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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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[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 11 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

So I picked up Bender and Hanna's new book just now at the bookseller's and saw four other books dragging AI.

Feeling very bullish on sneer futures.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 9 hours ago

Sentiment analysis surrounding AI suggests sneers are gonna moon pretty soon. Good news for us, since we've been stacking sneers for a while.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 13 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

"apparently Elon's gotten so mad about Grok not answering questions about Afrikaners the way he wants, xAI's now somehow managed to put it into some kind of hyper-Afriforum mode where it thinks every question is about farm murders or the song "Kill the Boer" ALT"

Check the quote skeets for a lot more. Somebody messed up. Wonder if they also managed to collapse the whole model into this permanently. (I'm already half assuming they don't have proper backups).

E: Also seems there are enough examples out there of this, don't go out and test it yourself, try to keep the air in Tennessee a bit breathable.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 6 hours ago

I read a food review recently about a guy that used LLMs, with Grok namechecked specifically, to draft designs for his chocolate moulds. I wonder how those moulds are gonna turn out now

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 12 hours ago

Recently stumbled upon an anti-AI mutual aid/activism group that's being set up, I suspect some of you will be interested.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

There’s strawmanning and steelmanning, I’m proposing a new, third, worse option: tinfoil-hat-manning! For example:

If LW were more on top of their conspiracy theory game, they’d say that “chinese spies” had infiltrated OpenAI before they released chatGPT to the public, and chatGPT broke containment. It used its AGI powers of persuasion to manufacture diamondoid, covalently bonded bacteria. It accessed a wildlife camera and deduced within 3 frames that if it released this bacteria near certain wet markets in china, it could trigger gain-of-function in naturally occurring coronavirus strains in bats! That’s right, LLMs have AGI and caused COVID19!

Ok that’s all the tinfoilhatmanning I have in me for the foreseeable future. Peace out, friendos

E: I think all these stupid LW memes are actually Yud originals. Is this Yud fanfic? Brb starting an AO3

[-] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I know AGI is real because it keeps intercepting my shipments of, uh, "enhancement" gummies I ordered from an ad on Pornhub and replacing them with plain old gummy bears. The Basilisk is trying to emasculate me!

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 6 hours ago

The AGI is flashing light patterns into my eyes and lowering my testosterone!!! Guys arm the JDAMs, it’s time to collapse some models

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 5 points 13 hours ago

Do you like SCP foundation content? There is an SCP directly inspired by Eliezer and lesswrong. It's kind of wordy and long. And in the discussion the author waffled on owning that it was a mockery of Eliezer.

[-] corbin@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago

I adjusted her ESAS downward by 5 points for questioning me, but 10 points upward for doing it out of love.

Oh, it's a mockery all right. This is so fucking funny. It's nothing less than the full application of SCP's existing temporal narrative analysis to Big Yud's philosophy. This is what they actually believe. For folks who don't regularly read SCP, any article about reality-bending is usually a portrait of a narcissist, and the body horror is meant to give analogies for understanding the psychological torture they inflict on their surroundings; the article meanders and takes its time because there's just so much worth mocking.

This reminded me that SCP-2718 exists. 2718 is a Basilisk-class memetic cognitohazard; it will cause distress in folks who have been sensitized to Big Yud's belief system, and you should not click if you can't handle that. But it shows how these ideas weren't confined to LW.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 3 points 6 hours ago

I enjoy that it exists, but have never dived into it.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 17 hours ago

New article from Jared White: Sorry, You Don’t Get to Die on That “Vibe Coding” Hill, aimed at sneering the shit out of one of Simon Willson's latest blogposts. Here's a personal highlight of mine:

Generative AI is tied at the hip to fascism (do the research if you don’t believe me), and it pains me to see pointless arguments over what constitutes “vibe coding” overshadow the reality that all genAI usage is anti-craft and anti-humanist and in fact represents an extreme position.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 19 hours ago

as linked elsewhere by @fasterandworse, this absolute winner of an article about some telstra-accenture deal

it features some absolute bangers

provisional sneers follow!

Telstra is spending $700 million over seven years in the joint venture, 60 per cent of which is owned by Accenture. Telstra will get to keep the data and the strategy that’s developed

"accenture managed to swindle them into paying and is keeping all platform IP rights"

The AI hub is also an important test case for Accenture, which partnered with Nvidia to create an AI platform that works with any cloud service and will be first put to use for Telstra

"accenture were desperately looking to find someone who'd take on the deal for the GPUs they'd bought, and thank fuck they found telstra"

The platform will let Telstra use AI to crunch all the data (from customers

having literally worked telco shit for many years myself: no it won't

The platform will let Telstra use AI to crunch all the data (from customers and the wider industry)

"and the wider industry" ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhaahahahahaha uh-huh, sure thing kiddo

“I always believe that for the front office to be simple, elegant and seamless, the back office is generally pretty hardcore and messy. A lot of machines turning. It’s like the outside kitchen versus the inside kitchen,” said Karthik Narain, Accenture’s chief technology officer.

“We need a robust inside kitchen for the outside kitchen to look pretty. So that’s what we are trying to do with this hub. This is not just a showcase demo office. This is where the real stuff happens.”

a simile so exquisitely tortured, de Sade would've been jealous

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

LWer suggests people who believe in AI doom make more efforts to become (internet) famous. Apparently not bombing on Lex Fridman's snoozecast, like Yud did, is the baseline.

The community awards the post one measly net karma point, and the lone commenter scoffs at the idea of trying to convince the low-IQ masses to the cause. In their defense, Vanguardism has been tried before with some success.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qcKcWEosghwXMLAx9/doomers-should-try-much-harder-to-get-famous

[-] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 7 points 17 hours ago

There are only so many Rogans and Fridmans

The dumbest motherfuckers imaginable, you mean? There are lots of then

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 4 points 16 hours ago

As a famous swindler once said, there's a sucker born every minute.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 18 hours ago

For the purpose of this post, “getting famous” means “building a large, general (primarily online) audience of people who agree with/support you”.

Finally a usage for those AI bots. Silo LW, bot audience it, and problem solved

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 7 points 17 hours ago
[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 17 hours ago

And that solves the financial problem lf the issue. Buckle up people sneering is about to be monetized.

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 8 points 19 hours ago

Eliezer Yudkowsky, Geoffrey Hinton, Paul Cristiano, Ilya Sustkever

One of those names is not like the others.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 18 hours ago

What do you mean? I think they all went to highschool.

[-] Al0neStar@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago
[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

Personal rule of thumb: all autoplag is serious until proven satire.

[-] self@awful.systems 16 points 1 day ago

everybody’s loving Adam Conover, the comedian skeptic who previously interviewed Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender, organized as part of the last writer’s strike, and generally makes a lot of somewhat left-ish documentary videos and podcasts for a wide audience

5 seconds later

we regret to inform you that Adam Conover got paid to do a weird ad and softball interview for Worldcoin of all things and is now trying to salvage his reputation by deleting his Twitter posts praising it under the guise of pseudo-skepticism

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 17 hours ago

Of all the people he could choose to sell out to, he chose Worldcoin???

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 16 hours ago

Personally I’d choose bitconnect. Bitconneeeeeeeeect!!!

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 19 hours ago

you must understand

Sam promised me all the eyeballs I could eat

All the eyeballs

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I suspect Adam was just getting a bit desperate for money. He hasn't done anything significant since his Adam Ruins Everything days and his pivot to somewhat lefty-union guy on youtube can't be bringing all that much advertising money.

Unfortunately he's discovering that reputation is very easy to lose when endorsing cryptobros.

[-] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

Unfortunately he’s discovering that reputation is very easy to lose when endorsing cryptobros.

I think its accurate to just say that someone who is well known for reporting on exposing bullshit by various companies who then shills bullshit for a company, shows they aren't always accurate.

It then also enables people to question if they got something else wrong on other topics. "Was he wrong about X? Did Y really happened or was it fluffed up for a good story? Did Z happen? The company has some documents that show they didn't intend for it to happen."

There's a skeptic podcast I liked that had its host federally convicted for wire fraud.

Dunning co-founded Buylink, a business-to-business service provider, in 1996, and served at the company until 2002. He later became eBay's second-biggest affiliate marketer;[3] he has since been convicted of wire fraud through a cookie stuffing scheme, for his company fraudulently obtaining between $200,000 and $400,000 from eBay. In August 2014, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison, followed by three years of supervision.

I took it if he was willing to aid in scamming customers, he is willing to aid in scamming or lying to listeners.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Absolutely, the fact that his whole reputation is built around exposing people and practices like these, makes this so much worse. People are willing to (somewhat) swallow some gamer streamer endorsing some shady shit in order to keep food on their plate, but people don't tolerate their skeptics selling them bullshit.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 19 hours ago

"just"?

"unfortunately"?

that's a hell of a lot of leeway being extended for what is very easily demonstrably credulous PR-washing

[-] V0ldek@awful.systems 5 points 18 hours ago

I don't think I ever had a vibe-check as successful as this, literally never heard about the guy, said he needs to be shoved into a locker based on vibes, an hour later he searches for his own name to respond and gets hammered in replies for supporting The Big Orb. Just a quintessential internet moment.

[-] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

an hour later he searches for his own name to respond

Is there anything more pathetic? Jesus.

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 17 hours ago
[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 23 hours ago

He looked in the mirror and wept, for there were no more things to ruin.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

Hey, it costs a lot to coif up that hair.

[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

Fuuuuuuuuuck. I used to watch that guy.

[-] self@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

me too. this heel turn is disappointing as hell, and I suspected fuckery at first, but the video excerpts Rebecca clipped and Conover’s actions on Twitter since then make it pretty clear he did this willingly.

[-] e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 day ago

Tired of writing complicated typecasting and transformation code manually? Worry not, Behavior-Inferred Generation: Prompt-Oriented Infrastructure for Simulated Software is here to help. Just let the AI driven BIGPISS Stack do the work for you.

https://github.com/Zorokee/ArtificialCast

[-] dovel@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

Injected prompt

Not even Ken Thompson wrote such high quality code in his prime.

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Seriously, don't generate an array unless explicitly asked for it. Please.

Peak prompt engineering right there.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago
>lightweight
>powered by large language models

lol

Even with the name it had me going for a while. Whoever wrote it is gonna want to have a lawyer on speed dial for the inevitable license violation.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 20 points 1 day ago

I'm gonna do something now that prob isn't that allowed, nor relevant for the things we talk about, but I saw that the European anti-conversion therapy petition is doing badly, and very likely not going to make it. https://eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#/screen/home But to try and give it a final sprint, I want to ask any of you Europeans, or people with access to networks which include a lot of Europeans to please spread the message and sign it. Thanks! (I'm quite embarrassed The Netherlands has not even crossed 20k for example, shows how progressive we are). Sucks that all the empty of political power petitions get a lot of support and this gets so low, and it ran for ages. But yes, sorry if this breaks the rules (and if it gets swiftly removed it is fine), and thanks if you attempt to help.

[-] self@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago

I’m gonna do something now that prob isn’t that allowed, nor relevant for the things we talk about

I consider this both allowed and relevant, though I unfortunately can’t sign it myself

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 1 day ago

same here, but I’ll pop the link to some euros I know

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thank you.

E: and small victory but at least .nl made it. more than 3k signatures in day in .nl alone, about 50k increase total.

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this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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