Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

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.

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsOP
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      4 months ago

      it’s still far too early in baytime (hell, it’s barely morning in eagleeast), gonna check back in on this in 2~3h for when the real fun starts

        • froztbyte@awful.systemsOP
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          4 months ago

          two from the same esteemed poster:

          That sounds very “leftist” in circular-logic where more money means you are axiomatically automatically the most guilty regardless of level of harm caused. Which means that if you were to become the first trillionare by curing 95% of all forms of cancer then you are clearly history’s greatest monster.

          Alright then so when do we go from it being tax deductible to outright banning private charity as “undemocratic”?

          • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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            4 months ago

            so true, there’s nothing conceivably wrong with making… a trillion dollars… ? on the back of cancer patients …?

              • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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                4 months ago

                taking all people with cancer in the world right now it’s at least a couple thousands of pure profits, but if you account for all future humans it’s basically giving it away for free!

                • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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                  4 months ago

                  Yeah but this doesn’t make you immortal so for the person to become a trillionaire in a reasonable timeframe (lets say two decades) that is a lot of dollars per treatment which goes to this inventor. Which compared to the payouts other inventors get would make him an asshole in their own class in exploiting sick people.

  • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    an exciting new startup promises to be “airbnb for gpus”! rent out your GPU to run untrusted code for pennies an hour: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260259

    bonus: the company is “pivoting” from drone delivery

    bonus bonus: boomer in the comments going on a nonsequiter rant about trans furries

    Wait a year and see how kids get on blockchain to sell and buy GPU resources for rendering ‘trans furries’, or better analyse classmates’ stolen chats. I can vividly remember we were by no means disclosing private info back in ‘94 only to see a world of influencers in 2024 sharing their very personal guts for profits.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      “New”. The crypto bros already thought of this for GPUs years ago (they probably weren’t the first), and the basic idea goes at least as far back as SETI@Home.

      • sinedpick@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        So the top response is asking the painfully obvious question: how is this secure? Some dude (not sure if it’s one of the startup employees) responds “Let’s just use homomorphic encryption!” then throws a pissy fit because some people downvoted the suggestion of running extremely inefficient computation on rented hardware.

    • maol@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      There’s something so… crypto bro… about someone mad that influencers spill personal info for profit instead of having it stolen from them by hackers. “Hey! That was my payday!”

    • ebu@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      Wait a year and see how kids get on blockchain to sell and buy GPU resources for rendering ‘trans furries’

      excuse you, i render my fursona with my own GPU

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsOP
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      4 months ago

      christ and of course it’s a YC company. they really should print that on the office entrance wall of something

      YC: Where Monopolied Rentware Is The Only Business Model We Know

  • slopjockey@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    So there was a big, vaguely described, public kerfuffle at a beach in my city, so I logged onto Xitter to see what happened. The first (and only relevant post) was from a sinister-ish sounding bluecheck. Low and behold, I found that he writes to the Unz review.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20240526210416/https://www.unz.com/article/the-worlds-greatest-boxer-is-a-white-man/ It’s all about Usyk, a heavyweight boxer who’s considered a pound for pound great. Usyk is a great boxer, undoubtedly. But this article is strangely constructed, borderline pointless, and brazenly racist (shocker). And honestly, reading the comments, I think the author’s just trying to cope with the fact that black boxers tend to be popular.

    I don’t think racist cope on its own is even worth a stubstack, but this one take is especially stupid:

    Since it’s assumed that heavyweight boxers are able to beat everyone below their weight class, the heavyweight champ is essentially the real champ. And until last weekend, there hasn’t been an undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999, when Lennox Lewis—a black “British” man—collected all of the belts, only to lose one of them a year later when he failed to promptly fight a mandatory challenger.

    To those unfamiliar with combat sports, I can’t emphasize enough how weird it is to say that the heavyweight champ is the best boxer, period. Skill - irrespective of raw strength - is super important to boxers and other people who participate in combat sports. To the point that any fan ranking a pro boxer will likely talk about “Pound for pound” (p4p) greats, not the objectively strongest fighters. And right now the unofficial p4p great is a sub 5’6" Japanese boxer Naoya “Monster” Inoue. This man is a beast. I don’t need to glaze him any harder, just google him or look up what people think on reddit. Weirdly enough, he’s not mentioned once.

    Hell, he doesn’t mention Gervonta “Tank” Davis at all. He’s half an inch shorter than Inoue, but he’s also considered a p4p great and is known for his high boxing IQ. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t mention Terence Crawford - 5’8" also considered a p4p great - at all either. Hmmm.

    • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      Echoing the audience’s fawning of heavyweight boxers is probably the least objectionable thing in this racist shitheap of an article, I like how it ends by basically saying people should shut up about the judges possibly favoring Usyk for being Ukrainian, not because that’s just Tyson fans coping but because the current notable russian heavyweights are either icky muslims or not full whites by parentage.

      P4P is mostly a marketing term anyway, size aside the meta is different enough between distant weight classes to really strain comparison.

      • slopjockey@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        Idk if heavyweights are the big thing right now. Tank and Inoue are some of the most popular fighters right now. Hell, look at Ryan Garcia, he’s the talk of the town. Everyone watched him v Haney and Garcia not even that big or good! I feel like if you asked the average young man who his favorite fighter was, they might not even be welterweight

    • gerikson@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      I’ve never heard of these boxers, but this was pretty funny

      In this corner: Tyson “The Gypsy King” Fury, a bald 6’9” behemoth who resembles the Amazing Colossal Man of 1957 sci-fi B-movie infamy. Fury was born 35 years ago to Irish Traveller parents […]

      I doubt that either Fury or Usyk understand the term “white” as Americans do. The main ethnic identity I’ve seen Fury claim is that of an Irish Gypsy whose people have been oppressed by the British for centuries. Fury even once let these words slip from his lips before one of his fights with Deontay Wilder when asked if there was a racial element to their matchup:

      We’re all hauman beings. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, pink or green. We share the same blood. We are humans.

      (mispelling in original)

      Shocking that a pro boxer named Fury is a better human being than some self-proclaimed racist blogger.

      • maol@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        Irish Travellers/Mincéir are hugely discriminated against in both Britain and Ireland. I would tell this guy to go crack a book but he would probably just write another racist article about Travellers.

        E: I just had a féach at Tyson Fury’s wikipedia page and apparently he was named after Mike Tyson.

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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        4 months ago

        it’s a site combining all the racism with a very useful archive of 20th century magazine copyright violations

    • slopjockey@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      And here are my favorite sneers from the comment section

      This guy gets fucking dunked on for not reading the room and claiming that black guys might actually be better boxers, genetically.

      And this guy thinks that weight classes are for wokies.

      Honestly, I’m starting to think this post was threadworthy just from the comment section alone.

      • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        weight classes are for wokies

        This used to be a Joe Rogan staple: no weight classes, no time limits and the ring should be the size of a basketball court.

        It’s really just the umpteenth reiteration of the meathead mantra of how I’d do really well in [popular combat sport] if it weren’t for those pesky rules holding me back.

        • slopjockey@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          Fucking lmao. Imagine being as big as Joe and wanting to fight in a ring the size of Kansas where you can’t go the distance.

          You def wouldn’t need weightclasses though, the featherweights would just have to run until the heavyweights pass out from dehydration/exhaustion. It’d be like the hunger games

      • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        ah, xitter. “blacks,” conversations with “alt right moderate” + colin wright tagged in, and ‘men being of different sizes is woke.’ what a site

        • slopjockey@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          And despite the fact that whatshisname wants to secure a future for himself and his heavyweight white children, he doesn’t capitalize “white” at any point. To be honest that was the only part that was surprising.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    I’ve been taking a long break from reading anything here. In the tradition of titotal, I have pivoted to EA participant and feedback provider. In this case, my EA is the Hades II Early Access, which is great, by the way.

  • jax@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    nsfw, and at a risk of beating a dead horse, but this article, although brief, does a decent job at connecting the dots between “silicon valley pronatalism” and regular ol’ nationalism/white supremacy and debunking some of their bullshit

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      and at a risk of beating a dead horse

      None of us are doctors, so we cannot declare the horse legally dead. So please keep beating it so it doesn’t stand back up and turn us all into paperclips.

    • @jax @froztbyte

      small domino: Scott Alexander confessing to his friend that he’s learned a lot from the reactionaries, including that beating children up is the best way to educate them

      (dominoes toppling…)

      big domino: "And a Guardian journalist witnessed Malcolm [Collins] strike their two-year-old across the face for misbehaviour, a parenting style they apparently developed based on watching “tigers in the wild”. "

      just rationalist things

      • BigMuffin69@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        I don’t understand why the wife does not simply consume her husband, a parenting style I’ve developed from observing the noble praying mantis in the wild.

      • froztbyte@awful.systemsOP
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        4 months ago

        Yeah.

        I had parents that did this shit (and more). Emphasis on “had”: I walked the fuck away from the whole goddamn lot.

        Does my fucking head in to see this kind of shit not only being given airtime but done so without criticism in the coverage.

  • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    pretty good indication that the eugenics couple are totally disrespected and disregarded even within their supposed sphere of influence: none or almost none of the 2^7 replies to the thread the other day were Just Asking Questions or So Everyone You Don’t Like Is A Nazi?ing. except for I guess peter thiel they convince nobody, appeal to nobody, and yet journalists keep uncritically writing about them. the ability of money to shape media is impressive

  • jax@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    a near 12,000 word anonymous hit piece on Émile Torres on the EA forum has some gems in the comments.

    the top comment basically calls it out as someone airing their personal grievances.

    next comment feels the need to call out Torres and Gebru are big bad bullies:

    Broadly I think that both Torres and Gebru engage in bullying. They have big accounts and lots of time and will quote tweet anyone who disagrees with them, making the other person seem bad to their huge followings.

    and my personal favorite, that Marx’s drive was more akin to rationalists than current leftists, because leftists for the “last ten-fifteen years just [haven’t] been very rational”

    Karl Marx’s whole work was based on economics and an attempt to create a sort of scientific theory of history, love it or hate it the man obviously had a drive more akin to those of current rationalists than of current leftists.

    • gerikson@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      That piece has been referenced here before, but thanks for diving into the comments. The one about Marx is pretty funny, I’m sure the commenter has only read the Cliff Nots of both Marx and “current leftists”.

      • deborah@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        It’s funny how they’ve taken on Marx and Communism as an unmarked Good Person in a weird sort of half troll (remember Musk claiming to be a socialist? to say nothing of Ms. Boucher as a cosplay elf reading the communist manifesto). It’s not quite like American racists and capitalists claiming Dr. King would have Supported Them, Actually, because it’s half serious (people like leftism so unfettered wealth acquisition is the real leftism) and half trolling. They’re trying to get props and have a haha-j/k back door out of the claim at the same time.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          Ms. Boucher as a cosplay elf reading the communist manifesto

          Apparently she wasn’t reading it, it was a troll, she had borrowed the book for the photo-op. So it is actually worse.

        • gerikson@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          I think a big part of Marx’ appeal back in the day was that he was fully slotted into the rationalist milieu of the time. Identifying an impersonal, inevitable “march of progress” that wasn’t religious was a powerful idea for some people.

          (btw the Communist Manifesto is 150 years old and could have been written yesterday, at least the first part)

          By all accounts, postwar Soviet union was a pretty sexist and racist place. It’s no wonder the “old guard” communists look at today’s blue-haired leftists and sound just like crusty old fascists.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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            4 months ago

            If you see a reactionary impulse as a desire to go back to an imagined past, the “old guard” communists (who mostly didn’t seem to have lived under communism) aka the tankies, being similar to crusty old fascists (who also didn’t live in a fascist regime, or in the world depicted by 50s americana postcards/commercials) makes a lot of sense.

            • gerikson@awful.systems
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              4 months ago

              It’s ironic that there is a “good old days” of (state) Communism, seeing that it was supposed to be the end of history.

              (side note, back in HS I saw a graph illustrating the Marxist theory that successive revolutions lifted human civilization up a series of stairs (pastoralism -> city states -> feudalism -> centralized kingdoms -> bourgeois capitalism) up until Communism where these steps became an ascending straight line… and I though “hey, why does the line straighten out just there???”)

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      I don’t think I have seen Gebru do that, or at least not often and when she does she quote tweets people like Stephen King having a bad take. She is way more aggressive about all the various wars and genocides going on in Africa atm which we are all ignoring. You can also see that despite her huge following the actual interactions she gets is pretty low https://x.com/timnitGebru https://xcancel.com/timnitGebru. But lets just ignore reality like how we are ignoring those wars and genocides in Africa.

      And it keeps being amazing that the guy who wrote that hitpiece is defending the people behind the grievance studies hoax oddly silent on Lindsay however, I assume that any stalking by Torres was also done vs Lindsay but I guess EA no longer defends innocent conspiracy theory anti-Semites (He has gone so nuts that the other hoax people tried to make him turn it down a bit, but no idea if he stopped).

      • o7___o7@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        The promptfondlers have learned (by way of multiple public thrashings) not to get into technical arguments with The Parrot Posse, so tedious innuendo about communism and cancel culture is all they have left.

  • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    An article about Opera going from a normal browser company to a predatory loan / cryptocurrency / chatbot / edgelord gamer / vtuber company: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-opera-browser/

    Now I’m a healthy woman. I think all browsers having associated vtubers, or at least mascots, is a great idea. But not at the expense of silently ending support for one of their browser branches leaving any users brave enough to use it to face huge security vulnerabilities.

  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 months ago

    a take from Derek Lowe on AI drugs: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-drugs-so-far

    They began with a list of AI-focused companies (114!), then matched that up with the clinical projects that are reported for them (39 of them).

    If you look at the 2023 figures, the authors have 24 AI-discovered targets, 22 AI-optimized small molecules, 4 antibodies, 6 vaccines, and 10 repurposed compounds. So what do we think about those figures?

    shot

    What you will see is that in almost every case, these targets were already known to be implicated in the disease under investigation. In some of these examples, in fact there are several drugs already in the clinic targeting the same proteins, or even therapies that are already on the market working through the same mechanisms

    chaser

    That colors my entire view of this paper - which was written by a prominent consulting firm, why did you ask.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      So, after decades of AI research, we finally are at the level of old blog ‘what a fascinating topic, well written too! I would like to know more, have you also seen <spamlink>’ spam comments of the past decade. Radical innovation!

    • 200fifty@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      Wow, this comment definitely caught my attention! “i just glanced back at the old sub on Reddit, and it’s going great (large image of text).” Sounds like the old sub on Reddit is going great! It reminds me of how people post on Reddit about things. I’m curious to hear what’s in the large image of text. Have any of you ever checked old subs on Reddit? How were they going? Let’s dive into this intriguing topic together!

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsOP
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    4 months ago

    What’s the word for “the sound of social tides turning”? Because I might have an example at hand

    (I may sneer, but I also giggle delightedly. It’s not quite schadenfreude by itself but also a childlike joy of wellduhhhhhhh)