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AI Use Note: Main body text entirely human written. Claude (Opus 4.8) helped develop models of animal life histories in the appendix.
Cross-posted from Good Structures.
Executive Summary
* Animal advocates sometimes make claims like “there are X of this animal...
Summary
Back in November 2023 I posted here to launch Spiro and raise our first $198k. Two and a half years later this is an update and a fundraiser for the next step.
The short version: we've now reached over-5,900 people with TB preventive medicine, including over 3,000 children under five years old. Our early results have held up well an...
Adapted from my Substack, Funding Anthropalypse.
Short version: if you want a share of the coming Anthropic and OpenAI windfall - the $37bn+ that could be in play next year - the way in is to become 'legibly excellent', so the evaluators and donors that frontier lab staff already trust point them to yo...
Recent opportunities to take action
Wayne Hsiung, the co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) is running for mayor of Berkeley: https://www.wayneformayor.com/
He's running on a left-leaning platform that doesn't explicitly discuss animals, but he will likely focus on animal-friendly policies. For example, he wants to create a "solar powered, pedestrian-only, and plant-based Green District."
DxE has been fairly controversial in the animal advocacy world, but setting aside questions of their particular tactics, having someone so animal friendly in government could be very impactful. I just donated $50 to the campaign, which is the maximum individual donation.
Does anyone know much about Berkeley politics, and if it seems like he has a shot at winning?
Some people are making predictions about this topic here.
On that link, someone comments:
For anyone who hasn't been following closely, this is quite the understatement! Wayne once threatened to "start a big fight" at EAG in order to generate media attention.
Do you have a source for this claim? If not, I'd be wary of repeating it; it's a vague but critical statement that sounds like it could have been taken out of context. (But if there is a source, I'd be curious to see it.)
Note that the Forum's rules warn against "behavior that interferes with good discourse." Unsourced negative claims about people often fall into that category (though this is a mild example).
Yes. You are welcome to ask the other people who helped organize the previous EAGs about it. If you like I can try to work out the dates.
Also, I would note that if you allow unsourced positive claims, but not negative claims, this isolated demand for rigor creates a bias and make us vulnerable to hostile actors whose behavior cannot be called out. Though of course you can moderate your forum however you like!
If you see unsourced positive factual claims about people (e.g. things they said or did), you are welcome to ask for sources the same way I did! I think that the average unsourced negative claim is more likely to hurt the Forum's culture than the average unsourced positive claim, but we would ideally have few of either.
I think Gregory_Lewis is referencing the same poor behavior here if you are looking for more sources. Please let me know what the organizers say if you ended up asking them.
That's the kind of source I was looking for; thanks for letting me know when it came up.