1: Instead of asking me “Why isn’t effective altruism spending its money on X?” all the time, consider entering Open Philanthropy Project’s Cause Exploration contest, where they will give you up to $25,000 for thinking of Xs they should be spending their money on.

2: Continued thanks to everyone who commented on my posts on the homicide spike. The only comment that’s actually made me doubt my thesis is the one linking this article on rural homicides rising almost as much as urban ones recently - given that rural areas seem too conservative to react to BLM protests much, this seems like potential counterevidence. I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this.

3: Congratulations to Data Secrets Lox, the unofficial ACX-related bulletin board, on their second anniversary. I’ve been reading a lot recently on the decline of Web 2.0 and its system of decentralized BBSs in favor of the corporate web of today, and I’m proud of our community for managing to very slightly buck that trend. I can’t remember everyone involved, but thanks especially to Cassander and Johan Larson for their work founding and moderating it, and to Obormot for doing the technical work.

4: Thanks to everyone who applied last week to Spencer Greenberg’s grants round. It is now closed, and I won’t be doing another ACX Grants for at least a few months, but if any of you want to pursue urgent opportunities in AI alignment, biosecurity, or similar fields before then, and find that some 4-5 digit amount of money would help, please send me an email at scott@slatestarcodex.com and I will try to connect you to relevant funders.