>>22430408, >>22430486, >>22431142, >>22435519, >>22435560, >>22435691, >>22435560 pb

cont…

Felix Bauckholt: The quant trader on an H1B visa killed by border police

Bay Area Cults

u/lithiumbrigadebait 31 points at 1677211900.000000

Rationalist-anarchist vegan Sith splinter sect Ziz blog is here, but I do not recommend reading it unless you feel like degrading your own sanity: https://sinceriously.fyi/

Basically, take the standard rat aesthetic and run it through a filter of intentionally obfuscating madness and completely new, Ziz-specific terminology whose definitions are partially metaphorical and deeply self-referential. Summarizing the content, as best as I'm able: "mental tech" for thinking more clearly / effectively that also skews into tinpot biological theories of brain structure and trans-ness / gender identity with a side of tulpas / alters. An actually-pretty-decent (once you get past the obfuscation of the aesthetic) model of society built on "undead types" as metaphors for a person's exercise of agency / where they draw motivation and meaning from. Severe historical beef with MIRI/CFAR over sexual abuse, blackmail payouts and coverups, trans discrimination, and generally being abjectly ineffective at their stated goal of AI research, including a shitshow protest that resulted in Ziz and a bunch of her friends getting arrested. A general goal / vibe of "acquire singleton, save world from extinction." Basically a much more radicalized and optimistic version of doompost-Yud who would rather build God themselves than work out how to do so as part of an organization. Much of the blog and ontology behind it seems to be geared towards identifying small-group collaborators with a similar vision and neurodivergent thought pattern. Mostly this seems to have resulted in collecting a group of not-particularly-mentally-stable transfemmes, several of whom have committed suicide, and one of whom is now dead after stabbing their landlord with a sword and being shot for their trouble. Basically: here there be madness, and a cautionary tale of why founding your own cult is not a very healthy response to escaping from your previous cult.

https://awful.systems/archives/thread/11adows