Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th July 2026 - awful.systems
awful.systems
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, and happy 4th July in advance.)

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, and happy 4th July in advance.)

  • lurker@awful.systemsEnglish
    6Ā·
    1 month ago

    So I managed to find some more of the AI 2027 authorā€™s opinions on their predictions after a bit of poking around, Iā€™ll let this snippet speak for itself

    EDIT: in several comments below, AI 2027 co-authors Daniel Kokotajlo and Eli Lifland provide clarifications and corrections to what Iā€™ve written here. Uplift ā€“ the extent to which AI tools are accelerating AI R&D progress ā€“ is indeed well short of where the AI 2027 scenario predicts. However, the authors do believe they were on track regarding the rate at which uplift would progress; they merely have adjusted their view of where things stood in early 2025. So uplift is indeed short of the AI 2027 scenario, but may now be advancing at the predicted pace, just from a delayed starting point. And frontier AI lab revenue is in fact ahead of AI 2027ā€™s predictions; the 80% figure Iā€™m citing here, which is labeled ā€œeconomic valueā€ in the linked report, turns out to reflect company valuations in addition to revenue. Finally, valuations have jumped since the 80% figure was computed and are now ā€œabout on trendā€. Daniel and Eli provided some other clarifications as well, see their comments.]

      • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        3Ā·
        1 month ago

        That and treating ARR as a reliable indicator of revenue. Which isnā€™t as bad as the valuations, but is still pretty bad. Ed Zitron has explained all the ways they game ARR, and, more importantly, it doesnā€™t matter how much your revenue grows if you are spending 2 dollars for every dollar you make (or spending 20 dollars for every dollar they make, as seems to be the case with their subscription plans).

        Maybe the boosters will shut-up once OpenAI and Anthropic finally run out of venture capital to burn on subsidizing subscriptions, but actually, judging by the way the AI 2027 authors are still claiming credit for being right, they will probably just look for someone else to blame for the high costs.