A Spy Embedded within the Effective Altruists

and a metaverse sexcapade

First off, so that you’re the first to know . . . Mars Review of Books Issue 4 is on its way. We’ll be throwing a launch party in NYC later in the month and having another reading with some special guests in Lisbon during Urbit Week. Watch this space, as well as Mars Review Twitter and Instagram, for updates. And if you haven’t yet, now’s the perfect time to subscribe (click here and then scroll down) to the Mars Review. If you subscribe now at Star Tier, you’ll get print issues of both Issue 3 (nearly sold out) and Issue 4 sent to your door.

But aside from all that, I wanted to draw attention to a few more from Issue 3 before we turn the page.

It’s hard to remember—but before the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and associated hedge fund Alameda Research, there was a kind of halo around him in the mainstream press largely because of his association with a philosophical movement called effective altruism.

In a piece mirroring “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” Mars Review correspondent Ruby Sutton zoomed around the continent looking to get some information from the effective altruists in the wake of Bankman-Fried’s disgrace. It’s an elegant and funny piece with an important truth embedded in it—never trust anyone who fails to see the proper value of beauty.

Meanwhile, Sam Venis not only reviewed venture capitalist Matthew Ball’s The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything but also recounted his experience of finding himself smack dab in the middle of a metaverse sexcapade. Venis’s piece pulls no punches: It’s both compassionate and wise about what technology can and cannot promise to do for us.

We hope you’ll enjoy both of those pieces. They’re only out from behind the paywall for a limited time.

That’s all for now. Until next time,
Noah Kumin
Editor in Chief
Mars Review of Books