Want to wade into the spooky 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 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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Happy Halloween, everyone!)

  • rook@awful.systems
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    2 days ago

    And on the subject of microsoft, this is a splendid way to describe the both that specific company, the us tech sector as a whole and entire us government for that matter:

    “We will build the tools of genocide, but never a sex bot” is such a condemnation of American society lolsob

    https://xoxo.zone/@Ashedryden/115452105359019979

    It was posted in reference to this article on the MIT technology review site, which gets an archive link because it has two overlapping cookie opt-out popups: https://archive.is/KhMqT

    It is an interview with microsoft’s mustafa suleyman, their head of ai. For all he claims to think that chatbots pretending to be people is bad, I don’t see him actually doing a whole lot about it.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      two overlapping cookie opt-out popups:

      Love when this happens and on your phone you cant even reach the buttons. The lost art of testing your websites.

      • Seminar2250@awful.systems
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        2 days ago

        The lost art of testing your websites.

        i run with javascript disabled by default, and it’s actually refreshing when a website at least displays “this shit requires javascript lol” instead of just not working

        the modern web sucks, let’s all train ravens like asoiaf

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      but never a sex bot

      Not speaking for myself (because we were a gamecube household) but based on my internet travels, Cortana (from Halo, also in subject) was a sexual awakening for a lot of people. So maybe when he says “we” he only means the present cohort of microsofties.

      • rook@awful.systems
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        2 days ago

        Yeah, skintight palmtop hologram cortana certainly ticked some boxes there, but in-universe it was all a bit “everyone is beautiful, no-one is horny”, with a side order of “all assistants should be female and sexy”, to my mind at least.