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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 18th May 2025 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 month ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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 you’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 cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[-] self@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago

if you saw that post making its rounds in the more susceptible parts of tech mastodon about how AI’s energy use isn’t that bad actually, here’s an excellent post tearing into it. predictably, the original post used a bunch of LWer tricks to replace numbers with vibes in an effort to minimize the damage being done by the slop machines currently being powered by such things as 35 illegal gas turbines, coal, and bespoke nuclear plants, with plans on the table to quickly renovate old nuclear plants to meet the energy demand. but sure, I’m certain that can be ignored because hey look over your shoulder is that AGI in a funny hat?

[-] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago

I argue that we shouldn't be tolerant of sloppy factual claims, let alone lies and disinformation, but we also need to keep perspective: it's worth opposing fascists even if they don't pollute that much, and it's worth protecting labor even if the externalities of doing so are fairly negligible. That is, I'll warrant, a somewhat subtle and nuanced position, but hey. This is my blog, so I get to have opinions that take more than a sentence or two to express!

Apparently we live in a world where "lying and Nazis are both bad, and Nazi liars are the worst" is a nuanced and subtle position. Sneers directed at society rather than the writer, but it was just a big oof moment.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The 'energy usage by a single chatgpt' thing gets esp dubious when added to the 'bunch of older models under a trenchcoat' stuff. And that the plan is to check the output of a LLM by having a second LLM check it. Sure the individual 3.0 model might only by 3 whatevers, but a real query uses a dozen of them twice. (Being a bit vague with the numbers here as I have no access to any of those).

E: also not compatible with Altmans story that thanking chatgpt cost millions. Which brings up another issue, a single query is part of a conversation so now the 3 x 12 x 2 gets multiplied even more.

this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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