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.)
Hot take: If a text extruder’s winning gold medals at your contest, that’s not a sign the text extruder’s good at something, that’s a sign your contest is worthless for determining skill.
Someone tried Adobe’s new Generative Fill “feature” (just the latest development in Adobe’s infatuation with AI) with the prompt “take this elf lady out of the scene”, and the results were…interesting:
There’s also an option to rate whatever the fill gets you, which I can absolutely see being used to sabotage the “feature”.
Please turn the elf girl into elf Grimes
Putting the “manic pixie” in manic pixie dream girl
Watch till end the third option made me choke on my drink it was way too funny
@BlueMonday1984 I was experimenting with generative fill and asked it to remove a person from a scene and “make the background yellow”. It made the person Chinese. No fucking joke.
one that I suspect will surprise none of us
depressing how Cheetoh & Co. continue to wrecking ball the shit out of everything
(wonder how long it is before the US degrades far enough that other countries start ratcheting up border/traveller defenses, compared to the current ~free rein they have (which, y’know, was owed to years of hard and soft power that the orange man is also rapidly pissing away))
(wonder how long it is before the US degrades far enough that other countries start ratcheting up border/traveller defenses, compared to the current ~free rein they have (which, y’know, was owed to years of hard and soft power that the orange man is also rapidly pissing away))
By my guess, not that long. If you have reports of American inadequacy during an outbreak (pretty likely), or horror stories of your countrymen getting persecuted (should be easy to find), you should have a solid political case for border lockdowns.
Focusing on Canada and Mexico specifically, I expect Canada will build its metaphorical walls first - the ongoing drug war in Mexico, plus the brutality of its cartels, will likely act to deter would-be American refugees from there.
So the fucking Cracker Barrel rebranding thing happened. I’m going to pretend this is relevant here because the new logo looked like it was from the usual “imitating Apple minimalism without understanding it in the least” school of design. They’ve confirmed that they’re not moving forward with it, restoring both the barrel and the cracker to the logo, so that’s all good. That’s not what I want to talk about.
No, what’s grinding my gears is the way that the rollback is being pitched purely as a response to conservative “antiwoke” backlash, and not as a response to literally nobody liking it. This wasn’t a case of a successful crusade against woke overreach, this was a case of corporate incompetence running into the reactions of actual human beings. I can’t think of a more 2025 media dynamic than giving fucking Nazis a free win rather than giving corporate executives an L.
I think I mentioned Doughboys in this sack somewhere, so talking about CB is fair game
Note I dont know what a cracker barrel is irl, as we dont have them here. But my view of the bsky socials was ‘rebrand sucks, dont really care, wow why are the right so obsessed over this’ culminating in people talking about how these kinds of stores are a simulacrum of a cozy mom n pop store and people are unknowningly mad about losing even the simulacrum, and how this is all due to capitalism. (More commercialization than capitalism imho, but capitalism did speed up the process). Just as rainbow capitalism will betray you in the search for more profit so will cozy capitalism.
I mean, it’s a restaurant and an aesthetic that is certainly more common and popular in the South, and they have had some controversied over racism and maintain that just w Apparently they had been having financial and brand issues, so I can understand the desire to change. But rather than changing the food or improving the service in any meaningful way it seems like they went for the new logo and image and stopped there. Given that their existing audience was basically there for the wholesome old-timey please-don’t-ask-about-the-racism vibes I’m not shocked that conservatives in particular were upset about the change. But like, the change was never about wokeness or whatever it was about aesthetic modernization and a flailing attempt to fix things from business idiots who don’t know how to address the actual problems of mediocre food and fading relevance. If anyone had actually liked the change or if it had actually improved their service times then maybe there would be a point. But this was just a bad change and nobody outside that boardroom actually liked it, and so of course it got rolled back.
@Soyweiser @techtakes The correct term for the type of capitalism that enshittifies its product should be “crapitalism”.
Yeah, it is also sad the culture warriors are not aware they are mad about this sort of crapitalism. They think the hominization of the builds is due to the woke, and not because the mother company owns the building/land of the franchise and this no slanted roofs bit (see https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:66rbia7w4vcwiszfppfv3r2e/bafkreiacsurup26wigvedpedf44rodrwzzebfcytzdglb2bh6wjh6brbsa@jpeg), increases resale value. Just companies looking for more and more minimal minimal viable product.
image description
Post from some social media by user Mancowmuller On the left four images of the outsides older style fast food places, all with more rustic looking buildings, notably buildings with more slanted roofs, evoking very slightly a more European home style (sorry if this is the wrong way to describe it im not an architect).
On the right four images of the outsides of four new style fast food places where the buildings look more like office buildings or simple modern stores, very blocky, lot of glass big panels/windows and flat roofs.
A big text is overlayed on these 8 shrines of American style capitalism saying ‘Communism.’
“Simulacrum” is the perfect word for it. None of these posers making a fuss about a corporate logo have simmered a pot of of soup beans in their life.
I must admit I stole that partially from somebody else who mentioned the idea. Which also had me go ‘indeed, that is a good word’
Was it the “Hyperreal Simulacrum” from the joe rogan takedown videos you linked in last weeks stubsack?
Enjoy this malicious prompt trying to find crapto secrets after a compromise
new zitron https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-bubble-2027/
it’s a long one and right behind paywall there’s a
Table Of Contents
How I Am Justifying "Guessing" NVIDIA, And What Will Happen Soonest Nevertheless, NVIDIA Will Accelerate The Collapse If Its Stock Falters Big Tech's Bubble Burst Moment Will Be When Growth Slows Capital Expenditures Are The Next Thing To Go CoreWeave — A Timebomb For The Markets and AI Writ Large How Does CoreWeave Collapse? The End Of AI Startup Funding How The Collapse Of Funding Begins — A Scenario (Chaos Bet) Costs Are A Brewing Scandal In Generative AI — Another Chaos Bet The Curious World of Anthropic and OpenAI, And My Own Suspicions About Their Businesses How About Anthropic's Costs? An Important Note: Anthropic and OpenAI's Costs Are Dramatically Underrepresented Because Neither Company Pays For The Construction Of (Or Owns) Their Infrastructure Questions About OpenAI's Revenue And Costs OpenAI Is Using Cal State's "Edu" Contracts To Pump Its Paid Business User Numbers — And It's Unclear How Long It Keep A User In Its Numbers What About Government Contracts? OpenAI Is Using "$1 for a Month" Subscription Deals On Teams To Juice Business User Numbers — And Offering Deals For ChatGPT Plus For $10-a-month To Stop User Churn (REMINDER: OpenAI Loses Money On Every User Anyway) I Believe OpenAI's Costs Are Worse Than They Seem — Where Is All The Money Going? OpenAI Will Burn At Least $3 Billion On Salaries In 2025, And May Spend As Much As $8 Billion — With Any Layoffs Guaranteeing An Industry-Wide Panic Compute Costs Are Likely Astronomical, Burning At Least $15 Billion — If Not $20 Billion — In 2025 Alone OpenAI Is Bleeding Out, And Could Run Out Of Money By End Of Year Chaos Bet: Microsoft Kills OpenAI By Blocking Its Non-Profit Conversion Even If Microsoft Agrees, OpenAI Does Not Have Enough Time To Convert To A For-Profit By The End Of The Year Chaos Pick: OpenAI Does Not Convert, And Does Not Receive More Money From SoftBank Alternate Chaos Pick: OpenAI Does Convert, But SoftBank Can't Get The Money How Does OpenAI (or Anthropic) IPO? I Believe Both OpenAI and Anthropic May Be Overstating Revenues And User Numbers, Using The Media To Launder Their Reputations What Happens Next? So Why Did You Say 2027?I like how Zitron does a good job of distinguishing firm overall predictions from specific scenarios (his chaos bets) which are plausible but far from certain. AI 2027 specifically conflated and confused those things in a way that gave it’s proponents more rhetorical room to hide and dodge.
Zitron taking every opportunity to shit on Scott’s AI2027 is kind of cathartic, ngl
I like how he doesn’t even bother debunking it point by point, he just slams the very premise of it and moves on.
RE: (meta?)speculation about the quantum bubble. So the preceding two tech bubbles tried to worm their way into the arts: NFTs, and slop. How do we think the quantum hucksters are gonna try co-opt craativity?
Quantum as a concept doesn’t really have any way to co-opt creativity that I can see - its a rather “science-y” concept in the public eye, far away from anything associated with the arts.
Probably won’t stop the hucksters, though - they’ll happily make shit up if it means butting in on artists’ turf.
At the risk of doing some “founder mode” idiot’s homework for them, impermanence is inherent to a lot of artforms, and I can see some insane and vague pitches to use quantum to “capture the magic moment”. Or maybe they tie it back into NFTs with quantum technology that comes up with every variant of the bored chimpanzee at once.
Automobile advertising
Lots of woo and mysticism already has a veneer of stolen Quantum terminology. It’s too far from respectable to get the quasi-expert endorsement or easy VC money that LLM hype has gotten, but quantum hucksters fusing quantum computing nonsense with quantum mysticism can probably still con lots of people out of their money.
No idea, but the big problem area to look out for imho is when it gets matched with quantum woo again. And if people manage to link that to computers.
New Ed Zitron: “How to Argue With An AI Booster”, an hour-long read dedicated to exactly what it says on the tin.
I’m curious, do you get paid for being a multiprotocol rss repeater?
I don’t know if they do but as someone too lazy to actually set up an RSS feed I deeply appreciate it.
maybe that means something like this should be a linkblog/{atom,rss,…} feedsite on its ace?
I appreciate it, and this also gives us an easy way to discuss it as Zitron seems to be quite popular here. So makes sense to me to just also post it here. And not everybody uses RSS (or Eds one).
No, I do this for the love of the game
Being paid 90s tv ad money has to suck donkey nads :<
Even for the people that do get email notifications of Zitron’s excellent content (like myself), I appreciate having a place here to discuss it.
It’s a nice master post that gets all his responses and many useful articles linked into one place. It’s all familiar if you’ve kept up with techtakes and Zitron’s other posts and pivot-to-ai, but I found a few articles I had previously missed reading.
Related trend to all the but achskhually’s AI booster’s like to throw out. Has everyone else noticed the trend where someone makes a claim of a rumor they heard about an LLM making a genuine discovery in some science, except it’s always repeated second hand so you can’t really evaluate it, and in the rare cases they do have a link to the source, it’s always much less impressive than they made it sound at first…
Discovered a solid sneer online today, aptly titled “I Am An AI Hater”
This is an excellent sneer, thank you for sharing! <3
Democratic presidential nominee for 2028 (vs trump of course) Newsom is doing a bit of ironic memecoin corruption. So many blueanon people are going to lose money if he goes along with this.
I really hope he is going to use this as a ‘use the controversy to reveal the corruption of the system’ style thing (in .nl a tv-show did this where they made a gameshow in which people who needed a new kidney could get one, as a ruse to spread awareness to ask for more donors and everybody participating was informed of this from the start (led to 12k new donors at least)). But I really doubt it.
He is not the Democratic presidential nominee for 2028.
Ow really? Tell me more.
The Democratic party’s presidential nominee for 2028 will be chosen by a primary election, which will also be in 2028. Until a candidate wins the primary election, there is no nominee. This is important because Newsom is a sack of shit and we have multiple years with which to oppose his run for nomination.
Ow really? Tell me more.Sorry that was mean.
I mean to say I’m aware of this, I know he isn’t and that Trump should not be allowed a third term, it was intended as a dark joke and to portray my dislike of the people pushing both people.
… thank almighty fuck
…yet.
New Public Good newsletter, talking about YouTube editing users’ uploads without their permission/knowledge.
“Enjoy” this Wronger explaining human sexual attraction
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ktydLowvEg8NxaG4Z/neuroscience-of-human-sexual-attraction-triggers-3
I have but skimmed it, not plumbed its depths for sneers.
it’s just this with more words (context: someone dead serious tweeted that speedrunning is communism and brought into it peterson’s mouth noises on sex somehow, and all in 14 tweets)
(that’s the same link)
Ah fuck. I didn’t click it cos I assumed it was the original tweet. I’ll just leave it there so you can all witness my crimes
the original tweets were deleted and only survive as screenshots
roy_batty.aac
I was thinking about why so many in the radical left participate in “speedrunning”. The reason is the left’s lack of work ethic (‘go fast’ rather than ‘do it right’) and, in a Petersonian sense, to elevate alternative sexual archetypes in the marketplace (‘fastest mario’). Obviously, there are exceptions to this and some people more in the center or right also “speedrun”. However, they more than sufficient to prove the rule, rather than contrast it. Consider how woke GDQ has been, almost since the very beginning. Your eyes will start to open. Returning to the topic of the work ethic… A “speedrunner” may well spend hours a day at their craft, but this is ultimately a meaningless exercise, since they will ultimately accomplish exactly that which is done in less collective time by a casual player. This is thus a waste of effort on the behalf of the “speedrunner”. Put more simply, they are spending their work effort on something that someone else has already done (and done in a way deemed ‘correct’ by the creator of the artwork). Why do they do this? The answer is quite obvious if you think about it. The goal is the illusion of speed and the desire (SUBCONSCIOUS) to promote radical leftist, borderline Communist ideals of how easy work is. Everyone always says that “speedruns” look easy. That is part of the aesthetic. Think about the phrase “fully automated luxury Communism” in the context of “speedrunning” and I strongly suspect that things will start to ‘click’ in your mind. What happens to the individual in this? Individual accomplishment in “speedrunning” is simply waiting for another person to steal your techniques in order to defeat you. Where is something like “intellectual property” or “patent” in this necessarily communitarian process? Now, as to the sexual archetype model and ‘speedrunning’ generally… If you have any passing familiarity with Jordan Peterson’s broader oeuvre and of Jungian psychology, you likely already know where I am going with this. However, I will say more for the uninitiated. Keep this passage from Maps of Meaning (91) in mind: “The Archetypal Son… continually reconstructs defined territory, as a consequence of the ‘assimilation’ of the unknown [as a consequence of ‘incestuous’ (that is, ‘sexual’ – read creative) union with the Great Mother]” In other words, there is a connection between ‘sexuality’ and creativity that we see throughout time (as Peterson points out with Tiamat and other examples). In the sexual marketplace, which archetypes are simultaneously deemed the most creative and valued the highest? The answer is obviously entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and others. Given that we evolved and each thing we do must have an evolutionary purpose (OR CAUSE), what archetype is the ‘speedrunner’ engaged in, who is accomplishing nothing new? They are aiming to make a new sexual archetype, based upon ‘speed’ rather than ‘doing things right’ and refuse ownership of what few innovations they can provide to their own scene, denying creativity within their very own sexual archetype. This is necessarily leftist. The obvious protest to this would be the ‘glitchless 100% run’, which in many ways does aim to play the game ‘as intended’ but seems to simply add the element of ‘speed’ to the equation. This objection is ultimately meaningless when one considers how long a game is intended to be played, in net, by the creators, even when under ‘100%’ conditions. There is still time and effort wasted for no reason other than the ones I proposed above. By now, I am sure that I have bothered a number of you and rustled quite a few of your feathers. I am not saying that ‘speedrunning’ is bad, but rather that, thinking about the topic philosophically, there are dangerous elements within it. That is all.
Somehow I had missed this when it originally spawned and I was not prepared for this level of psychic damage.
Ugh what is it with misogynists and compulsively writing out this nonsense again and again? Just want to punch him on the nose. Make it stop.
I think that §2 (“appearance-based sexual attraction”) will be the part that’s more centrally relevant for cis men (and most trans women)
…
kys
In this exciting new research direction in the making-stuff-up field I build upon previous work by Myself et. al in the making-stuff-up field.
Ugh reading more of this and it’s awful.
He writes that women are attracted to men who could beat us up or control us. He writes that the reason for this attraction is so we have a chance to marry the man and prevent these bad things from happening.
His “science” assumes that women think like they do in shitty erotica written by men for men. Even by rationalist evo-psych standards this is pretty poorly thought out.
I feel like this is some friggin’ Kissinger “power is an aphrodisiac” nonsense. Which is hilarious because while yes Kissinger spent more time out on the town with beautiful women than you would expect for a Ben Stein-esque war criminal, when journalists at the time talked to those women they pretty consistently said that they enjoyed feeling like he respected them and wanted to talk about the world and listened to what they had to say. But that would be anathema to Rationalism, I guess.
Having now read it (I have regrets), I think it’s even worse than you suggested. He’s not trying to argue that women are attracted to dangerous men in order to prevent the danger from happening to them. He assumes that, based on “everyday experience” of how he feels when dealing with “high-status” men and then tries to use that as an extension of and evidence for his base-level theory of how the brain does consciousness. (I’m not going to make the obvious joke about alternative reasons why he has the same feeling around certain men that he does around women he finds attractive.) In order to get there he has to assume that culture and learning play no role in what people find attractive, which is just absurd on it’s face and renders the whole argument not worth engaging with.
It’s almost endearing (or sad) that he believes (or very strongly wants to believe) his experience is “typical”, exploring the boundaries of what you are attracted to typically doesn’t involve this much evo-pysch psychology, or even this much fragile masculinity.
Imagr description: Steven Pinker, Lawrence Krauss and Jeffrey Epstein, posted as per tradition when either of the latter two are mentioned
Don’t they just radiate animal magnetism
krauss in this photo specifically reminds me of gibson’s description of the finn
Wronger explaining human sexual attraction
Are we sure this isn’t an SCP entry?
We should have a cognitohazard tag
Honestly it’s probably most things we post
Apart from the Hellraiser fanfiction.
From the other reactions, dont have the energy to read it atm, looks like he is recreating heartiste from first principles.
WTF is wrong with these people
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HbkNAyAoa4gCnuzwa/wei-dai-s-shortform?commentId=wFmCveaxA5EnNtuCj
Man doesnt get to do everything he wants, this means woman has all the power. Problem with seeing everything as a hierarchy means you cant see partnerships.
The old chestnut that really these days it’s women who hold all the power is as old as times. I saw an instance in Perrault’s introduction to the tale of Griselidis (1691) and I’m sure you can go much further back. Not sure why we ever even bothered with voting rights, reproductive freedom, or personhood.
Sorry darling, but according to my game-theoretical model this discussion ends in my victory in every possible combination of moves, so can we just skip to the point you apologise?
Where… where are you going
Are they drawn to the cult because they are obsessed with status, or does the cult foster this obssession? Yes.
I’m assuming that certain pop-culture stereotypes, for example the idea that women tend to feel attraction towards taller men (other things equal), are indicative of timeless human universals, as opposed to being specific to my own culture
lol. lmao.
I wrote this post quickly and without thoroughly studying what people have historically written on this topic.
What a coincidence! I read this post quickly and without thoroughly considering much of anything.
I acknowledge that I haven’t provided any direct evidence here […] But the former is at least an elegant story that fits in with other things I believe.
This comes shockingly close to self-awareness.
I wrote this post quickly and without thoroughly studying what people have historically written on this topic.
I think that goes without saying on LW but glad someone put it in writing
To my eternal sadness, this guy makes a decent point about the horror possibly continuing (yellow site has mixed takes and adds claims about “if we didn’t have to pay for training, we’d be profitable” by sam and dario ).
If this bears out, it might be that the only thing that’ll end this bubble is the vibe shift & backlash against AI
i’d like to see some elaboration from the smiling man himself (when he’s back), since he seems to have some numbers on that
This hits differently over the recent news that ChatGPT encouraged and aided a teen suicide.
transcript
Kelsey Piper xhitted: Never thought I’d become a ‘take you relationship problems to ChatGPT’ person but when the 8yo and I have an argument it actually works really well to mutually agree on an account of events for Claude and the ask for its opinion
I think she considers the AIs far more knowledgeable than me about reasonable human behavior so if I say something that’s no reason to think it’s true but if Claude says it then it at least merits serious consideration
“When the 8-year-old and I have an argument, it actually works really well to mutually agree on an account of events… and then take cocaine together.”
Acknowledging/validating each other’s feelings and finding a mutually-agreeable understanding of the conflict is already the hard part that most parents and kids aren’t willing to do. Talking to a chatbot after that just seems like you don’t understand the fucking point and are still trying to “be right” or whatever.
In 12 years we’ll get a book “My Mom Outsourced Raising Me to AI and it Broke Me”
I have context that makes this even more cringe! “Lawfulness concerns” refers to like, Dungeons and Dragons lawfulness. Specifically the concept of lawfulness developed in the Pathfinder fanfiction we’ve previously discussed. Like a proper Lawful Good Paladin of Iomedae wouldn’t put you in a position were you had to trust they hadn’t rigged the background prompt if you went to them for spiritual counseling. (Although a Lawful Evil cleric of Asmodeus totally would rig the prompt… Lawfulness as a measuring stick of ethics/morality is a terrible idea even accepting the premise of using Pathfinder fanfic to develop your sense of ethics)
Not everything that Yud writes feels like it should be read in the voice of Augustus St. Cloud, but a lot of it sure does.
From elsewhere in the replies:
My husband and I took a disagreement to Claude today, by happenstance. It was very helpful!
—TracingWoodgrains, who apparently feels that he is qualified to judge any other human being, ever, in spite of evidence to the contrary
That is his concern and not the billionaires behind it messing with the systems so much you cant prompt override it? Please tell me this guy doesnt work in AI alignment.
KP writing a paper for the journal “New Frontiers In Gaslighting Children”
Yes dude, that’s the main thing you should be concerned about of course. AI tools couldn’t possibly be bad in and of themselves, it has to be human tampering. You’ve always been very clear about that part.
it has to be human tampering.
and of course we all have root on the prompt, where - at awill - we can just instantly impose all manner of will on the corporate vendor chatbot. y’know, the chatbot operating in a service structured as much as possible to try to do what the corporate vendor wants to desperately maintain
(it continues to astound me that anyone takes yud seriously, at all, ever)
tfw your gifted child syndrome resentment of adults is powerful enough to make you forget about your life’s work
I was trying to figure out why he hadn’t turned this into an opportunity to lecture (or write a mini-fanfic) about giving more attack surface to the AGI to manipulate you… I was stumped until I saw your comment. I think that is it, expressing his childhood distrust of authority trumps lecturing us on the AI-God’s manipulations.
I feel dumber for having read that, and not in the intellectually humbled way.
I mean, tampering with the system prompt is definitely a kind of concern, given what we’ve seen happen with Grok’s tenure as mechahitler or Replika users finding their girlfriend no longer wanted them. But “messing with system memory” is the kind of sci-fi nonsense that should stay in a cyberpunk novel.
He has capital L Lawfulness concerns. About the parent and the child being asymmetrically skilled in context engineering. Which apparently is the main reason kids shouldn’t trust LLM output.
Him showing his ass with the memory comment is just a bonus.
“I have Lawfulness concerns” is just another way of saying “I deserve to be shoved into a locker”.
system memory
System memory is just the marketing label for “having an LLM summarize a bunch of old conversations and shoving it into a hidden prompt”. I agree that using that term is sneer-worthy.
Thanks for the clarification. I had definitely assumed that he meant some kind of God-AI-level attack that revolved around live editing the data or state in RAM or something.
When an 8 year old thinks an AI is “far more knowledgeable than me about reasonable human behavior” that could lead a person to self-reflection. Could.
@nightsky @Architeuthis Computer programs are generally written to be basically polite for customer service purposes.
A generative text program that opened chats with “Ugh, what do you want THIS time, loser?” would likely find itself …corrected… by the parent company on short order.
@nightsky @Architeuthis the kid’s not wrong, though 😭
