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From USC: Oneida. For most Americans, the name conjures up fine silverware. Few are aware that behind this secular symbol of middle-class respectability lies the story of a 19th-century religious community predicated on radical notions of equality, sex and religion. The community’s founder, John Humphrey Noyes, was the scion of a prominent Vermont family and a graduate of Yale Theological Seminary. He founded his own offshoot of Protestantism called Perfectionism. Noyes believed in the second coming and he also believed he was God’s prophet on Earth. Amid the fervor of religious revival, he attracted a group of devoted followers seeking an alternative to Puritanism. In 1848, he established a revolutionary community in rural New York that aimed to achieve a sin-free life through God’s grace, while espousing equality of the sexes and encouraging sex with multiple partners via “complex marriage.”

She was the first woman to fly rescue missions in a combat zone then became a brain surgeon

From the New York Times: “Valérie André was 10 years old in 1932 when, armed with a congratulatory bouquet, she greeted the hero aviator Maryse Hilsz at the Strasbourg airfield in France. She was already committed to becoming a doctor, an ambitious career goal for a young lady at the time. But she was so warmly received when she presented the flowers to Ms. Hilsz, who had just completed a record-breaking round-trip flight between Paris and Saigon, that she committed herself to another formidable objective: She decided to become an airplane pilot. Valérie André not only pursued both professions; she thrived in them. She became a brain surgeon, a parachutist and a helicopter pilot who was said to be the first woman to fly rescue missions in combat zones for any military force. She was also the first Frenchwoman to be named a general and was a five-time winner of the Croix de Guerre, for bravery in Indochina and Algeria.”

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Continue reading “Oneida silverware started out as a sex and eugenics commune”

From SFist: Clockwise from top left: Gwen Danielson in a 2019 mugshot; Jack “Ziz” LaSota; Alexander “Somni” Leatham; Emma Borhanian; Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt; Maximillian Snyder; Michelle Zajko; and possibly Teresa Youngblut from Instagram

I apologize in advance for this post, which may not interest many of you, or may be too meandering and/or inconclusive for others. Some pieces I write for The Torment Nexus involve a topic where I have a clear point of view that has been established over time — copyright and artificial intelligence, the absurdity of the TikTok ban, etc. This is not one of those times. In this case, I’m trying to think through a particular subject, and writing about things helps me think through them in a more logical (one might even say rational) way. You are welcome to join me on this journey, but obviously you don’t have to!

The subject or subjects of this newsletter have been sort of brewing in the back of my mind for some time, but they started to crystallize when I read about what is known as the “Zizian cult,” a group of what appear to be mostly trans women who have adopted n extreme version of Rationalist philosophy, following the writings of someone who goes by the nickname Ziz, for reasons that are unclear. The person with that name was born Jack Amadeus LaSota, and some of her followers — she uses female pronouns — have been implicated in four murders: in one, an elderly man had his throat slit, after previously being stabbed by a Samurai sword; in another case, a young woman allegedly killed her elderly parents in Pennsylvania; and most recently, a US border guard was killed during a shootout in Vermont near the US-Canadian border with Quebec.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with technology, which is allegedly the domain of this newsletter. What’s interesting to me about the Zizians is that they seem to have taken a philosophical approach that one often finds among programmers and other Silicon Valley types, i.e. Rationalism, and taken it to its logical — and possibly absurd — extreme. Rationalism has been around since Plato’s time, but modern rationalism with a capital R is a relatively recent invention, and was popularized by Eliezer Yudkowsky, who runs a site called LessWrong and co-founded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Scott Alexander Siskind, a practicing psychiatrist who writes a blog called Astral Codex Ten, is a prominent member of the community, and Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and others have been or are aligned with it.

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Continue reading “How did Rationalism lead to the creation of a murder cult?”

From The Sunday Times: “Somewhere in Boston there is a doctor who treats disorders of the brain: a brilliant woman, a Harvard graduate, a mother of two. But she has a dark secret. Unbeknown to her colleagues or her patients, she is also a writer of thrillers, churning them out at a terrific rate, nearly all of them bestsellers. Four were on the Sunday Times list of top-selling books of 2024. One, The Housemaid, is being turned into a film starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried; another is set to be a film too, while a third is to be a television series. Across all formats, and including translations, she has sold 17 million books. Do the hospital receptionists have any idea? Apparently not. To them she is just a common brain doctor. She writes under the pen name Freida McFadden and avoids book tours and signings. Some people have wondered if she is in fact AI or a team of writers. “She has published 15 books in the last four years!?” someone wrote on Reddit. “Something super fishy about her.”

The tallest building in North Korea is a thousand-foot-tall hotel that has been empty for decades

From Wikipedia: “The Ryugyong Hotel is a 330 m (1,080 ft) tall unfinished pyramid-shaped skyscraper in Pyongyang, North Korea — it is the most prominent feature of Pyongyang’s skyline and also the tallest building in North Korea. Its name (which means “capital of willows”) is also one of the historical names for Pyongyang. The building has been planned as a mixed-use development, which would include a hotel. Construction began in 1987 but was halted in 1992 as North Korea entered a period of economic crisis after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After 1992, the building stood topped out, but without any windows or interior fittings. In 2008, construction resumed, and the exterior was completed in 2011. The hotel was planned to open in 2012, for the centenary of founding leader Kim Il Sung’s birth. A partial opening was announced for 2013, but this was later cancelled. In 2018, an LED display was fitted to one side, which is used to show propaganda animations and film scenes.”

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Continue reading “This bestselling author lives a secret life as a brain doctor”

From Wikipedia: “Emily Rosa is the youngest person to have a research paper published in a peer reviewed medical journal. At age nine she conceived and executed a scientific study of therapeutic touch which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998. In 1996, Rosa saw a video of Therapeutic Touch practitioners claiming they could feel a “Human Energy Field” emanating from a body and could use their hands to manipulate the HEF in order to treat disease. She heard Dolores Krieger, co-inventor of Therapeutic Touch, claim that everyone had the ability to feel the HEF. Using a standard display board, Rosa devised a single-blind protocol for a study she conducted at age nine for her 4th grade science fair.”

The so-called Mediterranean diet is mostly a work of fiction

From Politico: “It’s the most famous diet in the world. It might also be the most misunderstood. “All this is part of the lifestyle of the Mediterranean diet,” the 72-year-old explains serenely, mopping tomato sauce off his plate with a thick hunk of artisanal bread. It’s a beautiful story and a terrific seasoning for our meal. The only problem is it’s not true. Fifty years since the term was coined by the American physiologist Ancel Keys — and a decade and a half after UNESCO recognized it as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity — the Mediterranean diet has become a mishmash of hyperbole, half-truths and howlers, stirred together for political and commercial ends. There are two competing theories on how the Mediterranean diet was born. Both begin with Keys, its founding father. Keys got his start in the world of nutrition in the 1930s, developing a portable provision for United States troops (the famous “K-ration”).

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Continue reading “She co-wrote a scholarly paper when she was nine years old”

From Wikipedia: “At the height of Soviet–Chinese tensions in 1969, Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong ordered the construction of the Underground City. The Underground City was designed to withstand nuclear, biochemical and conventional attacks. The government claimed that the tunnels could accommodate all of Beijing’s six million inhabitants upon its completion. The complex was equipped with facilities such as  restaurants, clinics, schools,  theaters, factories, a roller skating rink, grain and oil warehouses, and a mushroom cultivation farm. Elaborate ventilation systems were installed, with 2,300 shafts that can be sealed off to protect the tunnels’ inhabitants from poison gases. Gas- and water-proof hatches, as well as thick concrete main gates, were constructed to protect the tunnels from fallout.”

Even in one of the world’s newest deserts there are still signs of life

From Noema: “Until the 1960s, the Aral was the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water, covering an area of around 26,300 square miles. Its Uzbek name, Orol Dengizi, meant “Sea of Islands.” In the space of the last six decades it has shrunk to a tenth of its former size, one of the worst ecological disasters in history. Technically an endorheic lake, a body of water with no natural outlet, its existence was dependent on the inflow of two rivers: the Amu Darya and, farther to the north, the Syr Darya. Under Soviet mismanagement, both rivers were diverted into arid steppe to irrigate booming cotton farms. The planners knew what was happening but considered the loss worthwhile; the Aral became what ecologists term a “sacrifice zone.” As the shoreline receded year by year, the water’s salt content increased, causing a mass die-off of aquatic species. The exposed seabed has become the Aralkum, the world’s youngest desert.”

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Continue reading “There’s a huge network of tunnels underneath Beijing”

From Links I Would Gchat You: “Tom Anderson, in the cultural imagination, is the tech bro that got away. He’s a foil to the Musks and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, the exception that proves their rule isn’t that great. Just take a scroll through Myspace Tom’s assorted feeds, all ironically housed on the social platforms that usurped his influence, and observe the rare, precious sight of a very rich man contentedly minding his own damn business. Since stepping away from the limelight, Anderson golfs. He takes lavish international vacations. He pals around with former “Amazing Race” contestants. Anderson always made something of an oddball founder — a product of Los Angeles, he reportedly hacked Chase Bank not to steal money, but to level-up his code. He later studied English at Berkeley and attended film school in LA.”

A military base in the Korean DMZ has a par-3 golf hole in the middle of a minefield

From Wikipedia: “Camp Bonifas is home to the United Nations Command Security Battalion-Joint Security Area, whose primary mission is to monitor and enforce the Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953 between North and South Korea. Republic of Korea and United States Forces Korea soldiers conduct the United Nations Command DMZ Orientation Program tours of the JSA and surrounding areas. The camp has a gift shop which sells DMZ- and JSA-related souvenirs. The camp was formerly known as Camp Kitty Hawk. Access to the Neutral Nations Monitors (Sweden and Switzerland), on Camp Swiss-Swede, was through Camp Bonifas. There is a par 3 one-hole “golf course” at the camp which includes an AstroTurf green and is surrounded on three sides by minefields. Sports Illustrated called it the most dangerous hole in golf and there are reports that at least one errant shot detonated a land mine.”

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Continue reading “What MySpace Tom has been up to since he sold the company”

From Wired: “Although fans of A Song of Ice and Fire might still be hankering for the long-delayed next book in the series, bestselling sci-fi/fantasy author George R.R. Martin has instead added a different item to his long list of publications: a peer-reviewed physics paper just published in the American Journal of Physics that he coauthored. The paper derives a formula to describe the dynamics of a fictional virus that is the centerpiece of the Wild Cards series of books, a shared universe edited by Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass, with some 44 authors contributing. Wild Cards grew out of the Superworld RPG, specifically a long-running campaign game-mastered by Martin in the 1980s, with several of the original sci-fi writers who contributed to the series participating. Initially, Martin planned to write a novel centered on his character Turtle, but he then decided it would be better as a shared universe anthology.”

A 1,900-year-old papyrus describes a Roman case of tax fraud and slave rebellion

From Gizmodo: “In 2014, a researcher realized that the longest Greek papyrus ever found in the Judaean Desert was not what it seemed. The newly translated scroll reveals extraordinary details of a judicial hearing involving two men accused of crimes, including inciting rebellion on the eve of a massive revolt. Researchers in Austria and Israel have translated the longest Greek papyrus ever found in the Judaean Desert. Previously unearthed, misidentified, and then nearly forgotten, Hannah Cotton Paltiel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem rediscovered the papyrus in 2014. Now, Paltiel and her colleagues have translated the text, revealing it to be prosecutors’ notes for an ancient Roman trial from the early second century CE. The artifact provides unique insight into a case that dealt with tax fraud, forgery, and the fraudulent sale and freeing of enslaved people during a period of tension in the Roman province of Judaea.”

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Continue reading “Game of Thrones author co-wrote a scientific paper”

From Undark: “One day in 1905, the French geophysicist Bernard Brunhes brought back to his lab some rocks he’d unearthed from a freshly cut road near the village of Pont Farin. When he analyzed their magnetic properties, he was astonished at what they showed: Millions of years ago, the Earth’s magnetic poles had been on the opposite sides of the planet. North was south and south was north. The discovery spoke of planetary anarchy. Scientists had no way to explain it. Today, we know that the poles have changed places hundreds of times, most recently 780,000 years ago. (Sometimes, the poles try to reverse positions but then snap back into place, in what is called an excursion. The last time was about 40,000 years ago.) We also know that when they flip next time, the consequences for the electrical and electronic infrastructure that runs modern civilization will be dire. The question is when that will happen.”

The world record for highest number of basketball points is held by a 13-year-old

From Backpages: “My own personal gospel came to me in the form of World’s Strangest Basketball Stories, by Bart Rockwell. Published in 1993, the Chinese year of the Rooster, the book was 92 pages of pure basketball bliss for young readers to enjoy. Something jumped out to me on page 11: The Swedish Scoring Machine. Some 13 year old kid named Mats Wermelin woke up on February 5th, 1974, in Sweden and then scored 272 points in a game. And didn’t let anyone else (on either team) score! Let’s assume these Swedes played a 40 minute game (as per FIBA rules). That would mean Wermelin scored 136 per half. That’s 6.8 points per minute. Knowing that there was no three-point line back then, it would equate to a basket every 17.6 seconds. And that’s for 40 minutes, straight. Bart’s source was the 1985-86 Guinness Book of World Records.”

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Continue reading “The Earth’s magnetic poles are shifting and may switch places”

From CNN: “Sonia Vallabh was in her second year at Harvard Law School in 2010 when her mother got sick. Just months before, her mother had been healthy and vibrant, planning Vallabh’s wedding. Then she began having trouble with her eyesight, and her strange symptoms progressed to the point where she couldn’t recognize her daughter. Her muscles would jerk and spasm. She spoke in tongues. By fall 2010, she was on life support, with needles, tubes and wires coming out of her. Her mother died in December 2010 at age 52. Shortly thereafter, Vallabh’s father, a doctor, pulled her aside during a visit home and told her the disease was genetic. In 1986, it was given a name: fatal familial insomnia, or FFI. Much of what doctors first learned about the disease comes from a family in Venice, Italy, who have suffered from it for over 200 years.”

Contrary to popular depictions Napoleon Bonaparte was about average height

From MissedHistory: “You’ve probably heard jokes and references to Napoleon being extremely short. This enduring misconception has shaped popular culture’s view of the French emperor, but the truth about his physical stature reveals a fascinating story of how historical propaganda can distort reality for generations to come. Gillray’s caricatures portrayed Napoleon as a diminutive, childish figure, mocking both his physical appearance and his expansionist ambitions. The widespread circulation of these images throughout Britain had a lasting impact on public perception. But Napoleon was actually about 5 feet 7 inches tall, which was average height for a man during his time period. His height was given as 5’2″, but in French units of the time, this equated to roughly 168-170 centimeters or about 5’6″ in modern measurements.”

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Continue reading “This family’s genetic disorder causes fatal insomnia”

From The Daily Beast: “The iconic ‘Napalm Girl’ photo that was taken in Vietnam in 1972 is considered one of the most powerful images depicting the human toll of armed conflict that has ever been captured, redirecting the course of the Vietnam War when it was first published and resonating still today. According to detailed investigations and the testimony of witnesses who were in the room when the fateful decision happened, Nick Út, the photographer credited with the image, did not take the photo. An Associated Press photo editor confirms what is said to have been an open secret in certain circles of the industry: a local Vietnamese stringer had actually captured the image. That man was given $20 and a print of the photo as a keepsake. Út, on the other hand, won the Pulitzer Prize, and has spent the last 52 years basking in the glory and recognition.”

The identity of Oregon’s Googly-Eye Bandit has finally been revealed

From the New York Times: “Last month, googly eyes appeared on pieces of public art throughout Bend, Ore. Drivers would rubberneck, befuddled and amused by statues of deer and other sculptures that had been given an irreverent, cross-eyed gaze. The eyes became a sensation, except among frustrated city officials, who paid for their removal. The identity of the person behind the pranks, who became known as the Googly Eye Bandit, was unknown. That is until Jeff Keith came forward to claim responsibility.Mr. Keith, 53, who runs the Guardian Group, a nonprofit focused on disrupting sex trafficking in the United States, said that in mid-December he sneaked into the middle of a roundabout and put the googly eyes on some public art. “I love making people smile,” Mr. Keith said in an interview on Saturday. “Other people started joining in. I’m not taking credit for all of them. That’s the cool part.”

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Continue reading “There’s a lie behind one of history’s most famous photos”

From The New York Times: “The last time Dawn Momohara’s mother heard from her daughter, she told her she was going to meet friends at a shopping center in Honolulu.Hours later, after Dawn, 16, didn’t return home that Sunday afternoon in 1977, she was reported missing, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser later reported. The next day, March 21, 1977, just before students began Monday morning classes at McKinley High, Dawn was found dead on the second floor of what was then called the English building. She was partially clothed and an orange cloth was tightly wrapped around her neck. The police determined at the time that she had been strangled and possibly sexually assaulted, but a suspect would not be identified for decades. Nearly a half-century after Dawn’s body was found, Gideon Castro, 66, was arrested and charged with murdering her.”

These seven thrift store finds turned into small fortunes in 2024

From Artnet: “Discovering a hidden treasure in an unexpected place is a thrill like no other. In 2024, artworks and valuable artifacts didn’t just turn up in the most surprising locations—from thrift stores to musty old attics—some of them made quite the mint on the auction block. A tiny painting by British artist John Constable was found in a cupboard during a renovation. Bought for $37 at an auction years ago, the authenticated work could now be worth $315,000. A sealed vintage Lego set, discovered in a donated jewelry box at Goodwill, sold for $18,000 at auction. The set included a rare 14-karat gold Bionicle Hau mask, making it a dream find for collectors. A Victorian brooch bought for just $25 at an antiques market was identified on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow as a rare treasure by William Burges and sold for $15,000 at auction.”

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Continue reading “50 years after a teen’s murder police arrest an ex-schoolmate”

From The Daily Mail: “Aristocrat Unity Mitford’s leather-bound journal reveals fresh insights into the dictator widely reviled as the most evil man in history – whom she worshipped. One of the famous Mitford sisters, Unity gushed about the Nazi monster in her flowing handwriting. The young upper-class beauty scandalised British society by fawning over Hitler and becoming closer to him than any other Briton. She confided secrets of their extraordinary liaisons to her daily diary over five years running up to the Second World War. While plotting global carnage, Hitler was said to have ‘behaved as a 17-year-old’ around the 6ft statuesque blonde beauty. Unseen for 80 years, Unity’s diaries span 1935 to 1939 and chronicle an extraordinary 139 meetings with Hitler.”

They want to get to the top of Everest faster so they are going to inhale some xenon

From Why Is This Interesting: “Traditionally, climbing Everest requires a long, 18-day hike to Base Camp, which is an often challenging start to the trip, due to thin air and exertion. This acclimatization trek is considered a rite of passage, and those who bypass it by taking a chopper to Base Camp are typically given some side eye from the climbing community. But the FT outlines a radically different approach: Early this May, an airline pilot, two entrepreneurs and a government minister will wait for the call to mobilise. They will then take a taxi straight to a health clinic. For 30 minutes, each adventurer will wear a mask attached to a ventilator for administering xenon, a rare noble gas more often used as an anaesthetic and a rocket propellant. The men will fly by helicopter to base camp. After no more than two hours, they will begin their ascent.”

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Continue reading “Newspaper says it has the diary of Hitler’s British girlfriend”

At the risk of making things too personal, the recent election of Donald Trump to a second term as president triggered some pretty severe negative flashbacks for me, and I’m sure that I’m not the only one. I remember waking up in 2016 after he was elected and saying to someone (perhaps myself) that it felt like journalism had failed. For months, newspapers and TV networks had been reporting the details of Trump’s various indiscretions and even outright crimes: the tape in which he bragged about getting away with sexual assault, the fraud, payments to former porn stars for keeping quiet about his affairs, and so on.

Every day, it seemed as though dozens of lies were being fact-checked rigorously by journalists, including during TV debates. All of this effort at setting the record straight, at showing how Trump lied not just for specific political purposes but flagrantly and enthusiastically for no reason. Multiple stories proving that he was a philanderer and a terrible businessman who lied about his net worth, someone who talked about Christian values but has been accused by twenty-seven women of sexual misconduct, and found liable by a jury in a civil sexual-abuse case. How could so many people have voted for him anyway?

In a recent edition of this newsletter, I wrote about how it’s tempting to blame social media for the outcome of the election, to see Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and TikTok as the source of the problem:

It’s tempting to blame what happened on Tuesday night on social media in one form or another. Maybe you think that Musk used Twitter to platform white supremacists and swing voters to Trump, or that Facebook promoted Russian troll accounts posting AI-generated deepfakes of Kamala Harris eating cats and dogs, or that TikTok polarized voters using a combination of soft-core porn and Chinese-style indoctrination videos to change minds — and so on. In the end, that is too simple an explanation, just as blaming the New York Times’ coverage of the race is too simple, or accusing more than half of the American electorate of being too stupid to see Trump for what he really is. They saw it, and they voted for him anyway. That’s the reality.

Continue reading “Does fact-checking even work?”

From The Atlantic: “The sexual-assault-evidence collection box, colloquially known as the “rape kit,” is a simple yet potent tool: a small case, perhaps made of cardboard, containing items such as sterile nail clippers, cotton swabs, slides for holding bodily fluids, paper bags, and a tiny plastic comb. Designed to gather and preserve biological evidence found on the body of a person reporting a sexual assault, it introduced standardized forensics into the investigation of rape where there had previously been no common protocol. The kit was trademarked under the name “Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit,” after Sergeant Louis Vitullo. The Chicago police officer had a well-publicized role in the 1967 conviction of serial killer Richard Speck. But thanks to a new book we know about the collection box’s real inventor—a woman named Martha “Marty” Goddard.”

Italian towns used to have the equivalent of skyscrapers built by rich families

From Exurbe: “This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. We don’t see many such towers today… or think we don’t, but actually their remnants are all over Italy. Often when in Florence one sees buildings where one section is rough stone standing out amid stucco neighbors. These are actually the bottom nubs of Medieval stone towers. The town of San Gimigniano is famous for having several still intact. Wealthy families built these as mini-fortresses within the city, where they could defend against riots, enemy families and invasion. Signs of wealth and prestige, these all-stone buildings were also fireproof, leading to a terrible but effective tactic: take your family, treasures & goods up into your tower then set fire to enemies’ homes and let the city burn around you while you sit safe above.”

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Continue reading “She invented the rape kit but died in obscurity”