Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? 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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
AI seems good at purple prose and metaphors that donāt exactly make sense. No, I do not give a fuck about the ātriangle of calmā when it comes to, of all things, the narrator taking off her shoes. No, I am not interested in how long the narrator sets the timer on the microwave when she makes literally the blandest meal of all time.
Now Iām sure the techbros truly think this is good āliteraryā writing. After all, they only care that the writing sounds flowery, because they seem to be very good at missing the actual meaning of everything. I remember Saltman saying that the movie Oppenheimer needed to be more optimistic to inspire more kids to become physicists (while also saying that The Social Network did that for startup founders).
All I could think about is who has a microwave that beeps while itās still cooking?
In other news, Cade Metzā latest piece is actually pretty critical, especially by NYT standards, but you wouldnāt know it from the headline.
āA.I. Agents: Theyāre Fun. Theyāre Useful. But Donāt Give Them the Credit Card.ā
Microsoft MIGHT be suing OpenAI
Strong might, since nothing is set in stone yet. There have been talks where Microsoft has threatened to sue but thatās it so far
For lawsuits that actually are happening, OpenAI is getting sued by dictionaries
Back and forth a few years ago on the SlateStarCodex subredit, roughly:
Scott Alexander: Bay Area rationality is wonderful, we have foundations and group homes and jolly social activities and a Solistice ritual and even āReciprocity and Propinquity: two different rationalist dating/matchmaking servicesā
Rando:
I donāt know, I live in a nice community in a different city where people I know have lots of Shabbat dinners, choirs, board game nights, discussions, etc. And zero people I know have joined a cult, and one person I know has developed psychosis, but she had a family history of psychosis, starting having symptoms in early adulthood, and pretty quickly went on antipsychotics and got a lot better.
Is it just that California attracts weird shit and if you put people in California, whatever theyāre already doing will get culty?
Alexander: base rates! how do your demographics compare to ours?
Rando:
Probably similar size and age? Nearly everyone I knew has parents who are teachers/lawyers/doctors/therapists/etc, so I guess upper middle class according to that book you wrote about a while ago.
Itās not like everyoneās doing great, lots of people have depression and anxiety and probably smoke more weed than is good for them. Most of those people already had those problems from their adolescence.
But our rates of weird problems, like multiple people with overlapping psychoses tied to some guy, are low.
5 Tools You Can Vibe Code For Your Business In Under An Hour exactly the sort of slop from someone with a hard-on for AI, no understanding of the risks of vibe coding core parts of your businessā infrastructure and guest writes for Forbes would produce.
Starts with a sickening intro that leans into āpilledā to be ādown with the kidsā
If you havenāt joined the Claudepilled crowd, open an account and play.
Bright ideas include ācopy and paste the source code from your home page into Claudeā but overlooks the how to actually get those changes deployed part.
Wanna see my cool website. Itās at
http://localhost:1234/take that web developers!Then she describes building a custom internal dashboardā¦
Open Claude Code and describe your business. List every software tool you use. Ask it to suggest the key metrics youād want to see from each one. Go back and forth until the list feels right. Then give it your brand guidelines and ask it to build a dashboard that displays everything. Ask for it to be password protected.
Yes that sounds like a great idea and not a car crash waiting to happen
She also describes building a customer facing onboarding site
Build a custom client-facing dashboard instead. Tell Claude Code what your onboarding process looks like step by step. Describe what information you need to collect and what your clients need to access. Ask it to build a secure portal they can log into, with automations that send them what they need and follow up to collect what you need. This is a branded, professional experience that scales without you. The emotional design matters here too: you want clients to feel held, not herded. Tell Claude that.
Yes vibe coded customer facing tools are a fantastic idea and definitely not a vector for cyber attacks nuh-uh. Iām sure it will be fine if you ask for it to be āsecureā right?
FML are we in the twilight zone here?
The software industry is experiencing a huge collective AI psychosis.
Ask for it to be password protected.
I think Iām having a stroke. Or at least I hope Iām having a stroke and that this unparodiably dumb piece isnāt any more real than it sounds.
guest writes for Forbes would produce.
I seriously think we can completely dismiss Forbes as a credible source at this point, even if itās not something coming from, ahem, ācontributorsā
Can not be rid of this rancid sub-class of plutocrats quickly enough. āGen āŗ hanging the last squillionaire-tech-bro by the entrails of the last kleptocratā should be this milleniumās Diderotian coda on their existence.
The Founder of Anthropic Says He Wants to Protect Humanity From AI. Just Donāt Ask How. another long article about the AI craze and in particular Anthropic. A snippet that stood out to me:
"Reviewing my interview transcripts one night, I discover Iād left my recorder running when I excused myself to use the bathroom at Anthropic. On the tape, Kyle Fish, the AI researcher, and Danielle Ghiglieri, my tattooed guide, are laughing about some visitors to their headquarters the day before, what sounds like a documentary or TV crew.
āI sit right next to Trenton,ā Fish says. āI went back and told him, āDude, you really did something to those guys with your sunscreen stuff yesterday.ā He thought it was hilarious.ā
Theyāre both cracking up.
Ghiglieri says Fish, too, had convincingly come off as a ādifferent species of human,ā adding: āThey were very enamored with you.ā
Theyāre inclined to cooperate with whatever project these people proposed, she says, and make everybody a star. I hadnāt heard Trentonās sunscreen spiel yet. Only later, over lunch, would he tell me that he stopped protecting himself against skin cancer because AI was going to end the world in five years.
Crazy to me how people can so confidently predict AI doomsday, and then just keep working at an AI company
Iām more concerned that the writer could listen to this, presumably multiple times on his tape, and still wrote the rest of the piece like these guys are acting in good faith. Regardless of the unanswerable question of whether they believe their own hype, they are clearly saying things for a purpose of self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement rather than out of any concern for other people, and that is where the story should be. Even the guys most ostensibly interested in protecting humanity are still, when they think the mic is off and the journalist is out of the room, joking about how theyāre manipulating the press into saying what they want.
I think itās a specific genre of reportage where you objectively[1] report what you observe and let the reader draw their own conclusions.
[1] problematic term, engage!
Reading the article again, that definitely feels like the angle the author was going for
I will confess that my initial reaction was from a partial reading since I got derailed ranting about the silicon valley attitude towards neurodivergence and how much damage itās doing to us, and basically right after that bit it starts taking a much more (appropriately imo) cynical tone that was honestly refreshing.
Let this be a lesson to those of us who must learn, I guess.
The AI-as-excuse layoffs have come for Meta:
@dgerard hey, I saw your bsky post and had an idea. Have you weighed in on Nscale and the UKās sovereign scafolding reserve? I hope that it gets noticed by the wider public, because that shit is 10/10 hilarious.
It gets better! According to Trashfuture, Nscale never even bothered to buy the scaffolding yard, which is still in operation.
https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/unlocked-scaffold-to-heaven/
Donāt knock scaffolding, at least it has everyday uses.
Sam Altman wants his eye scanning crypto bullshit to be used to verify AI agents so he can save the internet from himself.
Rather than blocking automated traffic outright as a safety or data-protection measure, World [previously world coin] suggests sites could instead require AI agents to present an associated World ID token to prove they represent an actual human whoās behind any request. In this way, the site could allow agents to access limited resources like restaurant reservations, ticket purchase opportunities, free trials, or even bandwidth without worrying about a single user flooding the process with thousands of anonymous bots. The same idea could apply to sensitive reputational systems like online forums and polls, where itās important to prevent automated astroturfing or dogpiling.
Meanwhile, āAI agentsā continue to be an opaque bundle of shell scripts shoved into a trenchcoat, with an inconsistent English-language translation layer stapled on top
Thatās an unfair characterization. I think a lot of those scripts are written in python.
prove they represent an actual human whoās behind any request
This seems like he is misunderstanding the problem, we know people are behind the spam. That doesnt make the spam ok. Another one of those none solutions by blockchain tech.
This would just create a secondary market for peoples IDs. Like people being paid pennies to do captchas all day.
I also worry about the expenses of all this, an additional layer of blockchain bullshit on top of everything is going to cost a lot of time and money. Going to eat into the margins of things fast, esp if energy prices rise cause nobody wants to invoke the 25th amendment.
Ars sure drank the koolaid didnāt they?
Theyāve nosedived in quality with gusto.
How convenient being able to offer a solution to the problem you yourself created.
this also puts altman in position to forge identities at will
@fullsquare Heāll absolutely need that capability when the bubble bursts and he needs to make a hurried exit in the direction of the extinct volcano lair heās bought through a shell company in Polynesia!
cue a thriller where a disgraced techbro billionaire is hunted by the surveillance system he gleefully created
scratch that, that will be a popular reality TV show enjoyed by millions
Isnāt that new Chris Pratt movie I keep seeing the first 5 seconds of a trailer for basically this, but mixed with a Minority Report knockoff?
@gerikson You could run a lottery where the prizes were control over one of the FPV killer drones hunting him. Require a direct hit with an injector loaded with about 30% of a lethal dose of something excruciating, so everyone can get their stabby on and no one person is technically guilty of murder. (Subject to common cause doctrine in your jurisdiction, but anyway ā¦ )
We could setup a small new micro nation and route all the drone traffic through that to make sure nobody does any murder crimes. Easily crowdsourced, esp after the billionaires are no longer bidding.
immersion destroyed immediately (they never face consequences)
@fullsquare @techtakes If you want a TV show about billionaires getting their just desserts, just intone six words at the start of the intro narrative: āAfter the year of the revolutions ā¦ā
but but but blockchain
My heart goes out to my fleeting online acquaintance whoās seemingly but reliably two years too late to hype a trend. 2024 it was blockchain/cryptocurrencies that he tried pushing, now heās saying AI technology companies are here to stay.
Somebodyās gotta buy the reverse reverse Cramer index I guess.
New AI legal filing sanctions just dropped: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca6.152857/gov.uscourts.ca6.152857.50.2.pdf
I donāt have time to read over it completely yet, but hereās a taste:
That briefing repeatedly misrepresented the record, cited non-existent cases, and cited cases for propositions of law that they did not even discuss, much less support. As explained below, Irionās and Egliās misconduct warrants the sanctions laid out in Section II.C.
If we included typos and other errors that are arguably, but not clearly, a misrepresentation or fake citation, we would be looking at far more misstatements of fact and law
Irion and Egli did not respond to these directives. Instead, they said the show cause order was āvoid on its face for failing to include a signature of an Article III judge,ā was āmotivated by harassment of the Respondent attorneys,ā and āreflect[ed] illegal ex-parte [sic] communications within this Court.ā
Although citing fake cases violates Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38, Rule 38 alone is not āup to the taskā of sanctioning this conduct, Chambers, 501 U.S. at 50, because Rule 38 allows only for the imposition of costs and attorneysā fees, Sanctions Ā§ 33. But we think other sanctions are also appropriate, so we employ our inherent authority
Not a lawyer, just a bit of a law nerd, by this is a big deal, especially the fact that courts have been repeatedly using their inherent authority sanction on people who fuck this up. Courts do not routinely invoke their inherent authority like this. Also this footnote is interesting:
Ghostwriting is when one person writes the document while another person takes credit for it without acknowledging the true authorās identity. See The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 741 (4th ed. 2000). Legal authorities generally discuss ghostwriting for a pro se litigant, see, e.g., Duran v. Carris, 238 F.3d 1268, 1272 (10th Cir. 2001), but we see no reason why rules regulating ghostwriting should apply in only the pro se context. The primary concern with ghostwriting is that the true author would escape liability for his conduct, see In re Mungo, 305 B.R. 762, 768 (Bankr. D.S.C. 2003); Ellis v. Maine, 448 F.2d 1325, 1328 (1st Cir. 1971), and that concern is just as acute when a lawyer ultimately signs the ghostwritten pleading.
It sounds like theyāre looking for an angle to hold the LLM operators (OpenAI/Anthropic - or at least whatever company wraps the models in the necessary bits and bobs to make it a product they can sell to stupid asshole lawyers) as ultimately accountable for these filings, just as if they were a SovCit guru providing materials for one of their griftees to submit to the court without ever actually putting their name to the record where the might face consequences. Iād need to do some research to speculate on what that might mean, but it should give everyone operating in this space pause.
Iām still reading the appendix that goes into the specific hallucinations but it sounds like theyāre pretty absurd based on the tone of this order.
ā¢ On pages 17 and 19, Whiting cites āT.C.A. Ā§ 29-12-119,ā but we cannot find a section 29-12-119 in the Tennessee Code Annotated
lol. lmao.
On page 4, Whiting states āit is well settled that the First Amendment does not protect speech that knowingly asserts false statements of fact. United States v. Alverez, 567 U.S. 709, 721 (2012).ā Alvarez states the opposite: āThis opinion . . . rejects the notion that false speech should be in a general category that is presumptively unprotected.ā Id. at 721ā22 (plurality opinion).
Oh. Oh no.
ā¢ On page 1, Whiting states, āThis Court has made clear that , [sic] ā[T]he mere fact that a plaintiff did not prevail does not mean that the claim was frivolous.ā Adcock-Ladd v. Secretary of the Treasury, 227 F.3d 343, 350 (6th Cir. 2000).ā Adcock-Ladd does not contain the quoted language, and it is not about frivolous cases.
This specific confabulation appears at least 5 times. Iām not sure if Whiting was copy/pasting from something ChatGPT spat out or if ChatGPT was at least consistently inventing the same bullshit.
Looking for a bit of context I found this local news piece and it certainly reads like the guy is a crank who kick-started this whole thing by trying to protest the crime of public safety during a global pandemic.
Iām pretty sure the 2 people cosplaying as lawyers are just as bugshit as he is.
edit yeah theyāre SovCits
Finally, our orders are not invalid simply because the clerk signed them. We have already told Irion and Egli that our orders are not void when the clerk signs them in this very case. Whiting v. City of Athens, No. 24-5886, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 13507, at *1 (6th Cir. June 2, 2025). And the Supreme Court has twice denied petitions for mandamus from Irion and Egli demanding that the clerk stop signing our orders.
(italics in original, bold my emphasis)
God, I love when people think ābecause I said soā is adequate back up of their BS.
āJudges love this one weird trick!ā
new odium symposium episode. we examine the foundational TERF text, janice raymondās āthe transsexual empire,ā which turns out to be about how trans people are a big pharma conspiracy
https://www.patreon.com/posts/12-invasion-of-w-152915964
www.odiumsymposium.com for links to other platforms
i hope you get hazard pay for all the psychic damage you inflict on each other
our pay is our satisfaction in having inflicted it on others as well
in all honesty we would love it if doing this were our job but there is no pathway to that that we can see. we just do it b/c itās really fun
Did I mention that one of your more recent eps covered some shit so odious I stress ate a pile of oreos? Keep up the good work
alt-txt
Yesterday i explained something so bleak to my therapist she asked me if we could pause for a minute so she could think about it. Iām getting close to winning therapy i can feel it in my bones.
BTW, in markdown you can put alt text in the image link and renders will put it into the image tag.
Nifty, thanks!
Old by modern standards but this dramatic reading of some shit the suno guy said got me to laugh: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVLmCoNj_PB/
Topic adjacent, jazz musician/music theory youtuber Adam Neely has an 1hr30 video eviscerating Suno/AI music. Very high quality sneering with some wonderful Ben Levin animations.
NVidiaās announced an AI filter for PC gaming, calling it āAI-Powered Breakthrough In Visual Fidelity For Gamesā and hyping the ever-loving shit out of it.
The results are, unsurprisingly, complete garbage, and its already getting ripped apart by the gaming press.
Iām partway through the Gamers Nexus video clowning on the whole thing, and I kind of feel like I need to find the recording of the actual GDC presentation to pick it apart.
Thereās a clip they use around the 17 minute mark where Jensen talks about how they combined structured data and generative AI. Itās just so wrong on so many levels that I feel like it deserves its own dedicated fucking sneer post. Itās some of the slimiest marketing word play leading into just blatantly false claims.
The fact that the slide with Palantirās logo flanked by hearts didnāt result in even audible boos makes me very sad.
I mean, some of their before/after images are much more impressive than the RE one, but the general look is less like a revolution in capacity and more like someone took some time to find the right Instagram filter.
Also after taking a look at Starfieldās steam page for comparison Iām pretty sure that all the ābeforeā images were taken on lower settings for existing texture quality and lighting. Like, even in areas where the DLSS gives an improvement the original game doesnāt look as bad as presented here.
Also the discourse has been ongoing since at least Skyrimās original release whether or not the increasing fidelity of game graphics was actually making games better, or just more expensive to make and play. And that was before transformer models entered the picture and started cooking the world. Iām glad nVidia got some new jerk-off material, but even if it works exactly as advertised thatās all it is at this point.
Iām struck by how much contrast gets blasted into the shadows of every scene, reminiscent of the average RTX āremaster.ā Lighting is treated not as a tool for composing scenes and guiding attention, but as a dial to be turned toward āmore gooderā wherever possible. Just make everything look like everything else; thatās how you know the technology is getting Better.
increasing fidelity of game graphics was actually making games better, or just more expensive
I really liked what Control did with cranking up the verisimilitude and the photorealism, namely to accentuate the uncanniness and really up the new weird vibe.
Maybe itās just me but even the enhanced lighting aspect doesnāt look especially good, at least where faces are concerned; shining a hard light sideways so every facial nook and cranny gets highlighted in excruciating detail looks less natural and more like the old android HDR photo filter, even before you realize itās giving some characters instagram make-overs.
An Aella-curious blogger in SoCal has noticed something:
But what I find more interesting than broadly āweird sexā is the specific interest in BDSM, kink and particularly full-contact CNC; a relatively common fantasy in individuals, but one Iāve never seen such widespread community interest in outside the Bay Area.
Kink and power-play are practices of manufactured risk, with CNC clocking at a more intense point on the same spectrum. The idea that many of these people are devoting their 9-5s and beyond to eliminating the ultimate consequence (death), only to go home and collectively play-pretend violence (scaffolded with extensive rules and consent forms) is fascinating, and- to me- makes complete sense.
The rationalist interest in manufacturing risk is the direct byproduct of their commitment to flushing it out.
The blogger attended Aellaās SlutCon. I donāt know if she knows that many of our friends have problems with consent as most of us understand it (their understanding is more āif they are old enough to sign the contract, and they sign, that is on themā).
[Effective Altruism] was originally applied to initiatives like raising money for mosquito netting, but now includes figures like Johnson, who has reframed his blood experiments as a product of his own generosity, set to cure humanity of its greatest ill: death itself.
People keep saying this, so itās good to have a reminder that the weirdos (derogatory) were there all along.
I think that after it is all said and done and after all the money Bryan Johnson spends to live forever, I think the end result will be: exercise, good diet, no alcohol, no tobacco, no drugs. He will still be pushing his product, but the basic advice will be what we already know.
The end result is that he will die, just like every other human being ever.
Gleibermanās paper on the longtermist foundations of the Effective Altruism movement is great!
I read a post by someone leaving LessWrong-the-site who said that from now on he would only donate to Aubrey de Grey because obviously we are so close to curing aging. Found it http://lesswrong.com/lw/m81/leaving_lesswrong_for_a_more_rational_life/
