this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 16th February 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 1 week ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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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.)

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 21 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago

Wow that sucks, doubt his fam will read this but still condolences.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

from a discord. musk did not actually marry grimes, but apart from that my aplogies for mr beaning the whole america

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Fingers crossed that the next domino is “nuclear holocaust due to particularly bad day on social media”

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So about that...

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 6 days ago

Sweet, everythings comin’ up swlabr

[–] self@awful.systems 15 points 5 days ago (2 children)

so the nix devenv CLI tool that was gaining popularity around the time I left nix is now doing extremely invasive telemetry and quietly implemented a feature that exfiltrates your entire repo and all related files to their servers to feed into an LLM. if you’d like a reminder of the extreme bad faith the corporate assholes who own nixpkgs operate under, someone tried to add DO_NOT_TRACK to Nix’s wrapped version of devenv, and the devenv lead maintainer used their elevated privileges on the nixpkgs repo to revert that change instantly without following any existing processes or asking for the community’s consensus.

I ranted some time ago about how all these shit commercial tools are just ways to capture and monetize large parts of the nix ecosystem, and the bill has finally come due. lixpkgs can’t happen soon enough (and the nix infra people seem to agree — they’ve been using lix for a while now, cause the regular evaluator is too unstable for large-scale use)

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[–] sus@programming.dev 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

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]

(archives: one two three)

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 15 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

They have leveled up from the socialism of fools to the communism of dipshits.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i think they just want to live in a cult compound

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 15 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think it's quite funny that they talk about distributing the profits. these guys are all far right creeps. realistically the only thing they're going to be distributing is calories to the nearby bears

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

E: And the universe aligned and reminded me of this tweet

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[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 14 points 6 days ago (5 children)

canada has come up several times in the last several days and based on my small sample size, americans have no idea that the US government has been unsubtly threatening CA with annexation. these are not politically unconcerned or right wing people either

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

A lot of the reporting is using kids gloves instead of calling out the thinly veiled threats (god our media sucks), but anyone who can connect dots and read the tariffs + greenland + canada 51st state + panama + gulf of mexico news should be able to see Trump's hawkish expansionist dreams pretty easily.

Is this a matter of not following the news, poor critical thinking, or just so much stuff hitting the fan that it's hard to keep up?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

On the kid gloves, my bank keeps sending me updates on the state of the world economy and general big picture investment advice (and explaining their own actions). And between a lot of talk on AI, I saw they posted "we are going to take our profits on the usa investments, despite the tarifs being off the table". Which was, esp the first half, an interesting way to suggest to readers that they are pulling a lot of money out of the US and others might be wise to also do so. (Not that they would literally say the latter as 'not financial advice' etc). But yes worrying.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah I already have a lot of non-US stocks, and next week I'm going to rebalance to make them the majority.

I'm not a finance person. My uncle who's in the world of international corporate law thinks things will be fine so maybe I'm being a bit cautious but the way I see it there are a few big issues:

The US government is trying it's best to implode itself.
There is a brain-drain effect (or heck, a worker-drain effect in general), it will pick up as things get worse.
The US government is becoming much more isolationist and detached from the global economy.
There is a small but real chance that the US government will start one or more major wars over the next decade

All of this also increases the risk of "black swan" events like pandemics, hacks, the US "investing" all the "savings" they "found" into cryptocurrency schemes, large-scale unrest, or god knows what else.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

There is a brain-drain effect (or heck, a worker-drain effect in general), it will pick up as things get worse.

speaking of, https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1ipsasx/firing_the_next_generation_of_scientists_from_the/

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah just saw that. It's messed up.

I told my job a couple weeks ago that I'm planning to move out of the US. They need me more than I need them so they might actually help with that; but even if a transfer works out I intend to get out this year one way or another, even if it means a study visa instead of a job.

Even if things magically turn around like some people think my mind is set. Irreversable damage has already been done in my mind. I said in another comment that I feel like a stranger in America now (this is, in a weird sense, kind of a freeing feeling).

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 12 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Original writing prompt: “Write a romantic comedy. Difficulty: both lovers are emotionally mature and have excellent communication skills.”

What our good friend Eliezer makes of it

Oscar Wilde's job is in no danger

[–] sinedpick@awful.systems 14 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Impressive how someone can be so bad at writing after writing so, so much.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

yud, 15-year top of score chart of expert beginners

(e: s/p,/d,/ stupid phone)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

guy chooses never to take in feedback or think about how to git gud at writing so every time he spurts out more sludge it’s just more infinite degrees of fractal bad.

Why the fuck is it in bad script form? MAN: WOMAN: MAN: WOMAN: just fucking name them! There’s like ten names in the text, just fucking do it, you shit!

FWIW the only way to read yudkowskian dialogue is to imagine yud as each character wearing a different wig for that character. No distinctions in voice though, none are apparent in the text.

[–] sinedpick@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago (2 children)

ah good point. He reads "mature and excellent at communication" as a self-description. After that, there's absolutely no way he can resist writing himself into both characters.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 5 days ago

The man is a hollow shell, and the woman is tripping over her own tongue in the least regal fashion imaginable. There's no emotional maturity because there's no interiority. There's no communication, just Yud doing Ready Player One with Nerd Culture(TM) references. Remember the Evil Overlord list? You do, don't you? Wasn't the Evil Overlord list funny? Now imagine if an Evil Overlord had, wait for it, read the Evil Overlord list. Wouldn't that be amazing?

(Yes, he did the same damn thing in HPMOR, too.)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago

all of his works are socrappy dialogues (crappy socratic dialogues). This one is an unsubtle exploration of his BDSM fetish

[–] istewart@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Nice try, but you're going to have to work a lot harder if you want to trick me into clicking on that. I lived through browsing peak Slashdot at -1, you know

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Next time Gadget, next time!

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

SHE is gowned in a black dress sewn with tiny emeralds, rubies, sapphires too small to detract from the darkness of her gown, instead giving it the illusion of a rainbow sheen.

Following "gowned" so closely with "dress" is awkward, because the latter is redundant. Consider, e.g., "She is gowned in black, the fabric sewn with..." Using both "gowned" and "gown" in the same sentence compounds the problem. Consider introducing further information about the fabric: e.g., "the darkness of the velvet" or "the darkness of the silk".

Whoof. Made it through the first sentence.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 15 points 5 days ago

first thought: "she is gowned in old jeans and a Debian t-shirt"

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Also, shit writing prompt. I haven’t seen a writing prompt online that I didn’t hate. “Hey wouldn’t it be neat if someone wrote about this premise???”

Writing prompt: Day one at the dildo factory

shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 13 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Writing Prompts:

Pokemon and Digimon are both real and they are at war.
Fractals are alive and they hate us
A woman explores beyond the event horizon of a black hole and it's just very hot and cramped and boring and not at all pleasant
A company starts a time mine where they mine causality but they didn't think about sustainability

OK OK you have a point, I hate all of these and I wrote them.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

when I think about it more, what I don’t like is how insistent WPs are. Like what’s being communicated to me is “hey this is a good story idea, now you write it so you can prove my point!!!” You aren’t my editor, pal!

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago

Yeah, it's a lot easier to think of a potentially interesting premise than it is to sit down and actually write it out. Also if I'm gonna write something it'll be something I think is interesting rather than a prompt.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

• Diligent application of Bayesian reasoning finally gains you the ability to fly, propelled by your own farts

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 5 days ago

would’ve thought that’s more a hot air balloon situation

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago

Fractals are alive and they hate us

comp.basilisk FAQ

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 5 days ago

bullet 4 is almost the plot of the film In Time (2011)

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Writing prompt: Day one at the dildo factory

"Yarrgh. Another crew of bushy tails, more wet behind the ears than 'tween the legs. You've no idea what's in store for you, but these eyes, these old eyes have seen things. Like the great injector malfunction of aught-six..."

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago

Writing prompt: Day one at the dildo factory

Dragon whats?

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I randomly remembered crying wolf and decided to make that everybodies problem

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 13 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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."(E: Ahum) 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.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 14 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 14 points 6 days ago (6 children)

A good necromancer doesnt even need bones, he can create diamondoid undead just by looking at a picture of a blade of grass.

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[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

IIRC this was the post that made Daniel Harper start his nazi-tracking podcast I Don't Speak German

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Speaking of non-german speakers, I hope poptart is doing alright. Haven't heard anything of him since the blackout.

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