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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Saw an AI-extruded āartā ātimelapseā in the wild recently - the ātimelapseā in question isnāt gonna fool anyone who actually cares about art, but itās Good Enoughtm to pass muster on someone mindlessly scrolling, and its creation serves only to attack artistsā ability to prove their work was human made.
This isnāt the first time AI bros have pulled this shit (Exhibit A, Exhibit B), by the way.
I was wondering about the origins of sneerclub and discovered something kinda fun: ār/SneerClubā pre-dates ār/BlogSnarkā, the first example of a āsnark subredditā listed on the wiki page! The vibe of snark subreddits seem to be very different to that of sneerclub etc. (read: toxic!!!) but I wouldnāt know the specifics as Iām not a snark participant.
New trick for detecting bots, ask them for the seahorse emoji. found via
The article claims that Google didnāt āfall for the same trapā but thatās not correct, all this garbage is indeterministic so the author just got āluckyā.
Itās like saying āfour out of five coin-flips claimed that an eagle was the first US presidentā ā just because the fifth landed on heads and showed George Washington doesnāt mean itās any different than the rest.
But here Iām preaching to the choir.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/humanoid-robot-scaling
Quality sneering
Reality has an anti-robot bias.
Was jumpscared on my YouTube recommendations page by a video from AI safety peddler Rob Miles and decided to take a look.
It talked about how itās almost impossible to detect whether a model was deliberately trained to output some ābadā output (like vulnerable code) for some specific set of inputs.
Pretty mild as cult stuff goes, mostly anthropomorphizing and referring to such LLM as a āsleeper agentā. But maybe some of yāall will find it interesting.
This isnāt the first time Iāve heard about this - Baldur Bjarnasonās talked about how text extruders can be poisoned to alter their outputs before, noting its potential for manipulating search results and/or serving propaganda.
Funnily enough, calling a poisoned LLM as a āsleeper agentā wouldnāt be entirely inaccurate - spicy autocomplete, by definition, cannot be aware that their word-prediction attempts are being manipulated to produce specific output. Its still treating these spicy autocompletes with more sentience than they actually have, though
Now that his new book is out, Big Yud is on the interview circuit. I hope everyone is prepared for a lot of annoying articles in the next few weeks.
Today he was on the Hard Fork podcast with Kevin Roose and Casey Newton (didnāt listen to it yet). Thereās also a milquetoast profile in the NYT written by Kevin Roose, where Roose admits his P(doom) is between 5 and 10 percent.
Siskind did a review too, basically gives it the ātheir hearts in the right place butā¦ [read AI2027 instead]ā treatment. Then they go at it a bit with Yud in the comments where Yud comes off as a bitter dick, but their actual disagreements are just filioque shit. Also they both seem to agree that a worldwide moratorium on AI research that will give us time to breed/genetically engineer superior brained humans to fix our shit is the way to go.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone/comment/154920454
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone/comment/154927504
Also notable that apparently Siskind thinks nuclear non-proliferation sorta worked because people talked it out and decided to be mature about it rather than being scared shitless of MAD, so AI non-proliferation by presumably appointing a rationalist Grand Inquisitor in charge of all human scientific progress is an obvious solution.
Also they both seem to agree that a worldwide moratorium on AI research that will give us time to breed/genetically engineer superior brained humans to fix our shit is the way to go.
This century deserves a better class of thought-criminal
assuming that nuclear nonproliferation is gonna hold up indefinitely for any reason is some real fukuyamaās end of history shit
let alone ābecause itās Rationalā¢ thing to doā, itās only in rational interest of already-nuclear states to keep things this way. couple of states that could make a good point for having nuclear arsenal and having capability to manufacture it are effectively dissuaded from this by american diplomacy (mostly nuclear umbrella for allies and sanctions or fucking with their facilities for enemies). with demented pedo in chief and his idiot underlings trying their hardest to undo this all, i really wouldnāt be surprised if, say, south korea decides to get nuclear
Yud: āThatās not going to asymptote to a great final answer if you just run them for longer.ā
Asymptote is a noun, you git. I know in the grand scheme of things this is a trivial thing to be annoyed by, but what is it it with Yudās weird tendency to verbify nouns? Most rationalists seem to emulate him on this. Itās like a cult signifier.
They think Yud is a world-historical intellect (Iāve seen claims on twitter he has a iq of 190 - yeah really) and by emulation a little of the old smartness can rub off on them.
Itās also inherently-begging-the-question-silly, like it assumes that the Ideal of Alignmentā¢, can never be reached but only approached. (I verb nouns quite often so I have to be more picky at what I get annoyed at)
Also notable that apparently Siskind thinks nuclear non-proliferation sorta worked because people talked it out and decided to be mature about it
This is his claim about everything, including how we got gay rights. Real if all you have is a hammer stuff.
Trying to figure out if that Siskind take comes from a) a lack of criticality and/or the ability to read subtext or b) some ideological agenda to erase the role of violence (threats of violence are also violence!) in change happening, or both
When you are running a con like crypto or chatbot companies, it helps to know someone who is utterly naive and canāt stop talking about whatever line you feed him. If this were the middle ages Kevin Roose would have an excellent collection of pigges bones and scraps of linen that the nice friar promised were relics of St Margaret of Antioch.
Education report calling for ethical AI use contains over 15 fake sources
womp, and wait for it, womp
The report claims its about ethical AI use, but all I see is evidence that AI is inherently unethical, and an argument for banning AI from education forever.
Whichever one of you did https://alignmentalignment.ai/caaac/jobs, well done, and many lols.
CAAAC is an open, dynamic, inclusive environment, where all perspectives are welcomed as long as you believe AGI will annihilate all humans in the next six months.
Alright, I can pretend to believe that, go onā¦
We offer competitive salaries and generous benefits, including no performance management because we have no way to assess whether the work you do is at all useful.
Incredible. I hope I get the job!
Make sure to click the āApply Nowā button at the bottom for a special treat.
The Wall Street Journal came out with a story on āconspiracy physicsā, noting Eric Weinstein and Sabine Hossenfelder as examples. Sadly, one of their quoted voices of sanity is Scott Aaronson, baking-soda volcano of genocide apologism.
Somehow,
Palpatine returnedScott came off as a voice of reasonBehold the power of this fully selective quotation.
Being compared to whackjobs with a worse grip on reality than him definitely helped.
Since appearing on Piers Morganās show, Eric Weinstein has taken to expounding additional theories about physics. Peer review was created by the government, working with Ghislaine Maxwellās father, to control science, he said on āDiary of a CEO,ā one of the worldās most popular podcasts. Jeffrey Epstein was sent by an intelligence agency to throw physics off track and discourage space exploration, keeping humanity trapped in āthe prison built by Einstein.ā
Heartbreaking! Weinstein isnāt fully wrong. Maxwellās daddy was Robert Maxwell, who did indeed have a major role in making Springer big and kickstarting the publish-or-perish model, in addition to having incredibly tight Mossad ties; the corresponding Behind the Bastards episodes are subtitled āhow Ghislane Maxwellās dad ruined science.ā Epstein has been accused of being a Mossad asset tasked with seeking out influential scientists like Marvin Minsky to secure evidence for blackmail and damage their reputations. As they say on Reddit, everybody sucks here.
First domino: US government invents peer review
Last domino: Richard Stallman successfully kamikazes his reputation for good after multiple close attempts over the years
Richard Stallman successfully kamikazes his reputation for good after multiple close attempts over the years
He still maintains a solid reputation with FOSS freaks, fascists and pedophiles to this day. Given the Venn diagram of these three groups is a circle, this isnāt particularly shocking.
Thanks man, I love being lumped in with fascists and pedos.
I asked the other day whether theyāve actually spoken with these people that they keep posting such takes about, and thus far my presumption is āthey havenātā. posts like the above reinforce that view
Fuck, your lack of history is depressing sometimes. That Venn diagram is well-pointed, even among people who have met RMS, and the various factions do not get along with each other. For a taste, previously on Lobsters you can see an avowed FLOSS communist ripping the mask off of a Suckless cryptofascist in response to a video posted by a recently-banned alt-right debate-starter.
I often love your stuff, but this aināt it.
Thatās just yer bog-standard āthe best lie has a seed of truthā, ainnit?
(Peer review in its modern form was adopted gradually, with a recognizable example in 1831 from the same William Whewell who coined the word scientist. It displaced the tradition of having the editor of a journal decide everything himself, so whatever its flaws, it has broadened the diversity of voices that influence what gets officially published.)
Epstein was a sophon controlled trisolaran asset working to prevent crucial development of physics!!! j/k
New premium column from Ed Zitron, digging into OpenAI and Oracleās deal.
The Oracle deal seemed absurd, but I didnāt realize how absurd until I saw Edās compilation of the numbers. Notably, it means even if OpenAI meets its projected revenue numbers (which are absurdly optimistic, like bigger than Netflix and Spotify and several other services combined) paying Oracle (along with everyone else it has promised to buy compute from) will put it net negative on revenue until 2030, meaning it has to raise even more money.
Iāve been assuming Sam Altman has absolutely no real belief that LLMs would lead to AGI and has instead been cynically cashing in on the sci-fi hype, but OpenAIās choices donāt make any long term sense if AGI isnāt coming. The obvious explanation is that at this point he simply plans to grift and hype (while staying technically within the bounds of legality) to buy few years of personal enrichment. And to even ask what his āreal beliefsā are gives him too much credit.
Just to remind everyone: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent!
OpenAIās choices donāt make any long term sense if AGI isnāt coming. The obvious explanation is that at this point he simply plans to grift and hype (while staying technically within the bounds of legality) to buy few years of personal enrichment.
Another possibility is that Altmanās bought into his own hype, and genuinely believes OpenAI will achieve AGI before the money runs out. Considering the tech press has been uncritically hyping up AI in general, and Sammy Boy himself has publicly fawned over āmetafictionā āwrittenā by an in-house text extruder, its a possibility Iām not gonna discount.
nah. Samās a monorail salesman who knows how to say the AI doomer buzzwords.
The Grauniad has a new piece today about the underpaid human labor on which the āAIā industry depends:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/11/google-gemini-ai-training-humans
Most workers said they avoid using LLMs or use extensions to block AI summaries because they now know how itās built. Many also discourage their family and friends from using it, for the same reason.
OT: in happier news thats now doomed to be totally overshadowed: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/mars-potential-life-1.7630035
(Iām a massive astrobio/SETI nerd)
Can you recommend any resources on those topics?
I can drop some books when I get off work! The SETI subreddit is pretty good about posting the latest studies too.
https://www.amazon.ca/Elusive-Wow-Searching-Extraterrestrial-Intelligence/dp/0983958440 https://www.amazon.ca/Astrobiology-Understanding-Universe-Charles-Cockell/dp/1119550351 https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548649/extraterrestrial-languages/
These are all good. Elusive Wow might be harder to find, but its worth looking up the authors career (it was his hobby).
Iāve noticed Rationalists otoh tend to repeat whatever Anders Sandberg says and are ideologically wedded to a dead universe view of things.
Re dead universe.
That fixes the great filter problem for them.
Considering other life might also be unattractive as it could reduce the feeling of their own importance.
(massive bong rip) the aliens already came here and put us all in the Matrix, dude
exhales not sure this is weed dude.
These people are no fun at all.
In more low-key news, French voice actor FranƧoise Cadol has accused Aspyr Media of making an AI replica of her voice for the latest Tomb Raider remaster (the French one specifically, though its probably not the only one with AI slop voices).
Examples of the AI-generated voicelines have popped up on social media.
Word of warning, if you are squeemish, Charlie Kirk got shot, and closeup videos of him getting shot are over social media and people have not put warnings up. Managed to avoid it myself, but careful with autoplaying gifs, and use this link https://bsky.app/profile/nycsouthpaw.bsky.social/post/3lyiw3vi3yc2c for instructions how to turn that off.
E: and it was a groyper, stop your bets ladies and gentlebots. The winner of the bet is, acausalrobotgod! Again! What a predictive streak.
looks like weāve got us our own superpredictor
Donāt worry, Kelsey Piper managed to use it as an opportunity to be a bluecheck dipshit.
(via)
Iām at least enjoying the many comments calling her out, but damn she just doubles down even after being given many many examples of him being a far-right nationalist monster who engaged in attempts to outright subvert democracy.
Yeah and missing the point that a lot of people think āsome ideas are so shit they shouldnāt be debated the right wayā esp not ideas about others who are not you and stuff we have debated (and fought over) again and again already. It is like the IRA, Kirk needs to be lucky once, trans people/minorities/university professors(*) need to be lucky every time, again and again, forever. This is just the dumbest level of object level vs meta level thinking out there. When somebody enters the marketplace with sawdust they claim is flour every week you toss them out, donāt let them in next time. And you should notice they only try to sell this āflourā to the poor.
*: my second point, Piper is also very full of shit here. You know what happened to uni professors who debated/corrected/were women/poc in his space? They got put on the TPUSA watchlist and got death and rape threats. He was part of the organisation who ran that database. So this imagined idealized platonic Kirk shaped object isnāt even real. Hell you can see in debates the tricks he pulls so his side thinks he wins. That creepy smile he makes after a point that he knows is bullshit, that is to knock people off balance so people react oddly (as it is a really creepy smile) and donāt react to the dumb shit he just said. See this clip for example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Jrsy1aB6OSk (it cuts off before she talks about how creepy his smile is). Note he is lying about the fetus thing, and if this wasnāt a high stress debate and people got time to think about things they would just reply with āso a dolphin fetus is a dolphin little human being?ā. But that is professional debaters vs college students for you. This is not a man who was interested in truth or having his mind changed. And this smile is not some incident, he does it in other places.
Irrationally annoyed at yanks incorrecting each other how this kind of shot could only be pulled off by a trained expert sniper. The Behind the Bastards guy agrees, but the replies are still stuffed with examples.
I know from experience that even mediocre conscripts shooting a gun for the first time in their life usually manage to land hits in a one foot diameter circle from 150 metres with iron sights on an intermediate catridge rifle. It doesnāt take an elite marksman to hit a sitting man from 200 yards away, especially with a scope. Even if nervous and high on adrenaline, an average hunter, target shooter or (ex) military type would be more likely than not to hit a target of that size at that distance, assuming otherwise decent conditions.
Hell, the factory sights on an M16 are supposed to be set for zero elevation at 250 metres and the effective range for most assault rifles and their semi auto civilian variants is around 300 metres. To say you need to be a trained sniper to make this shot is like saying you need to be a professional racing driver to do 80 mph on a highway.
If thereās one thing youād assume seppos know well, itās shooting firearms, but some people still canāt help but spout dumb bullshit.
Yeah, I think the whole āquickly getting away without leaving a traceā is more sign of some training. But, this is reduced in being likely by the whole FBI just being filled with incompetent goons, podcasters, racists, who are now playing āfind the person of colorā and not doing the actual FBI things.
I mean I have no high opinion of groypers, so I donāt think they are well trained soldiers or something so take that into account. Exmil just has a higher willingness to kill people.
But yes, very good to point out thanks. Esp as Evans has experience in these things, and can generally be relied upon. (Apart from his views on 40k being too rosy).
We can prob rule out a Luigi style killer as there was no shellcasing with words on it found as far as I can tell.
Even in Luigiās case, it took days to catch a guy who (allegedly, lol) killed a billionaire in the middle of Manhattan. Though very dashing, Mangione hardly seems like a navyseal elite supersoldier ninja hitman 47 either. Whatever Kirkās killerās motive, I see little reason to assume it was necessarily a pro job. All this tells us is that overfunding and militarization doesnāt equate to a more competent police force.
Yeah, and he had motive because of his intense pain, still a weird Rationalist adjacent type guy was not a likely subject. And sadly we knew the latter already.
It has been long long ago, but I recall that when London put CCTVs everywhere the chief of police there admitted it had not caused a drop in crime not helped them catch criminals. But he still wanted to place more of them and more money. Just a strange sort of welfare project for pervert police people.
E: and look all that police power, and he gets caught be cause he admitted it to his dad.
also, I was at Bible study with Luigi at the time a CEO coincidentally had a bullet-involved collision, as were you
During the lead of usual speed incident?
Yep we were, we were talking about hiring jetskis. Strange how they never used the pictures of him on the jetski in the news like how they do with all the white guys who shoot up a place. Wait, that means they know he was innocent just like we do.
Reports are shell cases with messages have been found. My money is still on it being a false flag.
LOL ofc I spoke too soon, the āmessagesā were apparently random arrows
Iām hearing that the āmessagesā are mundane manufacturer markings misinterpreted
Fyi that manufacturer does not make 30 06 ammo. So it isnt true. Story goes that the source for the whole messages story is Crowder, that he dropped it before the mainstream news. Not a reliable source, wtf media.
E: turns out I was wrong sorry about that. But due to the casings we now know he was likely enough to be a groyper for me to call him one. Iāll update the first post with a link to my skeet about it. But the song he used was in a āgroyper warā playlist. The song didnāt make sense to me anyway.
crowder just mad that the title on the tent was āprove me wrongā and not āchange my mindā
Yeah, to me the whole finding of casings makes no sense. Like if you put a message on them, leave them there. (also bolt your gun if you might want to shoot it again). Just odd. Also odd they donāt mention the messages on them directly. Which normally get plastered all over social media. (Which is bad btw, donāt spread extremist messaging without context, I really hope they finally learned this, and this isnāt a case of them hiding the message to make it sound more extreme than it was).
But yes, I spoke too soon. Anyway, as Iām the negative Cassandra, let me say this. We can rule out it being a Rationalist, we have not found a copy of HPMOR on the scene as far as I can tell.
E: update on the writing, might be wrong
Even if we had the shooter may have just been looking for something heavy enough to brace against for the shot. You canāt exactly carry a set of encyclopedias up to the top of the book depository or wherever without attracting attention.
You canāt exactly carry a set of encyclopedias up to the top of the book depository or wherever without attracting attention.
Not sure about that, I donāt want to talk about specifics as I rather not have people know exactly where I live but you could do a lot on the roofs of our uni without people noticing. Doors were not even locked.
But it makes sense for a shooter to bring something they know the hight off, like their personally signed copy of HPMOR.
āOne of our guys was murdered; it could have only been an elite Navy SEAL with over 300 confirmed kills!!!ā them, probably
Thoughts and prayers, definitely no curses.
I have spend the last few hours looking through all my social media posts making sure I delete any bad things I have said about witches.
The covens appreciate the overture.
Hecate left no crumbs
JFC if he dies heās the new Horst Wessel
Weāre already seeing some of the less circumspect fash call this their Reichstag Fire.
According to this https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lyj2o4cuvc2g , and I think a fox news news report he is dead.
He was shot while he was trying to blame gun violence on trans people and gang violence basically. In a moment of weird poetry.
But I just posted this here to warn people. A tip if you see something traumatic: https://bsky.app/profile/baroness.bsky.social/post/3lyj32qx2os2f go play some videogames to not sear it into your mind.
Anyway, doubt they will make the diaper guy the new Horst Wessel.
E: a awful.systems relevant lol: https://bsky.app/profile/lasergiant.bsky.social/post/3lyixmkzfuc2r
he also said that kids should watch public executions https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-death-penalty-public-executions-1873073 and was shot directly under giant banner that reads āPROVE ME WRONGā
technically itās a school shooting so not sure why conservatives care at all about it. he died like he lived, moving goalposts
Yep, he sucked. Big question I have is why. He is a propagandist in the āfree speech on campusā wars, and they won the battle and unis are caving and banning free speech. Of all the targets he makes no sense to me (not that any of them do to me, assassination has a very poor track record, people still whine about Pim in the Netherlands, and pretend all violence comes from the left (despite reality proving otherwise)).
So considering his history with groypers, who got big partially attacking Kirk for not being extreme enough, wouldnāt be shocked if it is a groyper. Or an exmil who lost a kid in a shooting.
I mean why shoot the guy that looks like a budget steven crowder and a broken stretchy arms toy doll had a teleporter accident.
Imagine if it turns out that it wasnāt even politically motivated and he just owed a bunch of money or something.
i didnāt even thought he was relevant anymore since 2020, he was like 2017 era chud debatelord who relied entirely on gotchas. he did toe the party line tho, so maybe some divergent rightwinger didnāt like what he was doing for whatever reason. maybe it was situation like with trump shooter, probable republican that didnāt particularly like epstein link, or whatever else cause there might be involved
I donāt think he has been relevant, he was on some 1 X debates 20 !X shows, where he showed the creepiest smile after being wrong about latin, and that was it. For the relevance of things I heard about him.
Turns out he was relevant to the right whoever. As he apparently kept pushing the epstein link (I thought he was dismissing the epstein link) so much so that Laura Loomer decided she never wanted to hear from the guy a few days ago.
Just very weird from what I can tell of the people of his ilk, for too online leftwingers he was a joke. Compared to a shapiro/crowder.
huh i honestly had no idea, and i guessed he was very replaceable in rw propaganda machine. i heard somewhere that shapiro was also supposed to be there
The videoās also all over Twitter, thanks to nonexistent moderation.
Damn, I was hoping someone would finally recognize the true value of the ASCII-art goatse that used to show up on Slashdot all the time, before this inevitably came to pass
