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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • zogwarg@awful.systemsEnglish
    13Ā·
    1 month ago

    Encyclical from the pope about the dangers of AI, mostly sane actually: (provided link skips quite a bit about social justice and referencing previous literature)

    https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html#Artificial_intelligence

    EDIT, snippets:

    1. We cannot be satisfied with [ā€¦] the so-called ā€œalignmentā€ of AI [ā€¦] without [ā€¦] openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice. Otherwise, those who control AI will impose their own moral vision, which will become the invisible infrastructure of these systems. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few. [ā€¦]
    1. [ about post and transhumanism ] From the perspective of the Churchā€™s Social Doctrine, the key issue is not the use of technology as such, but the vision that underlies it. If the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy. In the name of progress, ā€œnecessary sacrificesā€ may begin to be justified, placing the burden on the most vulnerable in pursuit of a supposed optimization of the species. [ā€¦]
    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      17Ā·
      1 month ago

      When our enemies are so fucking immoral I have to hand it to the HEAD OF THE CATHOLIC FUCKING CHURCH when the fuck did I enter the twilight zone

      • flere-imsaho@awful.systemsEnglish
        7Ā·
        1 month ago

        for the nerds here, said head of the catholic fucking church quotes (correctly!) one gandalf from the works of well known catholic writer named tolkien

    • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
      8Ā·
      1 month ago

      tired: butletian jihad

      wired: butlerian crusade

      e: maybe we should have seen this coming, prospective Keeper of Two Masjids wanted to build ai dc in Neom

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      8Ā·
      1 month ago

      I donā€™t think anyone here is at risk of being tricked into thinking that the pope is their friend (unlike some people on social mediaā€¦)

      Under the last pope the church used similar arguments to argue that transgender people are unnatural (unsaid part: and probably shouldnā€™t be given healthcare). Itā€™s hard for me to read this without thinking about that backdrop:

      Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.