.] As loyal readers will know,

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Life update from the Sunshine State

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Tour stop in Raleigh, North Carolina this Thursday May 16

Currently in the mountains of western North Carolina, I’m looking to buy an old broken down house somewhere for like $50k but I need to test Wifi quality first... On Thursday we’ll be passing through Raleigh on a gracious invitation from @nicholatian and @resonanceknight. This will now be

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What I'm reading: Ernst Jünger

I've been exploring the work of Ernst Jünger, which I've never really read until now. The most cursory searching confirms a high likelihood of this man entering the Other Life pantheon. Consider the following from Eumeswil: When society involves the anarch in a conflict which in which he does not

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AcademiaLeaks, University of Chicago Edition

I was just sent this by an anonymous reader. It's not private but it's not in the news. The reader says "Haha imminent collapse. For real though, mostly suggestions for more committees..." They went on, "It all started when grad students voted to form a union in 2017. Admin didn’

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Some news and updates resettling

I'm now back in the United States, for the foreseeable future. My last two weeks in the UK were possibly my favorite two weeks in my 5.5 years there. On February 28, we went up to London with only what we could carry, for me to give a talk

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Modern Liberalism Is Not Peace, It's Pacification

Readers of my work over the past few years will know that I have long been interested in how natural human rebelliousness gets pacified (1, 2, 3). I recently had the pleasure of working on this question with a group of co-authors, from very different methodological backgrounds. The final result

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Planning a tour, would you like me to visit you?

I have received just enough speaking invitations to announce that I'm pretty much embarking on a DIY book tour. Basically how punk bands do it: no agents, no rules, no frills. Would you like my wife and I to visit your town, for me to give a talk? For normal

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Introducing monthly seminars

For the past two months, I've been hosting private online seminars for patrons supporting me at $25/month or more. The first one was good, but the second session really took off. Participants became comfortable sharing their projects, raising questions and constructive criticisms with each other, and the whole thing

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What am I doing?

Many different people are asking me what's going on with me. In different languages, sometimes gleefully and sometimes worriedly, I have been asked some variant of "what are you doing?" so many times in the past couple of weeks that I figure I should just write one thing that I

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WYRD PATCHWORKSHOP

I was recently approached by Diffractions Collective in Prague, who are working with a group called Sdbs, about hosting a discussion event on my livestream. The topic is patchwork. I don't know exactly what to expect, but naturally I said sure. They will be hosting a semi-public IRL event in