The Corpse of a Dream

...can awake the the dreamer too.

Dalle2

In late 2021, I departed America to pursue a PhD in Architecture in continental Europe. This past month, I decided to terminate it at only 8 months. I didn’t fail, nor did I get kicked out. It was not for lack of trying, nor a lack of will to try - although once the thought of ending it sunk in, the will to keep trying did certainly dry up. It was not a financial reason either, as I had a fully funded scholarship for 4 years and by all accounts a rather nice income for a PhD student. It was also not due to a disagreement or disappointment with my professor, who by all accounts is a world-famous TED-talking scholar.

So why did I perform this late-term abortion on my embryonic academic aspirations?

Let me first explain my seemingly poor decision by relaying to you why I went in the first place. Let me take you back to my undergrad, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, of which I’ve often credited the five years I spent in its architecture program with creating me as a person.

As America’s oldest technology university, it holds within it a spirit of inventiveness which preceded the birth of the nation. Although formally founded in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer, the Rensselaer family had been conducting strange masonic rituals and dark magical research upon those Hudson valley hills since the 17th century - when Shakepere’s corpse was still fresh and leathery. In time, it became known as Rensselaerswyck, and it was imbued with esoteric mysteries, subterranean lovecraftian lore, and the occasional UFO sighting (of which, I saw several). Scholars from this little university went on to build the Brooklyn Bridge, and large swaths of American Infrastructure. Today, a variety of US institutions contract with the university to work on clandestine technologies. One room even has a live feed of the Martian probes direct through NASA’s network. Its outgoing president is one of Hilary Clinton’s closest oligarchs, to add a bit more to the lore. The university is truly the Hogwarts of the Hudson Valley. In my time there, I’ve seen angels and demons, experienced the finest of friendships, and learned a great deal about life. It’s where I both lost and regained my faith, and where I learned to get over my fear of public speaking and boldly write what I want. Look for a substack post in the near future exploring my experiences there. They’d make a good fantasy novel.

Dalle2 Renditions, The Cryptoid Esoterica of Hudson Valley

Many moons ago when I was but a sophomore - come to think about it, just about exactly 10 years ago - I had the privilege of taking a course with an eccentric professor from Poland, who I will call Zbigniew. I’d say with confidence the man was akin to Dr Frankenstein. He made weird things.

The wonders of Zbigniew’s Lab.

Professor Zbigniew was very interested in training architects in the arcane powers of biology. He was rather successful in this advocacy, and possessed special clearance to access Rensselaer’s biolabs - some of the most advanced in North America. It was access I inherited when I became his acolyte. My time there was quite otherworldly and I ended up taking a second semester with him to further my studies. I eventually produced a material derived from bone and several secret ingredients which, when mixed in the right proportions, displayed capacity to be programmed via sound. It was research focused on the science of cymatics. By utilizing key resonances, I controlled my semi-secret formula to take form. By building a sonic chamber to manipulate the material, I was able to test a variety of controls and variables and even made this swanky little video of the process:

I kept the material on the down-low, even though there was a desire by some staff to patent it. I still have samples at home, were I ever to seek a commercialize of it. Personally, I’ve favored taking the John Galt approach and keeping my inventions to myself, for now. Not that I am some closet Ayn Rand fanboy. I most certainly am not. Rather, I somewhat like the idea of giving my inventions to small communities and help developing a secondary economy amongst friends.

My Million Dollar Baby

Those who know me around social media know that I am a bit of an eccentric pseudo-scientist, engaging in pursuits seemingly worlds apart from my profession of architecture. I’ve dabbled with biohacking, physics, chemistry, linguistics, and anything else that stimulates my undiagnosed autism for a month or so before I get bored again. If you are one of those secret admirers of my occasional alchemical accomplishments and enjoy watching my secret pursuits, and were ever curious how it was that an architect came to be competent in these arcane powers, you can thank Professor Zbigniew and his laboratory.

Dalle2, Literally Me!

While the skills I learned in that lab were richly rewarding, my time and ability to spend it in such pursuits was rather out of my own grasp once I departed Rensselaer. Nonetheless, the skills I learned there I’ve carried forward into the years. Some time ago when I saw a video by ThoughEmporium, a youtube science channel, that was a simple guide to genetic engineering, I got the sudden desire to rehash that part of my mind. In the video, he expressed frustrations with getting silk proteins to work, because the machines kept breaking from all the repeat sequences silk is made of. I am quite familiar with this problem. Due to DNA’s limited characters, it cam become quite difficult to build a genetic tapestry if units repeat, as the method by which they are made involve the capping and un-capping of tips between letters. If they repeat, the chemistry involved can break itself. Thus, innocent me thought up a simple solution using some of the techniques I developed in Zbigniew’s Lab. I wrote an algorithm to fix it by introducing random small junk segments to avoid the mechanical failures. This can sometimes cause problems with more complex proteins, but for self assembling fibrils it’s quite fine. I thought nothing of it, and went back to reality. But, in 2019, he published a solution to his problem. It was the same one I developed months prior. I was surprised, but felt a bolster of confidence. After all, if a real PhD scientist came up with the same solution I did - to whom no biology degree has ever been awarded to - maybe I was smarter than I thought, or the process simpler than it sounded?

I did my homework, reached out to a few private labs, and went about familiarizing myself with how DNA “sentences” work once again (they are more like poetry than computer code, fun fact). Such that in 2021, with the extra time from the pandemic work-from-home edicts, I sent my protein sequence to a lab to be assembled and edited into a line of yeast cell lines. A few months later, I received in the mail my first genetically modified organism that produced a protein I had written from scratch. This simple protein was based off common spider dragline. It was stretchy, sticky, and took forever to excrete. Reason being, I had chosen ordinary Baker’s Yeast as the cell to modify. That stuff is slow! But it was within the scope of Thought Emporium’s “Spider Beer” goals.

All the same, I cannot express in words the joy of seeing something one has wrote becoming a living host, or at least a modified version of one. The protein self-assembled into webbings, and I had produced an entirely new molecule in the cosmos!

The GMO silk my yeast cell lines made

Having accomplished something an architect ordinarily ought not be able to, I figured I should send out some documentations to universities and see if I could score a grant to spend the Biden years in a PhD program. My dream was always to end up in England or Scotland and enjoy 4 years of smooth sailing. Incidentally, I got into all my choices, but only one offered a scholarship - on the Continent. This was somewhat a disappointment, but I ended up convincing myself to go nonetheless. The problem was that in the EU, no GMO research was allowed for the unqualified, which I certainly was not! Thus I had to agree to do the research in America, and do the writing in the EU. A strange and expensive arrangement, but doable in January 2021…

A cloud of silk produced by a newer version of the protein sequence

At first, this arrangement wasn’t too hard. I was able to fly home in April for a month to conduct research, and bring data back for a progress reviews. Tickets were still cheap, and covid regulations were on the way out. But then ticket prices doubled, then tripled. Everything became too expensive, and the practicalities of taking advantage of the US’ deregulated bioscience market hit a wall. I tried my best to get around regulations and limits and seek research in Europe, but it ultimately came to naught. No grants would come under the current financial crises, and no lab access could be secured to do the work in the EU.

I decided it was impossible, and so with some discussion with the university, my PhD dream died on August 31st. I returned to my old job, as I was lucky enough to have a supportive boss more than willing to let me pursue this goal - so long I’d work the summers back in his office. Admittedly, returning to work in June and reminding myself how good I have it in Manhattan put a giant weight in the direction of quitting.

Returning to Europe to clear out my things was very strange. Closing my bank account, canceling my rent contract, ending my internet and electrical. Akin to arranging my own death, or going to my own funeral. But, the corpse of my Euro-dream has now been laid to rest. It is over. I am no longer an expat. I may once again pursue a PhD later in my life, but if I do it will be in the United Stated, that much is for certain.

A close up of some fibrons

You may imagine that quitting was a hard choice - up until I was told what my first publication would be in the program, you’d be right. Rather than a scientific journal, it would be a museum exhibit on climate change. I entertained it for a bit, until it was decided the gallery would be a meditation on climate change - featuring “Climate Change Tarot Cards”… oh yea, I was in deep.

I paused when I heard that. I imagined in my mind, myself at age 40, a decade from now. I’d be going in for a professorship interview at some university. “Ah yes, Mr Luthemplaer. Excellent degrees and experience” the interviewer would say, “but what’s this?” I shuttered in the dream. The interviewer takes out of his folder my first publication. “You got your PhD in Tarot Cards!?” The fear of such an embarrassing interview infected my willingness to go on. I felt stabbed in the heart. What the fuck was I doing here?

A note here: When I graduated from my Masters at Columbia in 2015, I had some rather unfortunate experiences in the interview process while finding work. Namely, I was repeatedly told no one hires from Columbia anymore - that their head was in the clouds. That Ivy League is a fucking joke. I was outright told by some they only brought me in because my undergrad is solid. Now, mind you, I was not offended at all. I am rather hard pressed to agree with their assessments. Columbia was indeed a joke. I practically sleep-walked my way through my Masters. I saw so many people pretending to be struggling at that university, when in reality they were just alcoholics and drug addicts unwilling to put in even a single drop of sweat worth of effort. The absolute state America’s decadent elite is something to pause and wonder at. They are akin to a zoo of dawdling landwhales, dyslexics and perpetually erect degenerates looking for a new hole to ejaculate into, and the occasional bright-dyed entity with a copy-pasted personality they claim is unique. I’d feel bad if I disagreed with my potential employer’s sentiments, but I have plenty of dirt to kick in the face of America’s future headships from my time there. What I witnessed gave me a very negative perspective of the future.

I suppose I thought the fiction of Ivy League status was still valued by most of America’s managers at the time I went. If as early as 2015 it was that bad, Lord only knows the state of it today. Nonetheless, that experience in those interviews gave me a trained ear. I can hear when something will be a waste of my time now. I have a very sensitive bullshit detector. So when I was told my first publication would be tarot cards, I promptly began to hatch my escape plan I had nestled in a warm place.

I recall before I left, a pastor at Redeemer Church in Manhattan told me “the worse case scenario is, you just pack up and leave”. That was an important piece of advice to hear as an adult. In many ways, quitting this PhD represents two formations. Firstly, my formal entry into fearless adulthood - albeit, at the not-so-tender age of 30. Secondly, my formal break from the University Institution. I recall when I was young I was afraid the world would end if I failed out of University, and some of that returned while I was in the program this year, but those pastoral words kept that storm at bay. At some point, a spirit of contentment entered me and I realized something: I just don’t give a shit anymore. I think that’s part of growing up. You learn to value your own time and experience, and cut off things that waste or devalue yourself. In the frankest of terms, for myself, that means I will not make bloody tarot cards when I can create a whole new life form with what I know.

I wish to stress to you, dear reader, the important principal of Scope Creep. I learned this term in my professional life, and if you’ve never heard it, I strongly encourage you to learn it here and now. Scope Creep is thus: When you enter into a contract with another entity, you firmly define your services and goals. When those are breached, you are experiencing scope creep. The party must be informed, and if no respect is rendered, they must be cut off. This is to prevent a client from expanding their requests beyond what they payed for - and thereby screwing you over and robbing you of your value. When you interact with people - even in ordinary friendships and relationships - always define the scope and always place firm boundaries that, when crossed, constitute a violation. Because I did this for my PhD, I was able to identify very quickly how the scope creep had infected the entire experience, and when to cut things off. No time wasted, and quick remediation to fix it.

So that’s that. This post constitutes something of a rant, and something of my vision for a path forward. I’m open to your own thoughts too, dear reader. I’ve received quite a few curious subscribers of this little blog of mine, many from still-respected institutions and professions. If you happen to be Peter Thiel, I am more than willing to hear your advice - and Thielbucks are always appreciated. Shilling aside, how do you suppose I could use the skills I have as a free agent (yet again)? Is there something you think I should focus on? Other than finally getting licensed and being a real architect - yes, I know much of this is a fear of responsibility if I were to get licensed. Nonetheless, leave a comment below, or reply to this in email form if you have thoughts.

As for me, I’m going to keep tinkering with biohacking. I’m going to keep exploring what materials for architectural practice can be generated by biological production methods rather than technological ones. I’m going to continue exploring how this technology can benefit my friends first, and everyone else too perhaps, in true John Galt fashion. Finally, I’m going to continue maintaining strict boundaries and preventing scope creep. I hope you’ve learned to start doing so too! Your time is as valuable as mine, dear reader. Don’t let anyone rob you.

Dalle2 rendition of biohacking.