Want to wade into the spooky 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. Happy Halloween, everyone!)
any of y’all watch a good movie or tv show lately? what was it
Watched Once Upon A Time in Space recently - pretty damn good documentary series.
I’ve been meaning to catch Adam Curtis’s latest but I just haven’t got around to it yet.
Trying to think of what ai’ve seen new lately instead of rewatched and drawing a blank. Edge of Darkness (the brit one) was quite good.
rewatched all of DS9 over a while, its writing hits even harder in the current year
(apple shows but that can be worked around:) invasion, slow horses, shrinking
haven’t been watching a lot of series tho so limited bucket recommendation
Found out about a new space junk startup today.
One bold new startup is looking to cash in on the frenzy with a particularly bizarre approach: a massive array of space mirrors meant to reflect the Sun’s light down to paying subscribers.
The company has yet to launch any of the 4,000 satellite mirrors it sold in its far-out pitch. However, the startup recently applied for a license with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch a 60-by-60 foot demo craft in April of 2026, Space.com reported this week. That’s after winning a $1.25 million contract from the US Air Force, of all places, on top of a $20 million Series A funding round to build out its “sunlight on demand” service, which Reflect says will “strengthen the national defense of the United States of America.”
Astronomers, however, aren’t so gung-ho about the idea of a massive space mirror blinding the Earth with Sunlight.
“The reflectors will be directing their light [even after they pass their target] because obviously they can’t shut that off,” John Berentine, an astronomer at the Silverado Hills Observatory told Space.com. “The beam reflected by these satellites is very intense, four times brighter than the full moon, and they will be flying multiple satellites in a formation. That will have an effect on wildlife in the directly illuminated area, but also, through atmospheric scattering, on the surrounding areas as well.”This has never been tried before and is a completely new idea.
@sundogplanets was posting about this not too long ago, I’ll try find the thread a bit later
e: thread
Check out the graphics on their homepage. It has that terrible “scroll driven” web-design but the graphics look like placeholder art cooked up by a programmer.
Usually these sorts of VC bait companies at least hire a graphics designer but I guess that’s not actually necessary.
That has to be intentionally bad.
Apologies for doing journal club instead of sneer club.
Voiseux, G., Tao Zhou, R., & Huang, H.-C. (Brad). (2025). Accepting the unacceptable in the AI era: When & how AI recommendations drive unethical decisions in organizations. Behavioral Science & Policy, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/23794607251384574
abstract:
In today’s workplaces, the promise of AI recommendations must be balanced against possible risks. We conducted an experiment to better understand when and how ethical concerns could arise. In total, 379 managers made either one or multiple organizational decisions with input from a human or AI source. We found that, when making multiple, simultaneous decisions, managers who received AI recommendations were more likely to exhibit lowered moral awareness, meaning reduced recognition of a situation’s moral or ethical implications, compared with those receiving human guidance. This tendency did not occur when making a single decision. In supplemental experiments, we found that receiving AI recommendations on multiple decisions increased the likelihood of making a less ethical choice. These findings highlight the importance of developing organizational policies that mitigate ethical risks posed by using AI in decision-making. Such policies could, for example, nudge employees toward recalling ethical guidelines or reduce the volume of decisions that are made simultaneously.
so is the moral decline a side effect, or technocapitalism working as designed.
I would adore an awful journal club tbh
so is the moral decline a side effect, or technocapitalism working as designed.
AI is an accountability sink by design, its technocapitalism working as designed
as a bonus, it’s also fascist!
To start this spooky Stubsack off, there’s signs Framework are being slow on the refunds:
Just a heads up I haven’t gotten a refund from my cancelled FW12 order. Framework seems to be having trouble figuring it out.
I don’t know why, maybe it is Canada or maybe it is a high volume of similar requests, but it is a sign I always find concerning in a company I am worried about the financial stability of.
Could be nothing, but if you have been wavering on a cancellation I figured you might want a heads up.
This comes two weeks after Framework’s public fash turn, and just a few days after their latest double down. “Go fash, lose cash” proves itself again.
i’m trying to sell mine now
but also i don’t have any other computers and probably can’t afford anything
time for me to learn to use a pencil
The market should be flooded with used business laptops that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 but will take an easy Linux distro
oh fuck, i didn’t think of that! thank you for the idea 💖
lightly used thinkpads are the classic choice for this — IT departments buy high spec ones then dump them for cheap a few years later in surplus sales or on eBay, and there are usually repair manuals and spare parts readily available. usually you can type the specific model and generation into a search and get a wiki page or at least a couple blog posts reporting how well they’re supported under linux, and Lenovo seems to intentionally do very well on compatibility since Linux compatibility is a nice checkbox for an enterprise laptop to have. just be careful you don’t get bamboozled into buying any of Lenovo’s consumer laptops, since they tend to be a fair bit cheaper and don’t have the same compatibility guarantees, repairability, or ample spare parts availability.
For sale: lenovo thinkpad, lightly used
-Earnest Hempingway
thank you for the suggestion, this is good stuff.
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That post requires signing in to view; it’s a link to this: https://futurism.com/science-energy/trump-altman-plutonium-oklo
Ah apologies forgot to check.
Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium to Sam Altman
The “Weapons Grade” part is almost certainly editorializing (hopefully), but this whole shit sounds like another Chernobyl waiting to happen
i don’t think so, it’s like megatons to megawatts but stupider, instead of using up uranium from adversary they want to use up their own plutonium, while also having policies against spent fuel reprocessing (for alleged nonproliferation reasons, which is patently bullshit, power generation was straight up cheaper this way because new uranium is cheaper than reprocessing and use of mox. some other countries (at minimum ru, fr, in, pk, jp, cn, il) do reprocessing as a matter of national security/energy independence/hedge against future shortages of uranium). also this requires recertification of reactors for mox use, which won’t always work or else only part of uranium can be replaced, and if it’s for smr, then there’s gonna be a lot of plutonium in there, and it all starts with handing plutonium to motherfucking sam altman, for only a slight chance of any positive results
i see it more as current administration ripping copper wiring from walls than anything else tbh
