They are Tolkien fans and yet they are building the devices (Palantir, Anduril) which evil will eventually use to dominate. Palantir is well-named but tragic that a fan would build it. Anduril is poorly-named as it is the sword used to combat industrial power rather than represent it.

Is this like GameMaker but AI-based, or is it more lofty and at risk of biting the hand that feeds it?

I read it as probably containing something deep that I should save for when I have time to go through the details. Maybe we syntaxlings need time to get comfortable.

You're right, they kind of assume the reader knows what they are thinking. My guess is that it is because white isn't used for comradery except if you are extreme, whereas it is normal to do so for non-white groups, so they are trying to delegitimize the extreme group. Whether it is the effective course of action given the goal is an interesting question.

ReLU is if-like since it only passes half of the input values with the other half becoming 0