Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden 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.)

  • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
    4Ā·
    23 days ago

    I think this probably deserves a top level post but Iā€™m lazy so dumping it here: https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost

    Midjourney is aiming towards making a fancy new ultrasound device! They have a trailer with unsettling sci-fi music and visuals!

    Are they starting with clinical trials? Does it actually work yet? Haha no of course not theyā€™re gonna make a ā€œresearch spaā€ in San Francisco.

    The blog post is full of weird phrasing and details that makes it impossible to take seriously:

    When you step into the water, youā€™re standing on top of a platform. The platform is connected to rails and begins to descend into the water - an elevator gently lowering you at around 2 inches, or 5 centimeters, per second.

    Our spa will have hot tubs, saunas, cold plunges, and cozy rooms with pools of golden light which softly scan your body. It should be a place you love going, whether itā€™s by yourself, or with friends. It should be available 24/7.

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
      5Ā·
      23 days ago

      The more I read the less it makes sense, largely because the LLM that they used to fluff up the original napkin pitch decided it should promote high end medical equipment like it was another AI powered furby knock-off. Yeah, building a community around ct scanners seems definitely the way to go.

      Towards the end they basically stop just short of claiming that building the medical tricorder from startrek is the inevitable outcome of this pivot.

      We think itā€™s completely possible that with enough early imaging in the future, the world could avoid 30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs. The cultural, physical, and mental health benefits of all of this are hard to comprehend, but also hard to overstate.

      Deploying this stuff at scale at so called midjourney spas while supposedly working with FDA to eventually get approval just screams that the actual business plan is letting Peter Thiel collect full body scans indiscriminately.

      Surprisingly, ā€œdemocratizing ct scanningā€ doesnā€™t appear anywhere in the post.