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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 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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[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 6 days ago

How do we make the experience of dating apps even worse? With AI, of course:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/12/chatgpt-ed-into-bed-chatfishing-on-dating-apps

The funniest bit is the guy who needed multiple exchanges with the ocean-boiling slop machine to come up with "Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you".

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

“I’d already been ChatGPT-ed into bed at least once. I didn’t want it to happen again.”

According to a 2024 YouGov poll, for instance, around half of Americans aged 18-34 reported having been, like Holly, in a situationship (a term it defines as “a romantic connection that exists in a gray area, neither strictly platonic nor officially a committed relationship”).

“Over the course of a week, I realised I was relying on it quite a lot,” she says. “And I was like, you know what, that’s fine – why not outsource my love life to ChatGPT?”

She describes being on the receiving end of the kinds of techniques that Jamil uses – being drilled with questions, “like you’re answering an HR questionnaire”, then off the back of those answers “having conversations where it feels as if the other person has a tap on my phone because everything they say is so perfectly suited to me”.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

So for my gaming needs I check reddit every now and then, and on phone it had after the comments ended a related answers section, which gave related answers 99% of them in the same sub.

Now they out some ai generated shit between that and the answers are just horrible generic slop.

Check out this answer for example: https://www.reddit.com/answers/3c67990a-d1a2-4f86-b1e4-c2f3bb54803d/

Very important context here. I was looking at the starsector subreddit. (A 2d arcade like space shooter) This is about a minecraft like building game. (Most of the advice is also useless (how to survive: 'use mods!').

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 26 points 1 week ago

as one of the two non-computer scientists here, every time I check in there seems to be some load bearing open source project I've never heard of that's gone fash. "GreenBlox is refusing to kick out a contributor who said the jewish question should be on the table??" "PipeLinux official account is posting that pronouns don't exist?" open source people, are you ok?

[-] aio@awful.systems 26 points 1 week ago

CS has a huge number of people who think you can derive the solutions to social problems from first principles. It's impossible to reason with them.

[-] fullsquare@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago

it seems to me that bigger problem is that they also think that software can solve these problems

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 25 points 1 week ago

open source people, are you ok?

No.

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[-] rook@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago

For the most part, the sudden rash of people deciding that their bigotry is now publicly acceptable is mostly around non-loadbearing things, because aggrieved entitled nerds aren’t great at working in a team (hyprland has definitely suffered from alienating people and missing out on fixes and compatibility work).

The rubygems stuff was a special case, because it was a hostile takeover of some important infrastructure by a shitty company, but most of the rest are unexciting projects that have found that giving it the old H-H is good publicity and more importantly: there are some rich folk throwing money around. Not a lot of cash in open source under normal circumstances.

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[-] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 21 points 1 week ago

“In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer,” [Peter Thiel] said, referring to Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky

I am going outside to smoke something. I don't care what, just… something

[-] macroplastic@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"The Antichrist wants to stop all science", says the motherfucker who pays people to drop out of universities.

[-] istewart@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago

Damn, when you get kicked off the Thiel grifter pipeline, you get straight punted. Not even the callous disregard and abandonment practiced by a certain outer-borough real estate hustler, instead it's reverse apotheosis

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[-] rook@awful.systems 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Bluesky going to bad for that poor, downtrodden, victimised and underrepresented demographic, uh, ai slop posters?

https://bsky.app/profile/carrion.bsky.social/post/3m2kf3rottc2h

alt textA screenshot of an email sent to a bluesky user, reading

Hi there, Your Bluesky account (@carrion.bsky.social) has created a list called "Al Slop Posters" that may violate our Community Guidelines. We've temporarily hidden this list from other users because it contains one or more of these issues.

  • Harmful language such as insults or slurs
  • Unverified claims
  • Appears intended to shame or abuse users
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[-] antifuchs@awful.systems 18 points 1 week ago

Oh my god, The Guardian with the sneer:

Take a look at Sam Altman. I mean, actually do it. Go to Google images, where you can find countless photos of the OpenAI boss smiling in a kind of wan genius way, the humble lost puppy of Silicon Valley. But I urge you to simply cover the bottom half of his face in any of these pictures, and you will immediately clock that Sam has the sad-psycho eyes of the lost woman’s boyfriend who the police have asked to front the missing person’s appeal. Please come home, Sheila – we’re all worried sick and we just want you back.

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[-] sinedpick@awful.systems 18 points 1 week ago

I just wanted to lob a sneer at this article fawning over Sora 2: https://spyglass.org/soras-slop-hits-different/

And again, a lot of this stuff — slop or not — is funny. Really, truly funny. Sora is scaling comedy in a way that we’ve never seen.

did this motherfucker just try to say "scaling comedy"? If you ever wondered why techbros are so unfunny, here's something to point at.

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[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 17 points 1 week ago
[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago

Is there a general term for the type of experimental or vaporware tech whose main function is creating FUD and FOMO which slows down the adoption and development of more mature conventional solutions? In the case of public transit these are collectively known as gadgetbahns. Examples from other fields include SMRs, direct air carbon capture, various embrace-extend-extinguish schemes in the software world, extraterrestrial colonies and a host of consumer IoT gadgets.

[-] FredFig@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

if there isn't, I'm calling it muskware, its conceptually close enough to vaporware.

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[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago
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[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago

A new psychology preprint argues that "contemporary AI is research misconduct".

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[-] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago

a lobsters is mad that a middling Perl project gets upvotes just because it's "braincoded"

https://lobste.rs/s/bu1a84/i_brain_coded_static_image_gallery_few#c_um9usd

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[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago

shot:

chaser:

(thread)

transcription of first imagephgn posts: Nice!! The Vercel CEO recently posed for pictures with Netanyahu, so I'm looking for an alternative actually!

aziaziazi replies: I'd be glad if you can share a source of that.

ardren replies: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vercel-ceo-takes-selfie-israe...

transcription of second imagephgn's comment is flagged and removed

an additional reply by baobun with the links https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/developers-drop-vercel-call-boycott-after-ceo-posts-selfie-netanyahu, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45416353, and https://old.reddit.com/r/nextjs/comments/1nueacb/vercel_controversy_ethics_backlash_and_a/

[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago
[-] mii@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago

I'd wanted to mention this when I read about Cloudflare doing it, but, seriously, what the hell is up with Omarchy?

It's not even a full distribution, just a fucking Arch config. Some shell scripts and dotfiles you can run to set up a system ... like tons of nerds have on their git and have been using for decades. Why is this shit getting sponsorships?

[-] rook@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago

The answer probably looks a lot like “here’s how to install omarchy on your laptop in 14 easy steps! And 88 great apps you can install afterwards!

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[-] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 15 points 1 week ago

Bluesky's found another set of rakes to step on - after a user complained of ableism from the mods, Trust and Safety head Aaron Rodericks used the automated systems as an accountability sink, then let slip that users' work was being uploaded to AI slop service thehive.ai, seemingly contradicting Bluesky's promise to not dump artists' work into the slop machine.

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[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago

A major Australian university used artificial intelligence technology to accuse about 6,000 students of academic misconduct last year.

The most common offence was using AI to cheat, but many of the students had done nothing wrong.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-09/artificial-intelligence-cheating-australian-catholic-university/105863524

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[-] mii@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

After kinda fence-sitting on the topic of AI in general for while, Hank Green is having a mental breakdown on YouTube over Sora2 and it's honestly pretty funny.

If you're the kind of motherfucker who will create SlopTok, you are not the kind of motherfucker who should be in charge of OpenAI.

Not that anyone should be in charge of that shitshow of a company, but hey!

Bonus sneer from the comment section:

Sam Altman in Feb 2015: "Development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."

Sam Altman in Dec 2015, after co-founding OpenAI: "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return."

Sam Altman 4 days ago, on his personal blog: "we are going to have to somehow make money for video generation."

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[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

New AI alignment problem just dropped: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1976304803744501775

Best I can do now is try to make sure that at least one AI is truth-seeking and not a super woke nanny with an iron fist that wants to turn everyone into diverse women 😬

Edit: It only just now occured to me that hes' probably whining about generative AI rather than an army of superintelligent robots marching across the earth transing people, but I'm leaving my comment.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 20 points 1 week ago

A spectre is haunting Silicon Valley. The spectre of getting force-femmed by diamondoid bacteria.

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Lately I've been mildly annoyed when I just want to relax and watch gaming videos on Youtube and I see recommendations for some AI critihype. Out of morbid curiosity, I decided to click on one of them and of course the "original paper" the video is based on is the stupid Anthropic blog post about how the AI blackmailed someone (after it was told to blackmail someone). I was even more annoyed to find out how popular it is, but at least it shows how the general public has such a negative opinion of AI. Some of the comments are thankfully pushing back against the video and focusing on the real harms.

I thought that by now we would have learned from the tobacco companies to never trust "research" done by a company about their own products.

[-] antifuchs@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago

Also, reading up on the recent nix community mess (more fun interpersonal steering committee member conflict!), I’ve come to one conclusion:

One day someone will make a stage play out of this whole thing and the play will suck.

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[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago

In the Financial Times:

The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year. And some analysts believe that estimate doesn’t fully capture the AI spend, so the real share could be even higher.

AI companies have accounted for 80 per cent of the gains in US stocks so far in 2025. That is helping to fund and drive US growth, as the AI-driven stock market draws in money from all over the world, and feeds a boom in consumer spending by the rich.

Since the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population own 85 per cent of US stocks, they enjoy the largest wealth effect when they go up. Little wonder then that the latest data shows America’s consumer economy rests largely on spending by the wealthy. The top 10 per cent of earners account for half of consumer spending, the highest share on record since the data begins.

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago

what are some of the all time most ludicrous and/or bigoted lesswrong posts? i am starting a podcast where my cohost and i show each other shockingly weird or bigoted texts and discuss them. mostly we're doing historical ones but rationalist stuff is fair game

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[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 13 points 1 week ago

I could never live in a dyson sphere. I cant stand how they stop charging after six months.

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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2025
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