The NYT Finally Ponders the Zizian Trans Murder Cult

But then decides to not think about why so many ex-men represent masculinity at its most toxic.

Back in January, I started covering on my Substack the Zizians, a transgender vegan animal rights effective altruist rationalist high IQ computer geek murder cult. In contrast, it took the New York Times four weeks longer to get around to writing about the Zizians, and then it didn’t mention that most of the violent cultists are transgender ex-men.

Some of the delay seemed to stem from the Times laboring last winter to avoid committing to any pronouns for the killers in order cover up their transgenderness from the the Times’ 11 million mostly sensitive subscribers, who tend to have strong biases about who are the bad guys and who are the good gals, and didn’t want to read about transgender women being the new Manson Family.

Now in July, the NYT is finally covering the story in detail, although as usual the really interesting stuff is buried toward the bottom.

She Wanted to Save the World From A.I. Then the Killings Started.

At first, Ziz LaSota seemed much like any other philosophically inclined young tech aspirant. Now, she and her followers are in jail, six people are dead, and Rationalists are examining whether their ideas played a role.

The lone earlier NYT article referred to the leader as Jack LaSota and then eventually got around to calling him “they” rather than his preferred “she.”

By Christopher Beam

Christopher Beam attended Rationalist community meet-ups and spoke with dozens of Rationalists in the Bay Area and New York City for this article.

Published July 6, 2025

If she didn’t get access to vegan food, she might die.

That’s what Ziz LaSota told a judge in February when she appeared via videoconference in Allegany County District Court in Maryland for her bail hearing.

Ziz, who is known widely by her first name, spoke haltingly in a weak voice, but interrupted the judge repeatedly. “I might starve to death if you do not intervene,” she said, asking to be released on bail. “It’s more important than whatever this hearing is.”

On its face, it seemed like a reasonable request. But prosecutors saw a ploy. They argued that Ziz, 34, was not just any inmate but the leader of an extremist group tied to a series of murders across the country. (The official charges against her involved trespassing, resisting arrest and a handful of misdemeanor gun charges.) She had skipped bail once before while being held in connection with a murder in Pennsylvania. Before that, she had faked her death to “escape investigation” in a different case, according to the Maryland district attorney. Besides, according to Capt. Daniel Lasher, assistant administrator of the Allegany County Detention Center, Ziz had been served vegan meals “from the get-go.”

The judge denied her bail request.

Ziz had been a minor celebrity within a slice of the Bay Area tech scene known as the Rationalists — a highly cerebral, extremely online group of tech and philosophy nerds dedicated to improving the world through logical thinking and deeply concerned with whether artificial intelligence will overtake the world and destroy humanity.

Over the years, the Rationalist movement has counted Peter Thiel and Sam Bankman-Fried among its community, and has influenced numerous figures, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Steven Pinker and Nate Silver. Perhaps more significant, for the tech workers building the A.I. tools that will undergird our world, Rationalism is something like a fraternity, and a shared language.

So, in the 8th paragraph:

Ziz, who is transgender, started as a typical Rationalist — a geeky optimist hoping to save the world — but turned toward an ultraradical strain of the philosophy.

And then finally, in the 27th paragraph, comes the revelation that the leader of the murder cult being trans is not just a random fluke but is part of a defining pattern:

Ziz’s clique was predominantly transgender or nonbinary, and several worked or interned at tech outfits like Google, Oracle and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

One had dropped out of Rice University to work on A.I. safety. They would get into arguments with other Rationalists on the online platform Discord, but their logic could be hard to parse.

“We called them ‘the incomprehensible cluster,’” said Ozy Brennan, a Rationalist writer. In one Discord exchange, members of the group insisted on using Discord handles composed of symbols rather than alphanumeric characters. When moderators objected, the group accused them of transphobia.

“They’re like, ‘You are forcing us into legibility, and trans people are illegible, and this is an important expression of my identity,’” said Brennan, who is trans nonbinary. This view dovetailed with their belief that transgender women have a distinct neurotype that is particularly good at A.I. safety research, according to Brennan.

The article goes on from there at some length about whether Rationalism is to blame, but never considers the question of the role of transgenderism in this appalling table.

Our society has sanctified ex-men, despite the abundant evidence that more than a few of them represent masculinity at its most toxic.

Update: Reader Gary Lacourt asks:

Curious if he is being held in a men or woman's prison?

Excellent question. that nobody else seems to have asked.

Zizian leader Jack/Ziz LaSota is being held in the Allegany County Detention Center in Maryland. But it was hard to find anything about whether LaSota is in the male or female section.

3 days ago the local newspaper cleared up that question:

Three Zizians granted joint trial

Teresa McMinn, Cumberland Times-News, Md.

Thu, July 10, 2025 at 3:17 PM GMT+2

https://www.yahoo.com/news/three-zizians-granted-joint-trial-131700370.html

… "LaSota, a transgender woman who blogged under the name “Ziz” and has been described by police as the leader of the group, was federally indicted last month in Maryland charged as an armed fugitive in the Frostburg arrest.

"LaSota is listed as male in charging documents and held in the men’s detention center.

"Elliott [the DA] has referred to LaSota in court as “he” while Twigg [the judge] called her “Ms. LaSota.”

Local newspapers are better at answering that kind of question than national newspapers.