Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Buddhist Rationalist cult MAPLE wants the Internet to know that contrary to "a recent social media post" their guru Soryu Forall is authorized to teach by "by well-known teachers of the Vipassana and Zen traditions." They mention a few whoopsies.
They could be responding to The High Control Dynamics at MAPLE (2026) or perhaps Emerging: Making Sense of Soryu Forall (2026) or even My experience inside Soryu Forall's AI-Centered Monastic Academy (2025)
Aella does her boundary-setting thing (those Zizians/MAPLE/Leverage/Brent Dill are bad and not us) https://xcancel.com/Aella_Girl/status/2091015022042595743#m I don't think Ozy covered MAPLE although IIRC they had a Bay Area offshoot with offices nextdoor to Leverage. I would like to know who is funding Soryu.
I think the only cult type that Yud hasn't spun off yet is fundamentalist Christian.
That slot will probably be filled by whatever moneyed post-Trump US Southern snake-fondlers Thiel manages to bilk with his Antichrist bullshit. And therefore not likely large or long-lasting
@BioMan @techtakes But singularitarians *are* fundamentalist Christians, just a heretical variety who ditched the god/jesus/bible bits but kept the rest of the eschatalogical structures intact.
And they think that Computer Jesus will return soon and punish the wicked and reward the faithful. I wonder what Yud's parents' rabbi thinks of all this.
@CinnasVerses @techtakes And don't get me started on Roko's Basilisk (the singularitarian remix of Calvinist Satan, complete with theological predeterminism and eternal damnation for the non-elect).
somewhere Blaise Pascal is shaking his fist in his grave
I mean, true, but that's true of most secular cults in America and Europe.
There were some breadcrumbs in that Wes streeting article about https://www.eaforchristians.org/ but I couldn't get a sense of how fundie they may be.
tim taylor voice Oh no...
Has anyone researched exactly how MAPLE split off from Bay Area rationalism? Most of the writeups focus on what happened after they built a giant compound in Vermont, not why so many rats travel there.
They seem to have launched in one small Vermont township in 2014 ("3 Years of Training Awakened Leaders " as of 2017). They moved from Johnson, VT to Lowell, VT at some point.
Edit / Some history here but nothing on the LessWrong connection except something called the 1440 Foundation in California https://www.centerformindfullearning.org/history/
Edit / Local journalism delivers
Their Form 990 is here but does not have details of the donors. So it sounds like they have a single guru with wealthy patrons.