MondSemmel's Shortform

People who agree with the assassination want the assassin to agree with their politics.
People who disagree with the assassination want the assassin to agree with their political adversaries' politics.

He'll be used for partisan mud-slinging, as practically everything that's on the news in America is.

From the first link:

While members of the TPOT community struggle with whether to embrace Mangione as part of what they call “the ingroup,” other extremely online commentators insist he has to be a member of the scene.

TPOT is commonly cited as an offshoot of rationalism, a popular Silicon Valley viewpoint popularized by thinkers like computer scientist Eliezer Yudkowsky and psychiatrist Scott Alexander that suggests all aspects of life should be decided based on rational thinking. Members of the TPOT community are often referred to as “post-rationalists” — former adherents who became “disillusioned with that whole scene, because it’s a little culty, it’s a little dogmatic,” said journalist.

Still, those in the subculture tend to share a few common interests and values: a fixation on technology — specifically, artificial intelligence — and an interest in self-improvement through diet, exercise, and meditation. Members speak often of exercising personal agency or free will in order to change their lives. (The term “agentic” is heavily employed in TPOT spaces to mean someone who exercises a high degree of personal agency; members encourage one another by saying, “You can just do things!”) Certain corners of the subculture embrace the use of psychedelics for self-help, and others, according to Rosenberg, adhere to pronatalism, the belief that a high birth rate is crucial to human survival.

Others suggest Mangione is more aligned with effective altruism, the similarly rationalist ideology that had a heyday in tech spaces before its chief promoter, Sam Bankman-Fried, was convicted of federal crimes.

Still, Rosenberg noted at least one other similarity between Mangione and the TPOTers: a penchant for overly long tweets.

“It’s a very verbal culture. People really love to have long-form discussions, state their opinions,” she said. “Really, just people who like to talk a lot.”

From the second link:

I have not found any evidence that Luigi was a specific fan of Scott, but he expressed appreciation for several figures associated with this big tent movement, including Peter Thiel.

My summary:

The evidence about the connection is that some members of TPOT (which is more like ex-rationalists) think that the shooter could be considered one of them (which is their opinion, not his). Also, someone unspecified said, without providing any evidence, that the shooter seems more like an EA to them. Finally, Rosenberg (who is he, and why should I care about his opinion?) found the smoking gun: both the shooter and the rationalists are verbose.

Also, the shooter knows Peter Thiel's name, which suggests that he is a member of a mysterious inner circle.

(I guess this passes for journalism these days.)

EDIT: It also feels weird to use "people in a specific group approve of the shooter" as evidence for something, when there are probably many groups that do the same.

Ooh, I found the first video where I maybe could have noticed that they're religious (though not that their belief is particularly important to them: In every video of their Stereotypes series, Tyler plays the Rage Monster stereotype where he gets angry and wrecks stuff. But in their Christmas Stereotypes video, Tyler temporarily stops this performance before he'd wreck a nativity set, with these words: "That would be a little bit too far. By the way, if you've got your nativity set up like this, technically it's not biblically correct. The wise men weren't actually here yet. They were still travelling. Anyways, <turns around and resumes Rage Monster shtick>".

EDIT: Found another, rather subtle one, from their Skiing Stereotypes: Part of a trash talk is this exchange:

A: "You ever missed a church Sunday service?"

B: "Have you ever been to church?"

...

A: "By the way, I go to church every Easter!"

B: "Sure you do."

EDIT2: Found a non-subtle one, namely this huge "Holy Spirit" wall poster thing in the background of this Game Night Stereotypes video. Or from the same video, a scary chainsaw scene which is randomly cross-shaped and is followed up by an "Easter" equip.

Other than that, I've learned that they play Christian songs over some of their videos, but I never pay attention to the lyrics, so I never noticed any of that.

When we switched Internet providers in our house, I had to relocate the Internet router and reconnect the network cables.

I first tried to connect my own PC (via a labeled patchfield), but could not get a connection to the router despite attempts with three (longer) network cables. I found the experience incredibly perplexing - I knew three three cables could not all be broken, and I knew I was missing something, but not what. But I eventually realized my error:

In a seemingly unrelated fact, I had traded rooms with a roommate some months prior. Because the patchfield was labeled with person names, not rooms, it no longer reflected reality from that point on. (I even figured at some point that it needed to be relabelled, but then forgot.) Whenever all network cables were connected to the router, this basically did not matter (except for LAN port numbering). But when only one network cable was connected, it made all the difference.

When I want to set a recurring reminder for something, I use Google Calendar's email notifications. I wanted to set a reminder for monthly reviews at the end of the month, and so created a calendar event set to repeat "Monthly on day 31".

Soon after, I discovered something that incredibly surprised me. Can you guess what it was?

I consider my memory to be terrible and make do with tools like such reminders. If I hadn't noticed this problem right then, I might not have noticed it for a long time.