What's with this "cultlike group" bullshit, AP? Like, you're afraid they're going to file a defamation suit if you call them a cult? As if these murderous weirdos -- who are all either in police custody or fugitives from justice -- have nothing better to do than to pursue tort cases in defense of their reputations? Bert the Samoan Lawyer has assured me that I can safely call the followers of Jack "Ziz" LaSota a radical vegan transgender death cult without fear of civil liability, because truth is always an ironclad defense against any libel claim.
Anyway, about five hours after the Associated Press published its story about the so-called "Zizians," CBS News did its own summary:
In the wooded outskirts of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a perplexed landlord noticed odd sights at two of his rental properties.
Tenants wore long black coats and parked box trucks outside the duplexes. They ran an electrical cord from one box truck into one of the condos and kept a stretcher inside another.
A neighbor remembers similarly dressed figures walking around at night holding hands. They never spoke a word.
By the time the FBI searched the property last week, one of the most recent tenants had been killed in a shootout with U.S. Border Patrol agents in Vermont, and a second was under arrest. A third, a shadowy figure known online as "Ziz," remains missing after authorities linked their cultlike group to six deaths in three states. . . .
Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings tell the story of how a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs, and became increasingly violent. . . .
Jack LaSota moved to the San Francisco Bay area after earning a computer science degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2013 and interning at NASA, according to a profile on a hiring site for programmers, coders and other freelance workers. NASA officials did not respond to a request to confirm LaSota's internship, but a Jack LaSota is listed on a website about past interns.
In 2016, she began publishing a dark and rambling blog under the name Ziz, describing her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and "often desire to kill each other."
LaSota used she/her pronouns, and, in her writings, says she is a transgender woman. She railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
LaSota began promoting an extreme mix of rationalism, ethical veganism, anarchism and other value systems, said Jessica Taylor, an AI researcher who met LaSota both in person and online through the rationalist community and knew her as Ziz.
When LaSota left the rationalists behind, she took with her a group of "extremely vulnerable and isolated" followers, Anna Salamon, executive director of the Center for Applied Rationality, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Taylor said Ziz adherents use the rationalist ideology as a reason to commit violence. "Stuff like, thinking it's reasonable to avoid paying rent and defend oneself from being evicted," she said.
Well, you can read the whole thing, but you won't learn much that I didn't already report in my five blog posts on the topic, beginning January 27. Basically, three weeks after I start blogging about something, the mainstream catches up, and they don't even hat-tip me (or Andy Ngo, who was the first to put this story together). The important thing, however, is that at least three members of the "Zizian" cult are fugitives at large, whereabouts unknown, considered armed and dangerous.
If you should spot one of these dangerous weirdos, do not approach them. Do not ask what their pronouns are. Nor should you offer them a cheeseburger. Instead, contact law enforcement immediately.