My PC is out of commission right now, so no origami this month.  Still got a handful of links.

Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults | Ozy Brennan – When we talk about Rationalist cults, no we’re not describing Rationalism itself as a cult, we’re talking about specific groups of people with isolationist and dysfunctional social dynamics.  Such as the Zizians, a trans vegan cult that recently murdered a landlord.  Ozy interviews former members to get a sense of what they were like and where they went wrong.

Many of the cults seem to have had a practice of exhausting multi-hour sessions, where they would read far too deeply into minor domestic behaviors.  That… really reminds me of Barefoot Bum’s description of the Kerista Commune (the cult known for coining “polyfidelity”).  It was not a Rationalist group at all, but had institutionalized a very similar practice.

Videogame politics for a burning world | Unwinnable – An interview with Ajay Singh Chaudhary, who offers an interesting perspective on climate change.  He frames climate change not as a future apocalypse, but rather as a thing that is happening right now–“all the things you hate about the present getting worse and then being stuck that way”.  Since this is a video game periodical, the latter half of the interview turns towards video games, and their role in climate change.  We have to ask, is the extravagance of large commercial video games necessary?

Just reading an apologetics book and asking “why are we doing this?” | Tell Me Why the World is Weird – Perfect Number (Christian ex-Evangelical) reviews a book by Lee Strobel and discusses chapter by chapter.  I left a long comment about William Lane Craig’s view of cosmology.  William Lane Craig is very attached to a specific theory of cosmology, that I do not think is broadly accepted, and he acts like it’s the main one.  And the reason WLC likes that one is because it implies that the universe had a beginning, which aligns with his view of Christianity.  That’s wild because the Bayes factor is like 2:1 at best–either the universe began or it did not.  Why are you even fighting over this measly scrap of evidence.

The Unforgivable Sin of Ms. Rachel | Lindsay Ellis (video, 2:22 hours) – Starting from the topic of children’s educational media, and spinning out into empathy, Israel, and genocide.  A very informative video even if you don’t know a lot about all these topics!