Previous: Scott Alexander's Living Room Mantel
We, just like Alice Monday, have now “interacted with” Scott Alexander. What hotly-awaited insight does this give us into the mind of dear Alice? None whatsoever 😞 Katie & Andrew’s terminal vagueness has led us to a dead end.
Luckily, Alice Fact #7 ups the tempo considerably:
Around the time the alleged threats came from Ziz, Alice appears to have left the country. In 2022 a profile that matches her email address wrote of living in Chile on a Workaway trip.
😮 This, if true, is our biggest revelation from this entire cursèd article. It is the pearl in the glop. This, if true, does throw a monkey wrench into our fav unfounded & irresponsible speculation— perhaps. Or perhaps it does not. At any rate, our fingertips are trembling trying to decide— in the absence of any link or screenshot confirming this— whether this pearl has a home in the New News bucket, or in the ¿Dubious News bucket. Anyone can write of living in Chile: that does not a Workaway trip make. Are we veering towards sounding conspiracy-minded? We are, alas, spinning our wheels here, pounding our fists against the door of another dead end— w/ no receipts, & w/ seemingly no one on this planet able to find— let alone ask— the shy & retiring Alice.
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Alice’s unique, whisper-on-the-wind elusiveness made us muse: If Ziz’s digital footprint (DF) is raccoon-like, what would that make the uniquely elusive DF of Alice?
We once more turned to Chat & asked: we are tracking the shyest animal in the U.S. What are we tracking?
Chat guessed we were prob. on the trail of a small, weasel-like creature called the American marten (AM).
The AM is notably solitary: it does not join groups w/ others. It is also skittish: avoiding human contact, & disappearing in a flash when disturbed. This does not mean it is a shrinking violet!
Widdle it may be, but, among its forest compatriots, it is bold & assertive. It owns its territory w/ quiet & steely assuredness. The AM knows what it wants in this life— & the AM usually gets it.
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The AM is quick, clever, & eerie. In trying to describe its nature, Chat fell into a flurry of frankly wonderful comparisons:
There is a cold, deliberate logic behind its hunt, & there is single-minded determination. Once the AM is in pursuit, almost nothing will stop it; if stymied, it does not mind biding its time, & circling back for a second try. It is precise, methodical, & vicious, w/ a tendency to show up when you least expect it, take what it needs, & leave almost nothing behind.
That is Chat’s comparison for what it feels like to be on the trail of the singular Alice Monday 😮💨
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🎉 At last: K & A wrap up their weird little article w/ 3 bits we do not have time for:
1. Reading a neutral Ziz quote in the most harsh & scathing light;
2. Quoting Jessica Taylor that this is a “death cult”;
3. Flubbing their analysis of “Punching Evil”, & simultaneously throwing us one last Ziz/cult leader comparison— like a beautiful bouquet we declined to catch 💐
🥱 Goodbye to K & A, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye! 🤭 Readers, we have slipped out of their eyesight, but we haven’t left this forest yet. We, like a good little forager, are looping back around to explore something curious we saw when we opened “Punching Evil” to make sure that K & A had flubbed their analysis. This exploration will be a strange New News spelunk. We are walking into the New News cave right now, & hope you remembered your gear 🔦
😡 Never have we been so upset at a lack of false name accusations, & a lack of past-tense pronounery. Unacceptable, K & A, unacceptable.
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