Aella

the rationality community is so weird. i was just reading some blogs and liked them, and started going to a meetup full of nerds. It was just a bunch of ppl in their early 20's being earnest and trying really hard, and we had a potluck every week and debated each other, and eventually some of us were founding companies and noticing crypto and talking about/investing in ai (very early) and writing books and everyone was dating or had dated each other, and was founding goup houses, and eventually i see more and more names of people i've known for a long time (or knew of through friends) in the news, and reporters start coming to our internal events, and some of us buy a big campus as a community center, and that old friend you played goofy bonding exercises with at that meetup in 2015 now happens to run the grant process you just applied to, etc we were just interested in some blogs, man! But I think being interested in those bloggers correlated with a certain type of unusual-thinking agenticness and - dare I say, attempts towards rationality - that had a lot of downstream returns. I was totally oblivious to how special it was in the early days. I didn't know we were so unusual.

Aella ✓ @Aella_Girl [Subscribe] Getting into history stuff, I don't think I realized how fragile democracy is at its early stages. So many times people are like "fuck this monarchy/dictator shit, let's do a democracy" and then someone they don't like gets elected and they're like "wait not like that" and then they ignore or bend the rules to let them be the ones staying in power and then it's we're back to monarchy/dictator shit. 12:23 PM · Jan 19, 2026 · 17.6K Views 💬32 🔁13 ❤️316 🔖27 [share] Daryl ✓ @allvibesnoskill · 2h [Embedded image, book page]: CHAPTER XLII.—How easily Men become corrupted. In this matter of the decemvirate we may likewise note the ease wherewith men become corrupted, and how completely, although born good and well brought up, they change their nature. For we see how favourably disposed the youths whom Appius gathered round him became towards his tyranny, in return for the trifling benefits which they drew from it; and how Quintus Fabius, one of the second decemvirate and a most worthy man, blinded by a little ambition, and misled by the evil counsels of Appius, abandoning his fair fame, betook himself to most unworthy courses, and grew like his master. Careful consideration of this should make those who frame laws for commonwealths and kingdoms more alive to the necessity of placing restraints on men's evil appetites, and depriving them of all hope of doing wrong with impunity.