Hey folks, here’s everything you need to know about Urbit this week! In one short email you can skim in under five minutes.
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And as always, we give out free Urbit ships at imperceptible.computer.
Note from the Editor
Forget Balaji! He doesn’t understand Urbit yet. Who cares? I really like Balaji. He’s smart and cool, I’ve learned a lot from him. He’s also getting older and nobody can understand everything. Who cares? He is not your daddy. I hate the way Urbit enjoyers hang on his every tweet, “Oh my gawd is today the day he’s going to endorse Urbit oh my gawd?” Shut the fuck up! Don’t be a dick-rider! This is extremely beta behavior. It makes no difference whether he endorses Urbit or not. Be happy and proud of yourself that you see something before other smart people do. Balaji will come around when everyone else comes around. And then you can take delight in saying I told you so! There is no greater joy in life than understanding something, with conviction, while other smart people you admire do not yet see it. Relish the feeling. Forget Balaji.
Will Realm take over the creator economy?
"Realm starts to directly compete, simultaneously, with Patreon, Twitch, Telegram, Discord, Google Drive and Reddit. The total of what Urbit + Realm + Crypto can provide makes all of these services obsolete.” —Reserve Weekly
If you haven’t already, try Realm now. Realm in the wild via ~tomfex-pitlux:
There will be an Urbit conference in Wyoming in August 2023. "A technology oriented conference for builders in the Urbit ecosystem." Hosted by Tacen.
Hang out on %radio on Thursdays at 4:30pm Central. Radio is an Urbit app for watching media with a group of people. Install %radio from ~nodmyn-dosrux and you'll see everyone on the default station.
~mastyr-bottec built a Stripe integration into Urbit. "anyone with an Urbit will be able to start a self-hosted Substack or Etsy in one click."
The Mars Review of Books threw a party for Issue 2 in NYC. Looks fun. Next time we must send an imperceptible representative. If you are in NYC, let us know and we’ll make you our official reporter in the region. ;-)
MRB party
A podcast from the Mars Review of Books. On Jordan Castro's "The Novelist" and Christopher Prendergast's "Living and Dying with Marcel Proust."
New app: %Board. Board is a new Urbit app based on Robin Sloan's Spring '83 concept. Each user gets one board to edit. People are using it to share %blogs, daily thoughts, job opportunities, and all sorts of stuff. Search the app grid or enter in the dojo/Terminal:
|install ~dister-hanfel-dovned %board
%Board
New %blog: Christian by Philip Galebach. "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
New %blog: Symposium by ~danhus-lopbes. "I have had the opportunity to learn from different Christian denominations in El Salvador and several countries from Latin America, observing their way of thinking, how they've organized, their culture, and what they teach to their congregations."
~mopfel-winrux began work on a way for Urbit to control arbitrary hardware devices. "This is exciting work that will enable internet-of-things applications and integrations with other devices, such as hardware crypto wallets." —Ted Blackman
From the Imperceptible Group Blog
Our group on Urbit has more than 2,000 developers, writers, entrepreneurs, and creators. To be featured below, write something interesting in the Group Blog at ~hatryx-lastud/other-life.
Our Little Dark Age
"How can a swarm of Urbit Hilux’s maintain imperceptibility? How will that Urbit Hilux State establish a scalable, yet effective infrastructure capable of sustaining and defending itself outside and within the Empire? Praxis, Nation 3, and other LARPers are jumping the gun." By ~sicrul-naprys.
Nothing Forever
"Prisoners of the math that created them, they move, speak, and interact with each other within the boundaries of the code that conjures them. It no longer matters if they are alive; even if they were we couldn’t tell the difference. They are too determined by their math to conceive of escape. Behind the screens of our computers we laugh at how ridiculous it is, as we pick up our iphone alerting us that it’s time to feed; our DoorDash has arrived." By ~davnyl-dorreg.
The Meaning of Life
"It is not an accident that we're on track to AGI anymore than it is an accident that a bird grows wings... Being repurposed, whether for the sake of removal or to act in a different function, shouldn't feel like jerking off while eating a black forest cake from the grocery store. It should feel like enlightenment." By ~bintus-ragret.
Cannabis Research is the fertile field in which DeSci can grow
"The majority of current DeSci work is in the trad pharmaceutical sphere, and I argue that DeSci shouldn't go directly against the massive institutions right away but start with a fertile envelope of opportunity using jurisdictional arbitrage." By ~ripnyt-ripnyt.