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.

  • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    30 days ago

    Trust me when I say there’s nothing worth reading in the article beyond the headline:

    He would be right if he meant in the sense that Bruce Wayne ineffectively leads a personal crusade motivated by unresolved childhood angst, and that the world would be much better off if his money was just spent on basics needs for the people and he went to therapy.

  • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    30 days ago

    One of my kids is a huge Gravity Falls fan and has recently acquired The Book of Bill. For some reason, Bill’s anecdote about silly straws reminded me of the grok discourse:

    FUN FACT: When you use a silly straw to murder someone, it becomes a serious straw!

  • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    25 days ago

    J, K. Rowling, skull enthusiast:

    Khelif, who went on to win Olympic gold despite the harassment, reportedly filed a lawsuit alleging cyberbullying against Rowling (Elon Musk is also named in the suit). Shortly after the lawsuit became public on August 13, Rowling went silent on X, leading to speculation from many onlookers that she had pushed her transphobic narrative too far. On August 23, though, she again appeared on the platform, spreading more false and misleading commentary on Khelif. Her first post was a quote from a transphobic hit piece against Khelif by Colin Wright, the former managing editor of the far-right website Quillette.

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      25 days ago

      lol, poor helpless joanne just can’t help but run headlong into the wall

      saw something drift by that she’d also deleted a bunch of tweets in the quiet time, so her coming out swinging is doubly funny

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        25 days ago

        I mean, does she actually write books anymore? Or is she a full time TERF now? Because that’s a direct conflict between what’s in her legal best interest and in her professional best interest.

          • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
            0·
            25 days ago

            @froztbyte @techtakes Speaking as a working writer: she’s a hobbyist writer. At this point she’s so rich she could spend £100K/week of her capital and still be a multimillionaire when she dies aged 100+. A novel typically takes a year to write and even JKR is unlikely to make significantly more than £100K from a book (unless it gets filmed). So she keeps writing for ego/self-esteem but not from necessity (to stop writing would leave a hole in her life).

        • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          24 days ago

          Her professional interest would be to shut the fuck up and just live in her castle, forever rich beyond measure. She could never write another thing in her life and she’d never run out of money anyway.

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    26 days ago

    Problematic developer with AI crush realizes she’s just dust under the wheels of progress

    https://justine.lol/history/

    You know those polls that say fewer than 20% of Americans trust AI scientists? It shouldn’t be the case, because no group is doing more right now to elevate the universe to a higher state of complexity. You know who the public does trust? Open source developers.

    Justine, LOL indeed.

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      26 days ago

      You know those polls that say fewer than 20% of Americans trust AI scientists?

      No, but I’d say its a good sign we’re getting close to an AI winter

    • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      24 days ago

      elevate the universe to a higher state of complexity

      girl my life already too complex, ain’t no one need elevation to an even higher state of complexity

      can we maybe do a lower one?

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      26 days ago

      Problematic developer with AI crush

      I thought this was gonna go in a completely different direction.

      Setting: romantic sunset beach, without a crowd in sight. There is no sound but that of a gentle breeze, waves lapping at the shore, and seagulls in the distance. Ryan turns to his girlfriend Tiffany. He gets down on his knees, the sand muddying his pants. Tiffany clasps her hands over her mouth in disbelief. Ryan says: “Tiffany you are the light of my life. You have made me a better man. I can’t see me living with anyone else but you. Will… will you marry m-- bzzt. Thank you for using Virtua-Boyfriend, unfortunately we ran out of VC money so are shutting down.”.

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      26 days ago

      In classic Rationalist fashion, she noticed something she didn’t like, hypothesized a cause with no real evidence, and then proceeded to rant about the implications of that unproven hypothesis.

      My suspicion, on the other hand, is that because Claude is just reproducing statistical patterns from its training data is simply reflecting the fact that she is referred to as a Nazi coder far more often than she is as some kind of open-source luminary. Unless her github metadata signs everything “Justine T the open-source developer” then that association isn’t reflected in the patterns extrapolated from the training data.

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    26 days ago

    Etsy: an artistic one-stop chop shop where slop pops up like catch crops - and that quick shot’s no hatchet-job, so keep it from pops 'fore it leaves him in a strop:

    Etsy sucks

    (Full disclosure: the opportunity for some quickfire rhymes may have played a role in birthing this sneer.)

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPMEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      This wasn’t the first love triangle in the Heinlein residence (they had earlier been in a consensual threesome with L. Ron Hubbard)

      UNSEE UNSEE

      • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        29 days ago

        and that’s twice in as many days that I have been doing a Lady Macbeth “out, out damn spot” routine with my entire central nervous system

          • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            29 days ago

            there’s a friend of mine that’s ex-scientology. didn’t get in if their own choice, but that of family. they got out before it could really get its claws into ‘em

            but the reason I bring this up is because it’s from said friend that I learned of the fact that we have a Hubbard museum house in ZA. it looks like an episode of TNG fucked a vintage porn set, and it’s preserved in that state

          • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
            0·
            29 days ago

            I don’t have friends of such tendencies

            or, perhaps better stated, I am not aware that I have such friends. and sincerely hope to avoid learning that I do

            (e: this comment came first, and is why the other came to mind)

      • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        29 days ago

        If either of the parties involved were just about any other science fiction author, it would be the among the least damning things I’ve heard of the other one, but it just had to be these two.

  • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    24 days ago

    The giant bust of Elon Musk towed by a CyberTruck is real after all! https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/large-sculpture-elon-musk-towed-cybertruck-brownsville-texas-elonrwa-nft-1234715157/

    The original video I linked to looked possibly CG, because it was short and looked like the uncanny gaze of giant Elon Musk was staring directly into the camera the whole time; but turns out it is real. I’m so “happy”.

    And surprising exactly no one, it’s an advert for an NFT.

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    27 days ago

    I wonder how soon we’re going to hit the “we have team $foo building that internally since we can’t use $serviceX for that (externally hosted has security issues)” phase of corporate fafo

    why am I thinking of this? oh, no reason. just pondering the cyclic nature of history I guess you could say.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      24 days ago

      “Hey you said I maybe killed 5 children with murder drones on a mountain could you maybe not?”

      “sorry to hear you’re not liking it! it’s currently not possible to opt out since this is just an experiment. but if you get a response that you feel is unhelpful or irrelevant, you can let us know by submitting feedback via these steps: https://goo.gle/3ySHg00”

      Oh gosh that’s such a corporate response.

        • self@awful.systemsEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          it’s absolutely fucked that the grammar and tone of Google’s response is so casual, and the proposed non-solution is so worthless, the whole post looks like parody — I was convinced @sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems must have been paraphrasing til I saw the screenshot of the original post and found out it was just a straight copy and paste

          sorry you didn’t like that we implied you’re a child murderer. no takesie-backsies though! fill out this form we won’t read if you’re really sure you didn’t like our fun experiment!

          I wonder if giving responses so fucking ridiculous they look like a joke is a tactic on Google’s part to make complaints about the shit they’re doing look ridiculous and overdramatic by association

    • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      24 days ago

      but if he’s just being held accountable for running a service where others did nefarious things, then this should be a chilling effect for all founders.

      ok. chill them

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      24 days ago

      outrage that the arrest order was issued while Durov was in the air, so he couldn’t evade justice (this is unconfirmed)

      Clearly arrest warrants should be made like hide-and-seek where the seeker has to count to 100 days before arresting the hider and publish “ready or not here I come!” to their social media account.