hi hi and also yesterday I read their complete contributions to the iNat forums and apparently they turned up a few weeks ago out of nowhere and started demanding iNat change their entire UI in order to uprank ficus. Also to make it easier to downvote incorrectly identified ficus. Also change the forum policy to allow them to link to specific bad identications of ficus so they can mock bad ficus-identifiers.

But even though a few weeks is being left to drown:

“d” asked me to send him pics and i was like “nope”. when he finally sees the tree in person it’s going to blow his scholarly socks off. he’s gonna really regret not seeing it sooner. and i’d be surprised if he didn’t write an article about it

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love me a single-minded gardener, but even when I am obsessively uploading pictures of the lifecycle of the swallowtail caterpillar eating my parsley, I'm not trying to turn a citizen science site into Polymarket.

oof.

From the comments:

Insect welfare (unlike woke identitarian proliferation) is not a priori wrong.

a community whose commendable openness to unbiased discussion of any idea, uh huh.

Ben Stewart:

Manifest's decisions are and have been bad not in terms of PR, but bad for its own epistemics, the forecasting community, EA, and basic human decency.

TW:

"Basic human decency"? Jeez, mate. I understand not wanting to engage with right-wingers personally, but treating it as a deep affront when others choose to do so is off-putting, to say the least.

Ben Stewart:

Yeah that was a bit strong, sorry late here.

Ben, honey. You do not have to apologize for referring to platforming Hanania as an affront to basic human decency. That TW is successful in shaming you for accurately identifying what happened here is no credit to your own ability to recognize the dangerous epistemic bubble in which you find yourself, or the cultlike social pressures that persuade you to distrust your own correct judgement -- not because TW challenged your facts or your interpretation, but because he -- gasp! -- called it "off-putting."

Not everyone's going to like you. Not everyone's going to agree with you. Social stigma is a good and correct tool in your toolbox when a member of your community says that cites-the-Turner-Diaries, enforced-sterilization, anti-"miscegenation", “women’s liberation = the end of human civilization” Richard Hanania has something valuable to add.

Here's the "what did you like least" survey entries the organizers say they classified as "edgy people":

"all the racism stuff" = "edgy people". Yup.

They do buy mosquito nets, although it's unclear that all malaria net charities do so in culturally-appropriate ways where they'll be used as intended. I believe they've stopped with the large grants to deworming charities, which is good, because the effectiveness of deworming programs is extremely controversial. Depending on where you direct your money at that parent website, it might go to EA Funds, who send a lot of money at global development but has also paid a ton of salaries for people researching LLMs and AI. Or it could go to EffectiveVentures, which might have spent your money buying a castle. For reasons.

If you support mosquito nets, you can give to the mosquito net charity directly, cut out the overhead. Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières does good global development work if you don't mind giving to a huge organization that by necessity has higher overhead. Avoid the Red Cross and you should be fine.

There’s no reason to believe they live this way in reality. None of these profiles do any actual journalism. None of them investigate whether their claims about their childhood are true. This one doesn’t even talk to the neighbors who theoretically live next door for free (and do the unpaid childcare). This is stenography of neo-fash influencers self-described life and there’s no reason to believe any of it.

Yes and that’s obviously lies, as anyone who has grown up with limited income in a cold area can tell them. Cheap, warm clothing is not bought online (in the US) from Russia, and never from Etsy. In the US it’s bought — if you’re buying new at all! — from Target or Kohl’s or some other big chain. You get layers, you get things used when you can, and the cheapest way to dress warmly is the most normie, uninteresting clothes that are mass produced and sold in low end department stores.

Nothing they describe is practical or cheap. It’s cosplay Kinder, Küche, Kirche, and the journalist repeated it verbatim because she’s a chump.

Gee, I wonder what about the time period from 2015 to 2020 would have prompted the transformation from “occasional youtuber who goofily wears fascinators and cute nerdy graphic tees” to “hugo boss chic”. Must have just been her own changing tastes, couldn’t possibly be related to anything else.

Honestly any day the Guardian isn't publishing transphobia wearing a feminism mask is a good day for them.

I love how the journalist just reprints their reskinned Great Replacement theory at face value.

And importing people from Africa to support a mostly non-working white population – because you didn’t put in labour to support non-working white people – has really horrible optics.

Ah, so the reason you’re concerned about falling white birth rates and don’t want immigration is because it’s racist to allow “people from Africa” to immigrate to your country. Got it.

I appreciate that the journalist was shocked by the bad parenting but I’d have appreciated a little more fact checking on the naked racist conspiracies.

This is part of a whole thing where the journalist keeps presenting their framing without question. Is it “allow their neighbours to live in the second house rent free, in exchange for childcare” or is it “they have unpaid live-in nannies in a staff apartment”? Do they “give everything they can spare to charity” or are they landlords who own property they don’t live in? Is she wearing a corset and chemise from etsy because it’s practical, or because these weirdos have put on staged cosplay performances for every journalist who’s ever interviewed them, and you’re no exception?