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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.

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

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[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 12 points 3 days ago

In the process of looking for ways to link up with homeschool parents that aren't doing it for culty reasons, I accidentally discovered the existence of a small but active subreddit for "progressive monarchists". It'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 17 points 3 days ago

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. There'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 I've seen from George Orwell and not for a lack of competition.

[-] maol@awful.systems 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Oh yeah Britain didn't become fascist, they just imposed brutal imperialist exploitation on colonies in Asia and Africa lol. It's not fascism if you export it!

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[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 3 days ago

let'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

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago

is it a real quote from Orwell or just something someone made up?

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

Today on highlighting random rat posts from ACX:

poster thinks the future of llm training is contingent on focusing early on philosophical and theological text because they match the causality of human experience

(Current first post on today's SSC open thread)

On slightly more relevant news the main post is scoot asking if anyone can put him in contact with someone from a major news publication so he can pitch an op-ed by a notable ex-OpenAI researcher that will be ghost-written by him (meaning siskind) on the subject of how they (the ex researcher) opened a forecast market that predicts ASI by the end of Trump's term, so be on the lookout for that when it materializes I guess.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 3 days ago

scoot asking if anyone can put him in contact with someone from a major news publication

how about the New York Times

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 8 points 3 days ago

NYT and WaPo are his specific examples. He also wants a connection to "a policy/defense/intelligence/foreign affairs journal/magazine" if possible.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago

well I guess the NYT is auditioning the Völkisher Beobachter rôle so that tracks

[-] BigMuffin69@awful.systems 8 points 3 days ago

Does scoot actually know how computers work? Asking for a friend.

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

(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 couldn’t locate these particular instructional videos, but from what I can gather outlier.ai farms out various “tasks” 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 “device” 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 "Uber for AI code data" so now you do too.

[-] nightsky@awful.systems 10 points 3 days ago

I had to read “Uber for AI code data” so now you do too.

Wow, what a fractal of cursed meaning. I don't even understand what it really means, but it feels like understanding it any further would cause considerable psychic damage.

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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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