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 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 “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” 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.
(Taking over for Gerard this time. Special thanks to him for starting this.)
Got a jumpscare watching this.
New elon allegedly spawned 5 months ago via MAGA columnist/influencer Ashley St. Clair
CW: Original source is the new york post, which I thought was an appropriate rag for this kind of news. Feel free to link a non NYP source.
Relevant political cartoon (though I feel gross after looking at it)
E: no prob different person
E2: climbing on my hill See another recent kid from Musk, vs the relative lack of them before ~2018 (my rough estimate when his radicalization by weird twitter people began (I believe he isnt smart enough/has the attention span to be radicalized by moldbug sliding into his dms (also jock vs creep)) began), sure he had an above average amount of kids with his first wife but nothing like the wild secret seeding he does now. I really think he was a late concert to Nazism and not one always (he always was a racist piece of shit). See also how this man who has trouble shutting the fuck up was silent about gomergate1 and approved on hrt for his exdaughter (and due to trans people showing how gender isnt innate, quite performative, and poreus, nazis hate trans people). This is my hill! (Yeah, this doens’t really matter, neo-nazis delenda est no matter when they became one).
Also, was the old messaging exchange that’s been getting some attention sources to “MILO” as in Milo “maybe if I’m hateful enough they’ll ignore that I’m gay” Yanniwhatever?
Yes Nero is that Milo. The reactionary who tried the whole ‘I’m going to troll the liberals by being gay and objectifying black men lol, ow god why are yall trying to eat my face’ guy. Last I heard he is ex gay now. Massive pos, but also turns out that a lot of things he wrote in the before times were actually ghostwritten by others, others who he then didn’t pay (because pos (Sidenote, but it amazes me how many of them simply don’t pay employees/contractors (I assume their dealers do get paid))).
You know, I feel like he’s still breaking down barriers because I’ve never heard of a straight man being that much of a messy bitch.
But internalized homophobia aside the fact that they’re so frequent in failing to pay their hired help really puts the lie to the libertarian side of their ideology. Even if you and I in particular have too much pride and sense to work with them they never seem to have issues finding someone to take the risk, meaning that *someone is getting exploited into make the lifestyles of the rich and famous possible.
MAGA columnist/influencer Ashley St. Clair
ah. earlier someone linked me screenshots of the tweets and I was trying to remember where I knew the name from.
“They don’t know I’ve stopped saving for retirement”
Making my service slightly worse once again to own the libs.
nasb, Curtis Yarvin’s Cult For Billionaire Morons
the comment around 13:00 onwards, “it was very hard to get people to care about this before”. felt in my bones.
Thanks for adding to the coporate-techno-king takeover of america nightmare fuel ^^.
Nothing like the ascendancy of fascism in the US triggering a new level of public awareness of my own niche concerns of both the inevitability of fascism via capitalism and how the western tech world breeds a specific ideological mindset that enables said fascism. Of course, it should go without saying that the only effective way to end fascism is to
have the ideological opponents of fascism break the fascist country through total warvote blue no matter whoPeter thiel looks like if nosferatu never hit puberty
This image will now forever live in my head. Thanks, random YT commenter.
Okey, what is with these dweebs and never taking their leather jackets off? (Talking about the opening still, have not even started the video)
They think leather jackets are cool but don’t know why, and have never been challenged on their fashion choices. Fuckers need a good mugging to change their ways.
hilariously, also features in the commentary
Keeps the stank in, also shaping (I.e. spanx for dudes).
Remember The Matrix? Remember bullet time and leather trench coats? Remember there not being a spoon? Remember taking the red pill and becoming the savior of prophecy? These fucking guys sure do.
still amazing to me that the pillers and “anti-woke” and all went so deep on the matrix, given that it was a trans allegory. way to miss the point, chumps
In a hilarious turn of events that no one could have foreseen, Anthropic is having problems with people sending llm generated job applications, and is asking potential candidates to please not use ai.
While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process. We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate ‘Yes’ if you have read and agree.
https://www.404media.co/anthropic-claude-job-application-ai-assistants/
Well this is the final straw. Guess I’ll keep my current iPhone while it still works (unless they ruin iOS too much before that)… but then, what? I don’t want a Google thing either :(
So I guess it’ll have to be some Android fork. GrapheneOS or so? But even that involves giving money to Google for a Pixel phone… there’s just no good option.
Or am I overlooking something? I don’t need many features or apps on a phone – I don’t really like today’s smartphones anyway. Mostly I just need the basic features to work reliably. (Context: my last attempt at a non-Android Linux phone was the original Jolla phone, over 10 years ago, and that has left me a little cautious with the idea of a Linux phone, due to the many bugs with basics like “working mobile data” or “working GPS in a navigation app”…)
Plus 1 for GrapheneOS, has been pretty solid so far. Also, it seems that police imaging software doesn’t work on it yet!
Graphene is very nice, but you should be aware that:
- the only supported hardware at present are pixel phones by google who are not the world’s most ethical company
- google are implementing security policies on their devices that cannot be implemented on grapheneos and will prevent certain apps (notably banking ones) from working
google are implementing security policies on their devices that cannot be implemented on grapheneos and will prevent certain apps (notably banking ones) from working
That is concerning. Tbh, banking apps are probably the main reason I use a smartphone at all, because there’s no way anymore, at least where I live, to get a TAN without their stupid apps since they have all deprecated SMS TAN. Some still sell you physical token generators for ridiculous prices, but that’s going away, too.
And on the main topic of this thread: can Xwitter in general just fucking die already?
Regarding banking apps. A relative bought a Huawei just as they were pushed out of the western market and it turned out that it was shipped with a Android fork with a Huawei store. Most things worked fine, but banking apps was a problem because they could only be installed through Google Play or App Store.
The solution I found for her was installing a virtual Android environment with Google Play. So when banking apps are needed she opens the virtual environment.
I don’t know if this solution will continue working, but it works for now. Guess I will find out.
I saw a toot recently showing a number of methods to deal with the general casual shit (such as checking whether something was installed from play store, etc). don’t know if I stored the link, but might be worth a look around re the latter bits
(e: to be clear, not saying you’re wrong for indicating those issues (which are entirely valid concerns), and all of this very much depends on whether user wants to even screw around with stuff. just mean to point out that there are definitely some workarounds and options kicking around, although personally nfi how extensive they solve)
The thing that currently cannot be worked around is the “play integrity api”, but relatively few applications make use of it yet.
It is a terrible security measure (because it give the impression to app developers that a 5+ year old android installation that’s never had a patch is more secure than an up-to-date graphene install) so there’s a chance that it might be improved in future, but it is currently a looming problem.
ah yeah, I’ve heard of play integrity. that shit should burn.
A) True, though I got an older model on sale. That said, it is a tradeoff. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
B) I came from a LightPhone II. It helps to have an appetite for mild annoyance when stepping outside the regular tech ecosystems.
Thanks for the infos everyone!
I can live with mild annoyance, if it allows me to sufficiently separate things from Google. Banking apps and such could indeed be a pain point, but I could just put them on another device (e.g. old iPad, which I’m never really using anyway, so i could make it a special purpose device for “those few shitty apps that the world requires me to have”), since I never need that on the go on my phone anyway.
I have been looking into Fairphone for work. My focus for that is mostly long lasting, repairable, hardware. I want a minimum of friction with switching the users, so it would be Android for us, but I think there are open non-Google options.
couldn’t find if this has featured here before, so linking for others as I figure a few of you are likely to appreciate: destroy AI
bonus, learned about asrg and an art piece that goes immensely hard
the scott alexander fanclub on reddit is especially unhinged lately. Some choice picks, beginning gently with a sneer:
Anyone who says there is a 0% chance of a fried egg being sentient is overconfident. Nobody knows what causes consciousness. We have no way of detecting it & we can barely agree on a definition. So we should be less than 100% certain about anything to do with consciousness and fried eggs.
moving on,
For me, I currently believe that the way forward is gathering my Dunbar community of ~150 values-aligned people and dropping out together to live in intentional community, generally off-the-grid, interacting with technology only as a tool (no news/algorithms/push notifications), close enough to a major city to visit friends but far enough away to isolate ourselves when we want to.
We then push forward into an unknown world, supporting each other, doing enough trade and consulting with the outside world to ensure a positive trade surplus for the collective and distributing the profits among us to sustain the community.Yes, that is a response to AI despair. In a “non-doomer thread”. Because of course.
but what takes the cake is the regularly scheduled IQ thread, a beautiful dumpster fire which burns especially bright on this day. Yet one specimen soars above the din:
The average should recognize and accept their inferiority and make peace with the fact that they will live and die a mediocre life. They should stop trying to interfere in the affairs of their betters and content themselves with their own garden, which can provide enough happiness for them until the end of their life if properly cultivated.
Further study of the user’s excreta clarifies that they are:
- sincere
- definitely not racist
warning: HEAVY PSYCHIC DAMAGE and I really hope the spoiler block functions correctly on your end
spoiler
[sic] we should treat all low human capital like zoo animals regardless of skin colour [\sic]
For me, I currently believe that the way forward is gathering my Dunbar community of ~150 values-aligned people and dropping out together to live in intentional community
Years ago (sadly I forgot to take a acreenshot, as the posts were silently removed) there was somebody recruiting for something like this on themotte. Something like “you sound like a good match for our homesteading group, check out our blood and soil(*) voat”. Which was a pretty bad sign (wonder how much of that shit was done via dms).
*: for the few who do not know, this is one of those undeniable neo-nazi terms.
in the slatestar club. straight up ‘sleight of mouthing it’. and by ‘it’, haha, well. let’s justr say. My peanits.
if a fried egg cannot code, then how come [piece of software you dislike] exists?
A fried egg cannot code
Prove it. It is more likely it actually can code, but refuses to do so. Perhaps fried eggs have a genetic predisposition to vore?
E: other comment there:
We can’t be 100% sure of anything
Are you sure about that?
When I asked Claude if it’s sentient
AAAAAa (it gets even worse when they are gods in the gapping sentience).
Yep that’s a brickin
We then push forward into an unknown world, supporting each other, doing enough trade and consulting with the outside world to ensure a positive trade surplus for the collective and distributing the profits among us to sustain the community.
That’s just a commune. Like my brother in Christ I think you’re just talking about communism.
i think they just want to live in a cult compound
I think it’s quite funny that they talk about distributing the profits when these guys are all far right creeps. realistically the only thing they’re going to be distributing is calories to the nearby bears
They have leveled up from the socialism of fools to the communism of dipshits.
I randomly remembered crying wolf and decided to make that everybodies problem
IIRC this was the post that made Daniel Harper start his nazi-tracking podcast I Don’t Speak German
Speaking of non-german speakers, I hope poptart is doing alright. Haven’t heard anything of him since the blackout.
poptart is fine :-)
Thanks, fr!
I had forgotten about that one. Thanks, I hate it.
I was already largely out of step with the Rats at this point, and I definitely hadn’t read it with the new “actually I feel like I was right about this one, neener neener” header. What strikes me now is the attitude here. Like, it takes a staggering degree of reflexive contrarianism to frame this as “see Trump isn’t that racist” instead of “hey look how fast the rest of the political establishment embraced this overt racism. Maybe we should have listened when everyone tries to tell us how racist the political establishment was underneath the respectable and reasonable public face”. Just because the wolves have taken off the wool suits now doesn’t mean they weren’t wolves the whole fucking time.
The header was written somewhere during the first Trump admin iirc. But for some reason he didnt add a year. (For people who worry a lot about epistemics and stuff like that another dumb move, imagine people reading that now and thinking he added that last year, it all aged a bit badly). Funny how every time he adds a header he makes it worse. See also his ‘i don’t believe a lot of this anymore’ header above the anti nrx post (which has a year).
That was literally the inflection point on my path to sneerclub. I had started to break from less wrong before, but I hadn’t reached the tipping point of saying it was all bs. And for ssc and Scott in particular I had managed to overlook the real message buried in thousands of words of equivocating and bad analogies and bad research in his earlier posts. But “you are still crying wolf” made me finally question what Scott’s real intent was.
Even if it wasn’t the seed of doubt about his real intentions, it also reveals how out of touch he is in a way (esp now 8 years later), and just how silly some LW stuff is. Like how they all want to be super-predictors, and try to keep notes on how good their prediction etc are, but how little all these other predictions matter when you make a mistake like this. “All this stuff about how [trump] is “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up.” Also note that he [Scott/Trump/The LGBT person who wrote that text on the flag] didn’t notice that the lgbt flag was upside down.
I can’t find the exact quote because google has decayed into hot garbage juice, but there’s a line in Gideon the Ninth where Harrow asks Gideon how she thinks necromancy works exactly, and Gideon says something like, “I don’t know, maybe you think about bones really hard until something happens?”
That’s how LW people think actual intelligence works.
A good necromancer doesnt even need bones, he can create diamondoid undead just by looking at a picture of a blade of grass.
what if a future necromancer were to resurrect and torture all people who did not contribute to their eventual creation. I’m going to advocate for teaching necromancy in schools
Necromancers are just genetically better, they quickly keep up in conversations and they seem to sparkle(*), I suggest we make them the elites.
*: please ignore my detractors who keep pointing out this could also be because they snort bone dust. They are just a snarlbunch, and we have noticed the skulls already.
About the only good stuff LW does is remind me of other, much better SF. In this case Ian McDonald’s Necroville (Terminal Café in the US), about a future where nanotech enables the resurrection of the dead. Said neo-living are of course discriminated against, have no human rights, and are used as cheap disposable labor by the corporation that uses the technology.
Im now reminded of that dystopian short story of the first guy who uploaded his own mind (and how copies kept being abused, had no rights, went crazy when they figured out how much time had really past, and reliably got dementia after x years had past, just like the OG).
Yeah that’s “Lena” by the SCP guy. Great story.
MMAcevedo’s demeanour and attitude contrast starkly with those of nearly all other uploads taken of modern adult humans, most of which boot into a state of disorientation which is quickly replaced by terror and extreme panic. Standard procedures for securing the upload’s cooperation such as red-washing, blue-washing, and use of the Objective Statement Protocols are unnecessary.
Holy smokes Jeeps will reportedly show ads while you are freaking driving:
Imagine pulling up to a red light, checking your GPS for directions, and suddenly, the entire screen is hijacked by an ad. That’s the reality for some Stellantis owners. Instead of seamless functionality, drivers are now forced to manually close out of ads just to access basic vehicle functions.
One Jeep 4xe owner recently shared their frustration on an online forum, detailing how these pop-ups disrupt the driving experience. Stellantis, responding through their “JeepCares” representative, confirmed that these ads are part of the contractual agreement with SiriusXM and suggested that users simply tap the “X” to dismiss them.
“Listen guys, if you don’t want me stabbing you you simply have to ask nicely every time, and also I’m trying real hard to reduce the rate of stabbing incidents so in a way I’m the victim here.”
Ugh. With this, and the recent articles about car makers collecting location data, and the multitude of news about car makers integrating LLMs, it seems that cars are going the same way as TVs, i.e. everything on the market is constantly violating privacy while also throwing ads in your face, and there’s no good models left to buy that don’t do it (to my knowledge). Wondering if there will be any good options left when it’s some day time for a new car…
tbh I think the “just vote with your wallet” strategy is probably insufficient. the flipside is that this means it requires people everywhere to start pushing back on this shit, across multiple countries. hard, but necessary
the positive side is that the outright harms of the tracking industry is more and more frequently becoming known to J Average person, so the fight may become easier
Re: Smart TVs, what works for me is a Roku TV, skip all of the sign-in shit (don’t even connect it to the internet — update firmware via USB if necessary1). Then, plug in whatever devices and navigate to them. Close enough to a dumb TV for me.
I almost have Android TV figured out: Bought a cheap Onn Android TV box, sideloaded SmartTube in case I need to rewatch The Gemsbok’s Video performing an existentialist reading of Fucking Dark Souls2, installed MullvadVPN3, and sideloaded whatever other apps I needed. The only reason I say it is almost figured out is I couldn’t bypass the Google account creation/login — an insufficient stopgap is to create a throwaway account, though it’s very hard to do this in a way that isn’t linked to your real identity, I think.
(This will be part of my “how to privify/securify your shit” series, if I ever learn to write.)
1: it isn’t
2: this sounds angry but it’s more pumped up, this shit rules
3: note that “block connections without VPN” is built into regular Android, but not Android TV, as far as I can tellI couldn’t bypass the Google account creation/login
That’s why I try really hard to avoid such things. I still try to (so far successfully) avoid having any Google-created operating systems anywhere in my home, because I trust them even less than Apple (for some years I used an AppleTV, but grew too frustrated with its limitations, and also Apple is becoming less and less trustworthy as well).
My solution currently: connected to an (older, non-smart) UST projector is a small HTPC (a little box from Asus based on an Intel N200, low power and fanless, but still has a GPU with a modern video decoding engine so it can decode even 4K video without issues). Since it’s a normal x86 system, I run a normal desktop Linux on it. To access streaming services, youtube, etc. I just use the web interfaces in Firefox. Big advantage of the setup is privacy, and best-in-class applications for playing local files (on streaming appliances that’s usually annoying and bad). And I can even watch broadcast TV on it with a USB DVB-T2 thingy, although I do that rarely these days.
Disadvantage: need to have desktopy computery input devices on the couch to use it (also have an IR receiver in there, but it’s not working well). Still, for me the upsides outweigh that downside.
I tried something similar with my Steam Deck (Bazzite + Gamescope works OKish) but I got tired of using a KB+M.
I will let you know if I figure out any way to bypass Google account creation. I have this old bullshit Amazon Fire HD 6 (Fire 6 HD? Who fucking names this shit?) that I am trying to fuck with and you can bypass connecting to the internet at all by
clicking any SSN → back → not now, so maybe it’s possible on some Android TV devices. Or maybe not and I can finally get around to reading Don Quixote.I will let you know if I figure out any way to bypass Google account creation.
Thanks :) Although I’m so far happy with my current setup.
I got tired of using a KB+M.
Using a mouse on the couch sucks, yeah. I still had an old unused Apple Magic Trackpad here, which (to my surprise) works perfectly with Linux, and with that it’s pretty nice.
That’s awesome. :)
please drink verification can
this is how almost all software works now but because it’s in a sacred place, the car, it is big news
Good point, but for most people it’s really hard to accidentally kill someone if they get distracted on a desktop, laptop, tablet or a phone. Cars are deadly machinery and deliberately distracting the operator of a dangerous machine with your software just to squeeze a little more money from their frustration should be a crime.
Stellantis is circling the drain even more rapidly than Tesla. The 3rd-runner-up car makers of both the USA and Europe bonded together into one great big Megazord of mediocrity. Unsurprising they’d pull something like this.
A massive fan favorite in this community and CEO of a thermodynamics startup recently linked up with Grimes.
Nitter link: https://xcancel.com/BasedBeffJezos/status/1889072622409064649#m
Substantially, uh, wider than I expected. But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The bird flu is probably hitting that fellow’s diet hard.
a thermodynamics startup
what
Like what do they do, find ways to increase entropy faster? Or are they bootstrapping thermodynamics from first principles to disrupt the field of physics with blockchain-powered quantum synergy
IIRC, they were promising some new kind of processor with stochastic stuff in it that was advertised as “quantum computing” but isn’t really.
But he sure likes saying physics words.
I feel like there’s something to be said about how merely wearing a suit apparently means “Bond villain aesthetics”. Or is posing with a pretty young woman what makes the suit Bond villainy?
It’s probably because he’s a fatuous evil twat.
No, that’s not a new achievement for him.
It’s “Bond villain aesthetics” if the “villain” you mean is the big guy guarding the next location who acts intimidating for five seconds before Bond suplexes him and walks inside anyway, quipping.
Also, Grimes is not even offering table stakes for being a Bond girl here. Like, she’s an extra in the club through which Bond quickly passes in order to find the actual Bond girl. She’s not a vaguely trans-coded Famke Janssen bringing herself to orgasm by machine-gunning an entire room of technicians while Gottfried John looks on with a “what the fuck, tovarisch” eyebrow lift.
Like, if this guy gets a second scene, it’s the one where they demonstrate that SPECTRE does not tolerate failure.
holy shit that’s perfect
from a discord. musk did not actually marry grimes, but apart from that my aplogies for mr beaning the whole america
Fingers crossed that the next domino is “nuclear holocaust due to particularly bad day on social media”
Sweet, everythings comin’ up swlabr
looks like our sneer comrade DisneylandDiplomat (disney6830 on discord), who did the Thinkateria rationalist-parody blog, died in Oct 2022. From Reddit Sneerclub:
Hello, I am writing since I saw this sub is a bit active again. I am wondering if anyone remembers the blog “thinkateria” or the reddit user DisneylandDiplomat who often posted links to promote it here. he was my little brother and he killed himself in October of 2022, after deleting the blog, and I only saw his reddit activity afterwards. I think it was satirical writing making fun of these other bloggers discussed here. He was very private and this sub is really the only insight into his state of mind at that time that I have. There’s no point to this post except I feel a need to share that he is gone and this is the only place I know he had any connections with. It must have been hard for everyone who talked about this so early on.
Wow that sucks, doubt his fam will read this but still condolences.
Niko Matsakis wrote a post about how the fucking rust compiler toolchain should include an LLM to explain error messages because teaching the semantics of a language is too hard and that pissed me off so much that instead of linking that piece of shit directly I’m posting this excellent sneer from Anatol Ulrich that’s also much shorter than Niko’s extended attempt to beg for a promotion at Amazon
If the rust community spearheads the downfall of LLMs somehow, I’ll stop using C
Oh no :((
Rust’s emphasis on “reliability” makes it a great target for AI
What?! Aaaaaaahhh! This makes me want to scream. After so many years of C++ misery and increasing frustration with it, and looking into various alternatives for years, I found that Rust is the lanuage which brought me back to actually enjoying programming. If they really ruin it with LLMs now, I don’t know where to go anymore in terms of programming languages.
this excellent sneer from Anatol Ulrich
That reply is indeed excellent.
I feel the same way. I program in rust cause I like it, and the feeling of actually liking writing systems code was refreshing coming from C and especially C++. rust is a language I find beautiful — but I won’t for long if its excellent diagnostics and tooling all get deprecated in favor of an LLM. I can’t imagine what pivoting to AI would do to the language’s roadmap.
