OpenPhilanthropy has been seeding (b) a bit of money to local liberal activist groups but (a) guys to get them to do Abundance shit, under that name, then the guys play coy about the EA agenda

source: talking to people wondering who the fuck these weirdos were. they said “OpenPhilanthropy” and I went “ohhh boy have I got some disconcerting news for you”

yeah, but it’s a sure giveaway on which criticisms really hit home. So focus on governance.

and it was 2014

I was thinking, Sam doesn’t look like a younger Andrew Cuomo, but that’s the most Cuomo-ass expression. “HOW DARE YOU”

I just found out the name of Scott Alexander’s psychiatry practice (Lorien Psychiatry) is a Lord of the Rings reference, so my guess as to direct Thiel money just went way up

one horse laugh is of greater utilitarian impact across the quantum waveform of the universe than ten thousand syllogisms

i’ve had several recs for that greenscreen and frankly it looks ideal for the job. Now for the £160 … it’s on my channel wishlist.

this post was the starting pistol for rationalists taking as much adderall as they could get down their necks. Scott is not telling you that adderall will make you a financial genius and super effective, you understand. Except Kelsey Piper, who he literally says this about by name.

This is the post that made it a rationalist commonplace that adderall makes anyone a super effective financial genius.

it’s what got TPOT losers “microdosing” street meth. Of course the same TPOT confused meth and MDMA.

Somehow, Scott still has a license.

His practice has a name drawn from Lord of the Rings like other things in the Thielsphere.

fuckin lol, I had not spotted this, what a tell

update: so the AI slopster is Gerez herself. She pulled the same scam at Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo in 2024 — get accepted with real paintings, then fill the booth with AI slop. C2E2 also has a rule against AI art, but nobody threw her out that time. Now I’m honestly surprised I can’t find Gerez getting into NFTs.

https://xcancel.com/GenelJumalon/status/1784573908777136259

it’s also resource exhaustion, literally a SLAPP

oh yeah anything that can be chromakeyed basically, green is canonical and quite a good colour for the job.

this is apparently the same Oriana Gerez five years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJGZnCy7Muw

it was 2020 and she was already “AI is inevitable”

from particle physics to art scams

(her sound is bad enough I’m not bothering to listen myself and youtube’s transcriber choked on it, but it retains curiosity value)

did he actually contribute anything other than chemists nicking the name “nanotechnology”?

really has turned into Scientology

I should get a green screen for my videos. Suggestions welcomed.

• I can’t leave it up permanently, I need to be able to get it out and put it away each use without it being a massive PITA.
• I record in a small room. It’s tiny and awkwardly shaped and I’m fixed in place by perspective tricks (something I would like the green screen to alleviate).
• Amazon is the least worst vendor in this circumstance if all else is equal.

Any ideas? Do any of you use such a device yourselves?

but look, i liked this article,

this comment has a rancid attitude no matter how much civility filler you try to spackle on top

if a state-level actor wants access to your encrypted secrets,

in a closer to home example, El Salvador deploying Pegasus on the phones of journalists who were already using Signal

I concur this series could do with a bit more focus.

(When I realise I don’t understand the fine details, I ask people and then listen to the answers for useful bits. I have a half-written draft here that I’ll be posting to MoreWrite when it’s done specifically to get that stuff right.)