Previous: Eight New News Nuggets
Welcome to our Q & A on Ezra’s sponge. For those listening at home, we have moved to the News on News lounge. We have slipped into something more comfortable,
& are resting our eyes in the glow of ruby-red incandescents after those 😮💨 merciless studio softboxes. Barry White is on the stereo, & we’re so happy all of you could join us. Keep squeezing onto the sectional, don’t be shy— yes, it is real velvet. There are blankets behind you as well. Here comes our News on News crew w/ microphones— pls, raise your hand, & let’s talk sponge.
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How did Ezra do reading Ziz’s blog? Boy, that’s a tough opener! In short: we’re not sure he did read it. His descriptions were zany & all over the place.
He claimed she had published more than one “long blog post” on Gwen’s hemisphere theory. We have yet to find these blog posts, & sadly, Ezra provided no links. If we come across them, you’ll be the first to know.
He decontextualized many important things to make Ziz sound weirder & more volatile than she appears on her blog. We saw a return of “carnist” catastrophizing; but Ezra, to his credit, did put a lot of work into sketching out “militant veganism”, which we’ve not seen the press do before.
He again claims to have based his sketch on her blog, again provides no links— & again, we have yet to read of the global vegan takeover he says she says she desires.
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What was Ezra’s zaniest statement? That Mz. Ziz wishes to to be Queen of this global vegan takeover 👸
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Did he make any other silly statements? Let’s look at our notes— here’s one:
Her writing… could be violent, a delirious blend of youthful fantasy imbued with a very adult thirst for bloody vengeance.
Again, there is no citation— perhaps bc nowhere on her blog does Ziz confess to thirsting for blood— not even in “Punching Evil”.
Oh, here’s another silly one:
While many people were disturbed by these posts, others were drawn in by their baroque malevolence
You see what we mean abt beautiful writing? “Baroque malevolence” is a great line! Too bad it’s, in AI lingo, a hallucination.
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What was his dirtiest statement? 🤭 This is a family program, so we presume you mean, did he pull any dirty & misleading tricks. Yes: he claims Ziz took to her blog w/ fantasies abt killing Anna Salamon.
To back this up, he quotes from a totally unrelated post, in which a Rationalist tells Ziz to imagine killing someone— a hypothetical someone, not an Anna someone. Ziz obeys, but then feels used & sullied by this request.
He cuts out the part where she mentally erases these imaginings (TI), & clumsily makes Anna TI’s target— by which we mean: in the quotes Ezra uses, Ziz refers to her hypothetical quarry as “they”— since they are unspecified. Anna has yet to reveal herself as part of the enby crew, & would ofc have been a she/her quarry.
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He quoted NBC quoting Anna, but did he interview Ms. Salamon himself? Yes, we believe she was the only Rationalist he interviewed, at least the only named one. What did Anna say? 😂 Just the classics:
She felt “scared,” she said. “I can’t recall having a feeling like that at other points in my life, ever.”
Have you signed up for our text alerts? If so, expect an alert w/ links to exactly what we think of Anna’s fear & trembling. If not, you can sign up by texting “unihemispheric sleep” to 1-800-NEW-NEWS.
She also claims that Ziz asked her for help getting a job at MIRI— which, if true, would have been normal & unexciting; ofc, Ezra attempts to spin this into sthng sinister & kooky! Anyway, Anna says: “I did not think that was a thing I wanted to assist with”. Which is unsurprising: Rationalists hate hiring trans ppl 🤷🏻♀️
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😂 Did Ezra talk to Jessica Taylor? Not directly, but he still manages to cite her! He writes the baroquely malevolent line:
On Discord, Ziz and her followers would share bloody fantasies of revenge against what they called Vampireland, their name for the regime of meat-eaters they believed was damning humanity to AI hell.
“Share” shares a hyperlink to who-but-Jessica on X. Jessica has graciously shared w/ her followers 🤭 the “exclusive discord logs” of J. Oliver Conroy! 😂😂😂
Do these logs talk of Vampireland? Do they talk of a “regime of meat-eaters… damning humanity to AI hell”? No! We have seen zero proof that these friends ever said the former, or that they believed the latter.
Also, in Ziz-speak, “vampire” means sthng else. One is not a “vampire” just bc one eats meat, & not all “vampires” are “damning humanity to AI hell”.
Also, there’s a chance these Discord logs were phony in the first place. We rlly dk.
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How does Ezra handle the girls’ protest? Uh… mostly, he doesn’t! He says they accused CFAR of “corruption”, & leaves it at that. We’ll send another text alert w/ the girls’ true grievances.
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Does he mention The Great Witch-Hunt of 2019? Not directly. He cites “An anonymous blog post”— no link— which echos Anna Salamon’s language abt “risks of physical violence from Ziz”. He whispers abt Rationalists whispering abt “the supposed danger of reading Ziz’s writings — words so potentially radicalizing and dangerous they constituted a severe infohazard.”
Oh, & do you remember that PI who won us bingo a couple of shows back? He clarifies what we already suspected: this PI was hired by yet more “Anonymous rationalists”.
In other words, he talks abt Rationalists talking abt the Witch-Hunt, but does not put it into context, & completely fails to mention the Witch-Hunt’s most baroque excesses. He also either omits or does not know how the girls themselves responded to these allegations.
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How does he handle the Vallejo shooting/stabbing? Well… this makes us sad. It makes us sad bc he intros Curtis Lind as “kindly”, which is exactly what we used to think Lind was! We still dk what really happened: maybe our first impressions were correct, & maybe they were woefully inadequate. Anyway, he echos Lind’s & friends’ version of events, & either omits or is ignorant of the version which Emma’s & Somni’s allies give. He also makes a lil snafu where he blames Somni for “luring” Lind out to the girls’ trailers in order to get jumped— in fact, this is what Suri is in jail rn for (allegedly) doing.
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Does he say more abt Milo’s & Audere’s “Zizian” beliefs? Ye-es, but these run the gamut from “banal, nonthreatening” to “unsubstantiated” to “maybe true; nothing we’ve seen before”. Which do you want to start w/?
All right, unsubstantiated. Give us one second to find it. Ezra writes:
Like Ziz, [Audere] wanted to identify and work with other good people to build a morally aligned vegan AI superintelligence.
🤷🏻♀️ Was this Ziz’s dream? If so, it is New News to us. Also if so: this, by itself, sounds okay! This does not sound like a “baroquely malevolent” plan! Ofc, Ezra would waggle his fingers & say, Ziz wants to be Queeen of the morally aligned vegan AI superintelligence— but we have yet to see any proof for either claim.
Which “Zizian” belief next? Nothing we’ve seen before? Okay: if true, this is an Audere belief— even tho Ezra presents it as one more sign of Zizpilling. Here’s what he writes— his info comes from a friend of Milo’s & Audere’s.
[Audere] explained how the good people — a category that included all noncarnivorous animals — would eventually be uploaded to “the simulation.” As they ate, [they] described a sort of digital Noah’s ark where animals and good humans could frolic together in eternal bliss. There, “I would be friends with lots of good people,” [they] said, like cows, “who are really sweet.” They would all “be friends and have a good life and live forever because death is evil, and do interesting things.” [Milo] seemed to have fully bought into this vision. When [the friend] asked [xiem] about [xier] hopes for the future, [xie] responded: “Might be nice to have some kids with [Audere].” Not in the real world, though: [Milo] hoped to raise children in the simulation.
If this is true— if Audere believes this— okay, it’s not what we personally believe… but is it legal, in America, to hold unique beliefs? We thought it was! Also, this is rlly cute. Also, just based on their pamphlets,
is it so diff. from what the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe? 🤷🏻♀️
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Ooh, that’s a niche one: does he describe Milo’s “tactical clothing” at the hotel? He… misdescribes it as “body armor” 😂, even tho he includes a pic from the security cam footage that we have also shared!
Crew, crew, let’s put up on the screen behind us a pic of “body armor”.
Ok, that’s a good one. & let’s put up Ezra’s pic of what Milo was wearing.
Uh-huh. Could xie perhaps have been wearing body armor under that nice coat? 🤷🏻♀️ Nobody knows! The receptionist has given no statements suggesting xie was, which makes sense, bc it looks like that coat is zipped all the way up. Ezra is the first person we’ve seen whip out “body armor”, & he does not reveal his source(s).
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Does he say anything else abt Milo & Ophelia? Well, he fails to say one critical thing: that they were being watched by the cops… which is an unfortunate omission, bc he does describe this pair seeming “paranoid, anxious”.
If a hotel had just called the cops on you— & if you perhaps had an inkling you were still being watched— would you feel paranoid? Would you feel anxious? Next question:
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How does he describe “the Zizians” in general? Hmm… badly. He calls them “A set of lonely, stunted youth”, & compares them to Andrew Tate-pilled incels. He describes them, let's find it… as “fighting evil meat-eating vampires with rifles and swords”. Here we’re back in sillytown. Drilling down on just one silly part: Ziz may, for unknown reasons, have chosen to lug around a rifle in North Carolina, but no “Zizian” ever shot anyone w/ this or any other rifle.
Oh, & he finishes this “Zizian description” section w/ a banger:
Their targets — a Border Patrol agent, parents, and a landlord — were avatars of the adult world they so hated, with its insistent demands that they all grow up.
We think Ezra might be trying to throw us down on the Freudian couch too. From where is he sourcing his claim that they “hated” the “adult world”? When did this world demand “that they all grow up”? He calls this adult world “insistent”— was it? Bc we have never heard a peep out of it on this topic. We have time for two more questions— yes, first one:
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What would we say to Ezra rn? 🤭 Ezra unfortunately couldn’t join us, he had a prior commitment this evening. We would say: Ezra, why are you infantilizing these grown adults? What do you get out of it? Does it perhaps mask the fact that you do not know what motivated these “Zizians”? You’re in good company there: you’re in the company of every reporter we have hosted on this show so far— oh, & that company includes us as well! We have no grand, overarching answers, but we do have a few pointers which we have 😮💨 learned the hard way.
Pointer #1 you will recognize from our earlier convo: “the Zizians” do not exist. They are a boogeyman made to scare the Rationalists. This boogeyman has now escaped the world of Rationalism, & is scaring all of America.
#2: there is no “Zizian cult”. We know you are a cult girlie, & this may be disappointing. The cult is yet another Rationalist mirage 🙌
#3: As long as the “Zizian cult” exists, it’s easy to believe they were motivated by cultish ideology to carry out various killings. As soon as the cult does not exist, there is no longer clear motivation for 3 out of the 4 violent acts which surround this friend-group. Of these 3 violent acts, only one is— so far as we can tell— clearly the work of one of these friends: it is the work of Milo. The other two may or may not be 🤷🏻♀️ We do not know, & neither, we think, do you.
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Last Q.: 😮 Did we win bingo! We completely forgot to check— oh goodness, did we bring it with us? Here comes a crew member now— ty, Frank, you ran all the way to the studio & back in record time:
Nooo, we were stymied at every turn by Ezra’s lack of overtly-transphobic gambits! Which we commend him for.
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That’s all for tn, friends, ty so much for coming— don’t worry abt folding up the blankets, our crew will take care of them. Get home safely— there are always some ubers lurking out front if you require.
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