Previous: News on News pt. 1
Shaking the right-wing dust off our feet, we decided to head over to The Advocate: “the oldest and largest LGBTQ publication in the United States and the only surviving one of its kind that was founded before the 1969 Stonewall riots”— Wiki. It was founded in response to police brutality at a gay bar— surely it would have some… if not kind, at least mildly sympathetic things to say abt the plight of our cabal? 🤞
The Advocate’s zarticle (Ziz article) is written by 😮 Trudy Ring: senior politics editor and copy chief. She loves old Hollywood movies— so do we! We settled in for a nice, relaxing read of Who are the Zizians, a cult-like group led by a transgender woman? —W/, ofc, our Bingo chart in arm’s reach:
The article opens w/ a pic of Ziz’s mugshot, backed by crime scene tape. Not bad Photoshop!
Ziz is introduced again as a “transgender woman”… and again, a few sentences later, as a “trans woman” 🤗 We know, Trudy!
Trudy describes the Rationalists as a group which believes in “the power of the human mind to see clear truth, eliminate bias and bad thinking, and improve individuals and society” 😂 Believe in it they might, but… ahhh, who are we kidding, the Rationalists wouldn’t know clear truth if it bit them in the ass.
She seems to be mainly quoting from the BBC’s article— which is totally fine: goodness knows we don’t do original reporting! Anyway, the BBC describes Ziz’s slow & traumatic exile from the Rationalists this way: she “soon fell out with mainstream Rationalists as her writings spun off in bizarre directions.” 🤔 We’ll try to respond to this BBC article later but yah, yah yah, Ziz’s “falling out” w/ that ship of fools was def due to her craaazy writings (we wanted to add “BIZARRE” to our bingo chart, but ran out of room 🤷🏻♀️)
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Next, Trudy quotes from none other than the NY Times, who, she says, got their info from 🤯 THE UNNAMED SITE, “which seeks to expose the group”??? 🫣 & she includes a link????
The NYT says Ziz’s beliefs center around “upending moral norms, practicing extreme veganism and accepting the concept of gendered brain hemispheres”
🤥 NYT, we invite you to read pt. 24 of the named site zizians.co re: those moral norms; & we dk if Ziz was into *extreme* veganism, we don’t rlly know what that would entail— harvesting all your own legumes?
Also, the brain hemispheres were Gwen’s idea & she rlly resents it when Ziz gets credited w/ her work!
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Ziz’s blog is described as “[attracting]… adherents”, which is kind of a weird way to describe “friends”… & then, via the LA Times, Gwen’s dad is quoted saying he “feared”, ca. 2017-2018, that Gwen was “going down a dangerous path”— which, as we recall, was the subject of quite a falling-out b/w Gwen & Dad!
(2017 just happens to align w/ when Gwen officially changed her name & pronouns— this, to borrow her words, is "perhaps [coincidental]".)
The NYT comes back in to admit that, from their perspective, “The goals of the Zizians” “aren’t completely clear”— prob. bc “the Zizians” aren’t a thing! Nonetheless, says the Times, those “goals” seem to have included “gender identity”, which sounds like a clear nod to the SOTTV* from our perspective.
*Specter of the ~traaans villain~
Then Trudy quotes directly from The Unnamed Site, incidentally choosing a passage which we have already responded to here. Then Trudy deadnames Somni 😫— & Ophelia!!!
Finally, Ziz’s lawyer is quoted saying, “I urge members of the press and the public to refrain from speculation and premature conclusions”, which is the first sane sentence we’ve found so far in this article, & w/ that The Advocate est fini.
Oh Trudy! We rescind our offer of Hollywood movie night 😔
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Call us gluttons for punishment, but obv. we had to read the NYT’s piece (TNYTP) next.
TYNYP’s reporters are Remy Tumin & Kate Christobek. Remy’s About page says she approaches every story w/ “curiosity, impartiality and vigor”, while Kate’s notes only that she really likes the Times’s Ethical Journalism handbook— sounds cool!
One weird thing abt the NYT is that they love eliding obvious follow-up questions thru carefully neutral language: ex. we find our cabal introduced as “the 'Zizians,' a name for the followers of a person known as 'Ziz'”. Putting aside the fact that Ziz’s name doesn’t include scare-quotes, & the fact that she iz Ziz, rather than merely “known as” such… our attention was struck by “a name for”.
Whose name for? The “Zizians’” name for? Clearly not, or it would read sthng like: “the ‘Zizians’: followers of one Ziz LaSota.” It is, ofc, The Unnamed Site’s (TUS’s) own sinister coinage, meant to enhance TUS’s central claim: that Ziz leads a cult (and yes, the NYT, like The Advocate, does include TUS’s URL for curious readers!)
Remy & Kate then immediately deadname Ziz— two times in a row, & quote from the prosecution, who has helped our bingo card immensely w/ their widely-repeated phrasing: “an extremist group known as Zizians”.
🤭 We always get a kick out of this the-less form of the word— almost like they’ve gotten their own nationality!
To their credit, Remy & Kate note that “The group itself does not appear to have an official presence online”— yeah, bc it would be “BIZARRE” to make a web site advertising yr friend group!
Next Ophelia & Milo & Somni are deadnamed… Ziz gets a 3rd deadnaming… & w/ that, the article wraps up!
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As usual, reading The NY “Just-the-facts-ma’am” Times leaves us w/ a feeling of greyness— a feeling of a whole lot of nothing. Unlike feisty young Catherine Solgano over at PJ Media, Remy & Kate have not called Ziz & co. “a now infamous transgender terror cult”, “a violent transgender cult”, or even “bloodthirsty radical[s]”.
In fact, they have omitted mention of the trans angle altogether, & have scuttled around the “Ziz” biz by implying that Ziz is just a nickname for that devious [Redacted] LaSota— somewhat like “The Kid”. The NYT, after all, does not appear to “see” transness— or, when they do see transness, it gives them a fright & they quickly dismiss it from their memories (for those curious, here is an excellent podcast on what the NYT’s poor trans employees make of all this.)
We at first thought that Remy & Kate had achieved this in part thru omitting pronouns for Ziz altogether. A second read-thru found that they did use “they/them” pronouns— only twice, which takes some skill to do (by way of comparison, Curtis Lind gets only 3 paragraphs, but is lavished w/ 4 “Mr.”s & 5 personal pronouns— there is no doubt what gender Mr. Lind is!) The other “Zizians”, alas, get given no pronouns at all.
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Grey tho it may appear, the NYT manages to get thru the same essential message as its more colorful right-wing counterparts (the real cynics might jump in here to say “openly right-wing”):
✅ Ziz & friends are an extreme cult.
✅ Their transness is beyond the pale.
It achieves this 1st message— all while keeping its hands clean— in part by offloading the *real* sensationalism onto its key source— The Unnamed Site— which, just to remind readers, was very likely authored by a transphobe abuser who may have had a particular grudge against Ziz bc she turned him down.
It achieves this 2nd message— again, all while keeping those hands purportedly clean— thru erasing transness: thru presenting their deadnaming & misgendering as neutral acts, & ofc thru their wholesale avoidance of pronounery. This subtly casts Ziz & friends as “illegitimate” & “other”, while letting us know— once again— that the NYT has declined to affirm trans identity.
While we joshed w/ Trudy over her triple-transing of Mz. Ziz- reading the Times, we find ourselves wistfully thinking back to her emphatic approach.
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Perhaps— based on how the Times typically covers trans issues— it's a blessing they've elided this detail.
It’s possible that, on some level, the Times believed that its options were to either omit transness, or to frame it as a factor which somehow predicts or explains Ziz & co.’s alleged crimes. We’re certainly glad they didn’t do the latter!
But alas, transness— or specifically, transphobia— is intrinsic to this saga. It’s intrinsic to understanding what happened to Ziz & co. leading up to their alleged crimes (ACs), & it’s intrinsic to understanding how those ACs have since been framed by the media.
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Like the Rationalists, the NYT makes much of calling themselves “objective” & “impartial” observers, while nonetheless upholding sometimes-conservative, sometimes frankly reactionary points of view (see again: this podcast.) To our eyes, a truly “objective” observer would have applied the same sharp skepticism towards their own sources as they do towards their subjects.
To be fair, this would have required Remy & Kate to do a bit of digging— as we know, having 😮💨 attempted to do that digging ourselves. Remy & Kate are busy, busy girls— but at least one of them does say she loves “rigor” & “curiosity”. What might a rigorous & curious approach to this case have looked like? It could have looked like…
✅ Digging into the question of who authored The Unnamed Site (TUS)— what might their motives & biases have been?
✅ Verifying claims independently, rather than citing a bunch of other news reports in a snake-eating-its-own-tail recursive loop. This prob. would have obligated Remy & Kate to read Ziz’s blog for themselves— no small ask, as we well know! Ziz is quite the wordy girl. But a survey of her blog would have contradicted many claims made on TUS, & would— hopefully— have prevented R & K from thinking such TUS-inflected nonsense as, “Ziz dreams of ‘upending moral norms’”, & “Zizians practice ‘’extreme veganism’, whatever that is”.
✅ Rather than citing only a smear site, the prosecution, & sensationalized news reports, R & K could have done their best to cite ppl from w/in Ziz’s circle, who could provide some counterweight to the above. True, this is easier said than done, as Ziz’s circle is almost entirely in jail and/or dead— but, in a final, desperate attempt, they could have found the circle’s blogs, which ofc tell a v. diff story.
Speaking of citations, we were curious: what zstories (Ziz stories) were bopping around Remy’s & Kate’s heads as they wrote this greyly sensationalist, greyly hostile piece? We skated thru their hyperlinks, & in so doing, completed our Bingo card!
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Source #1– CNN— continues the deadnaming & misgendering, while throwing in some more of our least-favorite flourishes: saying that Ziz (or “Ziz”) goes by Ziz on her blog (she also “goes by it” irl!); that she “used” female pronouns (she is, notoriously, still alive!); & that she “in her writings says she is a transgender woman” (which is supposed to make us think what exactly?)
CNN then calls Ziz’s blog “dark and sometimes violent” (it’s got a black background, but come on!)— & describes Ziz as having “railed against perceived enemies”. We at Strange New Vegan Death Cult Murders have “railed” against these “enemies” far more ferociously than Ziz has— & will continue to rail, as long as news reports keep providing us w/ such irresistable material!
It vaguely lists these enemies as “so-called Rationalist groups”, again describing these clowns as 😇 “[seeking] to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge”— oh, & as “sometimes” being worried about AI.
Weirdly, it then says these Rationalists “operate mostly online”— they, like us, are terminally online, but this omits critical facts abt how desperately insular & all-consuming it is to live in IRL Rationalist hubs— namely the Bay Area.
Ziz & friends get called a “strange group [who] are sometimes called “Zizians” in online forums”— omitting to mention that these are Rationalist forums, namely LessWrong, whose egregious behavior towards the girls has been outlined here.
The members of this ~strange group~ are then described as “highly intelligent”, which sounds nice but which we’ve actually added to our bingo card bc we think it’s dumb how the news goes 🙀 over the idea that “good kids” or even “geniuses” could get involved in such a muddle.
They are also described as having “met online”— another pet peeve of ours, since a lot of esp. queer ppl meet online these days, & there’s nothing sinister abt that.
Finally, they are described as having “shared anarchist beliefs, and [become] increasingly violent”— as if the latter naturally emerges from the former. Ding & ding on our bingo card.
What made us titter was that the “rigorous” Times appears to have nearly plagiarized CNN’s phrase— “Their goals aren’t clear, but online writings included topics such as radical veganism, gender identity and artificial intelligence”— changing a few words & switching the order of those 3 purported interests.
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Source #2 is 6abc, which, yada yada yada, repeats most of the above— also w/ some light plagiarism of CNN.
6abc creatively adds that this “strange group” calls itself “the Zizians”— titter titter— & meaningfully mentions that this group tends to dress in black, which as we know is a major offense. Shoulda-coulda-woulda added it to the bingo card.
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Source #3 is AP News, which repeats much of the above…
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Source #4 is Open Vallejo (OV), which shakes us out of our slumber by calling Ziz & co. both “extreme” & a “murder gang”!
They mention vegan Sithery, which is tbh irresistible, & quote a pal of Curtis Lind’s saying that the girls’ RVs were “creepy in the extreme”— which is kinda weird since a friend of Emma’s is elsewhere quoted calling Emma’s RV “a work of art”!
Also weirdly, OV then walks back its blaring “murder gang” exposé promises by mentioning that the group is only called a “cult” by “some”— “some” who post in “various online forums”, which, dare we surmise, are all Rationalist. Rationalist “ideology” is described as 😇 “using scientific techniques to enhance human decision making”.
OV also mentions the girls’ ~sinister~ protest, proffering that démodé rumor that one of them had a gun… before admitting that this “was not confirmed” (more specifically, it was confirmed false). 😮 OV then chats w/ our old friend Jessica Taylor, who is naturally the one who provided them w/ that stunning phrase “murder gang”!
Jessica tries & fails to sum up the friends’ “ideology”, which OV then takes the liberty of labeling “Zizianism”.
Whew!
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Source #5– also Open Vallejo— is totally unremarkable 🥱
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Source #6– ABC7– takes another stab at describing this “ideology”, which it diplomatically says includes “some interesting beliefs”.
Tho we object to the term “ideology”, we can’t help but agree: the “interesting beliefs” of our cabal are a big part of what first got us hooked on this saga!— Not, ofc, that it’s a crime in modern-day America to be a little “interesting” ☺️
But then we scratch our heads over the “interesting belief” that ABC7 points to: out of all the possible options, they choose veganism! Not even “extreme veganism”!
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Source #7 is encore 6abc, who this time not only puts “cultlike” in their header twice, but tags the whole article “CULT”.
It mostly repeats itself, but, this time, calls Ziz’s blog “dark and rambling”, which we think is quite uncharitable (yet may adequately represent the frustrations of these reporters, faced w/ the task of reading all 100,000+ words of such key source material!)
😮 Here tho we receive a piece of ✨New News✨: Jamie bought their gun one day after her 2nd convo w/ Ziz abt killing Alice. Interesting!
We also get a nifty video of “more than 50 FBI agents” searching the woods of N. Carolina on their Zizhunt.
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& finally, sources #8 & #9 are… the same source: SFGate’s spectacularly titled, “A 'death cult' on the run: The Bay Area fringe group terrorizing America”!
(Just yesterday, we had been discussing this source w/ our gf, & had mutually agreed that Ziz & friends have not so much been “terrorizing America” as they— currently either dead, arrested, or in hiding— have been terrorized *by* America.)
It starts by dramatically crossing out Somni’s, Ziz’s, & Gwen’s eyes in Easter colors, why we don’t know:
It then opens to the scene of “a fringe group of radical Berkeley pseudo-intellectuals”, which we excitedly thought would be the Rationalists— but which alas were “the Zizians”!
SFG talks a big game, but repeats a lot of ground (deadnaming, misgendering, etc.) that we have already covered. Veganism encore is the “Zizian” “belief” which readers first confront, followed by the fact that “many” of these gals & enby pals “identify as transgender” 🙄
The Rationalists are again described in totally boring, unremarkable terms, except— curiously— it is noted that MIRI is “buoyed” by Peter Thiel: the über-reactionary cofounder of PayPal.
We say “curiously” bc this would have been a perfect moment for SFG to disclose Peter’s truly sinister CV:
✅ After Gawker outed him as gay, Peter secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against the site (TS), ultimately leading to TS’s demise.
✅ 2 years later, Peter wrote an essay advocating for “a more technocratic or elite-driven” replacement to democracy in America.
✅ In 2016, he donated $$$ to Trump & spoke at the Republican National Convention.
✅ In 2022, it was discovered that Peter also gave $$$ to anti-trans Republican candidates.
✅ He has funded the wildly transphobic Claremont Institute.
✅ He has supported (monetarily & otherwise) Chris Rufo: the “conservative activist”— interchangeably called a “propagandist”— who is behind many of the moral panics which we know & love: critical race theory, “groomer” rhetoric, anti-DEI- even the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which (not unlike poor Gwen’s hemisphere theory!) is often misattributed to Ron DeSantis tout seul, when it was in fact the brainchild of Chris’s!
✅ This past year, Peter lent his generous support to J.D. Vance.
✅ …Moreover, he’s a fan of 💕strongmen💕 like Viktor Orbán.
✅ MOREOVER, he owns Palantir: company who provides the gov’t & ICE w/ SURVEILLANCE TECH.
✅ 😮💨 In general, it is his invisible hand which is credited w/ pushing Silicon Valley to the right in recent years.
All of this would have given readers of SFGate helpful context into what kinds of ppl we find chez the Rationalists. But no. We all know who the “radical” “extremists” “terrorizing America” are, & it rhymes w/ “dizzyin’”.
SFG also appears disheartened by the task of reading Ziz’s blog: they call it “lengthy & rambling” “incomprehensible self-important jargon”, laced w/ “video game analogies” (we think there are more sci fi & fantasy show analogies, but w/e.)
It’s clear they have thrown up their hands at the blog: they badly flunk the reading comprehension portion of our bingo card by summarizing its contents as “[discussing] saving the world through Rationalism” (more like saving the world from Rationalism), “using sociopathy to avoid being “pwnd”” (see here), & “fantasies about killing their abusers” (this is, to pull in AI lingo, a “hallucination”; but if it weren’t, would that be so wrong?🤔🤔)
What’s weird is that SFG persists for a 2nd paragraph in describing the Zizster’s blog, which makes us sad for them: they clearly hate & find “incomprehensible” every word that they’re reading— why didn’t they go take a walk instead?
They make much of a quote where Ziz talks of “evil people ganging up to kill off good people”, which doesn’t seem to us so odd— again, we don’t personally like to divvy ppl into “good” & “evil”, but there’s nothing esp. edgy in saying that the “evils” of this world seem quite fixated on targeting the “goods” (see.) Then their wigs fly off at a post where Ziz allegedly wonders “what would happen if society were to “strip away ‘morality.’”
Curious abt what would happen, we searched for this post ourselves. In our interpretation, by “strip away ‘morality’”, Ziz means, “strip away its biases & ‘phobias”— which sounds like it would be rad!
The Unnamed Site is described as merely “a later anonymous blog post”, & SFG repeats, w/ no caveats, its most serious allegations. The girls’ v. legitimate protest against MIRI & CFAR becomes, in the hands of SFG, “a very real, and strange, protest”.
Mercifully, then we receive some ✨New News✨: the video of Milo at the hotel in xier “tactical clothing” (TC)— underscored by some incredibly suspenseful tunes:
The New News is: Milo’s TC just looks to us like… clean, new, normal black clothing? 🤷🏻♀️
It’s no:
…Miss Jessica Taylor is encore quoted calling Ziz & co. a “death cult”; oh, & then a teensy bit more New News: Ziz allegedly called Suri in jail & encouraged them to escape— hooray! Aaand on that note: thank God SFG runs out of steam & comes to a close.
😮💨 In other words, Remy’s & Kate’s reading list was trash, except for a few bright spots (the date of the gun purchase, the sinister Peter Thiel, the “tactical clothes”), which they seem to have overlooked.
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We are très fatiguées. Let’s tally up our bingo card & leave these non-Rationalist clowns behind us:
Rats! We were blocked from bingo by the fact that only Andy Ngo is stuck on that topic of “false names”!
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