Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 12th April 2026 (awful.systems)

submitted 1 week ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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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[-] corbin@awful.systems 19 points 4 days ago

Dan Gackle threatens to quit HN over their reluctance to condemn an act of violence towards Sam Altman:

I don't think I've ever seen a thread this bad on Hacker News. The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get. I feel ashamed of this community.

Gackle's ashamed of people not wanting to protect Altman. Curiously, he doesn't seem ashamed of openly allowing people with nicknames ending in "88" to post antisemitism, nor of allowing multiple crusty conservatives like John Nagle and Walter Bright to post endorsements of violence against the homeless and queer, nor of allowing posters like rayiner to port entirely foreign flavors of racism like the Indian caste system into their melting pot of bigotry. This subthread takes him to task for it:

Frankly people calling out a post from a billionaire is a good thing. You would have to be terminally detached from reality to not see how all these festering issues - wealth inequality, injustice, cost of living, future employment etc etc - are starting to come to a head which would cause people to feel something - frustrated, angry, wrathful.

The rest of that subthread involves Dan demonstrating that he is, in fact, terminally detached from reality. Anyway, I fully endorse Gackle fucking off and buying a farm. While he's at it, he should consider following the advice of this reply:

Maybe it's time to pack it in? I don't just mean you, I mean that maybe this site has kinda run its course.

[-] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 15 points 4 days ago

Every day, HN users flag into oblivion anything mildly critical of the technological dystopia these tech-bros are trying to manifest. "Politics!" they cry. But Sam Altman comes along with an OpenAI marketing piece dressed up as a condemnation of political violence, and suddenly "politics" are a perfectly acceptable topic. dang has long made it clear whose side he's on.

Oh, and I hope everyone noted how quickly Sam used this incident as an excuse to place blame on the reporters who published the New Yorker piece that was mildly critical of him:

Words have power too. There was an incendiary article about me a few days ago. Someone said to me yesterday they thought it was coming at a time of great anxiety about AI and that it made things more dangerous for me. I brushed it aside.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

That's a hilarious reaction.

Anyway there's zip about this incident on LW, which is telling.

edit here's a very oblique reference https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/igEogGD9TAgAeAM7u/jimrandomh-s-shortform?commentId=zdMRHRqWDcjswhA3i

don't miss the anarcho-libertarian in the comments

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Lesswrong is too centrist-brained to ever even hint at legitimizing (non-state-sanctioned) destruction of property as a means of protest or political action. But according to the orthodox lesswrong lore, Sam Altman's actions are literally an existential threat to all humanity, so they can't defend him either. So they are left with silence.

I actually kind of agree with the anarchy-libertarian's response? It is massively down voted.

This is just elevating your aesthetic preference for what the violence you're advocating for looks like to a moral principle. The claim that throwing a Molotov cocktail at one guy's house is counterproductive to the goal of "bombing the datacenters" is a better argument, though one I do not believe.

Bingo. Dear leader Yudkowsky can ask to bomb the data centers, and as long as this action goes through the US political process, that violence is legitimate, regardless of how ill-behaved the US is or it's political processes degraded from actually functioning as a democracy.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 3 days ago

Specifically, a screenshot of a moderator warning him that advocating violence is grounds for a ban there. It would also be grounds for a ban on LW.

That explains why Yud is using twitter so much nowadays. I mean they did ban him right? right?

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 3 points 3 days ago

Someone just made a top post condemning the Molotov but defending and normalizing Eliezer: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Sih2sFHEgusDEuxtZ/you-can-t-trust-violence

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Ah suddenly when it reaches the class he feels he should be a part of (or is a part of, I don't know how much money he makes) violence is suddenly a problem.

It’s not easy to be a cop, and that’s basically what you are around here, but thank you for doing it.

...

this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026

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