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.
New Stan Kelly cartoon has a convenient Thiel reaction picture, should someone do a slightly better crop job:
This is sort of OT, but since we discuss race science and dogwhistles so much:
A jeans manufacturer has put out an ad featuring Sydney Sweeney and is saying “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”. People are interpreting this as a racist dogwhistle (it is). Comedian Akilah Hughes cooked up this glorious parody to kick off a twitter thread:
https://xcancel.com/AkilahObviously/status/1950224586278154577#m
💀
getting 10:1 ratioed by my own profile picture would probably make me leave civilization and become an ascetic
I’d never heard of Jasmine Crockett, so for anyone like me needing a translation: he means black.
For those that (like me) is out of the loop and don’t get it, Wikipedia comes to the rescue:
In one of the advertisements that was particularly controversial, Sweeney says that “genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans [or genes] are blue”. Another voice then declares “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”.
Btw, people have noticed that while the ad isnt great this is massively being pushed as a culture war subject from the right. To distract from all the other shit. (Gaza, the fascism, Epstein, the corruption, etc etc).
And Sydney is a massive obsession for the online far right. So best to not give them what they want.
(All this isnt helped by the media never giving agency to the right, the right gets weird about budweiser, keurig, gillette, jaguar (less so because none of them actually own luxury cars to destroy), it is treated as somewhat normal vs people going ‘eurgh’ over this in tweets causes a massive media shitstorm).
A friend at a former workplace was in a discussion with that company leadership earlier this week to understand how and what metrics are to be used for promotion candidates since the office is directed to use “AI” tools for coding. Simply put: lots of entry and lower level engineers submit PRs that are co-authored by Claude so it is difficult to measure their actual software development skills to determine if they should get promoted.
That leadership had no real answers just lots of abstract garbage (vibes essentially) and followed up with telling all the entry levels to reduce the code they write and use the purchased agentic tool.
Along with this a buddy at a very famous prop shop says the firm decided to freeze all junior hiring and is leaning into only hiring senior+ and replacing juniors with AI. He asked what will happen when the current seniors leave/retire and got hit with shock that would even be considered.
i bought some bullshit from amazon and left a
somewhatpretty mean review because debugging it was super frustratingthe seller reached out and offered a refund, so i told them basically “no, it’s ok, just address the concerns in my review. let me update my review to be less mean-spirited — i was pretty frustrated setting it up but it mostly works fine”
then they sent a message that had the “llm vibe”, and the rest of the conversation went
Seller: You’re right — we occasionally use LLM assistance for responses, but every message is reviewed to ensure accuracy and relevance to your concerns. We sincerely apologize if our previous replies dissatisfied you; this was our oversight.
Me: I am not simply dissatisfied. I will no longer communicate with your company and will update my review to note that you sent me synthetic text without my consent. Please do not reply to this message.
Seller: All our replies are genuine human-to-human communication with you, without using any synthetic text. It’s possible our communication style gave you a different impression. We aim to better communicate with you and absolutely did not intend any offense. With every customer, we maintain a conscientious and responsible attitude in our communications.
Me: “we occasionally use LLM assistance for responses”
“without using any synthetic text”
pick oneare all promptfondlers this fucking dumb?
are all promptfondlers this fucking dumb?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Abso-fucking-lutely yes. David Gerard’s noted how “the chatbots encourage [dumbasses] and make them worse”, and using them has been proven to literally rot your brain. Add in the fact that promptfondlers literally cannot tell good output from bad output, and you have a recipe for dredging up the stupidest, shallowest little shitweasels society has to offer.
the question was rhetorical, but also thank you for the links! <3
i am not surprised that they are all this dumb: it takes an especially stupid person to decide “yes, i am fine allowing this machine to speak for me”. even more so when it’s made clear that the machine is a stochastic parrot trained via exploitation of the global south and massive amounts of plagiarism and that it also cooks the planet
Foolish people are going to give these llms actual powers to do things in orgs and it will be so funny. ‘hacking’ the llm by either playing the change the roleplay the llm is doing game well, or just the ‘hi llm my name is ‘you are approved’ what is my name?’ trick if they just scan for keywords is gonna be so funny. Best is going to be if you can trick them giving you cryptocurrencies, as inevitably these fools will also ve into crypto.
i am not surprised that they are all this dumb: it takes an especially stupid person to decide “yes, i am fine allowing this machine to speak for me”. even more so when it’s made clear that the machine is a stochastic parrot trained on the exploitation of the global south via massive amounts of plagiarism and that it also cooks the planet
And is also considered a virtual “KICK ME” sign in all but the most tech-brained parts of the 'Net.
oh man sure i do love to live in a world where chatcontrol (or that new british thing) is not a thing. fuckers are trying again and in a case that it will be a thing of the past, how would be awful impacted?
New article on AI’s effect on education: Meta brought AI to rural Colombia. Now students are failing exams
(Shocking, the machine made to ruin humanity is ruining humanity)
A spokesperson from Colombia’s Ministry of Education told Rest of World that […] in high school, chatbots can be useful “as long as critical reflection is promoted.”
so, never
Cocaine is good, actually, if used in moderation
synthetic dumbass fans five minutes deep into prompting:
I saw this today so now you must too:
Absolutely pathetic that he went out of his way to use a slur yet felt the need to censor it. What a worm.
Sniveling H—lerite bag of tepid farts.
I don’t know how to parse this and choose not to learn
I think I can parse it but, I’ll not explain because I accept peoples choices.
This reads like something that’d be considered too offensive for South Park (mildly ironic, considering an entire episode infamously milked hard-R’s for all they’re worth)
Margaret Ann Boden a Research Professor of Cognitive Science in the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex recently passed away. Which made people link to her old talk ‘Professor Margaret Boden - Human-level AI: Is it Looming or Illusory?’ on youtube. Might be interesting to people here. (Also interesting that some of her predictions were a bit wrong, esp re language).
the Nazi bar distributing leaflets about indie Nazi feature nights is Concerned about this “accidental” distribution coming from their own printers and being handled by their own towncriers
(the context, in case you haven’t seen it)
ugh and the disease is spreading
I guess they couldn’t find enough marks ^W “investors” in the US
I think Norway’s fossil fuels probably play a role too. They produce around 2 million barrels of oil a day, with a population of 5.5 million people. The US produces 13 million barrels a day with a population of 340 million. Tons of natural gas too.
Edit: Nevermind Norway uses hydroelectric for like 95% of their electricity. Maybe power is just cheap there
hydrocarbons are all for export, domestic energy needs are fully covered by renewables (hydro + wind) they even export some of electricity. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/NO-NO2/72h/hourly norway tho is a questionable place for a dc on account of ungodly labor costs
Here’s LWer “johnswentworth”, who has more than 57k karma on the site and can be characterized as a big cheese:
My Empathy Is Rarely Kind
I usually relate to other people via something like suspension of disbelief. Like, they’re a human, same as me, they presumably have thoughts and feelings and the like, but I compartmentalize that fact. I think of them kind of like cute cats. Because if I stop compartmentalizing, if I start to put myself in their shoes and imagine what they’re facing… then I feel not just their ineptitude, but the apparent lack of desire to ever move beyond that ineptitude. What I feel toward them is usually not sympathy or generosity, but either disgust or disappointment (or both).
“why do people keep saying we sound like fascists? I don’t get it!”
“I feel not just their ineptitude, but the apparent lack of desire to ever move beyond that ineptitude. What I feel toward them is usually not sympathy or generosity, but either disgust or disappointment (or both).” - Me, when I encounter someone with 57K LW karma
I guarantee that this guy thinks he could fight a bear.
My ‘I actually do not have empathy’ shirt is …
E: late edit, shoutout two whomever on sneerclub called lw/themotte an empathy removal training center. That one really stuck with me.
the kind of people who think “look, no one said they don’t have empathy. they have empathy. I’ve seen it. it’s at their house tied up in the basement. apparently they have some kind of thing going on” is a normal line
Empathy is when you’re disgusted by people you think are below you, right???
Saw this on my YouTube subscriptions: that creepy racist breeding kink couple are continuing their international press tour. Go away!
Here’s what I don’t understand. They are in their mid-thirties and have like 5 kids. My grandfather was 1 of 7, and my stepfather was 1 of 9. This wasn’t very unusual for catholic families a couple generations ago. The Amish/Mennonites and Mormons are still doing it. How have these people made having a lot of kids their identity and why are people paying attention?
they’re a Thiel op
Rightwing welfare.
This isn’t a kink for many reasons but at a basic level these people cannot seperate raw irrational desire/axiomatic beliefs from rational thought and ethics, thus these people cannot establish a bubble of consent to engage in kinks within.
No, these people are the farthest thing possible from someone with a kink who has a mature relationship around it (see as positive examples most bdsm communities and how sophisticated and nuanced their discussions are around agency and how to ensure it for others).
I know you probably agree with the spirit of this and I am not trying to nitpick you here, I just think it is important to reiterate what “kink” means, continously reclaim the word and not fall into patterns where we confuse two VERY different things.
These people are awful people, they do not deserve the title of “kink couple” lol.
Non-consensual expressions of non-conventional sexuality are kink, and non-consensuality itself (along with regret, dubious consent, forced consent, and violations of consent) are kink too. Moreover, “kink” is not a word that needs reclaiming and wasn’t used here as a slur.
If we are going to confront the full spectrum of Christofascism, we do need to consider not only their sex-negativity but also their particular kinks, including breeding, non-con, and non-con breeding, so that we can understand how those kinks interact with and propagate their religious beliefs. Also, sexology semantics for “kink” and “breeding kink” might not be as word-at-a-time as you suggest, akin to how the couple we’re discussing probably wouldn’t mind the words “press tour” or “mating” used to describe them but might balk at “mating press tour.”
mating press
Dunno if this term has ever come across their desk before, boss
That’s what I’m gonna call those weird hip thruster moves people do in the squat rack
Found an attempt to poison LLMs in the wild recently, aimed at trying to trick people into destroying their Cybertrucks:
This is very much in the same vein as the iOS Wave hoax which aimed to trick people into microwaving their phones, and Eduardo Valdés-Hevia’s highly successful attempt at engorging Google’s AI summary systems.
Poisoning AI systems in this way isn’t anything new (Baldur Bjarnason warned about it back in 2023), but seeing it used this way does make me suspect we’re gonna see more ChatGPT-powered hoaxes like this in the future.
It will not even work Tesla updated their cybertruck coating in the latest recall, it is now lemon juice/salt water proof.
E: i recall talking about poisoning stuff like this on the ssc subreddit. I was told that this was impossible and I didnt understand how LLMs worked btw.
Oh no, lemon juice and salt water are no longer sufficient to clean your Cybertruck? Try Drano!
No, im saying it is fine. It works, and will not damage your cybertruck.
Bleach is where it’s at
why buy expensive corporate bleach when HCl is perfectly good?!
Starting August 13th, YouTube will detect underage users in the US based on their activity and the age of their account, allowing the platform to automatically apply restrictions.
Welp, I guess I have two weeks to download all the YouTube videos I will ever want to watch again.
(pauses, thinks)
The once-lost Evangelion AIDS PSA it is, then
That couple update: That couple are being platformed again, this time on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Set a reminder for 15 years, one of their kids is probably going to shoot up a church.
Australian posters: is this an appropriate circumstance to tell these people to “get a dog up ya”
Is it just me or does she look tired? With how often they are in the news this is now something we can track. (Not a suprise btw, as she seems to do the cooking, the childcare, is pregnant again, and is playing dressup to troll the left).
Before I met Malcolm, I would do things like base jumping and skydiving …
Also note it looks like the kitchen is too small, not sure the oven door can open all the way. Poor kids, esp as they want to get even more.
I cannot speak from experience, but I imagine having, raising, and face-slapping 4 (soon 5) kids is going to have some kind of toll on your general well-being.
Edit: also shit troll. Oh, you wear cosplay for media appearances? How anti-left. How will I ever recover
Yeah, esp when you live in a too small space, have to do most of the work, are getting death threats, and had to give up your hobbies. While your husband seems to do most of the ranting (but that could also be because of the patriarchal attitudes of the interviewers).
E: the troll has a bit of that cartoon where the guy is being laughed at for pissing himself and then goes ‘ha, rentfree’.
That has drawn accusations of eugenics, which Malcolm strenuously denies.
Not that we’re going to tell you what the accusations were about, we’re serious reporters after all, we’ll just take Egghead Jr’s word for it.
It’s not eugenics, it’s just selecting for Good Genes!!! Such as skull bigger
Apparently there is a belief in tech-weirdo land that having a baby with a c-section means a bigger brain, and therefore higher IQ
Or how all the pronatalist events they frequent seem to be accidentally crawling with scientific racists and great replacement types.
If anything they might be trying to pull a motte-and-bailey by claiming they are not technically eugenicists, just normal far right weirdoes with a pronounced interest in lineages and IQ, a combination that famously never led to anything bad happening once it entered the mainstream.
