While googling around for stuff about them I found this article about a sting Hope Not Hate did on them. They produced a slideshow of doom for a fictional wealthy investor, imagining a proposed eugenicist city state on the Isle of Man.

What is it with these people and islands? Bankman-Fried wanted to buy Nauru. I assume none of them realize the inherent economic and planning disadvantages of building your empire on a tiny island…

“pro-LGBT rights” here means “pro Peter Thiel”. He gives them a lot of money.

They don’t want to make a population level impact on demographics, they want their kids to be the new aristocracy

If nothing else, they’ll be able to start a great punk band.

Yikes !

Their attitude to kids, based on that nightmarish Guardian interview, is extremely fucked. Hopefully their children will break the cycle.

I am very sure that the only reason they talk about positive eugenics is because negative eugenics, literally forcing some people to not have kids, is taboo. Then again they are pretty stupid and arrogant so maybe they really believe they’re breeding superbabies…

I will always remember Sam Bankman Fried saying it’s obvious that Shakespeare can’t be the greatest author ever because it’s unlikely. Just because something’s unlikely doesn’t mean it’s impossible! You need to independently evaluate the evidence!

In the Going Clear documentary an author says that because Scientology was built by and for L. Ron Hubbard, people who follow Scientology are gradually moulded in his image and pick up his worst traits and neuroses. LessWrong was founded by a former child prodigy…

They seem to believe that stereotypes often have a grain of truth to them, and it’s thus ok to believe stereotypes.

It’s the glitz of Catholicism with fewer of those pesky liberals around.

Also, some Orthodox monasteries had an enslaved workforce until well into the 19th century, which must appeal to neoreactionary scum.

I happened to be at mass today. There was a little explanation in the missalette that not only did Jesus’s death redeem the sins of everyone today, he also redeemed all the sinners who lived and died before Christ came. I dunno, it reminded me of the Roko’s Basilisk eternal judgment computer simulation…

This could result in the worst podcast of all time

Eurgh!

The story goes that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the second draft of “Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde” in less than a week while buzzing on cocaine. The Rationalists just write obnoxious blog posts.

Apparently newspapers are starting to get rid of mugshot galleries, so he might be lucky.

The combination of these two things is jarring because heroin is a Big Kid drug, not a prestige drug, and how, of course, could a neuroscientist smoke heroin?

Unlike this guy, I have no problem understanding that smart people sometimes like to do stupid things. There are a lot of doctors who smoke. This is not because they know tobacco is secretly good for you.

I can only assume the vibes were rancid

They did actually collaborate on Venus Fly, but that was before Grimes gave in the allure of power.

It was Jann Wenner, former Rolling Stone owner/editor, who said that he only wanted to write about “philosophers of rock ’n’ roll” for a book he wrote called “The Masters”.

You know, Joni was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock.

• “Jann Wenner Defends His Legacy”, web.archive.org

I recently got The Secret Public on CD and spent yesterday evening listening to it. Plenty of interesting LGBT+ history and there are some really great songs on there - the 60s songs really appeal to me, especially the girl groups, but there’s also some good tough 70s funk and disco.

I don’t know if I’ve been listening to anything that’s relevant to Sneer Club.