This should be interesting, it's about an organisation in the EA milieu that even other EAs though might be a bit too culty. Don't know who the writer Lydia Laurenson is, but she does come off as a bit of a cult enthusiast herself, and is probably more than a bit rationalist adjacent.

edit: The companion piece about the background of why she wrote it is quite a ride, if only for the biographical tidbits: she is indeed very cult adjacent, she had a spiritual experience and now believes in capital G god, she got engaged to an unnamed far-right writer but they broke up when she got pregnant.

Also the Leverage article was contracted to appear in the New York Magazine but she pulled the story because of uh declining trust in the field of journalism, but then she goes on to imply that the real problem was that the article was shaping up as a bit too pro-Leverage:

I pulled the story once I started feeling like it simply wouldn’t be possible for me to publish a version with NYMag that didn’t carry a subtle hostility towards Leverage, not to mention affiliated communities in Silicon Valley — and, more importantly to me, hostility towards a core spiritual sensibility that I see in both myself and in the people the story describes.

edit edit: Why can't these people ever be normal: Why I Was Part Of The Neoreactionary or Dissident Right Movement In 2020

edit edit edit: Jesus fucking christ she's Curtis Yarvin's baby momma.

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[–] schnoopy@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

The group felt hard to categorize. It seemed more Red Tribey than Blue Tribey (though it contained both), and I eventually learned that its membership contained many old-school NRx scenesters. But these guys violated my expectations about Red Tribe, because they were funny, brilliant media observers who never said anything racist or sexist (at least not in that Slack). Nowadays there is a ton of media coverage about NRx and the dissident right, but this coverage has largely failed to capture how the best parts of the movement felt non-denominational. Or at least, that’s how it felt when I started spending hours per day in this Slack group.

Liberalism is a disease of the mind where, due to an inability to distinguished aesthetics from substance, one ends up judging things on means rather than ends.

History's greatest monsters have been well dressed and genteel. Many of the most ardent fighters for humanity are coarse, flawed, and unpleasant. Mayhaps a lesson about books and covers? Let's see where this group ends up

I don’t spent as much time in the movement these days; it’s turned into an echo chamber; racism and sexism are front-and-center

Oh Apollo, free me from this curse.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 51 minutes ago

"...meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain" —some guy