WEIRD TALES: ZIZIANS, CRYPTO AND DEMIURGES ON THE CLOUD

The next time you end up in the Emergency Room at three in the morning, at which time you're informed by men dressed all in white that you're about to volunteer as a human pincushion for a panoply of razor-sharp metal instruments because your gallbladder is on the verge of combusting spontaneously, please remember to bring a good book with you to get your mind off your imminent descent into the hospital's sub-basement where all the infected, gooey bits of your upper torso are about to be removed surgically by professionals with an intense interest in divesting unconscious people of organs that have slid well past the expiration date. The more interesting the book, the more capable you will be of concentrating through the Level 9 pain on all those words on the printed page. I can now say, from excruciating hard-earned experience, that WEIRD TALES: ZIZIANS, CRYPTO AND DEMIURGES ON THE CLOUD by S. William Snider (AKA Recluse, host of THE FARM podcast) is overbrimming with compelling information about how deeply The Eternal & Sovereign Order of Tech Bros have lodged themselves, Xenomorph-style, into the eager and willing throat of the resurrected Trump Administration. Using the dramatic and bloody tale of the Cult of Ziz as a microcosm, Snider effectively traces the dizzying rise of Technocracy Inc. from the obscure byways of the internet in the early 2000s all the way up to the Trump-infected White House of 2025. You should put this book on top of your Must Read Pile today. 

Here's a brief excerpt from the back cover:

The curious saga of the Zizians, vegan Siths to some, a death cult to others, is just the tip of the spear. From Rationalists to effective altruists, NRx, the O9A, and onto Extropians and Accelerationists, the twenty-first century has witnessed no shortage of millenarianism in these United States.

But where is this headed? Do powerful tech lords envision a return to the Medieval world? Will AI be the new Black Death? Or is there something more terrible at play -- a civilization based on behavior and body modification that ends in a posthuman future?

Strange days indeed...

If you want to hear Snider discussing the main subject matter of the book, specifically the Cult of Ziz, I recommend checking out the 2-3-25 episode of THE FARM podcast. Click HERE to listen to "Thiel, Yudkowsky, Rationalists & the Cult of Ziz w/ David Z. Morris & Recluse."