• My ideal form of the content in this post would be a giant bullet list where you can "toggle" or "collapse" a single bullet point and sub-bullet point.
• However, LessWrong (understandably) doesn't offer this feature. (It's more something you'd find in a note-taking app or something.)
• So, using these dropdown sections is the closest I can get to that ideal.

• I've included them so that you can more easily see how I've constructed this timeline from the source material that I reference throughout this post (e.g. news articles, posts on social media, etc.)
• Each in-text citation is linked to a different part of this post where I've provided the corresponding reference.
• They look like this:
  • [AA19c [LW · GW]]
  • [EW23a [LW · GW]]
• And their meanings are like this:
  • [AA19c [LW · GW]] -- "Annie Altman, 2019, c"
  • [EW23a [LW · GW]] -- "Elizabeth Weil, 2023, a"
• Specifically:
  • The first two upper-case letters stand for the first and last name of the author of the reference.
    • Example: "AA" for "Annie Altman".
  • The two numbers that follow give the year in which the reference was authored.
    • Example: "19" for "2019".
  • The final lower-case letter doesn't have a specific meaning. It's just for distinguishing between different in-text citations that would otherwise look the same.
    • Example: "[AA19c]" vs "[AA19b]".
• Note: some of the links on these in-text citations are currently outdated and/or don't work. For now, just use Command-F/Control-F, or scroll down manually, to see the corresponding refernece for each in-text citation.

• The birth years of Max, Jack, and Annie can be deduced from (e.g.) [EW23a [LW · GW]], this article, this tweet, etc.
• $⟹$Sam is ~9 years older than Annie, Max is ~7 years older than Annie, Jack is ~5 years older than Annie.

• On November 13, 2021, Annie wrote: "I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman." [AA21a [LW · GW]]
• September 10, 2022, Annie wrote: "Sam and Jack, I know you remember my Torah portion was about Moses forgiving his brothers. “Forgive them father for they know not what they’ve done” Sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse. Never forgotten." [AA22a [LW · GW]]

• "Things Grandma was right about..."dwarf tossing” with my baby body was wrong" [AA24n [LW · GW]]
• Note on how I determined "between ~1994 and ~1997":
  • It seems that definitions vary regarding the age range in which a human is considered a "baby".
    • Some say "0-12 months." (Example.)
    • Others say "0-3 years." (Example.)
  • So, I just went with the conservative definition of "0-3 years."
  • Thus, because Annie was born in ~1994, the abuse, which perhaps started with "dwarf tossing" of Annie when she was a baby (0-3 years old), and then escalated over time, must have began between ~1994 and ~1997.
• Annie has also written that her grandmother (who I think was Marjori Mae “Peggy” Francis Gibstine) reprimanded Connie for neglecting Annie -- see [AA24p].

• In one of the Altman family pictures above, from when Jack was younger, Jack does indeed look a bit heavier:

• The question here being, "why?"
• A possible answer

• Timeline:
  • August 1997 - June 1998: 7th grade (for Sam, at JBS)
  • August 1998 - June 1999: 8th grade
  • August 1999 - June 2000: 9th grade
  • August 2000 - June 2001: 10th grade
  • August 2001 - June 2002: 11th grade
  • August 2002 - June 2003: 12th grade
• I (inductively) estimated the month and year in which Sam started and ended each grade at JBS using the dates available on the calendar on JBS's website.
• I don't know for sure that Sam did grades 7-12 there, but that's just what I'm guessing, since JBS says they're "for grades 7-12" in their X (Twitter) account bio.
• Sources indicating that Sam graduated in 2003: here, here.
• There are numerous sources that indicate that Sam attended JBS: here, here, here, here, etc.

• Annie has stated that:
  • Sam was something like her "first {sex work} client" [AA23j [LW · GW]]
  • Sam used her to "help him figure out his sexuality" [AA23a [LW · GW]]
  • Her brothers Sam and Jack "touched her." [AA22a [LW · GW]]
    • (implied: in an inappropriate / nonconsensual way that would be classified as sexual abuse.)
• I estimate the year in which the alleged sexual assault occurred from the fact that Annie claims that Sam was 13 when the alleged sexual assault occurred [AA23a [LW · GW]]. Sam's birthday is April 22, 1985, and thus, for him to have been 13 at the time of the alleged sexual assault, the alleged sexual assault must have taken place in the range April 22 1998 -- April 22 1999.
• From the birthdays I listed above -- at this time, the ages of the Altman siblings are as follows:
  • Sam is 13 years old
    • $⟹$Max is ~11
    • $⟹$Jack is ~9
  • Annie is 4

• My understanding is that this occurred as part of 4-year-old Annie's subconscious/automatic trauma response and/or as a mental defense mechanism.
  • That is, I think Annie's 4-year-old mind repressed the memories of this event because she was extremely young, and the event was extremely traumatic for her younger self in a way that was hard for her to even conceptualize, much less fully understand and remember.
• Annie does not begin to fully recall her repressed memories until decades later, in a gradual process that intensifies from mid-2018 onwards (as the rest of this timeline describes.)
• Decades later, about her gradual process of recalling her repressed memories, Annie would write:
  • On 11-8-2018: "With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, what is your earliest memory?' Without pause for an inhale I responded, 'probably a panic attack.'...I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death." [AA18b [LW · GW]]
  • On 4-21-2023: "I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating - all covers for PTSD..."After quitting my dispensary job, my relatives find a loophole to withhold said money. They knew the health conditions and my plan, and they're millionaires. I sell some things, go back to an older job, and eventually ask (for the first time ever) my millionaire relatives for financial help and am essentially told to "work harder." I got $100 for an ankle MRI copay, after much 'discussion'"...I do two family therapy sessions and am professionally advised to stop doing family therapy sessions...{in 2020} I'm offered {by Sam} a diamond made from Dad's ashes instead of money for rent or groceries. Dad just wanted cremation. I go for no contact with relatives...I have two years of remembering horrific things I'd buried and told myself I made up, and experience adult SAs that brought up even more memories." [AA23k]
  • On 10-15-2023: "I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact {with Sam and her other relatives}, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting." [AA23u [LW · GW]]
  • On 3-27-2024, Annie wrote: "{In summer 2020} I decided to go full no contact with my relatives {Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie.}...After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of {health issues with} my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much...I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain...{In September 2020} my body was physically hurting in so many ways...I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed. I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded. *Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details*...Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy...I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me...My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago." [AA24b [LW · GW]]
  • "I survived listening to my body fall apart as it told me the stories I had not yet been ready to hear the full depths of." [AA--f [LW · GW]]
• It seems that, before Annie started to recall her repressed memories, she only remembered that Sam had "read her books at bedtime." [EW23a [LW · GW]] Only decades later did her recollection change: "As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse." [EW23a [LW · GW]].

• Child Sexual Abuse -- US Department of Veterans Affairs
• The Body Keeps the Score -- by Bessel Van Der Kolk
• My Healing Journey After Childhood Abuse -- Tim Ferriss
• What to Do if You Have PTSD From Being Molested as a Child -- sexualabuselawfirm.com

• From saprea.org, (Saprea seems to be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity that "exists to liberate individuals and society from child sexual abuse and its lasting impacts":
  • The Effects of Child Sexual Abuse: How Does Trauma Affect the Brain and Body? -- saprea.org
  • Common Symptoms {in people who experienced sexual abuse as a child}: Flashbacks
  • Common Symptoms: Difficult Relationship with Body
  • Common Symptoms: Panic Attacks

• Decades later, Annie would write:
  • "I have experienced drama like the OpenAI drama — I grew up in it. I was repeatedly told “not to talk about it,” and to allow another person to remove my human agency." [AA23m [LW · GW]]
  • "Child-me...was told to stay quiet about other people's secrets - even when it made me physically ill." [AA23m [LW · GW]]
    • {I presume that it was Annie's mother who told her to stay quiet, though it's not fully clear.}

• Annie published 18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance on her blog (allhumanarehuman.medium.com) on March 6, 2019 $⟹$she started to criticize her appearance in 2001.
  • "18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance
    • 1. OCD
    • 2. Anxiety
    • 3. Depression
    • ...
    • 6. A belief that any body’s appearance is fixed its entire lifetime
    • 7. A belief that anything in this physical world is fixed, ever
    • ...
    • 11. A belief that I could control my body completely with enough will power
    • 12. A belief that controlling my body could control my entire life
    • 13. A belief that controlling my body could control its inevitable decay (lack of knowledge that fearing death is fearing actually living life)
    • 14. Equating control with peace and happiness
    • 15. A tendency towards being self-critical"

• Annie's symptoms include:
  • panic attacks
  • "feeling the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death" [AA18b [LW · GW]]
  • depression
  • OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
  • IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome)
  • body image problems
  • body dysmorphia
  • eating disorders
  • anxiety
  • suicidal thoughts
  • and more.
  • Sources: [AA23k [LW · GW], AA18b [LW · GW], AA19b [LW · GW], AA19c [LW · GW], EW23a [LW · GW], AA--f [LW · GW], AA24b]
• Annie writes, "I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating - all covers for PTSD." [AA23k [LW · GW]]
  • By "PTSD", I think Annie is specifically referring to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by the abuse she experienced (mostly) from Sam and (some) from Jack. [AA21a [LW · GW]]
• Annie writes in [AA18b [LW · GW]]: "I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death...I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike."

• I inferred the year that Annie graduated from JBS by looking closely at the bottom-right corner of the pictures she posts in [AA24i [LW · GW]]:

  • 

• This implies:
  • August 2006 - June 2007: 7th grade (for Annie, at JBS)
  • August 2007 - June 2008: 8th grade
  • August 2008 - June 2009: 9th grade
  • August 2009 - June 2010: 10th grade
  • August 2010 - June 2011: 11th grade
  • August 2011 - June 2012: 12th grade
• I made the same assumptions/used the same reasoning to make the esitmates here as I did (above) with my estimates regarding Sam's time at JBS.

• 2005: Steve Huffman (aka "spez") and Alexis Ohanian meet Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator), and pitch him a startup idea, hoping to get into Y Combinator (aka YC.) Graham rejects their idea, but calls them the next morning, and has another conversation with Huffman and Ohanian where he tells them to build a "front page for the Internet." With this idea, which becomes Reddit, Huffman and Ohanian join YC's first batch, of which Sam was also a member.
• In ~October 2006, Condé Nast acquires Reddit for ~$10-20 million.
• (If the story told by Yishan Wong (former Reddit CEO) here on Reddit is to be believed:) Beginning sometime in the late 2000's, Sam and some of his associates at Y Combinator begin the execution of a years-long effort to dilute Condé Nast's ownership in Reddit, and return Reddit to the control of YC & Reddit's original founders. (This effort seems to have ultimately succeeded.) --

• Annie eventually tapers herself off of Zoloft at age 22 (in ~2017) [AA19b [LW · GW], EW23a [LW · GW]].

• (I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in "Period lost, period found" [AA19b].)
• Annie stops taking birth control pills at age 22, just before her 23rd birthday (~2017.)

• The flashbacks Annie describes {to the sexual abuse she experienced from Sam during her childhood} will re-appear later on in this timeline.

• See also: Sam Altman says doing psychedelics during a weekend retreat in Mexico changed his life -- Business Insider (published September 24, 2024)
• Sam Altman - Wikipedia is where I got the information that Sam co-founded Hydrazine Capital with his brother Jack Altman.

• In this letter, Annie states that:
  • For the first time, during her current semester {her 6'th semester}, she has started to consider not going to medical school (e.g. to get a MD or DO degree}, and has instead started to consider other (related) career options, such as becoming a nurse, physician's assistant, or a therapist.
  • She wants to have a "summer of my own therapy: taking counseling seriously in a way I have never before felt ready to...working towards whatever euphemism you prefer for “getting my head on straight” or “re-centering.”"

• I infer that the separation (or divorce?) between Jerry and Connie occurred before the date that "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny" [TF16a] was published in the New Yorker because, in that article, Connie is referred to as "Connie Gibstine" (rather than "Connie Altman"), which implies that, by the date of the article's publication, Connie had separated or divorced from Jerry.

• "A blogger recently asked Altman, “How has having Asperger’s helped and hurt you?” Altman told me, “I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t have Asperger’s!’ But then I thought, I can see why he thinks I do. I sit in weird ways”—he folds up like a busted umbrella—“I have narrow interests in technology, I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing. When I remarked, after a few long days together, that he never seemed to visit the men’s room, he said, “I will practice going to the bathroom more often so you humans don’t realize that I’m the A.I.”"
• "“Well, I like racing cars,” Altman said. “I have five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla. I like flying rented planes all over California. Oh, and one odd one—I prep for survival.” Seeing their bewilderment, he explained, “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”"
• "Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told me, “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He’ll call and say he has a headache—and he’ll have Googled it, so there’s some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn’t have meningitis or lymphoma, that it’s just stress.” If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand. Thiel told me, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish—an optimist yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong, and that there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”
• "One evening at Altman’s house, his younger brothers, Max and Jack, were teasing him that he should run for President in 2020, when he’d be thirty-five: just old enough. Max, twenty-eight, said, “Who better than you, Sam?” As Altman tried not very vehemently to change the subject, Jack, twenty-seven, said, “It’s not purely little-brother trolling. I do think tech needs a good candidate." “Let’s send the Jewish gay guy!” Altman said. “That’ll work!”
  Jack eyed a board game called Samurai on the bookshelf and said, “Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids because he always declared himself the Samurai leader: ‘I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything.’ ”
  Altman shot back, “You want to play speed chess right now?,” and Jack laughed."
• "Max was working at the Y Combinator company Zenefits; Jack co-founded a performance-management company, Lattice, which had just gone through YC. The two brothers moved in with Altman temporarily three years ago and never left. Altman recently hired a designer to upgrade his gray IKEA sofas to gray SummerHouse sofas, and he hung some handsomely framed photographs taken from space, but the house maintains an upscale-student-housing vibe. His mother told me, “I think Sam likes having his brothers around because they knew him when, and can give him pushback in ways that other people can’t. But it’s tricky, with the power dynamic, and I want it to end before it explodes.”"

• (I only include this because it becomes relevant later on, in the context presented in "Period lost, period found" [AA19b].)

• At point in time {it seems to me}:
  • Jerry (Sam's dad) is still living and working (overtime) in St. Louis (with a heart condition) [AA24c [LW · GW]]
  • Annie has been (repeatedly) asking Sam to provide money and resources to Jerry {i.e. to help with his heart condition, or so he doesn't have to work overtime in his late 60's, or so he can retire.} [AA23q [LW · GW]]
    • From what I can tell, Sam has not provided Jerry with money or resources. [AA24c [LW · GW]]

• You may be thinking, "Why are you including this? This doesn't seem relevant."
• I am including this because, as I cover later on in the Responding to Objections/Comments I've Seen From Others [LW · GW] section, someone noted than Annie has "ate only beige foods for most of her life", with the implied argument being that Annie is sort of "crazy."
• I don't think this is a convincing argument for Annie being "crazy." To clarify: it is relatively common for some people, especially during childhood, to be sort of a "picky eater" and only want to eat "beige foods", i.e. foods whose color is generally white or beige. {More on this in a bit.}
• Also -- as I understand it, Sam's sexual abuse of Annie when she was 4 years old was the reason why she developed unusual eating patterns in the first place.
  • c.f. 18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance -- by Annie Altman -- published March 6, 2019
  • Annie, in [AA23k]: "I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating - all covers for PTSD. Also tonsillitis yay" 

• Annie (starting at 1:09 in the video): "I was a very picky eater for most of my life. I was a vegetarian by choice as a little kid...I chose {to do this} in kindergarten...I also was very picky, and a very controlling type {of} person, and so food became a thing to control...and it also became a really physical, textural thing. The textures of different foods were really freaking me out, and I had all of these taste aversions, and very real reactions...so basically for the first two decades of my life I subsisted on eggs, and cheese, and peanut butter, and bread, and potatoes, and rice, and tortillas. And a lot of those things, for the majority of that time, weren't like..."good" quality. It was {like} Wonderbread...so I would say, up until the end of high school, sof or the first 18 years of my life, I ate no green things. I started incorporating Caesar salads, and that was a huge deal to eat greens, to give you a show of it. And then in college I got more into cooking and I would, you know, put vegetables and things in muffins, and I'd find ways to incorporate it and get myself to eat these things...{but} I was still like {mainly eating} eggs, cheese, grains..."beige" foods...{but} I still held on to this. I was like..."One day, you're gonna crave broccoli"...If you've dealt with picky eating, you understand when you have something and it's great and it just shifts your whole mindset, of..."I've been missing out on that for that long?" And over my first year into transitioning {to a} plant-based {diet} it was just eating more and more of these fruits and vegetables that, for so long, I hadn't been interested in eating...my body, I think, was so excited that I was finally giving it fruits and vegetables."

• The video that Sam linked: "Am I an egomaniac for putting myself on YouTube?"

• Annie writes, "My Dad {Jerry} died in May 2018, and access to his Will was withheld from me by my mother {Connie} and three older siblings {Sam, Jack, Max} for an entire year." [AA24b [LW · GW]]

• She indicates that her Dad and her were very close, especially in the last few years before he died. {c.f. [AA18a [LW · GW]] for more details.}
• In [EW23a [LW · GW]], Elizabeth Weil writes, "At the funeral, Annie told me, Sam allotted each of the four Altman children five minutes to speak. She used hers to rank her family members in terms of emotional expressivity. She put Sam, along with her mother, at the bottom."
• Quotes from Annie's speech:
  • ""My dad trusted my intuition more than I ever have. He often reminded me of the strength of my mind-body connection, a concept I am both extremely passionate about and skilled at underestimating. He created and held space for all of my feelings, and those of you who have talked to me ever know that I have more than a few of those all of the time." [AA18a [LW · GW]]
  • "Sam said we could each talk for about five minutes, less if possible to not make you lovely people sit here all day, and Jack correctly pointed out how I will definitely be using all five of my minutes." [AA18a [LW · GW]]
  • "You may know that I come from a family that loves to rank things in order to make meaning of them. I love that too, and I also love talking about feelings, as someone who has so many of them. This led me to make a list about a year ago ranking my immediate family in terms of emotional expressivity, from most to least. Obviously I take “first place” on this list, which is probably part of why I wanted to make it. Next comes my dad, then Max, then Jack, and then Sam and mom alternate what would be first place if this list went from minimal to Annie levels of emotional expression. As I typed this out last night, Jack immediately questioned my list and checked in with Julia, his wife, for her opinion. (She agreed with my list, for the record.) It led to an interesting discussion on how different people express different emotions, which my dad knows is, along with family movie night, pretty much all I’ve ever wanted from my family. Also Jack last night, “I can just keep talking if you want me to write your speech, just keep it really meta, you can have my five minutes, it’ll be great.” Sam, I may really need Jack’s minutes here as when I read this out loud it was about 8 minutes — I’ll do my best to talk a little faster." [AA18a [LW · GW]]

• C.f. [AA18b [LW · GW]] for more details. It seems that Jerry's death may have been what triggered, or intensified, Annie's gradual process of recalling her repressed memories.

• I found the legal case relating to Jerry (full name: Jerold Donald Altman)'s death on the official Missouri courts government website that seem to corroborate this:
  • https://www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/cases/newHeader.do?inputVO.caseNumber=18SL-PR01960&inputVO.courtId=CT21
  • https://www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/cases/newHeader.do?inputVO.caseNumber=18SL-PR01960&inputVO.courtId=CT21#header

• "For context: Connie (biological mother) kicked me off her health insurance less than three months after Dad died, when I was 24 and could have stayed on her work one for two more years" [AA24h]

• The general idea (to me) is that Annie starts to process/realize that a panic attack is not her earliest memory. c.f. 2 bullet points below.

• Reading [AA18b [LW · GW]] in its entirety makes the connections a bit more clear here. The piece basically details Annie's gradual process, from the time of her Dad's death in May 2018, to the date of [AA18b [LW · GW]]'s publication on November 8, 2018,  of remembering/realizing that a panic attack is not her earliest memory. {Presumably, her earliest memory is her memory of being (sexually) abused by Sam, but it takes Annie a bit to fully process this memory, because it's so traumatic, and her brain repressed the memory as a defense mechanism when she was 4 years old.}
• To me, if you look through Annie's writings over time, in chronological order, they seem to reflect a gradual process of Annie remembering that Sam sexually abused her when she was 4. Here is a sample of her writings, in which you can see how her writing changes over the course of nearly 6 years. To me, the progression encapsulates a gradual process of remembering.
  • 11-08-2018: "Reclaiming my memories" [AA18b [LW · GW]]
  • 02-21-2019: "Period lost, period found" [AA19b [LW · GW]]
  • 03-06-2019: "18 reasons I spent 18 years criticizing my appearance" [AA19c]
  • 09-22-2020: "An open letter to relatives" [AA20a [LW · GW]]
  • 06-07-2021: "An Open Letter To The EMDR Trauma Therapist Who Fired Me For Doing Sex Work" [AA21c [LW · GW]]
  • 11-22-2023: "“How We Do Anything Is How We Do Everything”" [AA23m [LW · GW]]
  • 03-27-2024: "How I Started Escorting" [AA24b [LW · GW]]

• "Two months ago I met with Joe K, the owner of Urban Exhale Hot Yoga, to discuss the podcast episode we were going to record together. (I have since recorded podcasts with four other teachers at the studio and am completely unsure how to express my gratitude to Joe — honestly perhaps less words about it?) While I would be the one asking Joe questions on the podcast, he had an important question for me. With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, “what is your earliest memory?”
• "Without pause for an inhale I responded, “probably a panic attack.” I feel like Joe did his best asana poker face, based on projecting my own insecurities and/or the hyper-vigilant observance that comes with anxiety."
• "I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death. (Do I really have any concept of death now, though? Does anyone??) I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike."
• "I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides."
• "My dad died five months ago now, and to say I’ve learned a lot is an enormous understatement. I was and am a “daddy’s girl.” The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died. My dad was one of the most genuinely positive people I’ve ever come across. He had an incredible capacity to continually focus on the light, the good, what was “right” in any situation. I felt his presence during parts of the sound bath — a concept past me would have rolled her eyes about."
• "Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”
• "Joe, and whoever is reading, I would like to formally change my answer. I am also without an exact answer. I am non-sarcastically “trusting the process” to potentially receive one. I know that a panic attack is not my answer, and my ego likes to remind itself that knowing what is not my truth leads me at least somewhat closer to said truth.""
• "I can reflect on and connect with feelings of panic and still have space to choose a positive perspective. Searching for ways to cope with existence has lead me to yoga, dance, singing, ukulele, cooking, baking, writing… to asking all the questions I know to ask so that I can open myself up to knowing just how many more questions life has to offer. Without panic attacks, I may have lived my whole life without starting a YouTube channel, a podcast, or this blog."
• "Emotions come and go, so it keeps seeming. Emotions and memory are directly linked, re: the amygdala. I have little to no control over my emotional response; I do have control over my reaction and subsequent actions."
• "I write my own history. Though TBD on the first memory of that history. Here’s to exploring."

• Again: as I understand it, at this point in time, Annie still has not yet fully remembered the abuse she experienced Sam (and her other brothers) during her childhood. This is why she is ok with doing this podcast episode with Sam and her other brothers.

• "I started taking birth control pills at the age of 15 (I’m currently 25) and decided to stop taking them right before my 23rd birthday {~2017}. Also around this same time {~2017} I finished tapering off of Zoloft, which I started taking at age 13 {~2007} to help with symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression. Also also around this time {~2017} I drastically altered my diet...I promptly lost my period and learned that changes relating to diet, hormonal birth control, and psychiatric medications are three of the main factors that can disrupt hormonal balance (stress being the baseline factor)."
• "I’m experiencing a second puberty, or maybe an aftershock of sorts from first puberty and/or a year without my period. It feels like a hormonal “do-over” filled with moments of deja-vu: three new crushes in one week, intense crying and laughter in the same hour, and generally going about my day acting like I’m far less confused by all this internal “shifting” than I’m actually feeling. Plus days that feel exceptionally “average” leaving me extra confused about how dramatic life felt the day before. I’m fortunate to have received a liberal education and even so there were inevitable gaps in the information I was given, and open to receiving, about puberty."
• "I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog. I’m learning to give myself space to explore what genuinely excites me without justification and I’ve felt levels of self-consciousness around my career swerve that I had not experienced since first puberty. HOW will I get my intellectual ego stroked without constant science classes? How can art really have no “right” answer? Am I really the only one who can validate how my feelings feel??"
• "It’s been almost a year now since I got my period back and I feel I’ve been going through a sort of spiritual and scientific second puberty, to continue the soap operatics. A year extra filled with learning about my body’s cycle(s) and signals. Witnessing my hormones re-regulate has felt parallel to to self-soothing, not that I consciously remember learning that, and my first time with “my moon.” I started eating eggs again, including runny yolks for the first time, and ate fish for the first time in my life because my body very literally demanded them. A year without my period, after a decade of having it, felt like equal parts reset and emptiness."
• "I believe a large portion of shame takes root during puberty and then manifests as sexual repression, (sexual) aggression, body dysmorphia, addiction, and/or mood disorders. I can say for certain that has been my experience. Shame encourages ignorance by stifling conversations. Additionally, shame creates a feedback loop where ignorance is shamed and so questions and curiosity are discouraged."

• "1. OCD
• 2. Anxiety
• 3. Depression
• ...
• 6. A belief that any body’s appearance is fixed its entire lifetime
• 7. A belief that anything in this physical world is fixed, ever
• ...
• 11. A belief that I could control my body completely with enough will power
• 12. A belief that controlling my body could control my entire life
• 13. A belief that controlling my body could control its inevitable decay (lack of knowledge that fearing death is fearing actually living life)
• 14. Equating control with peace and happiness
• 15. A tendency towards being self-critical"

• Annie's illnesses include:
  • PCOS (Polycystic ovary syndrome)
  • A flare-up of her IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome)
  • Achilles tendinopathy and posterior tibial tendinopathy (aka posterior tibial tendon dysfunction), for which she has to go into a walking boot, for the 3rd time in 8 years.
    • 1st time: Achilles tendinopathy and a bone spur
    • 2nd time: Achilles tendinopathy
    • (this) 3rd time: Achilles tendinopathy and posterior tibial tendinopathy
  • Tonsillitis
  • Sources: [AA24b [LW · GW], AA23k [LW · GW], AA--f [LW · GW], AA--g [LW · GW], AA23m [LW · GW], EW23a [LW · GW]]

• As I understand it, the relatives that Annie notifies are, specifically: Sam Altman, Jack Altman, Max Altman, and Connie Altman. [AA23m [LW · GW]]

• In [AA23m [LW · GW]], Annie writes, "Though separated, my parents were still legally married and so my mother had the “surviving spouse” option to ignore Dad’s wish to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401K."

• "She {Annie} quit her job at a dispensary because she had an injured Achilles tendon that wouldn’t heal and she was in a walking boot for the third time in seven years. She asked Sam and their mother for financial help. They refused. “That was right when I got on the sugar-dating website for the first time,” Annie told me. “I was just at such a loss, in such a state of desperation, such a state of confusion and grief.” Sam had been her favorite brother. He’d read her books at bedtime. He’d taken portraits of her on the monkey bars for a high-school project. She’d felt so understood, loved, and proud. “I was like, Why? Why are these people not helping me when they could at no real cost to themselves?”"" [EW23a [LW · GW]]

• Ellen Huet: "Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he's on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income -- giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn't do the same here for her. There were times when I'd gone back and forth about what to include from Annie's story. It's a very personal, messy family situation, and I'll confess that on occasion I've doubted some unrelated things she's told me. But also, I've looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex."
• Annie: "I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you're in a place of selling furniture, you're in a desperate position of "I'm out options." This is a 'plan Z' I would not be doing this if plans 'A' through 'I' had worked out in any capacity."
• Ellen Huet: "The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub.

• Annie writes, "I sat in my therapist’s office, in my walking boot and hormonal sweat, with my oldest sibling {Sam} there in person holding his phone with our mother {Connie} on FaceTime. The woman who bore me {Connie} told the therapist that it would be “best for Annie’s mental health if she fully financially supported herself,” and my multi-millionaire sibling {Sam} agreed. The therapist was utterly shocked, I was only half-surprised. 
  
  Perhaps with her {the therapist} highlighting that I never asked them {Sam, Connie} for financial help until very ill, and it still being so early in grieving our Dad {Jerry}, and with her {the therapist} highlighting their enormous wealth, the therapist somehow persuaded them to give short-term help for my basic needs...
  
  My mom {Connie} and my brother {Sam} didn’t honor the therapist’s plan for six months of financial support, and my rent money was late or less-than-agreed or had-to-be-groveled-for." [AA24b [LW · GW]].
• In [AA23s [LW · GW]], Annie specifies, "I was given some rent money for a few months in LA before moving back to Big Island for a work trade. We made a plan with the family therapist (we did two sessions with) for Sam and my mother {Connie} to help with my basic needs while I was sick. That plan was not followed." [AA23s [LW · GW]]
• "That financial “help” became inconsistent and/or attached to strings. It would be less than the amount agreed on with the therapist, late for me to actually pay rent so I had to keep asked repeatedly, etc." [AA23t [LW · GW]]
• My note: I've estimated that the family therapy session occurred in ~January 2020 based on:
  • Max Altman's text message in [AA24r], where he tells Annie that he, Sam, Jack, and Connie "think it's best" if Annie "pay{s} for things in June {herself}", i.e. if Max, Sam, Jack, and Connie don't adhere to the plan to pay for Annie's basic living, food, and medical expenses that they'd previously agreed to during the sessions they did with Annie with a family therapist, and
  • Annie's statement that Connie and Sam were withholding the "final month of a six month plan for basic life support...while offering a diamond Dad didn't ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox" [AA24b]

• From [BB24d]:
  • Ellen Huet: "Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he's on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income -- giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn't do the same here for her. There were times when I'd gone back and forth about what to include from Annie's story. It's a very personal, messy family situation, and I'll confess that on occasion I've doubted some unrelated things she's told me. But also, I've looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex."
  • Annie: "I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you're in a place of selling furniture, you're in a desperate position of "I'm out options." This is a 'plan Z' I would not be doing this if plans 'A' through 'I' had worked out in any capacity."
  • Ellen Huet: "The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub.

• Annie will move again later, so it's helpful to clarify this now for those who may not know: Hawai'i (aka Hawaii) is a state in the United States of America, located far away from the rest of the states, in the Pacific Ocean. It contains 8 islands: Big Island, Maui, and 6 others.
• To get an idea of the geography of Hawaii, see Hawaii on Google Maps, and:

• 

• In [AA24b [LW · GW]], Annie writes: 
  "My Father never asked to become a diamond. I never sent my sibling the farm address. The mailbox was open, in a cluster of mailboxes in the middle of nowhere on the island. Plus, the most financially reasonable thing for me to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money — and my sibling {Sam} was aware.
  I decided to go full no contact with my relatives. The family therapist we spoke with recommended I consider this more seriously, after telling me she could not professionally recommend doing more group sessions. She was not the first therapist to tell me to go no contact. Withholding the final month of a six month plan for basic life support, while I was very sick, while withholding money left to me from my Dad, while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox, was my final straw to begin grieving all three of my siblings and my mother. A completely different and similar grieving process as grieving my Dad.
  The distinctions between “family” and “relatives” became more clear everyday."
• My note: I've estimated that this occurred in June 2020 based on:
  • Max Altman's text message in [AA24r], where he tells Annie that he, Sam, Jack, and Connie "think it's best" if Annie "pay{s} for things in June {herself}", i.e. if Max, Sam, Jack, and Connie don't adhere to the plan to pay for Annie's basic living, food, and medical expenses that they'd previously agreed to during the sessions they did with Annie with a family therapist, and
  • Annie's statement that Connie and Sam were withholding the "final month of a six month plan for basic life support...while offering a diamond Dad didn't ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox" [AA24b]
• Thus, it seems that the 6-month plan was for the months of January 2020 through June 2020, and that Sam offered to send the $5,000 diamond he made out of Jerry's ashes during the final month of that plan, i.e. June 2020 -- the same month that he withheld the money he'd previously agreed to send to Annie such that she could afford rent, groceries, and medical expenses.
  • I think this is why Annie says that Sam was "was aware" [AA24b] that "the most financially reasonable thing for {Annie} to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money" [AA24b].

• Annie writes:
  • "After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much. One of the owners of the farm kindly and graciously found computer work for him for me to do seated, which gave me more time while I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain. I had both an Etsy Shop and Patreon for my podcast, though they didn’t make enough to even cover my phone bill." [AA24b [LW · GW]]
  • "Still unsure how to rest and heal my body, I found a room rental in town and started OnlyFans. I applied for EBT food stamps and Medicaid, which felt so surreal while sharing DNA with millionaires. I had also applied for unemployment in California in April 2020, as at first I didn’t want to clog up the system for people who weren’t directly related to millionaires who could help them. I was one of the millions who had identity theft on their unemployment, and so had to go through paperwork and hearings for it to finally come through in November 2020." [AA24b [LW · GW]]

• "{In summer 2020} I decided to go full no contact with my relatives {Sam, Jack, Max, and Connie.}...After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of {health issues with} my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much...I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain...So back to September 2020, starting OnlyFans. I started very softcore, for all sorts of reasons. I was uncomfortable showing much of my body, both because of a history of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and because my body was physically hurting in so many ways. I enjoyed parts of posting, and being front-facing about it all. Sharing pictures and videos on my own terms felt healing for years of insecurities with my body and sexuality and preferences, like exposure therapy for all my conditioning to hide. It felt like a very specific art therapy project. I was confused about liking parts of something that was a plan Z last resort. I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. 
  
  After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed. I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded. *
  
  Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details." [AA24b]

• To me, this letter seems to be somewhat sarcastic. Annie is "thanking" her relatives in a way that carries subliminal criticisms.
• Example: "Thank you for strengthening my sense of self. I am where I am and doing what I’m doing in part because of each of you. My tenacity and gentleness to take care of myself has increased because of you. The lessons I’ve received from my relationships with you have shifted my perspectives beyond their limitations. Thank you for providing contrast." -- What I think Annie is referencing here is how her relatives screwed her out of her money and (esp. Sam) abused her for a very long time. To this, she had to adapt by developing better ways to take care of herself, and was also forced to move around in a state of relative financial poverty.
  • As with the rest of the letter, Annie includes seemingly-upbeat, purposefully vague one-liners throughout the letter, such as "Thank you for providing me with contrast." (The implied negative connotation isn't too hard to infer.)

• "I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me." [AA24b]
• "The two assaults were outside of in-person sex work, both right before I started and another final straw of sorts. Adulthood assault{s} are common triggers for remembering more childhood information, patterns get repeated until they are sorted."
  • Source: https://x.com/anniealtman108/status/1830774211465617685

• "While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own, so extending it to include others felt less intimidating. My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry. I couldn’t carry heavy things or go on long walks, and could manage even shorter beach walks because of the uneven surface. I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless. Being sick is very expensive, and also a very challenging state to be in attempting to make money." [AA24b]
• "My ankle and knee and hips would hurt extra some days, and it wasn’t for another year when I was referred to a pelvic floor physical therapist that I knew I was also managing nerve pain." [AA24b]
• "I decided to get on SeekingArrangements again, now living on Maui. My disabilities and desperation made me more open to navigate the website, and I figured it would be very different than in LA. It was different, though I was still resistant to actually meet anyone in person...{eventually,} I took the plunge to meet someone in person." [AA24b]
• "The first client I ever had was in an open relationship, where his partner gave him permission for “paid play partners” that she approved of. We met on video chat, then I met him for coffee, then a few days later he was at my place. We talked, we fucked, he sent me a Venmo, he left." [AA24b]
• "I logged on my computer and paid a bill I was behind on, immediately." [AA24b]
• "My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago." [AA24b]
• "In the shower after I prayed that would be my last experience in person, and I could switch to all virtual. I knew an article would be coming out soon quoting me in New York Magazine, and I prayed it would give me the exposure to support myself with OnlyFans." [AA24b]
• While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own...My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy......My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago." [AA24b [LW · GW]]
  • ""My last in-person client came out to me as gay followed with “omg I haven’t ever said that out loud before,” as I flashbacked and did my best to stay in “work mode.” Will be more/less something when less ptsd-y" [AA24q]
• From [AA24j [LW · GW]]: "Can you imagine how much more I’ll scare them now that I’m getting my tendon/nerve/ovaries cared for, not sucking dick for rent money while my Dad’s Trust was completely withheld, and learning it’s safe and allowed for me to share my story on my terms 🥰"
• From [AA--b [LW · GW]]: "Yeah I was super sick...and houseless...and sucking "parts" for...{money?}...and so now -- well, first of all, 'cause that was some outrageously good fuckery (abuse), and -- now I'm un-fuck-with-able!"

• From [BI23a [LW · GW]]:
  • The properties Sam bought include:
    • "A $43 million dollar estate in Hawaii, on Big Island, in 2021, with a private inlet, several houses, and "adventurous amenities", including motorboating, cliff jumping, wakesurfing, Jet Ski-ing, and scuba diving. Business Insider reports that:"
    • A $27 million dollar home in San Francisco with a wellness center, "cantilevered infinity pool", and an underground garage with a "car turntable"
    • A $15.7 million, 950-acre ranch in Napa, with five homes and vineyards
  • Annie had been "unaware that her oldest brother {Sam} owned property in Hawaii until BI asked her about it" [BI23a [LW · GW]]
  • The land was bought by an LLC owned by Sam's cousin, Jennifer Serralta
  • The purchase of this property had not been previously reported
  • "In a March post on her personal blog, Serralta wrote that she stayed at a Kailua-Kona property owned by "a friend" while vacationing in Hawaii. Last year, Altman tweeted a photo of himself wakesurfing in Hawaii; the view of the Big Island in the background of the photo precisely matches the view from the Kailua-Kona compound."
    • Note: Business Insider's statement seems accurate; c.f. my analysis using Google Maps in [BI23a [LW · GW]].
    • The Tweet that Sam posted:

      • 

• It seems Annie was trying to use EMDR to heal her PTSD, which, as she claims, resulted from having flashbacks to and stronger memories the abuse, e.g. sexual abuse from Sam, that she was subjected to during her childhood.
• It seems her therapist rejected her as a client on the basis of her position as a sex worker.

• Annie has stated: "There were other strings attached they made it feel like an unsafe place to actually heal from the experiences I had with him." [AA23g [LW · GW]] "The offer was after a year and half no contact {with Sam}, and {I} had started speaking up {about Sam, and his abuse/misconduct} online. I had already started survival sex work. The offer was for the house to be connected with a lawyer, and the last time I had a Sam-lawyer connection I didn’t get to see my Dad’s will for a year." [AA23h [LW · GW]]

• A picture Annie posted in [AA24e [LW · GW]], i.e. relating to her house being broken into:

• From here on the Internet Archive (I just searched for the URL, "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman", in the WayBack Machine on the Internet Archive):

  • 

  • 

    • As of 14:50:52 (military time, I assume) on October 5, 2023: the Sam Altman Wikipedia article does not contain any details about Annie's allegations that Sam sexually abused her:

      • 

    • Then: As of 22:50:05, the Sam Altman Wikipedia article does contain details about Annie's allegations that Sam sexually abused her:

      • 

  • 

    • Then: As of 12:09:09 on October 6, 2023, the Sam Altman Wikipedia article DOES NOT contain details about Annie's allegations that Sam sexually abused her

      • 

• From the Revision history of the Sam Altman Wikipedia article:

  • 

    • It seems various people repeatedly tried to edit Sam's Wikipedia page to include details about Annie's allegations that Sam sexually abused her, but that, within literal minutes of each edit being made, Wikipedia users - primarily Wikipedia user "Panamitsu", among others - removed the edits.
    • It also seems that all information about what those edits actually were has also been removed.
      • That is -- from what I can tell, usually, when someone makes an edit to a Wikipedia article, you can go into the Revision history page for that Wikipedia article, and see what edits were made.
      • But with these edits, the links you could normally click on to see the edit details have been removed - they've got strikethroughs (i.e. like this) applied to them, and you can't click on them, and there's a note that says, "edit summary removed" next to all of them:

        • 

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          • 

        • 

          • 

        • 

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        • 

          • 

        • 

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    • Wikipedia user "Panamitsu" (primarily), along with the other Wikipedia users who repeatedly removed the details, seem to have provided the following explanations for their removals:
      • "possible BLP issue or vandalism"
      • "Undid revision 1178799350 by 2A00:23EE:19D8:4A3:D9A4:325D:C151:C18F (talk) It is a WP:BLP violation. Twitter is not a reliable source and people make false accusations all the time"
      • "Undid revision 1178799655 by 2A00:23EE:1828:A9A0:E292:E724:64E0:FC4A (talk) vandalism"
      • "twitter isn't a reliable source for gossipsheet content.,, reverted"
      • "Take it to talk page, I don't think it should be here, it seems like a WP:BLP violation. I can't even verify if that is his siter"
        • {I think there is a typo here, i.e. I think "siter" was supposed to say "sister"}
      • "Protected "Sam Altman": Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: WP:EXTRAORDINARY WP:BURDEN ([Edit=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 01:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)) [Move=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 01:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)))"
  • The version history of the Sam Altman Wikipedia indicates that that the Wikipedia users who made the removals wanted people to "Take it to {the} talk page". That is, they instructed anyone who might want to add details about Annie's allegations to the Sam Altman Wikipedia article to first discuss their intent to do so on the Talk page of the Sam Altman Wikipedia article.

    • 

  • It seems that, on 01:26 on October 6, 2023, Wikipedia user "EI C" "protected" the Sam Altman Wikipedia article:

    • 

    • To be clear: I don't understand exactly what "Protected" means in this context. I don't know what Wikipedia user "EI C" did to make the article "Protected." (I'm not an expert in Wikipedia article revisions.) It seems that Wikipedia user "EI C" made it such that people couldn't add details about Annie's allegations unless they had "autoconfirmed or confirmed access". (I have no clue what that means either.) It also seems that this status was set to expire 10 days from the date & time it was instated (i.e. expire on 01;26, 16 October 2023.)
• October 9, 2023:
  • 09:08 on Oct 9, 2023 -- Wikipedia user "Allbirdy" edits the Sam Altman Wikipedia article, adding details about Annie's allegations:

    • 

    • 

  • Just 25 minutes later: 09:33  on Oct 9, 2023 -- Wikipedia user "Panamitsu", once again, removes these edits:

    • 

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• November 20, 2023:
  • 08:36 on Nov 20, 2023 -- Wikipedia user "Rei" edits the Sam Altman Wikipedia article, adding details about Annie's allegations:

    • 

    • 

  • Just 14 minutes later: 08:50 on Nov 20, 2023 -- Wikipedia user "Panamitsu", once again, removes these edits:

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  • 09:05 on Nov 20, 2023: Wikipedia user "Rei" re-makes their edit with the details about Annie's allegations, stating, "{My previous edit was} Very much NOT a BLP violation. Matches tone reqs, credits statements to specific individuals, cites secondary sources, etc. If you want to accuse a BLP violation, you need to cite the part of the BLP policy violated. Talk created."

    • 

    • 

  • Over the next hour (primarily), i.e. 09:05-10:50 -- "Rei" argues back and forth with other Wikipeditor editors about including their edits. Ultimately, Rei's edits are removed by Wikipedia editor "Isabelle Belato", with a note that says "Protected "Sam Altman": Edit warring / content dispute;WP:BLP issues. ([Edit=Require administrator access] (expires 10:30, 4 December 2023 (UTC)))"

    • 

• May 23, 2024: Wikipedia user "Somewordswrittendown" adds details about Annie's allegations of abuse, incorporating "guidelines across the various discussion pages that have opened up around this topic; namely, this doesn't source from twitter (stupid rule that needs to be updated) and only includes direct quotes from noted publications."

  • 

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37790899
  • Post before it was flagged & removed: https://web.archive.org/web/20231006140717/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37790899
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
• https://x.com/JOSourcing/status/1710390512455401888

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https://archive.is/lrC7W
 

• Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI - Wikipedia
• OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend - Zvi, LessWrong [LW · GW]
• Sam Altman’s Knack for Dodging Bullets—With a Little Help From Bigshot Friends - by Deepa Seetharaman, The Wall Street Journal
  • See [WSJ23a] for details.

• "Altman’s firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began when he dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 and gained the reputation as a Silicon Valley visionary. Over the past two decades, Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies."
• "A group of senior employees at Altman’s first startup, Loopt—a location-based social-media network started in the flip-phone era—twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior, said people familiar with the matter. But the board, with support from investors at venture-capital firm Sequoia, kept Altman until Loopt was sold in 2012."
• "In 2019, Altman was asked to resign from Y Combinator after partners alleged he had put personal projects, including OpenAI, ahead of his duties as president, said people familiar with the matter."
• "This fall, Altman also faced a crisis of trust at OpenAI, the company he navigated to the front of the artificial-intelligence field. In early October {2023}, OpenAI’s chief scientist {Ilya Sutskever} approached some fellow board members to recommend Altman be fired, citing roughly 20 examples of when he believed Altman misled OpenAI executives over the years. That set off weeks of closed-door talks, ending with Altman’s surprise ouster days before Thanksgiving."
• "This article is based on interviews with dozens of executives, engineers, current and former employees and friends of Altman’s, as well as investors."
• "A few years after {Loopt's} launch, some Loopt executives voiced frustration with Altman’s management. There were complaints about Altman pursuing side projects, at one point diverting engineers to work on a gay dating app, which they felt came at the expense of the company’s main work."
• "Senior executives approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. The board backed Altman."
• "“If he imagines something to be true, it sort of becomes true in his head,” said Mark Jacobstein, co-founder of Jimini Health who served as Loopt’s chief operating officer. “That is an extraordinary trait for entrepreneurs who want to do super ambitious things. It may or may not lead one to stretch, and that can make people uncomfortable.”"
• "Altman doesn’t recall employee complaints beyond the normal annual CEO review process, according to people familiar with his thinking."
• "Michael Moritz, who led Sequoia, personally advised Altman. When Loopt struggled to find buyers, Moritz helped engineer an acquisition by another Sequoia-backed company, the financial technology firm Green Dot."
• "Altman turned Y Combinator into an investing powerhouse. While serving as the president, he kept his own venture-capital firm, Hydrazine, which he launched in 2012. He caused tensions after barring other partners at Y Combinator from running their own funds, including the current chief executive, Garry Tan, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Tan and Ohanian didn’t respond to requests for comment."
• "Altman also expanded Y Combinator through a nonprofit he created called YC Research, which served as an incubator for Altman’s own projects, including OpenAI. From its founding in 2015, YC Research operated without the involvement of the firm’s longtime partners, fueling their concern that Altman was straying too far from running the firm’s core business."
• "By early 2018, Altman was barely present at Y Combinator’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., spending more time at OpenAI, at the time a small research nonprofit, according to people familiar with the matter."
• "The increasing amount of time Altman spent at OpenAI riled longtime partners at Y Combinator, who began losing faith in him as a leader. The firm’s leaders asked him to resign, and he left as president in March 2019."
• "Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.”
• "Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct."
• "To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post."
• "For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure."
• "As the company grew, management complaints about Altman surfaced."
• "In early fall this year, Sutskever, also a board member, was upset because Altman had elevated another AI researcher, Jakub Pachocki, to director of research, according to people familiar with the matter."
• "Sutskever told his board colleagues that the episode reflected a long-running pattern of Altman’s tendency to pit employees against one another or promise resources and responsibilities to two different executives at the same time, yielding conflicts, according to people familiar with the matter."
• "Other board members already had concerns about Altman’s management. Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corp., tried to cultivate relationships with employees as a board member. Past board members chatted regularly with OpenAI executives without informing Altman. Yet during the pandemic, Altman told McCauley he needed to be told if the board spoke to employees, a request that some on the board viewed as Altman limiting the board’s power, people familiar with the matter said."
• "Around the time Sutskever aired his complaints, the independent board members heard similar concerns from some senior OpenAI executives, people familiar with the discussions said. Some considered leaving the company over Altman’s leadership, the people said."
• "Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported."
• "Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported."

• Note: in the link I provided, there's a transcript. The transcript has this feature where it highlights the current word being spoken, with the idea being that you can "follow along" reading the transcript while you're listening to the podcast. Unfortunately, the feature is broken. I think this is due to the inclusion of some ads/commercials at various points throughout the podcast, which create a mismatch between the transcript and the audio.) Specifically, the word highlighted in the transcript is usually a few minutes later than the actual audio.
  • Example from OpenAI Part 1: The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive:

  • 

• Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): "Today, we're going to start on a drive in Hawaii."
• Annie Altman: "We're on north Shore, going deeper into the jungle on the north shore, so we're passing twin falls right now.
• Ellen Huet: "I'm driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman's little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "We're taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants."
• ..,
• Ellen Huet: "For much of the past two years, Annie hasn't been able to afford a stable place to live."
• Annie Altman: "The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property."
• Ellen Huet: "And I think she's an important part of Sam's story."
• Annie Altman: "And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent."
• Ellen Huet: "Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that's on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she's slept on floors and friends' houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn't have another option."
• ...
• Annie Altman: "The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids' room the week that they weren't there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there.
• Annie Altman: "I was houseless. I didn't have somewhere to go."
• Annie Altman: "I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months."
• {A podcast host}: "How many different places have you lived in that didn't have running water?"
• Annie: "Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don't know."
• Ellen Huet: "Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "On stage, on podcasts and interviews, people kept turning to Sam for answers. They were asking him what our AI future would hold. In May of that year, he confidently suggested a future where no one is poor. It's an idea he's talked about for years, and the remarks show that his tune hasn't changed despite growing renown and wealth.
• Sam Altman: "One thing I think we all could agree on is that we just shouldn't have poverty in the world."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam's promises about abundance, but Annie's story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "Sam is a savvy guy. As his profile has gotten bigger after he helped build the world's leading AI company, he has stopped saying things like AI will kill us all. Instead, he talks about how society will be profoundly changed, but overall it will be for the better. Since his newfound chat GPT fame, he has shifted toward presenting himself and by extension, open AI, as more middle of the road. Sam is allowed to change his views, but people have also so complain to me in private that Sam has a tendency to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He's good at telling people what they want to hear in that moment, so it's not surprising that if it's advantageous for him to seem more moderate, that he would start to sound that way."

• Ellen Huet: "What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He's offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman's company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman's income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam's proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that's asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?"
• Ellen Huet: "Like we said earlier, there's a part of Sam's life that really complicates this image of him. It's the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work. Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it's held up next to Annie's messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie's life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself."
• Annie Altman: "In my experience, it's not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven't had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year."
• Ellen Huet: "In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam's domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn't have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad's funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam's the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam's personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited."
• Annie Altman: "My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very "This is just a phase." I was an am at total daddy's girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to."
• Ellen Huet: "Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:"
• Connie Gibstine: "We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion."
• Ellen Huet: "In 2018, Annie's father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries."
• Annie Altman: "I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he's a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars."
• Ellen Huet: "Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he's on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income -- giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn't do the same here for her. There were times when I'd gone back and forth about what to include from Annie's story. It's a very personal, messy family situation, and I'll confess that on occasion I've doubted some unrelated things she's told me. But also, I've looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex."
• Annie: "I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you're in a place of selling furniture, you're in a desperate position of "I'm out options." This is a 'plan Z' I would not be doing this if plans 'A' through 'I' had worked out in any capacity."
• Ellen Huet: "The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn't want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn't have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break."
• Annie Altman: "If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There's some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I've also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I'm still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it's been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone's place for a night, and then a floor for a week - in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there's no - I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever."
• Ellen Huet: "It's not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn't going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable."
• Annie Altman: "It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam's - or a lawyer of his - that I would be allowed to live in."
• Ellen Huet: "She felt like it was a throwback to Sam's attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years."
• Annie Altman: "I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, 'Good.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn't ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it."
• Annie Altman: "To hear your little sister tell you she's doing something she doesn't want to do related to sex, and for the response to be 'Good.' So I was like, 'Oh, you're glad that I'm starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds 'good' to you because I'm supporting myself, even if I'm telling you I'm doing this as a plan Z because I don't know what else to do.'"
• Ellen Huet: "A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included."
• Annie Altman: "Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying 'He's never mentioned a sister.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Annie worries that because she's basically invisible in Sam's public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won't take her story seriously."
• Annie Altman: "That they will then question my validity, or {be like} 'Oh, well, she's crazy. Maybe...he's just not talking about her because she's so mentally unstable, and so now let's recycle the 'Annie's crazy' narrative and 'This is why she can't be trusted', or 'We should just ignore her.'"
• Ellen Huet: "In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie."
• Annie Altman: "And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
• Ellen Huet: "-- the Jewish day of forgiveness --"
• Annie Altman: "Sam emailed me, 'no subject' and in all lowercase, and said, 'hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were  able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren't really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.' There's no mention of this article that's coming out tomorrow, and there's no mention of the fact checking that he just went through."
• Ellen Huet: "Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn't feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she's about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn't done the same for her."
• Annie Altman: "It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It's beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn't...in the same way I'm gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I'm gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn't say, 'How can I help you.' It's why I use the term 'sibling' and not 'brother.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Even though Annie's story is really complicated, I think it's relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he'll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he's faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it's not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn't be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn't come through for her in the way she needed."

• c.f. [EW23a] and Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of Our Age for the full context.
• More of the context in which the quote was provided:
  • "Annie has moved more than 20 times in the past year. When she called me in mid-September, her housing was unstable yet again. She had $1,000 in her bank account.
  • Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks. She knows everybody takes the bits of their life and arranges them into narratives to make sense of their world.
  • As Annie tells her life story, Sam, their brothers, and her mother kept money her father left her from her.
  • As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse.
  • The Altman family would like the world to know: “We love Annie and will continue our best efforts to support and protect her, as any family would.”
  • Annie is working on a one-woman show called the HumAnnie about how nobody really knows how to be a human. We’re all winging it."

• Ellen Huet: "What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He's offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman's company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman's income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam's proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that's asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?"
• Ellen Huet: "Like we said earlier, there's a part of Sam's life that really complicates this image of him. It's the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work. Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it's held up next to Annie's messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie's life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself."
• Annie Altman: "In my experience, it's not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven't had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year."
• Ellen Huet: "In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam's domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn't have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad's funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam's the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam's personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited."
• Annie Altman: "My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very "This is just a phase." I was an am at total daddy's girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to."
• Ellen Huet: "Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:"
• Connie Gibstine: "We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion."
• Ellen Huet: "In 2018, Annie's father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries."
• Annie Altman: "I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he's a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars."
• Ellen Huet: "Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he's on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income -- giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn't do the same here for her. There were times when I'd gone back and forth about what to include from Annie's story. It's a very personal, messy family situation, and I'll confess that on occasion I've doubted some unrelated things she's told me. But also, I've looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex."
• Annie: "I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you're in a place of selling furniture, you're in a desperate position of "I'm out options." This is a 'plan Z' I would not be doing this if plans 'A' through 'I' had worked out in any capacity."
• Ellen Huet: "The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn't want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn't have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break."
• Annie Altman: "If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There's some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I've also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I'm still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it's been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone's place for a night, and then a floor for a week - in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there's no - I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever."
• Ellen Huet: "It's not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn't going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable."
• Annie Altman: "It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam's - or a lawyer of his - that I would be allowed to live in."
• Ellen Huet: "She felt like it was a throwback to Sam's attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years."
• Annie Altman: "I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, 'Good.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn't ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it."
• Annie Altman: "To hear your little sister tell you she's doing something she doesn't want to do related to sex, and for the response to be 'Good.' So I was like, 'Oh, you're glad that I'm starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds 'good' to you because I'm supporting myself, even if I'm telling you I'm doing this as a plan Z because I don't know what else to do.'"
• Ellen Huet: "A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included."
• Annie Altman: "Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying 'He's never mentioned a sister.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Annie worries that because she's basically invisible in Sam's public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won't take her story seriously."
• Annie Altman: "That they will then question my validity, or {be like} 'Oh, well, she's crazy. Maybe...he's just not talking about her because she's so mentally unstable, and so now let's recycle the 'Annie's crazy' narrative and 'This is why she can't be trusted', or 'We should just ignore her.'"
• Ellen Huet: "In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie."
• Annie Altman: "And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
• Ellen Huet: "-- the Jewish day of forgiveness --"
• Annie Altman: "Sam emailed me, 'no subject' and in all lowercase, and said, 'hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were  able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren't really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.' There's no mention of this article that's coming out tomorrow, and there's no mention of the fact checking that he just went through."
• Ellen Huet: "Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn't feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she's about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn't done the same for her."
• Annie Altman: "It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It's beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn't...in the same way I'm gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I'm gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn't say, 'How can I help you.' It's why I use the term 'sibling' and not 'brother.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Even though Annie's story is really complicated, I think it's relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he'll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he's faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it's not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn't be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn't come through for her in the way she needed."

Note: In my opinion, Annie and Sam tell stories about their dad's death that, to me, seem rather different and hard to reconcile --

Sam's wristwatches:

 

 

Sam can be seen wearing {what seems likely to be} his Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 in "WIRED25: Sebastian Thrun & Sam Altman Talk Flying Vehicles and Artificial Intelligence", published 10/16/2018:

• 

• It seems that, as of May 23, 2018, Sam also owned a ~$100K Philippe Patek Perpetual Calendar Ref. 1526 watch, which he posted a picture of to Reddit (on May 23, 2023):

  • 

  • The picture of the watch is not currently shown in the Reddit post. I found a link to it in the post's source code (using Inspect Element):

    • 

  • I also found the date & time of the post's creation in its source code:

    • 

    • (Note: as I noted on Twitter, I originally got this date wrong, accidentally mistaking the date and time at which a comment on the post was made for the date and time at which the post itself was made. Sorry about that.)
  • It seems this was the same watch that Sam wore when testifying to congress on Tuesday, May 16, 2023 about AI regulation:

 

 

• If Sam did indeed say this, I am a bit confused, as it seems a bit inconsistent to me that Sam identified Annie's Youtube channel as "aligning with his businesses", yet identified the podcast that he recorded with Annie as "not aligning with his businesses." The reason I state that this seems inconsistent is because I don't see what exactly what it was about Annie's podcast that made it "not align" with Sam's businesses given that Annie's Youtube channel "did align."

• The sole exception here, of course, is Elizabeth Weil's nymag article [LW · GW], but even this article doesn't directly state the entirety of the claims that Annie has made. Instead, it kind of vaguely addresses them, using somewhat inspecific phrasing like "Now those memories feel like abuse", or "Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks" that don't quite capture the gravity of what Annie has been claiming.

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37785072
• https://x.com/JOSourcing/status/1710390512455401888

• "Wanted money and didn't get it" --
  • this is a a misleading characterization. Annie's dad left money to her, but then Connie (in communication with Sam, Jack, Max) overrode Jerry's wishes and blocked Annie from receiving the money, right after Annie quit her job due to a variety of health issues that had cropped up for her that made it hard to work. Annie had told Connie (and, iiuc, Sam, Jack, and Max) before quitting her job that she was going to quit her job with the expectation that she would be receiving the money that Jerry had left to her, with the expectation being that this money would cover Annie's financial needs while she was temporarily unemployed. Connie then blocked Annie from receiving this money only after Annie had already quit her job. Connie knew this was going to happen. So, of course Annie "wanted" the money:
    • She was supposed to get the money -- Jerry had wanted her to have it
    • She was in a desperate financial situation
    • She had told Connie (and Sam, Jack, Max) that she expected that she'd receive the money before she quit her job, and then they withheld it from only after she had already quit her job, putting Annie in a precarious financial position in a way she had not at all been expecting.
• "after she wanted money and didn't get it" --
  • this is a misleading characterization. As far as I know, Annie hadn't began directly speaking out against her relatives (Sam, Max, Jack, and Connie) on social media until she made these 3 Tweets on November 13, 2021. This was roughly two years after Connie, Sam, Max, and Jack blocked Annie from getting the money that her father (Jerry) left to her. Saying "She only started accusing Sam after she wanted money and didn't get it" makes it sound like 1) Annie didn't have a valid reason for the money, she just "wanted" it, and 2) When Annie didn't get the money, she got on social media and started defaming her relatives on social media. Neither of these seem to be the case, as far as I can tell. As I detailed in the previous bullet point, Annie actually did have multiple valid reasons to expect the money: firstly, that her father had left it to her, and secondly, that she had told her family members that she was going to temporarily quit her job to try to fix her health issues with the expectation that she'd be receiving money, and (I presume) those relatives hadn't given any indication that they'd be withholding the money from Annie after she quit her job.
• "She disputed the inheritance from a trust fund she felt she was owed after her father died." --
  • "Felt she was owed" is a misleading characterization that makes it seem like Annie just felt entitled, for no good reason, to money that wasn't supposed to be hers. This is not at all the impression I get. My understanding is that Annie's father, in legal documents (will, 401k), indicated that he wanted Annie to receive money. Annie's relatives overrode these wishes, to block/withhold that money from getting to Annie.
• "She blamed her family and started publicly attacking them, including Sam." --
  • "Blamed" makes it seem like Annie blamed her family without a good reason. But that isn't what happened:
    • Annie's family (Connie, Sam, Jack, and Max) actively intervened to prevent Annie from seeing Jerry's will for ~1 year after his death
    • In 2019, Annie told her family she was going to quit her job, as she wanted time to try to cure her health problems (which were making it hard for her to stand $⟹$hard for her to do her job), and was expecting to receive money that her father had left. So, Annie's relatives:
      • KNEW that Annie expected to receive her father's money
      • KNEW she was going to quit her job
    • Then, only after Annie quit her job, did Annie's relatives then tell her that they were going to withhold the money from her.
      • This put Annie into a desperate financial situation. She was now jobless, low on money, and plagued by health problems that made it hard for her to get a new job.
  • "And started publicly attacking them" --
    • Again, Kat's writing is missing key context about the timeline here. Annie's relatives blocked her from receiving Jerry's money in 2019. Annie only started speaking out against them (including Sam) on November 13, 2021. There was a period of 2 years between those events.

• "The accusation is based on “repressed memories” from when she was 4 that she “didn’t remember until she was 26”" --
  • This is incorrect.
    • Though, I can see how one could easily come to this incorrect conclusion.
      • Again, if Kat was writing with genuine good intent in her Tweets, then I don't want to unfairly villainize her. Again, there is a lot of information here, and it's easy to miss small details here and there.
  • In my understanding, Annie 

• "After several meetings I am writing to make a formal request to graduate at the end of this spring, with almost seven semesters of Tufts residency. I have been a full-time student for six semesters...At the end of this semester I will have completed my Biopsychology major, as well as the university’s distribution and credit requirements."
• "Because I have so treasured my experiences, choosing I was ready to leave was extremely difficult. There is simply no need for the sadness and anxiety I’ve felt relating to school; but it took me a while to both figure that out and to accept it. Education should be a gift, however I’ve recently found it to feel more like a burden. I came to Tufts on the pre-medical track, and it was not until this semester that I let go of my rigid attachment to that plan. While a MD or DO degree may still be in my future, I want to more openly look into becoming a nurse or physician’s assistant, as well as a therapist through psychology or social work graduate programs. I feel confident that I want to go into the healthcare field but I am still discovering what role would be the best fit for me and my happiness, allowing me to make the greatest possible positive contribution to the world. I feel extremely thankful for the support I’ve had, both from teachers and friends, in working through this decision. I am also very fortunate for my relationship with my parents and the emotional and logistical support they have given me in this process."
• "My dream would be a summer of my own therapy: taking counseling seriously in a way I have never before felt ready to, focusing on art projects, dance classes, and guitar lessons, as well as attending yoga and meditation retreats — working towards whatever euphemism you prefer for “getting my head on straight” or “re-centering.” I then want to spend a year traveling the world, creating my own education while carrying with me many important lessons learned from Tufts."
• "Sometimes in meditation the most mindful moments come not from feeling fully aware, but rather from realizing you had momentarily lost your awareness and coming back to the present moment. Depressed feelings usually linger from the past, and anxious thoughts are often about the future — a focus on the present brings me a sense of peace. I have come to the realization that being at Tufts is not giving me the potential to be my best self, and I feel as though staying here another year is not in my best interest. I would like to reiterate that many of my issues are not specific to Tufts, but rather regarding where I am at this point in my life. I am grateful for your time and consideration in reading my words and I hope that you will honor my request."

• Jack: "Switching into a...topic of sort of money and sort of the long-term view of it and how people can think about it most clearly, I'm actually to start with a quick story that I think illustrates a bit of some of your views. This is from when we were very young and our grandma gave us each some stock --"
• Sam: "-- oh this is a good story --"
• Jack: "-- in a company --"
• Sam: "-- alright, you can tell this one."
• Jack: "Okay. So she gave us each some stock in a company that she thought we would like. And so, as you like to point out, I was heavier as a child, and one of the things I liked was Applebee's."

• "A blogger recently asked Altman, “How has having Asperger’s helped and hurt you?” Altman told me, “I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I don’t have Asperger’s!’ But then I thought, I can see why he thinks I do. I sit in weird ways”—he folds up like a busted umbrella—“I have narrow interests in technology, I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing. When I remarked, after a few long days together, that he never seemed to visit the men’s room, he said, “I will practice going to the bathroom more often so you humans don’t realize that I’m the A.I.”"
• "“Well, I like racing cars,” Altman said. “I have five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla. I like flying rented planes all over California. Oh, and one odd one—I prep for survival.” Seeing their bewilderment, he explained, “My problem is that when my friends get drunk they talk about the ways the world will end. After a Dutch lab modified the H5N1 bird-flu virus, five years ago, making it super contagious, the chance of a lethal synthetic virus being released in the next twenty years became, well, nonzero. The other most popular scenarios would be A.I. that attacks us and nations fighting with nukes over scarce resources.” The Shypmates looked grave. “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”"
• "Altman’s mother, a dermatologist named Connie Gibstine, told me, “Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He’ll call and say he has a headache—and he’ll have Googled it, so there’s some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn’t have meningitis or lymphoma, that it’s just stress.” If the pandemic does come, Altman’s backup plan is to fly with his friend Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, to Thiel’s house in New Zealand. Thiel told me, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish—an optimist yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong, and that there’s no single place in the world where you’re deeply at home.”
• "One evening at Altman’s house, his younger brothers, Max and Jack, were teasing him that he should run for President in 2020, when he’d be thirty-five: just old enough. Max, twenty-eight, said, “Who better than you, Sam?” As Altman tried not very vehemently to change the subject, Jack, twenty-seven, said, “It’s not purely little-brother trolling. I do think tech needs a good candidate." “Let’s send the Jewish gay guy!” Altman said. “That’ll work!”
  Jack eyed a board game called Samurai on the bookshelf and said, “Sam won every single game of Samurai when we were kids because he always declared himself the Samurai leader: ‘I have to win, and I’m in charge of everything.’ ”
  Altman shot back, “You want to play speed chess right now?,” and Jack laughed."
• "Max was working at the Y Combinator company Zenefits; Jack co-founded a performance-management company, Lattice, which had just gone through YC. The two brothers moved in with Altman temporarily three years ago and never left. Altman recently hired a designer to upgrade his gray IKEA sofas to gray SummerHouse sofas, and he hung some handsomely framed photographs taken from space, but the house maintains an upscale-student-housing vibe. His mother told me, “I think Sam likes having his brothers around because they knew him when, and can give him pushback in ways that other people can’t. But it’s tricky, with the power dynamic, and I want it to end before it explodes.”"

• "Sam Altman '03 speaks to students about the development of startups and AI ... and our collective responsibility to make sure they benefit everyone. https://jburroughs.org/news-and-events/sam-altman-03-startups-ai-for-good #JBSalum"

• "Check out my sister {Annie} on youtube!"

• 

• "My dad trusted my intuition more than I ever have. He often reminded me of the strength of my mind-body connection, a concept I am both extremely passionate about and skilled at underestimating. He created and held space for all of my feelings, and those of you who have talked to me ever know that I have more than a few of those all of the time."
• "Sam said we could each talk for about five minutes, less if possible to not make you lovely people sit here all day, and Jack correctly pointed out how I will definitely be using all five of my minutes. I’ll apparently even spend some sharing this backstory with you."
• "You may know that I come from a family that loves to rank things in order to make meaning of them. I love that too, and I also love talking about feelings, as someone who has so many of them. This led me to make a list about a year ago ranking my immediate family in terms of emotional expressivity, from most to least. Obviously I take “first place” on this list, which is probably part of why I wanted to make it. Next comes my dad, then Max, then Jack, and then Sam and mom alternate what would be first place if this list went from minimal to Annie levels of emotional expression."
• "My dad and I were always very close, talking about all the feels, all the music, and all the athletic activities."
• "We grew even closer in the past few years, as he was my #1 supporter and confidant in all my choices and adventures, most recently in moving to the Big Island of Hawaii, teaching yoga knowing full well it is not a “career” one can “support themselves” with, and even choosing to live in a car for a few months (re: there is little money in yoga and also Annie goes into extreme minimal hippie phase)."
• "My dad came out to visit me in February, when I finally moved into a non-mobile home...My brothers are convinced that he changed his diet to be closer to me, much like his interest in rowing and involvement with the St. Louis Rowing Club, and I know they are right."
• "In January my dad sent me a text, part of which read, “And just for clarification, I don’t just support your lifestyle now or your physical and emotional endeavors now; I support your life. I will always support your life. These are aspects of your life, so I support those too. And there is not a “now”, as Yoda might say. There is only life, for as long as that may be.”"
• "My dad was active, with people, and doing what he loved, I had said up until his last day before my mom correctly clarified it as “his last hour.”"

• "Two months ago I met with Joe K, the owner of Urban Exhale Hot Yoga, to discuss the podcast episode we were going to record together. (I have since recorded podcasts with four other teachers at the studio and am completely unsure how to express my gratitude to Joe — honestly perhaps less words about it?) While I would be the one asking Joe questions on the podcast, he had an important question for me. With all the casual profundity of a yoga teacher, Joe asked, “what is your earliest memory?”
• "Without pause for an inhale I responded, “probably a panic attack.” I feel like Joe did his best asana poker face, based on projecting my own insecurities and/or the hyper-vigilant observance that comes with anxiety."
• "I began having panic attacks at a young age. I felt the impending doom of death before I had any concept of death. (Do I really have any concept of death now, though? Does anyone??) I define panic attacks as feeling “too alive,” like diving off the deep end into awareness of existence without any proper scuba gear or knowledge of free diving. Panic attacks, I’ve learned, come like an ambulance flashing lights and blaring a siren indicating that my mind and my body are… experiencing a missed connection in terms of communication — they’re refusing to listen to each other. More accurately: my mind is disregarding the messages from my body, convinced she can think her way through feelings, and so my body goes into panic mode like she’s on strike."
• "I went to a sound bath at the yoga studio about a month ago, the second sound bath I’ve ever attended. (I cried at both and if you know me you know that I am happy about things that help me cry.) Sound baths are a guided meditation where you lay in corpse pose and receive sounds of specific frequencies, allowing vibrations to “wash” over and through you. Some shit is bound to surface in the tides."
• "My dad died five months ago now, and to say I’ve learned a lot is an enormous understatement. I was and am a “daddy’s girl.” The most recent panic attack, and perhaps darkest one I’ve experienced, happened the week he died. My dad was one of the most genuinely positive people I’ve ever come across. He had an incredible capacity to continually focus on the light, the good, what was “right” in any situation. I felt his presence during parts of the sound bath — a concept past me would have rolled her eyes about."
• "Laying in bed later that night, Joe’s question popped back into my consciousness with a kind “please make your way into child’s pose.” I realized I had deceived myself (classic humaning) with my response to his question, “what is your earliest memory?”
• "Joe, and whoever is reading, I would like to formally change my answer. I am also without an exact answer. I am non-sarcastically “trusting the process” to potentially receive one. I know that a panic attack is not my answer, and my ego likes to remind itself that knowing what is not my truth leads me at least somewhat closer to said truth.""
• "I can reflect on and connect with feelings of panic and still have space to choose a positive perspective. Searching for ways to cope with existence has lead me to yoga, dance, singing, ukulele, cooking, baking, writing… to asking all the questions I know to ask so that I can open myself up to knowing just how many more questions life has to offer. Without panic attacks, I may have lived my whole life without starting a YouTube channel, a podcast, or this blog."
• "Emotions come and go, so it keeps seeming. Emotions and memory are directly linked, re: the amygdala. I have little to no control over my emotional response; I do have control over my reaction and subsequent actions."
• "I write my own history. Though TBD on the first memory of that history. Here’s to exploring."

• A relevant snippet begins around ~24:30.
  • Context: "projection" is a recurring motif of discussion throughout the podcast episode.
  • Annie: "This is where, well -- I do believe that projecting can be deflecting and it can be another buzzword in a lot of ways, and also, as you brought up, it points to very intense feelings and very, as you brought up Max {Altman}, {with the} human psychology of things, of, in some ways, we're wired to remember painful experiences so that we do learn from them, and so - to remember negativity, and to remember those things --"
  • Sam {interjecting}: "More than that, I think one thing we're particularly wired for, I don't know why, is to not like hypocrisy..."
• Note: as reported in Elizabeth Weil's nymag article [LW · GW], Sam (and Jack) refuse (Annie's requests to) share a link to the podcast. Annie finds this unfair, seeing as how Sam had been willing to help his other siblings' careers in quite major ways. Sam (and Jack) apparently cited that the podcast episode "did not align with their businesses" [EW23a [LW · GW]] as the reason they refused to post the link.
• From [EW23a [LW · GW]]: "Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”" [EW23a [LW · GW]]

• "I started taking birth control pills at the age of 15 (I’m currently 25) and decided to stop taking them right before my 23rd birthday {~2017}. Also around this same time {~2017} I finished tapering off of Zoloft, which I started taking at age 13 {~2007} to help with symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression. Also also around this time {~2017} I drastically altered my diet...I promptly lost my period and learned that changes relating to diet, hormonal birth control, and psychiatric medications are three of the main factors that can disrupt hormonal balance (stress being the baseline factor)."
• "I’m experiencing a second puberty, or maybe an aftershock of sorts from first puberty and/or a year without my period. It feels like a hormonal “do-over” filled with moments of deja-vu: three new crushes in one week, intense crying and laughter in the same hour, and generally going about my day acting like I’m far less confused by all this internal “shifting” than I’m actually feeling. Plus days that feel exceptionally “average” leaving me extra confused about how dramatic life felt the day before. I’m fortunate to have received a liberal education and even so there were inevitable gaps in the information I was given, and open to receiving, about puberty."
• "I majored in Biopsychology in college, with a minor in dance, and took all the prerequisite courses for medical school. Then I noped out of the pre-med route to focus on movement, writing, comedy, music, and food. I got certified as a yoga teacher, worked for an online CSA (community-supported agriculture) company, began writing more frequently, started slowly going to open mic nights and putting videos on YouTube, and began a podcast and this blog. I’m learning to give myself space to explore what genuinely excites me without justification and I’ve felt levels of self-consciousness around my career swerve that I had not experienced since first puberty. HOW will I get my intellectual ego stroked without constant science classes? How can art really have no “right” answer? Am I really the only one who can validate how my feelings feel??"
• "It’s been almost a year now since I got my period back and I feel I’ve been going through a sort of spiritual and scientific second puberty, to continue the soap operatics. A year extra filled with learning about my body’s cycle(s) and signals. Witnessing my hormones re-regulate has felt parallel to to self-soothing, not that I consciously remember learning that, and my first time with “my moon.” I started eating eggs again, including runny yolks for the first time, and ate fish for the first time in my life because my body very literally demanded them. A year without my period, after a decade of having it, felt like equal parts reset and emptiness."
• "I believe a large portion of shame takes root during puberty and then manifests as sexual repression, (sexual) aggression, body dysmorphia, addiction, and/or mood disorders. I can say for certain that has been my experience. Shame encourages ignorance by stifling conversations. Additionally, shame creates a feedback loop where ignorance is shamed and so questions and curiosity are discouraged."

• "1. OCD
• 2. Anxiety
• 3. Depression
• ...
• 6. A belief that any body’s appearance is fixed its entire lifetime
• 7. A belief that anything in this physical world is fixed, ever
• ...
• 11. A belief that I could control my body completely with enough will power
• 12. A belief that controlling my body could control my entire life
• 13. A belief that controlling my body could control its inevitable decay (lack of knowledge that fearing death is fearing actually living life)
• 14. Equating control with peace and happiness
• 15. A tendency towards being self-critical"

• To me, this letter seems to be somewhat sarcastic. Annie is "thanking" her relatives in a way that carries subliminal criticisms.
• Example: "Thank you for strengthening my sense of self. I am where I am and doing what I’m doing in part because of each of you. My tenacity and gentleness to take care of myself has increased because of you. The lessons I’ve received from my relationships with you have shifted my perspectives beyond their limitations. Thank you for providing contrast." -- What I think Annie is referencing here is how her relatives screwed her out of her money and (esp. Sam) abused her for a very long time. To this, she had to adapt by developing better ways to take care of herself, and was also forced to move around in a state of relative financial poverty.
  • As with the rest of the letter, Annie includes seemingly-upbeat, purposefully vague one-liners throughout the letter, such as "Thank you for providing me with contrast." (The implied negative connotation isn't too hard to infer.)

• It seems Annie was trying to use EMDR to heal her PTSD, which, as she claims, resulted from having flashbacks to and stronger memories the abuse, e.g. sexual abuse from Sam, that she was subjected to during her childhood.
• It seems her therapist rejected her as a client on the basis of her position as a sex worker.

• "I experienced sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse from my biological siblings, mostly Sam Altman and some from Jack Altman."

• "I feel strongly that others have also been abused by these perpetrators. I’m seeking people to join me in pursuing legal justice, safety for others in the future, and group healing. Please message me with any information, you can remain however anonymous you feel safe."

• "Sam and Jack, I know you remember my Torah portion was about Moses forgiving his brothers. “Forgive them father for they know not what they’ve done” Sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and technological abuse. Never forgotten."

• "I’m not four years old with a 13 year old “brother” climbing into my bed non-consensually anymore. (You’re welcome for helping you figure out your sexuality.) I’ve finally accepted that you’ve always been and always will be more scared of me than I’ve been of you."
  • Note: The "brother" in question (obviously) being Sam Altman.

• "Must be strange to stalk your younger sibling’s social media after she went no contact from your abuse."
• "Must be stranger to see her pussy and asshole that you touched non-consensually, now posted publicly."

• {Jokingly} "{Sam's 'nuclear backpack'} may also hold our Dad and Grandma’s trusts {which} him {Sam} and my birth mother are still withholding from me, knowing I started sex work for survival because of being sick and broke with a millionaire “brother”"
• Note: [PO23] is a reply to this post.

• Note: this poem seems to be pretty clearly talking about Sam.

• "I got diagnosed with PCOS, and got walking boot for a third time in 8 years for the same tendinopathy, all in the first year of grieving my Dad."
  • 
• "I had a history since childhood of OCD, anxiety, depression, IBS, disorder eating - all covers for PTSD. Also tonsillitis yay"
  • 
• "I got notified almost exactly a year after his death about my Dad leaving me money, so make a plan to stop working for 6 months and focus on my health.
  • 
• "I got notified almost exactly a year after his death about my Dad leaving me money, so make a plan to stop working for 6 months and focus on my health. I had started a podcast and had other art proects I could do sitting down!"
  • 
• "After quitting my dispensary job, my relatives find a loophole to withhold said money. They knew the health conditions and my plan, and they're millionaires. I sell some things, go back to an older job, and eventually ask (for the first time ever) my millionaire relatives for financial help and am essentially told to "work harder." I got $100 for an ankle MRI copay, after much 'discussion'"
  • 
• "I do two family therapy sessions and am professionally advised to stop doing family therapy sessions."
• "I move back to Big Island so I can work trade for rent, be around community, and actually heal. I'm offered {by Sam} a diamond made from Dad's ashes instead of money for rent or groceries. Dad just wanted cremation."
• "I go {opt for} no contact with relatives."
• "I start spicy work which ends up being way more therapeutic than anticipated, though definitely challenging."
• "I end up moving to Maui. Unemployment comes through after identity theft, so I have a deposit {on?} a place to live."
• "I have two years of remembering horrific things I'd buried and told myself I made up, and experience adult SAs that brought up even more memories."
  • 

• Annie states that (Sam's) technological abuse (shadowbanning) has made it hard for her to make an income / financially support herself.
• She refers to Sam as her "first client" in her (current) sexual line of work.
• "{I have been} under the thumb of this deeply depressed human {Sam Altman}, dealing with his guilt about our dad dying much earlier than he needed to - because our dad was not given money while he was alive, even though he'd had heart issues, and was 67 - can you imagine being a fucking multimillionaire and not giving your dad -- that's for me to talk about in therapy"
• Context: Annie is (somewhat jokingly) talking about making shirts saying she survived Sam Altman's shadowbanning. "The shirts - they're gonna say 'I survived Sam Altman's shadowbanning.' And it's gonna be such a clusterfuck - because the longer that this has gone on - and it's been 4 years now - I no longer care about sounding like a crazy person. There's so much proof - go to my Instagram for "Hi Censorship" highlights. Also, the amount of friends I have had and tested things out with - and seen, when they share things, {versus} when I share things; sharing anything about the podcast..."

• "Altman grew up the oldest of four siblings in suburban St. Louis: three boys, Sam, Max, and Jack, each two years apart, then a girl, Annie, nine years younger than Sam."
• "In 1993, for his 8th birthday, Altman’s parents — Connie Gibstine, a dermatologist, and Jerry Altman, a real-estate broker — bought him a Mac LC II."
• "Several months later, in late May, Altman’s father had a heart attack, at age 67, while rowing on Creve Coeur Lake outside St. Louis. He died at the hospital soon after. At the funeral, Annie told me, Sam allotted each of the four Altman children five minutes to speak. She used hers to rank her family members in terms of emotional expressivity. She put Sam, along with her mother, at the bottom."
• "Altman continued racing his cars (among his favorites: the Lexus LFA, which was discontinued by 2013 and, according to HotCars, “set you back by at least $950,000”). In the early days of the pandemic, he wore his Israeli Defense Forces gas mask. He bought a ranch in Napa. (Altman is a vegetarian, but his partner, Oliver Mulherin, a computer programmer from Melbourne, “likes cows,” Altman says.) He purchased a $27 million house on San Francisco’s Russian Hill. He racked up fancy friends."
• "This is not the portfolio of a man with ambitions like Zuckerberg, who appears, somewhat quaintly compared with Altman, to be content “with building a city-state to rule over,” as the tech writer and podcaster Jathan Sadowski put it. This is the portfolio of a man with ambitions like Musk’s, a man taking the “imperialist approach.” “He really sees himself as this world-bestriding Übermensch, as a superhuman in a really Nietzschean kind of way,” Sadowski said. “He will at once create the thing that destroys us and save us from it.”"
• "Families replicate social dynamics. Power differentials hurt and often explode. This is true of the Altmans. Jerry Altman’s 2018 death notice describes him as: “Husband of Connie Gibstine; dear father and father-in-law of Sam Altman, Max Altman, Jack (Julia) Altman” — Julia is Jack’s wife — “and Annie Altman …”
• "Annie Altman? Readers of Altman’s blog; his tweets; his manifesto, Startup Playbook; along with the hundreds of articles about him will be familiar with Jack and Max. They pop up all over the place, most notably in a dashing photo in Forbes, atop the profile that accompanied the announcement of their joint fund, Apollo. They’re also featured in Tad Friend’s 2016 Altman profile in The New Yorker and in much chummy public banter.
  • @jaltma: I find it really upsetting when I see articles calling Sam a tech bro. He’s a technology brother.
  • @maxaltman: He *is* technology, brother.
  • @sama: love you, (tech) bros"
• "Annie does not exist in Sam’s public life. She was never going to be in the club. She was never going to be an Übermensch. She’s always been someone who felt the pain of the world. At age 5, she began waking up in the middle of the night, needing to take a bath to calm her anxiety. By 6, she thought about suicide, though she didn’t know the word."
• "Like her eldest brother, she is extremely intelligent, and like her eldest brother, she left college early — though not because her start-up was funded by Sequoia. She had completed all of her Tufts credits, and she was severely depressed. She wanted to live in a place that felt better to her. She wanted to make art. She felt her survival depended on it. She graduated after seven semesters."
• "When I visited Annie on Maui this summer, she told me stories that will resonate with anyone who has been the emo-artsy person in a businessy family, or who has felt profoundly hurt by experiences family members seem not to understand. Annie — her long dark hair braided, her voice low, measured, and intense — told me about visiting Sam in San Francisco in 2018. He had some friends over. One of them asked Annie to sing a song she’d written. She found her ukulele. She began. “Midway through, Sam gets up wordlessly and walks upstairs to his room,” she told me over a smoothie in Paia, a hippie town on Maui’s North Shore. “I’m like, Do I keep playing? Is he okay? What just happened?” The next day, she told him she was upset and asked him why he left. “And he was kind of like, ‘My stomach hurt,’ or ‘I was too drunk,’ or ‘too stoned, I needed to take a moment.’ And I was like, ‘Really? That moment? You couldn’t wait another 90 seconds?’”"
• "That same year, Jerry Altman died. He’d had his heart issues, along with a lot of stress, partly, Annie told me, from driving to Kansas City to nurse along his real-estate business. The Altmans’ parents had separated. Jerry kept working because he needed the money. After his death, Annie cracked. Her body fell apart. Her mental health fell apart. She’d always been the family’s pain sponge. She absorbed more than she could take now."
• "Sam offered to help her with money for a while, then he stopped. In their email and text exchanges, his love — and leverage — is clear. He wants to encourage Annie to get on her feet. He wants to encourage her to get back on Zoloft, which she’d quit under the care of a psychiatrist because she hated how it made her feel."
• "Among her various art projects, Annie makes a podcast called All Humans Are Human. The first Thanksgiving after their father’s death, all the brothers agreed to record an episode with her. Annie wanted to talk on air about the psychological phenomenon of projection: what we put on other people. The brothers steered the conversation into the idea of feedback — specifically, how to give feedback at work. After she posted the show online, Annie hoped her siblings, particularly Sam, would share it. He’d contributed to their brothers’ careers. Jack’s company, Lattice, had been through YC. “I was like, ‘You could just tweet the link. That would help. You don’t want to share your sister’s podcast that you came on?’” He did not. “Jack and Sam said it didn’t align with their businesses.”
• "On the first anniversary of Jerry Altman’s death, Annie had the word sch’ma — “listen” in Hebrew — tattooed on her neck. She quit her job at a dispensary because she had an injured Achilles tendon that wouldn’t heal and she was in a walking boot for the third time in seven years. She asked Sam and their mother for financial help. They refused. “That was right when I got on the sugar-dating website for the first time,” Annie told me. “I was just at such a loss, in such a state of desperation, such a state of confusion and grief.” Sam had been her favorite brother. He’d read her books at bedtime. He’d taken portraits of her on the monkey bars for a high-school project. She’d felt so understood, loved, and proud. “I was like, Why? Why are these people not helping me when they could at no real cost to themselves?”"
• "In May 2020, she relocated to the Big Island of Hawaii. One day, shortly after she’d moved to a farm to do a live-work trade, she got an email from Sam asking for her address. He wanted to send her a memorial diamond he’d made out of some of their father’s ashes. “Picturing him sending a diamond of my dad’s ashes to the mailbox where it’s one of those rural places where there are all these open boxes for all these farms … It was so heavy and sad and angering, but it was also so hilarious and so ridiculous. So disconnected-feeling. Just the lack of fucks given.” Their father never asked to be a diamond. Annie’s mental health was fragile. She worried about money for groceries. It was hard to interact with somebody for whom money meant everything but also so little. “Like, either you aren’t realizing or you are not caring about this whole situation here,” she said. By “whole situation,” she meant her life. “You’re willing to spend $5,000 — for each one — to make this thing that was your idea, not Dad’s, and you’re wanting to send that to me instead of sending me $300 so I can have food security. What?”"
• "The two are now estranged. Sam offered to buy Annie a house. She doesn’t want to be controlled. For the past three years, she has supported herself doing sex work, “both in person and virtual,” she told me. She posts porn on OnlyFans. She posts on Instagram Stories about mutual aid, trying to connect people who have money to share with those who need financial help."
• "Annie has moved more than 20 times in the past year. When she called me in mid-September, her housing was unstable yet again. She had $1,000 in her bank account."
• "Since 2020, she has been having flashbacks. She knows everybody takes the bits of their life and arranges them into narratives to make sense of their world."
• "As Annie tells her life story, Sam, their brothers, and her mother kept money her father left her from her."
• "As Annie tells her life story, she felt special and loved when, as a child, Sam read her bedtime stories. Now those memories feel like abuse."
• "The Altman family would like the world to know: “We love Annie and will continue our best efforts to support and protect her, as any family would.”"
• "Annie is working on a one-woman show called the HumAnnie about how nobody really knows how to be a human. We’re all winging it."

• Note: c.f. [EW23b], [EW23c], [EW23d], and [EW23e] for some comments that Elizabeth Weil made on X (Twitter) about this article.

• "Thank you for the love and for calling I spade a spade. I experienced every single form of abuse with him - sexual, physical, verbal, psychology, pharmacological (forced Zoloft, also later told I’d receive money only if I went back on it), and technological (shadowbanning)"

• "Aww you’re nervous I’m defending myself? Refusing to die with your secrets, refusing to allow you to harm more people? If only there was little sister with a bed you could uninvited crawl in, or sick 20-something sister you could withhold your dead dad’s money from, to cope."

• "This tweet endorsed to come out of my drafts by our Dad He also said it was “poor foresight” for you to believe I would off myself before ~justice is served~"

• "@RemmeltE This is also a story about the tech media & its entanglement with industry. Annie was not hard to find. Nobody did the basic reporting on his family — or no one wanted to risk losing access by including Annie in a piece." / X (twitter.com)

• "@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy of course — worry about losing access to pals, allies, people he funds, people he might fund, others in tech who don't want to talk with journalists who might independently report out a story and not rely on comms...." / X (twitter.com)"

• "@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy i'm not a tech reporter primarily and i've been in this industry for a long time (and it's a rough industry to be in), so less career risk for me"

• "@RemmeltE @phuckfilosophy Or accept the version of personal lives as delivered by the source. Sam talked about his personal life with me a bit, as did Jack. Just didn't ever reference Annie."

• "{I experienced} Shadowbanning across all platforms except onlyfans and pornhub. Also had 6 months of hacking into almost all my accounts and wifi when I first started the podcast"
• Note: Some commenters on Hacker News claim that a post regarding Annie's claims that Sam sexually assaulted her at age 4 has been being repeatedly removed. c.f. [HN23a], [NM23]

• "https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-profile.html… I feel like you are misrepresenting things here. If the article is correct of course. "Sam offered to buy Annie a house." Isn't that a big financial help?"
• Note: Annie's replies are given in [AA23g] and [AA23h].

• Note: this is Annie's reply reply to [PO23].
• "There were other strings attached they made it feel like an unsafe place to actually heal from the experiences I had with him."

• Note: this is Annie's reply reply to [PO23] and [AA23g].
• "The offer was after a year and half no contact {with Sam}, and {I} had started speaking up online. I had already started survival sex work. The offer was for the house to be connected with a lawyer, and the last time I had a Sam-lawyer connection I didn’t get to see my Dad’s will for a year."

• "I was too sick for “normal” standing jobs. Tendon and nerve pain, and ovarian cysts. “Pathetic” to you seems to mean something outside of your understanding"

• "Also PTSD from sexual traumas. I’m grateful to sex work for how much sex therapy I’ve gotten from the work"

• ".@hackernews keeps removing links to Annie Altman's revelations. Her shadow ban is real. And yours probably is too." 

• Annie {addressing Sam}: "What must it be like, to be an almost-tech billionaire, terrified of the little sibling -- you've lost privileges to call me your sister -- who you repeatedly molested, and physically abused, and emotionally and verbally and then financially and then technologically - and oh also chemically with forced Zoloft - and I'm still alive, and you're still scared, 'cause you're sad. And I'm sad too - the difference is that I've processed it, and I do other things with it..instead of directly abusing people. And what must it be like to be more scared? Because you know the longer this goes on, the worse it's all gonna be when it comes out for you. And knowing my Torah portion was about forgiving my brothers - wow. I mean, you're forgiven, and also - fuck off, forever."

• "Thank you more than words for your time and attention researching.
• All accurate in the current form, except there was no lawyer connected to the “I’ll give you rent and physical therapy money if you go back on Zoloft”"

• "The house offer came after a year and half of no contact.
• Also after both: 1) starting sex work virtually and in person for survival, and 2) speaking out online.
• The offer came connected to a lawyer, and I was told it was so I could not sell the house."

• "I asked for money and resources to be given to our Dad numerous times before he died."

• "Because my parents were still legally married, though separated, my mother was able to block my Dad’s wish and signature to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401k. I had quit the job I was working because of my Achilles and PCOS, while mid-paperwork to receive this money."

• "I had only fuzzy memories of sexual abuse until I went no contact, because of the emotional and financial and other abuses. I was unpacking my own sexual health, both by myself and in therapy, since 2012. Attempting to understand experiences like mid-sex projectile vomiting."

• "I also lost my period for 13 months from 2018-2019, after stopping Zoloft and hormonal birth control, and from various old disordered eating habits."

• "I was given some rent money for a few months in LA before moving back to Big Island for a work trade.
• We made a plan with the family therapist (we did two sessions with) for Sam and my mother to help with my basic needs while I was sick. That plan was not followed."

• "That financial “help” became inconsistent and/or attached to strings. It would be less than the amount agreed on with the therapist, late for me to actually pay rent so I had to keep asked repeatedly, etc"

• Alternate link
• 32:07 -- Annie's passport got stolen in the mail
• 32:48
  • Annie: "When I started the podcast, before I did sex work or any other things that increased shadowbanning, I had shadowbanning immediately, and I had podcast ratings get deleted when it {the podcast} was called 'True Shit' right when I started it. And I could not get through to a real person."
  • Remmelt: "And you don't even know why. You can suspect why, but..."
  • Annie: "Oh yeah. I have all of my theories, and I have emails. I got some emails back and forth with Apple Podcasts about it. There wasn't a phone number, ther wasn't any way I could have the real accountability of, 'Hey, I have this teeny podcast, it's only a few motnhs old, and I'm having a third or more of the ratings get deleted, and I don't underertand why.' And that makes it obviously challenging to grow a podcast.'" 

• "I have experienced drama like the OpenAI drama — I grew up in it. I was repeatedly told “not to talk about it,” and to allow another person to remove my human agency.
• I have lived under my sibling’s authority my whole life.
• The narrative of “Annie is crazy” and “Annie doesn’t know how to take care of herself” is what I was raised and conditioned in. That narrative, along with intentionally conditional love, is what was used to control me my whole life.
• When I went “no contact,” I learned even more about the control he wielded. It’s not just me, it’s his social and professional circles also. It’s terrifying how many people have told me privately they support me, but are terrified to speak publicly on my behalf.
• Since going no contact from my living relatives in 2020, my literal and virtual life continue to be extremely restricted. I’ve had multiple accounts get hacked. My podcast ratings and YouTube views seemed to be removed. My presence seems difficult to find on Google. I am not sure how this is happening, and I don’t have the resources to investigate further. At one point recently a high school faculty member, from our same school, spoke with me and attempted to convince me to break no contact.
• Going no contact was far from an easy decision.
• I attempted every other possibility, including family therapy in early 2020. After two sessions together with my mother and brother, my therapist privately advised me that no contact was my best option, which I resisted for another four months. During this time, I was managing PCOS (several ovarian cysts) and repeat Achilles tendinopathy that severely limited my walking and normal movement abilities. I was also grieving our Dad who died in May 2018.
• I quit a job because of being notified of money left to me from my Dad, and made a plan to take six months to heal my body. I notified my relatives of my health and my plan. While in the paperwork process, I was notified that the money was withheld from me until I’m in my 60s. Though separated, my parents were still legally married and so my mother had the “surviving spouse” option to ignore Dad’s wish to make me the primary beneficiary of his 401K.
• Dad had a known heart condition, but still had to work full time until his death in 2018. Dad was very involved in affordable housing and reconstruction of historic buildings in St. Louis City. I had asked my sibling for years to give our Dad the financial help to stop working. Dad openly expressed his dream to retire in Costa Rica.
• Jerry Altman died of a heart attack at age 67, without the dream his son could have fulfilled.
• While still very physically ill and simultaneously managing intense and horrific flashbacks from PTSD, I began in person sex work in late 2020. I was unable to fully financially support myself with the virtual sex work I had already started, and with unemployment benefits from California. I applied for unemployment in 2020, at first not wanting to apply and “clog up” the process, because of my millionaire relatives I naively assumed would help me, and then was delayed in receiving benefits due to identity theft.
• I was too physically ill with PCOS (several ovarian cysts) and repeat Achilles tendinopathy that severely limited my walking and normal movement abilities to work a standing job, and too mentally ill with daily flashbacks to do computer work.
• I also desperately needed money for physical therapy so I could become healthier and support myself in the future. I felt like a zombie getting through every day while budgeting how much labor my body and brain could manage.
• My sibling offered to buy me a home in 2021, reaching out with seemingly kind words after a year and half of no contact. We spoke on the phone three times, and through these conversations I began to suspect the offer was another attempt at control. It seemed I would never have direct ownership of the house. Also, given the nature of my PTSD flashbacks, the house felt like an unsafe place to actually heal my mind and body.
• With regard to the current situation at OpenAI (and with tech in general), I feel the drama is a red herring.
• The best case scenario is middle school-style interpersonal drama, with much higher money and power stakes. The worst case scenario is a distraction from something(s) that are more dangerous.
• Calling employees in the middle of night to secure their public display of loyalty seems like cultish hazing.
• Given my belief that “how you do anything is how you do everything”, and given the power of the technological revolution, I am concerned with where and how that power is being inequitably distributed. I am also concerned about who will benefit from that power, and in what ways.
• I would love to see and support technology being used to equitably distribute basic human resources, which is far different from its current use.
• My intention in sharing my story is to share my most personal and human truth, and to heal. In my own sharing, I wish to encourage others to find their truth and their healing.
• I seek sovereignty for myself, and for child-me who was told to stay quiet about other people’s secrets — even when it made me physically ill.
• I aim to give others the information of my story, while healing my own pains. My wish is to help others find their personal truth and healing from their pains — we’re all human.
• We all advance as humans when we all tell our story.
• Love,
• Annie"

• "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman snapped up a $43 million estate in Hawaii in 2021, adding to his impressive real-estate portfolio."
• "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman owns multimillion-dollar properties in San Francisco, Napa, and Hawaii."
• "Altman, fired then reinstated as OpenAI's CEO this month, has tried to keep a relatively low profile."
• "When Business Insider set out to catalog his assets, we found a previously unknown giant estate."
• "Years before the recent drama at OpenAI turned CEO Sam Altman into a household name, the former Y Combinator president went on an extraordinary 18-month, $85 million real-estate shopping spree, according to records reviewed by Business Insider — including a previously unreported $43 million Hawaii estate on land that locals describe as historically significant."
• "The purchases, which also include multimillion-dollar residences in San Francisco and Napa, California, took place between early 2020 and mid-2021, when Altman was ginning up support for his eyeball-scanning crypto startup, Worldcoin, and releasing OpenAI products in private beta, BI's review of business and real-estate filings found."
• "A spokesperson for Altman declined to comment."
• "Earlier this year, Altman seemed to take a subtle dig at his fellow tech executives for amassing too much wealth."
• ""This concept of having enough money is not something that is easy to get across to other people," Altman said at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco."
• "But as Altman's wealth has grown, he's become increasingly removed from the daily life of the non-ultra-ultra-rich. His mother told The Wall Street Journal in March that Altman hadn't been to a grocery store in four or five years. In 2021, he hired his cousin to manage his family office."
• "In July 2021, Altman bought a 12-bedroom estate in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, for $43 million. Judging by listing photos, the property has a private inlet and several houses. The estate is adjacent to a national landmark {Kamakahonu (here's its Wikipedia page)} a reconstruction of the royal temple of King Kamehameha I, the first ruler of the unified Hawaiian islands."
  • "A second video highlighted the estate's adventurous amenities, including cliff jumping, motorboating, wakesurfing, Jet Ski-ing, and scuba diving. A person who worked on the second video said the intent was to produce something that friends and family could watch to remember their trips to the residence. (Both videos were removed from YouTube after BI requested comment for this article.)"
• "Altman's purchase of the Hawaii property has not been previously reported. BI linked the property to Altman by examining business and real-estate filings showing the land was owned by an LLC managed by Jennifer Serralta, whose name appears as a manager on paperwork for other businesses known to be owned by Altman. Serralta, who previously worked in the automotive industry, describes herself on LinkedIn as the chief operating officer of a family office — presumably Altman's — and is his cousin, according to an obituary for their grandmother. Reached by phone, Serralta declined to comment."
• "In a March post on her personal blog, Serralta wrote that she stayed at a Kailua-Kona property owned by "a friend" while vacationing in Hawaii. Last year, Altman tweeted a photo of himself wakesurfing in Hawaii; the view of the Big Island in the background of the photo precisely matches the view from the Kailua-Kona compound."
  • The Tweet referenced:

    • [SA22a] https://x.com/sama/status/1512111914939154434 -- posted on April 7, 2022

      • "wake surfing but otherwise exactly that!"

• 

   

  • Here's where I think Sam is in the wake surfing picture, just from visual estimates moving around to different Google Street View Images on Google Maps (with the little orange dude you can drag-and-drop around) near Kamakahonu:
    • 3d view #1:

• 3d view #2:

• 3d view #3 (aerial/drone shot)

• 3d view #4:

• This matches up with:
  • how the background/landscape looks in Sam's wake surfing photo
  • the location of Kamakahonu
  • what Business Insider wrote
• "Altman has one family connection to Hawaii: His youngest sibling, Annie Altman, has lived on the islands on and off since 2017. Annie Altman, an artist and entertainer who has supported herself through in-person and virtual sex work, lives a much-different life from her brother's. Annie is teetering on financial insolvency, she told BI, after a lengthy stretch of illnesses. She has not spoken with her brother since 2021, when she refused his offer to buy her a home after learning that a lawyer would control the property, she said.
  She had been unaware that her oldest brother owned property in Hawaii until BI asked her about it, she said."
• Sam also bought:
  • a $27 million home in San Francisco, which "is the home base for a number of Altman's investment vehicles, according to business and Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including the venture firm Apollo Projects, 9Point Ventures, and Uncommon Ventures. In recent weeks, the property functioned as a war room for Altman and his closest allies as he planned his return to OpenAI."
    • The home includes a wellness center, "cantilevered infinity pool", and an underground garage with a "car turntable"
  • a $15.7 million, 950-acre ranch in Napa, with five homes and vineyards
  • "Several Altman companies are or have been registered to the address, including the opaquely named Project 2024 LLC, as well as another Altman venture firm, Hydrazine Capital."
  • a "big patch of land" in Big Sur

• (32:28-33:49) Sam: "AGI and my family are the two main things I care about, so losing one of those is like...so yeah I mean it was just like unbelievably painful. The only comparable set of life experience that I had, and that one was of course much worse, was when my dad died. And that was like a very sudden thing. But the sense of like confusion and loss...in that case, I felt like I had a little bit of time to just like feel it all. But then there was so much to do. Like it was like so unexpected that I had to pick up the pieces of his life for a little while. And it wasn't until, like, a week after that I really got a moment to just, like, catch my breath and be like, holy shit, like, I can't believe this happened. So yeah, that was much worse."

• "Altman’s firing and swift reversal of fortune followed a pattern in his career, which began when he dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 and gained the reputation as a Silicon Valley visionary. Over the past two decades, Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies."
• "A group of senior employees at Altman’s first startup, Loopt—a location-based social-media network started in the flip-phone era—twice urged board members to fire him as CEO over what they described as deceptive and chaotic behavior, said people familiar with the matter. But the board, with support from investors at venture-capital firm Sequoia, kept Altman until Loopt was sold in 2012."
• "In 2019, Altman was asked to resign from Y Combinator after partners alleged he had put personal projects, including OpenAI, ahead of his duties as president, said people familiar with the matter."
• "This fall, Altman also faced a crisis of trust at OpenAI, the company he navigated to the front of the artificial-intelligence field. In early October {2023}, OpenAI’s chief scientist {Ilya Sutskever} approached some fellow board members to recommend Altman be fired, citing roughly 20 examples of when he believed Altman misled OpenAI executives over the years. That set off weeks of closed-door talks, ending with Altman’s surprise ouster days before Thanksgiving."
• "This article is based on interviews with dozens of executives, engineers, current and former employees and friends of Altman’s, as well as investors."
• "A few years after {Loopt's} launch, some Loopt executives voiced frustration with Altman’s management. There were complaints about Altman pursuing side projects, at one point diverting engineers to work on a gay dating app, which they felt came at the expense of the company’s main work."
• "Senior executives approached the board with concerns that Altman at times failed to tell the truth—sometimes about matters so insignificant one person described them as paper cuts. At one point, they threatened to leave the company if he wasn’t removed as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. The board backed Altman."
• "“If he imagines something to be true, it sort of becomes true in his head,” said Mark Jacobstein, co-founder of Jimini Health who served as Loopt’s chief operating officer. “That is an extraordinary trait for entrepreneurs who want to do super ambitious things. It may or may not lead one to stretch, and that can make people uncomfortable.”"
• "Altman doesn’t recall employee complaints beyond the normal annual CEO review process, according to people familiar with his thinking."
• "Michael Moritz, who led Sequoia, personally advised Altman. When Loopt struggled to find buyers, Moritz helped engineer an acquisition by another Sequoia-backed company, the financial technology firm Green Dot."
• "Altman turned Y Combinator into an investing powerhouse. While serving as the president, he kept his own venture-capital firm, Hydrazine, which he launched in 2012. He caused tensions after barring other partners at Y Combinator from running their own funds, including the current chief executive, Garry Tan, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Tan and Ohanian didn’t respond to requests for comment."
• "Altman also expanded Y Combinator through a nonprofit he created called YC Research, which served as an incubator for Altman’s own projects, including OpenAI. From its founding in 2015, YC Research operated without the involvement of the firm’s longtime partners, fueling their concern that Altman was straying too far from running the firm’s core business."
• "By early 2018, Altman was barely present at Y Combinator’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., spending more time at OpenAI, at the time a small research nonprofit, according to people familiar with the matter."
• "The increasing amount of time Altman spent at OpenAI riled longtime partners at Y Combinator, who began losing faith in him as a leader. The firm’s leaders asked him to resign, and he left as president in March 2019."
• "Graham said it was his wife’s doing. “If anyone ‘fired’ Sam, it was Jessica, not me,” he said. “But it would be wrong to use the word ‘fired’ because he agreed immediately.”
• "Jessica Livingston said her husband was correct."
• "To smooth his exit, Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm’s website announcing the change. But the firm’s partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post."
• "For years, even some of Altman’s closest associates—including Peter Thiel, Altman’s first backer for Hydrazine—didn’t know the circumstances behind Altman’s departure."
• "As the company grew, management complaints about Altman surfaced."
• "In early fall this year, Sutskever, also a board member, was upset because Altman had elevated another AI researcher, Jakub Pachocki, to director of research, according to people familiar with the matter."
• "Sutskever told his board colleagues that the episode reflected a long-running pattern of Altman’s tendency to pit employees against one another or promise resources and responsibilities to two different executives at the same time, yielding conflicts, according to people familiar with the matter."
• "Other board members already had concerns about Altman’s management. Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand Corp., tried to cultivate relationships with employees as a board member. Past board members chatted regularly with OpenAI executives without informing Altman. Yet during the pandemic, Altman told McCauley he needed to be told if the board spoke to employees, a request that some on the board viewed as Altman limiting the board’s power, people familiar with the matter said."
• "Around the time Sutskever aired his complaints, the independent board members heard similar concerns from some senior OpenAI executives, people familiar with the discussions said. Some considered leaving the company over Altman’s leadership, the people said."
• "Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported."
• "Altman also misled board members, leaving the impression with one board member that another wanted board member Helen Toner removed, even though it wasn’t true, according to people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported."

• "Hello mother’s-lawyer,
• Contrary to your email here, my-short-term-lawyer shared with me that my Father’s Trust has been funded before my mother’s death.
• As I turned 30 this January, I am considering requesting the funds for which my Father’s Trust was established per my Father’s wishes, according to my understanding of my Father’s Will.
• Before I do so, I would like to know the following information:
  • How much was the Trust funded for, and when exactly?
  • Please send details of all assets and all information about the Trust. My-short-term-lawyer mentioned Hydrazine, a fund of my siblings’, and one of my Dad’s buildings with my-Dad’s-old-boss?
  • Please send all documentation you have concerning the Trust, including but not limited to: documents and numbers related to the institution holding the Trust, the trustees, and communication regarding how the trust was funded.
  • Have there been any divisions of the Trust? Please send any information if yes.
  • Please send all documents related in any way to the Trust that I may not be aware of at this point.
  • Why was the funding of the Trust delayed? Why was the Trust funded now after you previously said it couldn’t be funded?
  • My-short-term-lawyer (cc’d), who you spoke with about getting the Trust funded, let me know you said my next step was to “make an ask of the Trust with a monthly budget.” Will you please point to where in the Trust it specifies that stipulation?
  • The Trust mentions different stipulations for different ages, and my 30th birthday was in January. Why was I not contacted about the potential to request a non-prejudicial lump sum in accordance with my Father’s wishes?
• As you may also know, I quit my job in 2019 a year after my Father’s death, understanding that I was the primary beneficiary of my Father’s 401K. I planned to take my time away from work to focus on my health, which had declined severely in my mid-20s. My relatives are aware of my repeated tendinopathy, three times in a walking boot for the same ankle, and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I did not receive any such funding, and as a result, my health and well-being have continued to suffer — in direct contradiction to the stipulations in my Father’s Will. The Trust makes it clear that my Dad’s wish was for me to have been supported in these six years since his death. In the absence of the support intended for me in my Dad’s Trust, I’ve experienced two and a half years of houseless and homelessness and daily PTSD flashbacks, and I’ve had to resort to survival sex work to support myself financially while still navigating physical illnesses.
• Please send your confirmation of receipt of this email within 24 hours, and all requested documentation and answers, within 10 business days.
• Thank you,
• Annie"

• "Promise you it’s not something I ever thought I’d start.
• In 2019, while living in LA, I got diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. PCOS is a diagnosis of elimination, and/or “oh hey this ultrasound shows a cyst on your ovary.” Around the same time, I went into a walking boot for my Achilles for the third time in eight years. The first time was Achilles tendinopathy and a bone spur, the second time was plain old Achilles tendinopathy, and this third time was now both Achilles and posterior tibial tendinopathy.
• I got my fourth or fifth tonsillitis in there too, to round things out, or something.
• I had quit a job at a dispensary in the summer of 2019, while in the paperwork process about being the primary beneficiary of my Father’s 401K. My Dad died in May 2018, and access to his Will was withheld from me by my mother and three older siblings for an entire year. The 401K situation, a year after his death, motivated me to finally demand access to my Dad’s Will and other information.
• When notified by the company about my Dad’s 401K, while sitting at a reception desk because I could no longer do the standing shifts, I was both relieved for the help and shocked that information about my Dad would be hidden from me. Especially shocked because my relatives knew about my various physical illnesses and need for financial support.
• All three of my siblings and my mother, all wealthy, had seen the Will the entire time. I told them all about my health challenges, about the money I was receiving from Dad, and about my six month plan to work on my podcast and music and one human show, seated creative projects that would help me as I healed my tendons and hormones and digestion and grief.
• I naively trusted these relatives. I figured the worst case scenario was not being able to monetize my art projects. I accepted this potential worst case because working on my projects would still help me rest my ankle, by giving me a creative outlet other than dancing and yoga, which my health impacted my abilities to continue. I had first gone to the Big Island of Hawai’i in 2017 for yoga teacher training, and then moved back there and taught yoga. (Seems like a place to note that I paid for training, and if I had gone to medical school like was tracked for me it would have been paid for by my relatives.) My relatives knew how important yoga and dance were and are to me, and mocked my interest aside from one singular time two of them took a yoga class taught by me.
• I was very wrong about the potential worst case. Said 401K money from my Dad withheld from me by millionaire relatives, who knew I was sick. I went back to an old job I worked in the Bay Area, and was selling produce boxes with Farm Fresh to You. I was wearing the walking boot I attempted to avoid my third time needing. I was sweating through my sheets almost nightly, and was doing bloodwork and other exams to search for potential thyroid or other PCOS-related conditions. I began selling furniture and clothes, and the microphones I had been using for podcasts and music, so I could afford rent and food.
• In December 2019, after being told “no” for the financial support I asked for the first time ever, I went on SeekingArrangements. Living in LA, I had no idea what I was getting into with that site, which is for sugar dating and escorting. I didn’t meet up with anyone in person in LA, though I did have a couple video chats. I remember the first time a man sent me a Zelle for a video call where I flashed him my boobs — a Zelle that got my account out of the negative. I also remember a man yelling at me through the phone about saying no to coming over for $300 because “WELL HAVEN’T YOU DONE IT FOR FREE A BUNCH!” I was horrified, and felt like the sex work industry was probably “too much” for me. Being scared of what felt like “plan Z” was scary in itself.
• In the beginning of 2020 I did two family therapy sessions. I sat in my therapist’s office, in my walking boot and hormonal sweat, with my oldest sibling there in person holding his phone with our mother on FaceTime. The woman who bore me told the therapist that it would be “best for Annie’s mental health if she fully financially supported herself,” and my multi-millionaire sibling agreed.
• The therapist was utterly shocked, I was only half-surprised.
• Perhaps with her highlighting that I never asked them for financial help until very ill, and it still being so early in grieving our Dad, and with her highlighting their enormous wealth, the therapist somehow persuaded them to give short-term help for my basic needs.
• Again I was wrong about a potential worst case scenario. My mom and my brother didn’t honor the therapist’s plan for six months of financial support, and my rent money was late or less-than-agreed or had-to-be-groveled-for. So in May 2020 I moved back to the Big Island of Hawai’i, where I had lived before living in LA. This was my plan Y — find a low-labor work trade.
• I found a farm with a potential for a work trade, and despite being only a couple months out of the walking boot felt it was overall more healing than staying in a studio apartment I may or may not have enough rent money for, across from a park that was taped off due to Covid restrictions. When I notified one of my siblings of finding a farm work trade, he notified the rest of the relatives who group messaged me they would not be providing any of the final month of support agreed on with the therapist.
• I had planned to use the rent money for food.
• While work-trading on a rural farm, my oldest sibling messaged me asking where to send my diamond made from our Father’s ashes. My Father never asked to become a diamond. I never sent my sibling the farm address. The mailbox was open, in a cluster of mailboxes in the middle of nowhere on the island. Plus, the most financially reasonable thing for me to have done with a diamond at that point was to pawn it for food money — and my sibling was aware.
• I decided to go full no contact with my relatives. The family therapist we spoke with recommended I consider this more seriously, after telling me she could not professionally recommend doing more group sessions. She was not the first therapist to tell me to go no contact. Withholding the final month of a six month plan for basic life support, while I was very sick, while withholding money left to me from my Dad, while offering a diamond Dad didn’t ask to become to be sent to a rural mailbox, was my final straw to begin grieving all three of my siblings and my mother. A completely different and similar grieving process as grieving my Dad.
• The distinctions between “family” and “relatives” became more clear everyday.
• After a couple months, I had to stop work trading on the farm because of my ankle again. Even small plantings and weeding was too much. One of the owners of the farm kindly and graciously found computer work for him for me to do seated, which gave me more time while I scrambled with my legs up the wall in constant ankle and knee pain. I had both an Etsy Shop and Patreon for my podcast, though they didn’t make enough to even cover my phone bill.
• Still unsure how to rest and heal my body, I found a room rental in town and started OnlyFans. I applied for EBT food stamps and Medicaid, which felt so surreal while sharing DNA with millionaires. I had also applied for unemployment in California in April 2020, as at first I didn’t want to clog up the system for people who weren’t directly related to millionaires who could help them. I was one of the millions who had identity theft on their unemployment, and so had to go through paperwork and hearings for it to finally come through in November 2020.
• So back to September 2020, starting OnlyFans. I started very softcore, for all sorts of reasons. I was uncomfortable showing much of my body, both because of a history of eating disorders and body dysmorphia and because my body was physically hurting in so many ways. I enjoyed parts of posting, and being front-facing about it all. Sharing pictures and videos on my own terms felt healing for years of insecurities with my body and sexuality and preferences, like exposure therapy for all my conditioning to hide. It felt like a very specific art therapy project. I was confused about liking parts of something that was a plan Z last resort.
• I was still too sick to teach yoga. I had considered and attempted various mindless computer jobs, and found myself completely incapable. After going no contact because of financial and emotional abuse, I was flooded with memories of sexual abuse I had repressed.
• I had flashbacks of the sexual and physical abuses my whole life, though it wasn’t until the silence of no contact that I had the space to connect the dots. In college and after, I had projectile vomited multiple times during sex with men I loved and trusted. I remember talking about this and related things with therapists, unable to wrap my mind around how violently my body had responded.
• Now, literally on my ass from tendon and nerve and hormonal and digestive and ovarian cyst pain, I had a lot of time to remember the flashbacks’ details.
• While deep in my own tendon and hormone and trauma healing, I turned to escorting. Most of my emotional and thought space was on various sexual healings of my own, so extending it to include others felt less intimidating. My days were hazes of PTSD flashbacks with whatever grounding exercises I could do, whatever floor yoga and stretching I could do, and physical therapy. I had to budget basic things like grocery trips based on how much I could walk or carry. I couldn’t carry heavy things or go on long walks, and could manage even shorter beach walks because of the uneven surface. I was constantly stressing about my health and money, and feeling hopeless and powerless. Being sick is very expensive, and also a very challenging state to be in attempting to make money.
• My ankle and knee and hips would hurt extra some days, and it wasn’t for another year when I was referred to a pelvic floor physical therapist that I knew I was also managing nerve pain.
• I decided to get on SeekingArrangements again, now living on Maui. My disabilities and desperation made me more open to navigate the website, and I figured it would be very different than in LA. It was different, though I was still resistant to actually meet anyone in person.
• I had two adulthood sexual assaults while living on Maui that triggered more flashbacks. I’m grateful for those assaults in a fucked up way, for the clarities they gifted me. Half awake feeling unequivocally, “I’ve experienced exactly this before.” Though I was more set back emotionally and financially, managing even more flashbacks of old memories flooding in and incapacitating me. So I took the plunge to meet someone in person.
• The first client I ever had was in an open relationship, where his partner gave him permission for “paid play partners” that she approved of. We met on video chat, then I met him for coffee, then a few days later he was at my place. We talked, we fucked, he sent me a Venmo, he left.
• I logged on my computer and paid a bill I was behind on, immediately.
• My last escorting experience was with a man who was experimenting with his queerness, and wanted me to bring another man in. I invited a filming partner, as I had started making hardcore porn on OnlyFans and PornHub at that point. Before the filming partner came over, the client said “I’m so gay!” — while his dick was in my mouth between words of the dick about to be in his mouth — followed by “omg I’ve never said that before” and a distant stare. I felt that stare, back to a stare I’d experienced decades ago.
• In the shower after I prayed that would be my last experience in person, and I could switch to all virtual. I knew an article would be coming out soon quoting me in New York Magazine, and I prayed it would give me the exposure to support myself with OnlyFans.
• Then maybe I could give energy to my podcast and writing and singing and teaching yoga again, too.
• Who knows how much financial freedom I could have had from online work outside of the sex industry without the various technological blocks I’ve experienced.
• I had podcast ratings get deleted, and my personal home wifi repeatedly hacked, and more, before I ever started sex work. I learned even more about shadow-banning and more since starting sex work, as that community is the most targeted demographic. I also learned that sex work triggers tech companies because it is so powerful — sex work proliferates the internet and all technology, and perhaps all companies at their base. “The oldest profession.”
• I survived sickness because of survival sex work.
• Escorting: I’m not at all glad that it happened; I am grateful."

• "One time I found a $500k watch at my oldest siblings’ place, casually in an open kitchen cabinet. Another sibling told me how much the watch was, and then got bullied for disclosing to me. I asked why our 60-something Dad (with heart conditions) was making rent and car payments."
• "Surely retiring the father you claimed closeness with was more valuable than a watch????????"
• "If our Dad had his needs taken care of, I would have supported multiple fancy watches"

• "#rememberjerryaltman ❤️"
• "Jerry Altman died in 2018 of a heart attack, at the age of 67. He was working overtime, with known heart conditions.
• The dream he expressed to retire in Costa Rica was never fulfilled by his millionaire son, who could have retired our father that he claimed to love."

• 

• "What would have been our last family trip, I chose not to go for various reasons. I asked our Dad to be given a check for whatever would have been spent on my fancy plane ticket and accommodations. Dad didn’t ever tell me about getting money from Sam, and got quiet about his Costa Rica dream"

• "*one year after full no contact, year and half after the two sessions with the LMFT"
  • Note: I believe LMFT stands for Licensed Marriage Family Therapist, a therapist that "offer{s} expert guidance to individuals, couples, and families experiencing complex relationship-based issues" (source)

• Note: in the link I provided, there's a transcript. The transcript has this feature where it highlights the current word being spoken, with the idea being that you can "follow along" reading the transcript while you're listening to the podcast. Unfortunately, the feature is broken. I think this is due to the inclusion of some ads/commercials at various points throughout the podcast, which create a mismatch between the transcript and the audio.) Specifically, the word highlighted in the transcript is usually a few minutes later than the actual audio.
  • Example from OpenAI Part 1: The Most Silicon Valley Man Alive:

    • 

• Ellen Huet: "For this season, you'll hear reporting done by me and my colleagues at Bloomberg who have been covering AI during the boom of the last few years. We interviewed some of the leading minds in AI to try to cut through the hype and understand the debate about whether AI will be a tool to improve human existence or to extinguish it. But this is also the story of Sam, the man at the center of it all, and we spoke with Sam's friends, family, and collaborators to demystify him and how he rose to power. This first episode is all about how Sam got here. He's a man who has always understood the importance of being in the right room at the right time, with exactly the right few people. The full story of Sam's rise is important because understanding who he is and what he believes will shed light on an urgent question should we trust this man to oversee this technology? In the summer of twenty twenty three, about five months before he was fired, my colleague Emily Chang asked him this exact question at a Bloomberg conference..."
  • Note: I've tried to fix any typos in the transcript, but there may still be some I've missed.
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "To get a better sense of the kind of person Sam is and how he got where he is now. I want to take you back to his adolescence. Sam had a privileged upbringing in Saint Louis. He's the oldest of four siblings. His mom was a dermatologist and his dad was a real estate developer. He attended a private high school called John Burrows. There's an anecdote about him from that period that sticks out. When some students wanted to boycott an assembly about sexuality, Sam stood up in front of the whole school and announced he was gay. It's a pretty gutsy move for a teenager in the early two thousands, and unsurprisingly, Sam was smart.
• Andy Abbot: "And generally Sam he was. He was an exceptional student, He was an exceptional writer, he was an exceptional big personality."
• Ellen Huet: "That's Andy Abbott. He was one of Sam's English teachers, and he's now the head of school. And this is a pretty nerdy school where it's cool to get good grades and be a high achiever. And even in that environment, Sam stood out."
• Andy Abbot: "Sam's just a really natural leader, incredibly charismatic, curious guy. He's atypical you know. He was the editor of the yearbook and he represented the school in the Model United Nations. He designed our website, you know, before we hired people to do our website. He could just do that stuff.
• Ellen Huet: "Sam even played water polo."
• Andy Abbot: "He was pretty good {laughs.} I'm not a connoisseur, but I'm like, he was pretty good."
• Ellen Huet: "He remembers Sam as being really confident, and apparently for good reason. Sounds like Sam was just this exceptional kid."
• Andy Abbot: "Well, he's the smartest guy in the room, and he's charismatic. I remember thinking, and I'm just this is just an embarrassing confession. I hope he doesn't go into technology. He's so creative and he's so, he's such a good writer, and I hoped he would be an author or something like that. And I mean, nobody could have anticipated the magnitude of open Ai, but everybody knew that this guy's better at most things than most of us are."
• Ellen Huet: "This speaks to a pattern that'll become a crucial factor in Sam's career. He's very good at impressing people, especially the right people, older people, people with influence, people who are at a position to help him. Someone who knows Sam says his superpower is figuring out who's in charge and charming them."
• Ellen Huet: "So we have young Sam. Even though he was a teenager, he acted like someone older with more agency and confidence. Adults found this quality of his admirable, and he acted like this toward his three younger siblings too. In a big New Yorker profile on Sam, his younger brother said that as kids, they used to play a board game called Samurai, and Sam always won because he declared himself the leader and said, I have to win and I'm in charge of everything. When Sam's brother told this story, it was a jocular exchange. But Annie, their youngest sibling and only sister, sees it differently. These days, she's estranged from Sam and the rest of her immediate family, but when she was a kid, she remembered that same quality of Sam's wanting to be in charge, and to her it wasn't funny, it was domineering."
• Annie Altman: "From my perspective, with the 9 year age difference, he very much wanted to be, and acted like, the third parent, and like being the older sibling in charge, in control."
• Ellen Huet: "For instance, even though the family was Jewish, they used to get a Christmas tree until Sam put his foot down."
• Annie Altman: "I don't have memories of Christmas tree because when Sam got bar mitzvah'd at 13, he decided that we as a family unit were Jews and needed to no longer celebrate Christmas. There were no more Christmas trees."
• Ellen Huet: "When their dad passed away in 2018, Annie remembers that Sam dictated to each of his younger siblings how many minutes they could talk at the funeral.
• Annie Altman: "To be at your dad's funeral, to be like, oh, I'm the oldest sibling, so I get to choose how long all the sibling -- which, it is bizarre, and there's a level of it that's so hilarious and so benign, surface-level, classic older sibling bullshit where it's like, 'all right, older sibling wanting to make up the rules to the game.'" Like there's a level of it that's very light and funny -- and there's also a level of it that's very dark and deeply unsettling, of how does that behavior come up in other places if you believe that you get to be the authority on something that you are not the authority on."
• Ellen Huet: "A spokeswoman for OpenAI told us that Sam recalls these incidents differently, but she declined to elaborate."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "Sam started building the startup {Loopt} in 2005. The iPhone didn't exist yet, so Looped was trying to do this for flip phones and it was kind of hard to get traction. At one point early on, Sam's company was in a desperate situation. They really needed to get a deal with a mobile carrier. They learned that Boost Mobile, which was part of Sprint, was looking to add a location feature and needed a partner, but they were about to sign with someone else, so Sam flew down to Boost's headquarters in Irvine in southern California. When he tells the story, he says that he just showed up, waited outside the right executive's office, and asked for just ten minutes. Here's how that executive remembers it."
• Lowell Winer: "It's ever recall I got a phone call from Sam and he was in Irvine, and he said that he explained who he was and what Looped was somebody at Sprint had told him to get in touch with us."
• Ellen Huet: "That's Lowell Winer. He was at the time the head of business development for Boost. And he's going to tell a story that has a few asides, but that I think captures a lot about what Sam was like."
• Lowell Winer: "Early on, we were a day or two away from signing a contract with another startup that was further along than Looped. He asked to come by that day, you know, which is incredibly unusual, but given the timing that, you know, we were at the eleventh hour we were at to sign this contract. He had come, you know, referred to us by our parent company, it was worth at least a meeting. So Sam shows up at the office with one of one or two other guys from Loopt. We go sit in the conference room, you know, we share what we were looking to do. Sam started to share about Loopt. He was I think nineteen at the time, you know, I think maybe in cargo short sitting cross legged in a in a chair in the conference room and just kind of holding court."
• Ellen Huet: "I want to pause here for a second on this cargo shorts detail. For a lot of Sam's young life, he was a cargo shorts. Devotee wore them all the time. People kind of poked fun at him for it, to the point where he felt the need to address it on a podcast called Masters of Scale."
• Sam Altman: "Honestly, I don't think they're that ugly, and I find them incredibly convenient. Like I I, you can like put a lot of stuff like I like to. I'd still read paperback books. I like paperback books. I like to carry on around with me. I have like an iPhone seven plus, which is kind of like works really well in cargo pockets. I carry like computer chargers, cables. They're just like, you know, efficient. Why people care about that so much that I can't tell you."
• Ellen Huet: "That last comment? That's very Sam to remark that the things normal people might talk about don't make sense or aren't rational. It's like he has no patience for the things most of us might think are funny. He has more important things to think about anyway. Here he is a nineteen year old in a meeting with mobile network executives wearing cargo shorts, sitting cross legged in a conference room chair. Even though this encounter was almost twenty years ago, Lowell remembers vividly what Sam looked like in that moment, because it was such an odd picture.

• Ellen Huet (host of the podcast): "Today, we're going to start on a drive in Hawaii."
• Annie Altman: "We're on north Shore, going deeper into the jungle on the north shore, so we're passing twin falls right now.
• Ellen Huet: "I'm driving through the lush green forests of Maui. Annie Altman, Sam Altman's little sister is sitting in the passenger seat. You heard from her briefly in the first episode."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "We're taking a tour of the different places Annie has moved around in the last couple of years, driving down dirt roads to look at cabins and houses hidden behind enormous tropical plants."
• ..,
• Ellen Huet: "For much of the past two years, Annie hasn't been able to afford a stable place to live."
• Annie Altman: "The place you just passed is one of the places I stayed at longer-term in all of the houselessness...{I spent} two months on a newly-built, {with} no running water or no electricity, house, at the far end, back, of the property."
• Ellen Huet: "And I think she's an important part of Sam's story."
• Annie Altman: "And at the time I had nowhere to stay and no rent money, certainly no deposit money, and barely enough room, barely enough money for rent."
• Ellen Huet: "Recently, over the course of just a year, she moved twenty two times, and that's on average about twice a month. Sometimes she has stayed places for a week at a time, or even just a night or two. Some of them have been illegal rentals without running water. She says she's slept on floors and friends' houses. She stayed with strangers when she didn't have another option."
• ...
• Annie Altman: "The man who lived in the front house messaged me on Instagram, and I stayed in his kids' room the week that they weren't there, and then slept on the floor in the common room the week that the kids were there.
• Annie Altman: "I was houseless. I didn't have somewhere to go."
• Annie Altman: "I stayed in this cabin with the slanty roof right there for three months."
• {A podcast host}: "How many different places have you lived in that didn't have running water?"
• Annie: "Maybe five-ish? Five or six? I don't know."
• Ellen Huet: "Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in San Francisco, her brother Sam was having a spectacular year in 2023. The success of ChatGPT had launched OpenAI into the stratosphere. Sam was named CEO of the Year by Time magazine. He spent months flying around the globe talking to world leaders about AI."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "On stage, on podcasts and interviews, people kept turning to Sam for answers. They were asking him what our AI future would hold. In May of that year, he confidently suggested a future where no one is poor. It's an idea he's talked about for years, and the remarks show that his tune hasn't changed despite growing renown and wealth.
• Sam Altman: "One thing I think we all could agree on is that we just shouldn't have poverty in the world."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "It sounds wonderful, almost utopian. But Sam was saying on stage that everyone should have enough money, enough food, everyone should have a place to live, while his own sister was struggling with homelessness. I want to believe Sam's promises about abundance, but Annie's story complicates a lot of the things Sam has projected about the future."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "Sam is a savvy guy. As his profile has gotten bigger after he helped build the world's leading AI company, he has stopped saying things like AI will kill us all. Instead, he talks about how society will be profoundly changed, but overall it will be for the better. Since his newfound chat GPT fame, he has shifted toward presenting himself and by extension, open AI, as more middle of the road. Sam is allowed to change his views, but people have also so complain to me in private that Sam has a tendency to talk out of both sides of his mouth. He's good at telling people what they want to hear in that moment, so it's not surprising that if it's advantageous for him to seem more moderate, that he would start to sound that way."

• Ellen Huet: "What really strikes me is that Sam positions himself as the visionary behind this AI that might put us all out of work, and the visionary behind systems that will save us from that chaos. He's offering fixes to the problems that his own technology will create. Imagine a future where Sam Altman's company has invented AI so powerful that it upends the entire labor economy. We no longer work for money. Instead, we get monthly checks from Sam Altman's income distribution system. I can imagine that his intentions might be good, and that he wants to make a difference here. But what Sam's proposing is ending poverty through systems overseen by him, basically, and that's asking us to put a huge amount of trust in him. Remember, Sam is really good at gaining power. He has a deep drive to be in charge. His company has made promises about adhering to certain principles and then moved away from them. It brings me back to this question we asked in episode one, what I think is the key question of this series. Should we trust this person?"
• Ellen Huet: "Like we said earlier, there's a part of Sam's life that really complicates this image of him. It's the story of his little sister Annie. She says she lives in poverty. Sometimes she struggles with homelessness. She says she survives by doing sex work. Sam is pitching this dream future in which universal basic income will protect everyone who needs it. That sounds lovely in theory, but when it's held up next to Annie's messy, everyday reality, that promise starts to sound a bit hollow. Housing insecurity has defined Annie's life for the past few years. This is a complex and sensitive situation, so I wanted to hear from her myself."
• Annie Altman: "In my experience, it's not only hard to do anything when you are housing insecure, it is impossible. I haven't had a typical day in four years because of how much energy both physically like looking for places or doing things, or looking for jobs and emotionally goes into housing insecurity. It has been the single biggest energy output of my past year."
• Ellen Huet: "In person, Annie is upbeat and smiley. She has good suggestions for health food stores on Maui. She has the word love tattooed across her knuckles. She makes a podcast, Hello and Welcome to the Annie Altman Show All Humans or Human Podcast, and posts videos of her singing on YouTube."
• ...
• Ellen Huet: "Sometimes, I and to better understand her story, I want to rewind to her childhood. When we heard from Annie briefly in the first episode, she talked about Sam's domineering attitude within their family, how he dictated they wouldn't have Christmas trees and put himself in charge of how long each sibling could speak at their dad's funeral. Their family has three boys. Sam's the oldest, then Max, then Jack. Annie is the youngest, nine years younger than Sam and the only girl. Her brothers loved science, math, games, nerdy stuff. She was always the artistic, sensitive one. Even when they were children, she sometimes felt like the odd one out, and as they became adults, the bonds between the brothers tightened both personally and professionally. While Sam was running YC, Jack founded a software company that was funded by YC. Jack and Max also both worked with Sam, helping run his investment fund with money from Peter Teel. Then all three started another investment fund together in which they used Sam's personal wealth. The three brothers lived together in San Francisco, brothers, coworkers, roommates, a tight, messy knot of family, business and money. Annie, on the other hand, was not part of the Altman family brand. With each new step in her life, she seemed to veer farther away from the path she felt was expected of her. She completed pre med requirements, but decided not to pursue that further. She did improv classes, stand up comedy, yoga, teacher training. She said her dad was supportive of this turn away from a more traditional path. Her mom, who was a physician, was less excited."
• Annie Altman: "My siblings and mother were very judgmental about the shift and also very "This is just a phase." I was an am at total daddy's girl. With my mother, there was closeness only when I was doing what she wanted me to do, which is a story {that} sadly, I feel like a lot of people can relate to."
• Ellen Huet: "Just a note. We reached out to Sam, his siblings, and his mom for comment in this episode. His mom, Connie Gibstine, responded with this statement:"
• Connie Gibstine: "We love Annie and are very concerned about her well being. Over the years, we have offered her financial support and help and continue to offer it today. Navigating the balance between providing support without enabling self-destructive behavior for a family member with mental health struggles is extraordinarily difficult. We only want the best for Annie and hope everyone will treat her with compassion."
• Ellen Huet: "In 2018, Annie's father died suddenly of a heart attack, and the grief hit her {Annie} hard. Meanwhile, she also started dealing with some chronic health issues, including tendonitis in her ankle that made it difficult to do work that required standing. She quit her job. She was still mourning her dad. She had gotten some life insurance money after he died, but when that ran out a year later, she still found herself in a desperate financial situation. In order to pay rent, she started selling her furniture. She says she asked her family directly for money to pay rent and cover groceries."
• Annie Altman: "I asked my mother for help and she said no, And then {I} asked Sam and he was told to say no because of her {Connie} wanting him to say no, and he's a grown man in his thirties, {worth} millions of dollars."
• Ellen Huet: "Now, Sam and his family have given Annie money at times, but she says it always came with heavy conditions that made her nervous. At one point, Sam wanted her to get back on Zoloft, an antidepressant, which she had started as a teen but had stopped later on. She {Annie} forwarded me an email from Sam where he asked her to share her bank statements and to allow him and his mom to sit in on some of her therapy sessions in exchange for her rent and medical expenses being covered. She felt like it was his way of exerting leverage or power over her. Of course, Sam can spend his money as he pleases, but again, he's on stage espousing the virtues of universal basic income -- giving money away for free, unconditionally, -- and Annie says he didn't do the same here for her. There were times when I'd gone back and forth about what to include from Annie's story. It's a very personal, messy family situation, and I'll confess that on occasion I've doubted some unrelated things she's told me. But also, I've looked through corroborating emails and documents. We drove to a lot of places Annie lived, and I met people she lived with. So in late 2019, when she asked for help and says she was told no, she turned to something she considered a last resort. To make money, she started sex work. She made an account on a sugar daddy dating website where people trade money for companionship and often sex."
• Annie: "I was just...I was in a desperate place. I mean...people who have been in a position like this ever know that when you're in a place of selling furniture, you're in a desperate position of "I'm out options." This is a 'plan Z' I would not be doing this if plans 'A' through 'I' had worked out in any capacity."
• Ellen Huet: "The first thing she tried was video chatting with a middle-aged man. She flashed him on camera and he sent her money over Zelle. She posted videos on OnlyFans and PornHub. She also did in-person sex work for two years. She says she didn't want to, but it was the work that she was able to fit into her unpredictable schedule of dealing with her health issues. Her lack of stable income, led to a long period of housing insecurity. At times, she lived with sex work clients, or even with strangers from the internet. Her sex work contributed to her precarious housing. She didn't have pay stubs or regular income, which limited the kind of leases she could get. It felt like this interconnected web, exactly the kind of vicious cycle that something like universal basic income tries to break."
• Annie Altman: "If I had a security deposit in my bank account - {I} never would have lived with this man, not, not even a little bit of a chance, would I have lived with this man. There's some unhealthy sex work experiences, and I've also had very traumatizing experiences from in-person work that would not have happened if I had secure housing. I'm still in and, have been so long in, survival mode that it really shifts everything. It really shifts everything. Times when it's been really like...places...like staying just for a week and a half {somewhere} and then the floor for a week, and then someone's place for a night, and then a floor for a week - in those places of really moving that much in a short period of time, there's no - I had no energy for anything else. Really feeling a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that I have never experienced, ever."
• Ellen Huet: "It's not a clean cut situation. In twenty twenty two, Sam offered to buy Annie a house, but she says it wasn't going to be in her name, and the conditions made her uncomfortable."
• Annie Altman: "It became clear to me that it was not an offer for my house. It was an offer for a house of Sam's - or a lawyer of his - that I would be allowed to live in."
• Ellen Huet: "She felt like it was a throwback to Sam's attempts to get her on Zoloft and to peer into her bank statements, so she said no. I do want to pause on this because I know it may sound illogical. After all, it would have been a place to live. But from her point of view, Sam had exerted control over her throughout their lives, and this seemed like one more attempt to control her. During those conversations, she was clear with Sam about the hardships she had endured in the past couple of years."
• Annie Altman: "I told him over the series of those phone calls too, that I had started sex work, and distinctly remember when I first told him about doing sex work and he said, quote, 'Good.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Annie was stung, because she remembers that he didn't ask anything more about it. Like she was sharing something that was painful for her and he was blowing past it."
• Annie Altman: "To hear your little sister tell you she's doing something she doesn't want to do related to sex, and for the response to be 'Good.' So I was like, 'Oh, you're glad that I'm starting to post on OnlyFans. It sounds 'good' to you because I'm supporting myself, even if I'm telling you I'm doing this as a plan Z because I don't know what else to do.'"
• Ellen Huet: "A person close to Sam says that Sam remembers the conversation differently. Annie and Sam are mostly estranged. After that conversation, she kept living in Hawaii, struggling in obscurity. Meanwhile, Sam was ascendant. He was doing world tours. {He was} CEO of the year {in Time Magazine.} He officially became a billionaire. Most of the world had no idea Annie Altman existed, let alone that she was depending on OnlyFans for survival. But last fall, New York Magazine published a profile of Sam, and the journalist, Elizabeth Weil, interviewed Annie. The article was the first time a lot of people found out Sam even had a sister, myself included."
• Annie Altman: "Some of the trippiest messages I got from reporters, when that article first came out, were reporters who have watched every interview Sam has ever done, saying 'He's never mentioned a sister.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Annie worries that because she's basically invisible in Sam's public life life, especially compared to his tight relationship with his brothers, reporters won't take her story seriously."
• Annie Altman: "That they will then question my validity, or {be like} 'Oh, well, she's crazy. Maybe...he's just not talking about her because she's so mentally unstable, and so now let's recycle the 'Annie's crazy' narrative and 'This is why she can't be trusted', or 'We should just ignore her.'"
• Ellen Huet: "In the days leading up to the article coming out, New York Magazine reached out to Sam and his family and OpenAI for fact-checking and to confirm details. So Sam knew the story was going to mention Annie. And then the day before the article ran, something spurred Sam to make an unexpected move. He emailed Annie."
• Annie Altman: "And the night before it {the Elizabeth Weil article} came out was Yom Kippur --
• Ellen Huet: "-- the Jewish day of forgiveness --"
• Annie Altman: "Sam emailed me, 'no subject' and in all lowercase, and said, 'hi annie. in the spirit of it almost being yom kippur, i wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness for something. i should have kept sending you money without conditions even though our family had concerns; i was in a tough position of wanting to let mom drive decisions as the parent and seeing how much stress you were causing her (and also agreeing it would be better for everyone if you were  able to support yourself, and thinking that you needed medical help) and it being clear you just weren't really able to function very well. still, i made the wrong call and should just have just kept supporting you; i sincerely apologize. i hope you find peace.' There's no mention of this article that's coming out tomorrow, and there's no mention of the fact checking that he just went through."
• Ellen Huet: "Annie felt that the timing of this email was really telling. That for all this time, while Annie was staying in the background, Sam didn't feel any need to apologize. Then, just as she's about to exert a little bit of power over him, by complicating his image, he reaches out, and invokes their shared Jewish heritage to ask for forgiveness. I asked Annie how she felt about Sam speaking publicly about universal basic income and ending poverty when he hasn't done the same for her."
• Annie Altman: "It was a very big slap in the face. It feels embarrassing to be related to him. It's beyond depressing and heartbreaking and disappointing that someone who I thought had a different moral compass, or who I thought would be there for me when I needed someone and was really sick, wasn't...in the same way I'm gonna be grieving my dad for the rest of my life, I'm gonna be grieving Sam for the rest of my life. And the sadness of...of someone who saw me in a walking boot and didn't say, 'How can I help you.' It's why I use the term 'sibling' and not 'brother.'"
• Ellen Huet: "Even though Annie's story is really complicated, I think it's relevant to all of us. Because when Sam is going around talking about our AI future, he acknowledges that AI could take our jobs and upend society and money as we know it. And he says he'll come up with a solution for us: universal basic income. But, when he's faced with the messy reality of his own sister, suddenly it's not so simple. In public, he is literally saying that there shouldn't be poverty. {That} money will be given away to everyone. In private, when Annie asked for help, he didn't come through for her in the way she needed."

• "Hi @JBSchool!
• Why so much attention for my sibling who went there, and not for me? Wouldn’t be about donations, would it?
• Would love to see how much money you were given while I was navigating my Dad’s Trust being withheld, tendon/nerve/ovarian cyst pain, and homelessness - want to share?"

• 

• 

• "My siblings’ nickname for me was “Trash Can”
• Can 
  Cannie 
  The Can 
  Miss Can 
  Bad Baby Trash Can
• Didn’t fully grasp the meanness until I was working as a personal care attendant, and the nonverbal wheelchair bound client cut me out a magazine quote that said “YOU CAN!” and gave it me with genuine love ❤️"

• "My long term home was broken into one month after these tweets."

• 

• 

• Note: this is a Tweet reply to [AA24e].
• "My two most valuable items were left untouched."

• "To Jack {Altman} in 2020.
• I’m still curious how grown men allowed their mother to make their financial decisions, and not help their sister (when allowed to call me that) with groceries when I was very physically ill"

•  

  

  • "Okay, I'll text her. I'd like to change the arrangement somehow to involve less checking in, as I'm in agreement with your and (especially) Sam's request for us to take more space. I'd like us to please talk in the future, Sam more too, about why she is able to make any of your financial decisions"

• "For context: Connie (biological mother) kicked me off her health insurance less than three months after Dad died, when I was 24 and could have stayed on her work one for two more years"

• My note: I'm pretty sure this Tweet from Annie is directed at her mother, Connie.
• "You birthed me and raised me, abused me and let others abuse me. Sure you know me well, and I know your bullshit just as well, thanks.
• Haven’t talked with you in over four years, and my PTSD is the best it’s ever been. Please thank your mom for me, for reprimanding you for neglecting me."
  • My note: I think Connie's mom was Marjori Mae “Peggy” Francis Gibstine, based on her obiturary.

• "Can you imagine how much more I’ll scare them now that I’m getting my tendon/nerve/ovaries cared for, not sucking dick for rent money while my Dad’s Trust was completely withheld, and learning it’s safe and allowed for me to share my story on my terms 🥰"

• "If the multiverse is real, I'd love to meet the version of me who did run away to the circus at 5 years old after telling her birth mother about wanting to end this life thing and being touched by older siblings, and said "mother" decided to instead protect her sons and demand to receive therapy and chores only from her female child."

• "My last in-person client came out to me as gay followed with “omg I haven’t ever said that out loud before,” as I flashbacked and did my best to stay in “work mode.” Will be more/less something when less ptsd-y"

• My note: Annie posted this as a Repost of a Tweet that I made.

• 

• "Things Grandma was right about..."dwarf tossing” with my baby body was wrong...{and} hot baths cure most things"

• same as [AA24f [LW · GW]] above
• 

• "Yeah I was super sick...and houseless...and sucking "parts" for...{money?}...and so now -- well, first of all, 'cause that was some outrageously good fuckery (abuse), and -- now I'm un-fuck-with-able!"

• 

• "Reposting for you to read before you reach out about OpenAI and ChatGPT.
  
  I’m just at the light at the end of tunnel of four years of being sick and broke and shadowbanned. I’d do it again to go no contact and feel physically and emotionally safe for the first time in my life.
  
  Yes business life and personal life and different, and also “how you do anything is how you do everything.” Please vote with your dollars, your attention, and your truth.
  
  #truthcomesouteventually #trueshit #allhumansarehuman"

• Here, Annie provides a set of screen captures (in the form of an Instagram story called "Hi censorship") showing instances she's identified as shadowbanning / unusual activity surrounding various posts she's made on social media. 

• "Victim mentality or survivor mentality? Did that happen “to you” or “for you”? (Note to watch out for spiritual bypassing and erasure of real experiences in your ~reflecting~)
  
  I survived Achilles and posterior tibial tendinopathy. I survived posterior tibial nerve pain that radiated to my ankle, knee, and pelvis. I survived PCOS and those particular ovarian cysts that got intense enough to warrant scans. I survived IBS and every single disordered eating game.
  
  I survived listening to my body fall apart as it told me the stories I had not yet been ready to hear the full depths of. I survived 18 months of nearly all-day PTSD flashbacks of childhood assaults.
  
  I survived my Dad’s will being withheld for over a year, and money he left me being withheld by millionaires relatives. I survived the grief of my decision to go no-contact with said relatives.
  
  I survived being shadowbanned across multiple accounts, while attempting to make a livable income online. I survived an in-person profession that was a plan Z last resort, and learned and was therapized by it.
  
  I survived every form of ab*sive behavior. I survived relatives telling and showing me I was “crazy” for pointing out said ab*se.
  
  I survived grieving my Dad and somehow got even closer with him, and yes forever grieving.
  
  I survived myself.
  
  #everyoneisgoingthroughsomething #allhumansarehuman #thehumannie #trueshit #truthcomesouteventually"

• 

  • The image:
    • "Dec 19, 2019
      
      Hello Internet. I've gotten myself into a very difficult position, as I've been unable to work as much as I've needed due to my mental health and physical health. I put myself in a financially risky position to pursue my one woman show and podcast, and then had unexpected costs with health and technical difficulties. I'm dealing with the consequences of my own decisions and I need help. My Venmo is @Annie-Altman if you're able.
      
      In this calendar year I observed the one year anniversary of my dad's death, discussed another mental health label to add to my collection, got diagnosed with PCOS (scans to rule out adrenal tumors, pelvic ultrasounds, blood tests), had IBS flare up again, had a long-term achilles injury flare up the longest I've experienced it, had almost all of my personal accounts have attempted or successful logins, had people logging on my wifi and other wifi issues (4 new modems, had excessive cell phone service issues, the pity-party list continues. I'm beyond my capacity of what I can handle alone. I -"
  • Annie's post:
    • "#fbf to a silly and sad Annie, “putting herself in a position” to save other people who were harming her.
      
      I’ve since learned part of personal accountability can be noticing my own savior complex, and allowing someone else to experience the consequences of their decisions.
      
      Third sentence there ought to have read 'My millionaire relatives are refusing to give me help, and are withholding money from my dead Dad that I quit a job because of, while sick and in paperwork process to receive what he left in my name.'"

• 

• "Almost all of my social media accounts have been/are shadowbanned, and this is an unfortunate truth for many. OpenAI would be tagged here also if they had a account.
  
  It started for me before any swork {sex work} started. I don't mean that this account would be at 100K or some set number. I do mean it makes no sense to be unable to pass 1K, with over 100 podcasts and other creations, and consistent posting.
  
  Old videos wil {sic} get reduced to something like 2 views on @instagram and @youtube , podcast rating get frequently deleted on @apple @applepodcasts , people will get automatically unfollowed, posts will be restricted in who sees them, and more.
  
  It's been really demoralizing on a lot of levels, which is part of the purpose of shadowbanning. The other purpose of shadowbanning is direct repression of ways I can support myself with my art, like my @etsy and @patreon , or podcast ads for @anchor.fm ."

• "Patek Philippe’s first commercial manufacturing perpetual calendar was the reference 1526. This is the ultimate permanent calendar for most enthusiasts, including the collectors. Over the years, numerous designers have produced alternate calendar displays. However, nothing has come anywhere close to the 1526’s clear, readable, and visually beautiful dial."
• "The Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar case is made of pure 18k yellow gold and is 34mm in diameter by 11.5mm in thickness. The acrylic crystal is spherical while the back of the casing snaps shut...The casing body is brush polished, while the snapback is finished. The lugs have a modest downward arch—besides, the brown leather strap with Patek Philippe clasp in 18k gold. The calendar info is also displayed on the dial in an ideal manner."
• "The dial has a lovely, homogeneous eggshell-colored patina that complements the rose gold color of the casing wonderfully. The logo and scales are solid enamel and are as polished as a refined connoisseur could anticipate. The gold mark beneath the top left lug is clear, and the signature on the right ring is profound and prominent, indicating that the case is strong and resistant to scratch."
• "In addition, the Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar dial is 100 percent genuine and untouched. It is matte silver in color with attached golden Arabic numerals and hour indicator dots and a written minutes scale around the outside. The golden hands are also distinctive and are leaf style, commonly known as Feuille hands in Patek jargon. The supplemental second’s hand is a tiny version of the golden leaf style. The blued hand along the outside chapter enclosing the moonphase window, whereas the day and month are presented under the 12 o’clock position, indicates the date. The original moonphase disc is blue with gold stars as well as a moon."
• "During the model’s history, just 165 pieces with references to 1526 perpetual calendars were produced...Patek Philippe 1526s are incredibly uncommon."

• "If you’re wondering what watch Sam Altman wears, at least one of his choices appears to be a Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1."
• "In the comparison below, the watch was flipped to put the crown on the right side. From there, you can see the long tourbillon bridge and main dial location seem to match the layout of the Greubel Forsey.
• "Let’s look at the overall layout side-by-side. The image below includes a Greubel Forsey image with a similar red gold/silver dial configuration."

  • 

• The watch may stick out prominently from Mr. Altman’s sleeve, but that doesn’t make it any easier to identify from the video. However, the thickness, short lugs, and bar across the lower left are definitely leaning towards the Invention Piece 1."
• "Not to mention, pieces like this carry retail prices so far from obtainability that the average watch collector finds them to be fun to gawk at and read about, but that’s about it – the way car people might drool over images of the Ferrari Daytona SP3 or Lamborghini Sian (although Greubel Forsey is more along the lines of a Pininfarina Battista or Pagani Utopia)."
• "The price is not the only limitation in acquiring an Invention Piece 1… there were only 33 total watches available in the entire world."
• "If you’re going to spend that much on a timepiece, you probably want people to see it. The Invention Piece 1 is the perfect wingman in that regard. Boasting a diameter of 43.5mm and standing tall at almost 17mm in thickness...At about 13 seconds into the video… wait a minute, is that Sam Altman doing a classic watch geek move of looking down at his wrist to make sure his watch is exposed?"
• "The Invention Piece 1 is available in 18K white gold, 5N red gold, or platinum. 11 pieces were produced in each metal type."
• I found the date of publication and the last modified date using (once again) Inspect Element:

• "To Sam Altman's many titles — ousted-then-returned OpenAI CEO, former Y Combinator president, universal basic income enthusiast, part-time Hawaii resident — we must add one more: Watch guy."
• "Altman owns a watch so rare that only 33 were ever made, according to luxury watch website KeepTheTime. After spotting Altman wearing a chunky gold watch at a Wired event in 2018, BI asked the site for assistance identifying the distinctive timepiece. (BI, which went way too hard, also asked for help from a subreddit for watch enthusiasts, a longtime watch salesperson at Tiffany's San Francisco location, watch experts at several high-end auction houses, and people lurking in the Discord of the open-source intelligence site Bellingcat.)"
• "The watch, the Greubel Forsey Invention Piece 1 in red gold, was priced at 520,000 Swiss Francs when it was released in 2008, a spokesperson for Greubel Forsey confirmed. At the exchange rate of the time, that works out to roughly $480,000."
• "Altman has also flaunted his more modest Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar 1526, one of which sold at Christie's for $106,250 in 2017."
• "Altman posted a photo of the timepiece on the r/watches subreddit in May 2018, with a ❤️ emoji, and was spotted wearing the watch at a congressional hearing this year where he testified to the need for AI regulation."
• "Altman's pricey watch collection is just one part of his ultra-luxurious lifestyle. Business Insider previously reported that he went on an 18-month, $85 million real estate shopping spree in recent years. He was spotted driving a red McLaren F1 around northern California this month. A similar car was expected to sell for up to $15 million at auction in 2015. Altman also reportedly owns a Lexus LFA racing car, one of which recently sold for $1.1 million at auction."