Just two weeks til’ Halloween now.

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 ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ 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.)

  • scruiser@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    Ā·
    2 days ago

    Judging by the way LLMs and generative AI has been used, even when we do get something vaguely like a realistic version of sci-fi fantasies, capitalism and people who can’t distinguish the limits of the real thing from the fantasy will manage to misuse it.

    • istewart@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      Ā·
      2 days ago

      who in the hell would want programmable matter anymore, after they’ve seen what happened to plain ol’ computer programming as already practiced

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      Ā·
      2 days ago

      This doesnt apply to everything, like VR and 3d printers were a sci-fi fantasy and now they are mundane economically viable but not revolutionary products.

      Biohacking and nanomachines otoh dont seem to be viable and you hear nothing about those anymore. Only a little bit in the uncreative (and going on the experts unrealistic) ā€˜ai will create bioweapons’ critihype. No ā€˜It will turn people into cyberzombies’ (quake 2 was pretty good (that was aliens not AI but still)).

      • scruiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        Ā·
        3 hours ago

        VR did get a preemptive attempt to enshittify it with the Meta-verse, and the tech isn’t quite there, but it is coming along. 3d printers are nice, haven’t been fucked up yet as far as I known.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          Ā·
          3 hours ago

          Yeah, but they have not generated the science fiction futures, that is what I meant. They are just normal techs

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      Ā·
      2 days ago

      What’s that XKCD that goes over the ways that capitalists would be ruthlessly exploiting all those ā€œsecrets they don’t want you to knowā€ for incredible profits?

      • scruiser@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        Ā·
        3 hours ago

        https://xkcd.com/808/ . I think the XKCD undersells the ability of capitalists to chase dumb ideas, especially in the short term. Like Theranos was only a step or two up from Homeopathy in terms of bad science?

    • schnoopy@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      Ā·
      2 days ago

      Piles of screaming grey goo and people being like ā€œWhy are you running away? can’t you see it’s my grandmother?ā€