Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      ā€œOh well, time to learn absolutely nothing from this and continue to be terrible people,ā€ said Grimes and Aella mentally, and unbeknownst to them, because they each have one brain cell quantum-entangled* with the otherā€™s, simultaneously

      *I finished the three body problem trilogy recently! Where do I sign up for the ETO

    • froztbyte@awful.systems
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      aww, look at the little collaborators trying to pretend they both got duped instead of both having been active and enthusiastic enablers

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      Iā€™d swear Iā€™ve seen that exact same ā€œrealizationā€ from Aella before, when she posted something like ā€œI got really into tradcath practices for [the writerā€™s barely disguised fetish] reasons, and now Iā€™m shocked that they really actually do hate sex work.ā€

      Edit to add:

      ok what the FUCK is goin on with the neo-trads? I was just over here enjoying this free life, individualism, subversive, unwoke cultural movement and I thought everybody was on board but suddenly BAM weā€™ve got a a bunch of them spawning into sex-negative tradcaths or whatever [ā€¦] iā€™m just sad cause i thought this section of culture were my allies. we both were like ā€˜leave me alone, authoritarian government/cultureā€™, and were appropriately skeptical of novel identity movements, willing to say the weirdo things.

      https://xcancel.com/Aella_Girl/status/1630875718518456321#m

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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      i want to slap each and every one of the people of X replying with something about autism

      bad faith is actually incredibly easy to detect with a little practice if youā€™re not a bad faith idiot yourself

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      Aella last seen shouting ā€˜but it is in the dictionary, I dont understand why yall keep telling me it isnt!?ā€™

  • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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    Hackernews woke up feeling like fascism ( make sure to enable dead + flagged comments if you hate yourself):

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42905937

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897696

    (Two comment threads about the CDC purging ā€œwokeā€ research, the comments are bad even by HN standards)

    Gee given a forum full of hackers youā€™d expect them to be against arbitrary removal of scientific studies. What happened to ā€œinformation wants to be freeā€?


    Bonus US terribleness: the NTSB suddenly thinks Twitter* is the beeā€™s knees and way better than email! What coincidental timing https://xcancel.com/NTSB_Newsroom/status/1885734974298435943


    Also I know I know, more US politics. It turns out silicon valley fascists have gained power so expect this to keep happening for the forseeable future šŸ™ƒ.

    These past two weeks have made me very uncomfortable working in Silicon Valley, I know last time I said I was planning to get out; but now it feels urgent both for my own well being, and to stop contributing to this industry. In trans communities we immediately saw coupy stuff** for the attempted transgender genocide that it is, the wider public and media is waking up to this very slowly.

    * An account-only platform that sometimes bans US citizens for being cool.

    ** If thereā€™s interest I could try turning all of this into a top level post on morewrite or techtakes. Iā€™ve been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but itā€™s extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.

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      Not clicking those HN links, decided years ago already that site should not be part of my life anymore at all. The few times I have deviated from that rule since, I regretted it.

      As for the more general topic, I feel so bad for all trans people with everything that is unfolding. Itā€™s horrible. But be assured that there are many peope in this world who are on your side on this. Wish I could say something more useful, but Iā€™m at a loss of words.

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      Iā€™ve been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but itā€™s extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.

      I posted this on masto just before reading this

      https://mathstodon.xyz/@sc_griffith/113935375805048449

      and honestly reading what you wrote here, Iā€™m tearing up. the constant downplaying for almost a decade has really worn me down, and itā€™s getting worse and worse. that I see more and more people plainly describing the situation is so cathartic, such a relief

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      An account-only platform that sometimes bans US citizens for being cool

      Not just that, but a site that, if you are bot logged in shows an accounts posts not chronologically, but most popular first. Making it totally incapable to be used as a gov communication platform. Imagine looking at a gov storm warning system for your area and seeing the list of most virally named storms first, and nothing about how you should evacuate right now.

      Amd yes it is quite horrible that the usa is in the book burning and building (more) concentration camps stages of the gearing up for genocide stages. Up next, taking away passports (which they are already not issuing anymore) and any guns (not that these help, historically speaking, iirc the Jewish people had guns in Germany at first).

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      Iā€™ve been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but itā€™s extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.

      yep. havenā€™t been posting about it here because not sure where here weā€™d put it (while a lot of it is well within the orbit of regular content and posters) and itā€™s not quite entirely anything I can do anything about but offer words of comfort and keeping watch on the nasty shit, but been speaking a lot with friends in places (signal generally, or some other spaces we actually control (i.e. not discord, etc))

      I feel moderately confident that at least for a bit of the foreseeable future weā€™ll be okay this side of the world, but I also know enough history and context to know how vacuous that is by itself. these fuckers wonā€™t stop.

      I also wish I could just make people understand that none of this is by mistake, none of this is these fuckers just finding some shit they disagree with under the seat cushions. I wish I could make them understand the depth and extent of planning and preparation that went into this, the sheer commitment behind it all. but too often such concerns would all be received as this toot put it

      thereā€™s so much more I could say but I guess Iā€™ll leave it there for now

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        I also wish I could just make people understand that none of this is by mistake

        I keep seeing US people go ā€œa lot of Trumps plans were stopped at rhe courts last timeā€, and I keep worrying this is people fighting the last war again, not realizing that the opposition are active intelligent (as in baseline human beings not as in high IQ) people who prob are not going to be stopped by the same things as last time. Dont worry the Maginot line will stop them from invading too fast, cant get through the Ardennes sort of thinking if that makes sense.

        While companies seem to be betting on anti discrimination laws being gone (why else take the legal risk of shuttering dei programs). (I have written reactions like this before and often deleted it because it feels just too doomer, but it keeps coming back to me).

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    Neo-Nazi nutcase having a normal one.

    Itā€™s so great that this isnā€™t falsifiable in the sense that doomers can keep saying, well ā€œonce the model is epsilon smarter, then youā€™ll be sorry!ā€, but back in the real world: the model has been downloaded 10 million times at this point. Somehow, the diamanoid bacteria has not killed us all yet. So yes, we have found out the Yud was wrong. The basilisk is haunting my enemies, and she never misses.

    Bonus sneer: ā€œwe are going to find out if Yud was rightā€ Hey fuckhead, he suggested nuking data centers to prevent models better than GPT4 from spreading. R1 is better than GPT4, and it doesnā€™t require a data center to run so if we had acted on Yudā€™s geopolitical plans for nuclear holocaust, billions would have been for incinerated for absolutely NO REASON. How do you not look at this shit and go, yeah maybe donā€™t listen to this bozo? Iā€™ve been wrong before, but god damn, dawg, Iā€™ve never been starvingInRadioactiveCratersWrong.

    • ShakingMyHead@awful.systems
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      Itā€™s wild that Yudkowsky saw a binary choice of ā€œnuclear holocaustā€ and ā€œsuperintelligenceā€ and chose ā€œnuclear holocaustā€ in the first place.

      • BigMuffin69@awful.systems
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        Like, even if I believed in FOOM, Iā€™ll take my chances with the stupid sexy basilisk šŸ over radiation burns and itā€™s not even fucking close.

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          I donā€™t want to say with absolute confidence that thereā€™s no scenario I can imagine to which a nuclear apocalypse would be preferable (the real kind, not the Fallout kind). But I have yet to hear one.

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            The upcoming firestorms of climate change, while patrolling the Mohave desert almost make you wish for nuclear winter. Ow wait not like fallout you said

            • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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              nuclear winter is not a thing that can possibly happen, from what i understand

              sagan et al overstated amount of soot put in upper atmosphere over 10x, for no particular reason other than trying to make a point

              notice how no one talked about it after desert storm? oilfield fires provided negative evidence

              • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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                Another dream shattered. Not sure if the oilfield fires were big enough. Volcanoes can cause some cooling right? pokes old yeller

                • rook@awful.systems
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                  Weā€™ve had recent eruptions in all be big categories, so weā€™re not due another one for a while and trying to cheat by setting one off early wonā€™t allow sufficient pressure for a proper bang.

                  Not that I want to discourage you, but donā€™t be sad if you try for a year without summer and get a couple of weeks without flights instead.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      The advanced sinophobia where the Chinese are so much better at everything than the west that even when they make better and cheaper bullshit machines than the Americans do and hand them out for free, it has apocalyptic consequences.

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      i wonder which endocrine systems are disrupted by not having your head sufficiently stuffed into a toilet before being old enough to type words into nazitter dot com

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    (Reposting from the last thread)

    Days since last open source issue tracker pollution by annoying nerds: zero

    My investigation tracked to you [Outlier.ai] as the source of problems - where your instructional videos are tricking people into creating those issues to - apparently train your AI.

    I couldnā€™t locate these particular instructional videos, but from what I can gather outlier.ai farms out various ā€œtasksā€ to internet gig workers as part of some sort of AI training scheme.

    Bonus terribleness: one of the tasks a few months back was apparently to wear a head mounted camera ā€œdeviceā€ to record ones every waking moment

    P.S. sorry for the linkedin link behind the mastodon link, but shared suffering and all that. I had to read ā€œUber for AI code dataā€ so now you do too.

    • nightsky@awful.systems
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      I had to read ā€œUber for AI code dataā€ so now you do too.

      Wow, what a fractal of cursed meaning. I donā€™t even understand what it really means, but it feels like understanding it any further would cause considerable psychic damage.

      • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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        Well I canā€™t translate it but if you search for itā€¦ holy smokes are search engines amusingly bad at indexing federated content.

        That random other Lemmy instance is actually doing the right thing here since it includes the right link rel canonical, so I guess Google just hasnā€™t caught up yet or something. I have no idea why Google chopped off the last byte of the IP address.

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    In the process of looking for ways to link up with homeschool parents that arenā€™t doing it for culty reasons, I accidentally discovered the existence of a small but active subreddit for ā€œprogressive monarchistsā€. Itā€™s titled r/progressivemonarchists, because their imagination in naming conventions only slightly outatrips their imagination for forms of government. Given how our usual sneer fodder overlaps with nrx I figured there are others here who I can inflict this headache on.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      A silhouette of a nuclear family with their heads overlaid by the flags of Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. Above them king Charles of Normal Island holding and umbrella, shielding them from rain labeled "Trumpism and far right ideology".

      Quality shitpost, I could imagine some thirteen year old actually believing this.

      Flags of Spain, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Norway, Andorra, Luxembourg and Belgium. Above the quote: "On the whole the European countries which have most successfully avoided Fascism have been constitutional monarchies" from George Orwell

      Yea, no fascism whatsoever took place in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, or Belgium during WW2, in which they were all very successfully avoiding being occupied by fascists.

      Extra points to Spain who already avoided succumbing to their own homegrown brand of fascism before the Nazi German invasion of Poland, and where they avoided having fascists in power all the way until the 1970s. Thereā€™s a book I quite like about the war where that happened called Homage to Catalonia. I wonder if Orwell ever read it.

      Missing from the list is Italy, which is no longer a constitutional monarchy, but used to be until 1946, which is why they were so good at avoiding fascism they even named it.

      This might take the cake for the dumbest take Iā€™ve seen from George Orwell and not for a lack of competition.

      • maol@awful.systems
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        Oh yeah Britain didnā€™t become fascist, they just imposed brutal imperialist exploitation on colonies in Asia and Africa lol. Itā€™s not fascism if you export it!

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            i would love to read someone more familiar with historical fascism and imperialism who is able to articulate the link between the two. like, an analysis of imperialism as the construction and maintenance of borders across which exploitation is enforced and economic value is extracted ā€“ paired with the observation of fascism as the attempts to construct borders ā€œacross peoplesā€ from within the imperial core

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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        letā€™s also not forget these very liberal and not at all nazi-collaborating kingdoms of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Thailand and Japan. honorable mentions to Cambodia that very successfully avoided Pol Pot and Iran that very successfully avoided islamic revolution

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        A really hot take for sure. Apparently Orwell did at least say this, at least according to Wikipedia (I was doubtful initially), which is weird, but I also feel that Orwell is often misrepresented and we are probably missing context. For one, Orwell was a socialist and yet is somehow presented as a hero by Raeganists and the such. I suspect there might be context missing.

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    Screenshot of an insta post of a screenshot of a tweet

    Tweet:

    I canā€™t believe ChatGPT lost its job to AI

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      Folks around here told me AI wasnā€™t dangerous šŸ˜° ; fellas I just witnessed a rogue Chinese AI do 1 trillion dollars of damage to the US stock market šŸ˜­ /s

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      Is it too early to hope that this is the beginning of the end of the bubble?

      Also, does someone know why broadcom was also hit so hard? Is it because they make various networking-related chips used in datacenter infrastructure?

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        When hedge funds decide to flip the switch on something the reaction never looks rational. Meta was green today ffs.

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    9 days ago

    Getting pretty tired of new coworker spruiking copilot all the time, please send me your sympathy and energy so I can weather this trial

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      I have added your coworker to the list of people I will imagine being tortured in the future. Im no robotgod but it is the best I can do.

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      that word temporarily broke me (its constituent phonemes are all valid/typical afrikaans (and dutch) but the word itself made no sense), then I looked it up

      that sounds exhausting. I wish to flippantly suggest launching your colleague to another planet, but cruel fate might reveal them to be a muskovian martian so perhaps best not to broach that subjectā€¦

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      You have my sympathy! Is the worst part that you have to review the slop or its general presence at all?

      Asking because at my workplace it will be allowed soon, and some coworkers are unfortunately looking forward to it, and Iā€™m horrified, especially by the thought of having to do code review thenā€¦

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        Itā€™s more the latter. I canā€™t really stop anyone from using it, and playing the game of ā€œcan you tell if this snippet of code was LLMedā€ is a fools errand, so I have to choose to ignore that part of it. Testing de-risks bad code, but there is never enough testingā€¦ well, thereā€™s only so much I can do within my pay grade.

        Iā€™ve since asked this person to stop talking about their copilot usage, so this issue has been resolved, for now.

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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      that thread is a work of genius and answers what the next tech boom needs to be

      dicks in mousetraps I MEAN whatever wastes electricity most, preferably with Nvidia cards

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        I do actually have a mechanism for using the sharp edges of NVidia cards for dick mouse trapping purposes. And we could - hypothetically - use the extraneous power inputs to mine Bitcoin or something, maximizing efficiency!

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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    lol holy shit this just came into reddit sneerclub (and was zapped immediately)

    user HardboiledHack

    also tried r/lesswrong and r/slatestarcodex

    iā€™m sure the guardian can be trusted to report on anything involving trans people

    the journalist is J Oliver Conroy https://www.theguardian.com/profile/j-oliver-conroy who now writes for the Washington Examiner and used to write for Quillette (the article has been deleted from the site) https://archive.is/aSBjW

    from http://joliverconroy.net/

    I am a journalist who specializes in features and profiles. I write about the American right, ideologues, intellectuals, extremist movements, the culture wars, true crime, and strange events and strange places.

    by ā€œaboutā€, he means ā€œforā€

    Iā€™m a journalist at the Guardian working on a piece about the Zizians. If you have encountered members of the group or had interactions with them, or know people who have, please contact me: oliver.conroy@theguardian.com.

    Iā€™m also interested in chatting with people who can talk about the Ziziansā€™ beliefs and where they fit (or did not fit) in the rationalist/EA/risk community.

    I prefer to talk to people on the record but if you prefer to be anonymous/speak on background/etc. that can possibly be arranged.

    Thanks very much.

    iā€™ve also warned over at the old place

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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        From what Iā€™ve been able to piece together from the various theological disputes people have had with the murder cult it seems like the only two differences are that Ziz and friends are much more committed to nonhuman animal welfare than the average rat and that they have decided that the correct approach to conflict is always to escalate. This makes them more aggressive about basically everything which looks like a much deeper ideological gap than there actually is. Iā€™m not going to evaluate whether these are reasonable conclusions to take from the same bizarre set of premises that lead to Rokoā€™s Basilisk being a concern.

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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          However, I do think that the unfolding of this story presents an object lesson in why ā€œalways escalate to the maxā€ is a wildly stupid idea. It turns out that even when you have guns (metaphorical or otherwise) and a complete disregard for the consequences of failure the average group of citizens is still at a decided disadvantage to the state at higher points on the escalation ladder.

          • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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            You misunderstand, they escalate to the max to keep themselves (including selves in parallel dimensions or far future simulations) from being blackmailed by future super intelligent beings, not to survive shootouts with border patrol agents.

            I am fairly certain Yud had said something very close to that effect in reference to preventing blackmail from the basilisk, even though he tries to no-true-scotchman zizians wrt his functional decision ā€˜theoryā€™ these days.