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.

Last week’s thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

    • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      5 days ago

      Ok, so, some typical clueless VC mixed up atlas and sisyphus, which absolutely tracks. A VC thinks they are performing the all-important task of holding up the universe, when really they are just pushing a boulder up a hill and letting it fall down again.

      VCs really think they are prometheus bringing fire to man, when really they are the eagle eating prometheus’s ever regrowing liver, where prometheus is the working class and the liver is collective wellbeing.

  • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
    15·
    6 days ago

    Breaking news: “AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably”!

    Or, you know, not.

  • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    New superpredictor lore dropped on r/mapporn. If you believe in prediction markets and meet someone from Blaine MT or Essec NY, you have to do whatever they say because they are smarter and better at predicting than you.

    • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      5 days ago

      If you gotta conclude with, “tee hee! simulation theory!” you’re not just cooked… you’re seared and roasted

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      5 days ago

      So why must binary digits define, for all time, the limits of computation, and our experience of it?

      There’s enough layers of irony here that it’s a bit hard to tell if he’s making a serious argument here or not; but this is one of the weirder straw-men arguments I’ve ever read.

      “No no no, it’s not all the exploitation, social ills, lack of user control, shoddy quality, and general capitalism I hate in the modern “tech” industry; it’s the fact that it uses binary!”

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      6 days ago

      I was watching an old Day9 stream today and this story is bouncing off of some comments he made about the importance of degenerate players to competitive design. Like, this is a pretty dumb outcome of regulation, but at the same time if you try to define regulations to create an exception for what “everybody knows” is in something suddenly that process gets taken advantage of by self-interested manufacturers who will figure out how to convincingly argue that “everybody knows” their generic shampoo contains peanuts and shellfish or whatever. And in the context of this kind of regulation that degenerate play will get people killed.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      Gasp

      This is just like the fall of Rome.

      E: eurgh the people arguing against regs that help people with allergies.

  • s3p5r@lemm.eeEnglish
    141·
    7 days ago

    Crossposting this thread from nottheonion@lemmy.world with the fortune article “Elon Musk’s AI turns on him, labels him ‘one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X’”. The article itself is nothing much, but it does have this quote:

    The smackdown from his own AI system, ironically, came soon after Musk touted the system to his followers in a tweet reading “Use Grok for answers that are based on up-to-date info!”

    A little delicious irony is fine as a treat.

  • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
    22·
    9 days ago

    Folks, huge W today. I was hanging out with my parents today and my mother was scrolling her feed, commenting out loud about everything she saw when she came across some autoplag content. “This is fake!” she said, and I could not be prouder. Not just because she IDed the slop, but because it meant she at least has a better brain than my trumper family members that habitually repost trumper slop.

    Cherry on top: she showed me a text chain where she was trolling a “my phone died, this is my new number” scammer.

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOPEnglish
    19·
    10 days ago

    Elon Musk, Ramaswamy land Trump admin roles

    President-elect Trump has tapped tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an advisory group focused on cutting federal spending and reducing the size of the government.

    Trump announced Tuesday that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), an initiative meant to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and restructure federal agencies.

    We live in the dumbest timeline

      • ahopefullycuterrobot@awful.systemsEnglish
        10·
        6 days ago

        Fascists were always cringe. Himmler was a weird occultist. Goering was a drug addict still high on his glorious from World War I. Hitler was a profoundly lazy man with terrible taste in art. There were normal fascists (there had to be), but the leadership was always cringe. Unfortunately, being cringe doesn’t stop a movement from killing vast numbers of people.

        • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          This Adolf guy kinda had me when he was just a dude traumatized by war who liked buildings and was kinda shit at drawing them, but his political takes were full on yikes and he quickly lost me when it came to the arts as well.

      • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOPEnglish
        13·
        10 days ago

        Its gonna be the largest embezzlement scheme in US history, that much I’m certain. How much damage the pair will do to the federal gov I’m not sure, but I expect there won’t be much left of it once they’re done.

          • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
            10·
            8 days ago

            Personally I’m betting on Teapot Dome: somebody in the Cabinet will be convicted of something like bribery, foreign influence, or electoral interference; and the cleanup will implicate multiple other Cabinet members. Trump needs to do this at some point anyway; he’s already done all of the Nixon things like Watergate and interfering in foreign wars, and while he attempted a Teapot Dome last time with Ryan Zinke, he needs to actually have a Cabinet member removed or convicted in order to truly be a worse president than Warren G. Harding.

              • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
                9·
                8 days ago

                Because project 2025 and the mass deportations won’t actually solve the problems his base is feeling, and at a certain point this kind of scandal will either be his downfall or his only option to scapegoat someone else.

              • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
                5·
                7 days ago

                Trump would have to literally kill all lawyers. Think of the DoJ as a pile of folks who all took an oath to the law itself. When pundits complain that it’s being “weaponized”, they’re actually talking about a facet of overcriminalization where the DoJ’s limited attention can be controlled somewhat; it’s always going to be a full-power laser that targets what the law perceives as criminality.

                In particular, the President doesn’t have the authority to tell the DoJ to stop an investigation, and the DoJ usually can’t tell individual prosecutors to stop filing motions. Trump wasn’t able to protect Cabinet member and Teapot Dome Candidate #2 Michael Flynn from prosecution, nor can he protect Eric Adams. The worst that he can do is a Saturday Night Massacre, where he fires lawyers until the investigations stop, and the entire pattern of special counsel is purpose-designed to prevent that from actually working.

    • Mii@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      10 days ago

      Such meme. Much wow. I see we’re continuing with giving dumb names to everything the Muskrat is involved in. Glad that hasn’t changed.

    • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
      17·
      11 days ago

      But Trump can’t explain things, and Urbit defies explanation. So does the statement “Trump explains Urbit” represent undefined behavior in English?

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        11·
        11 days ago

        What is worse? Trump explaining urbit and coming close? Or him explaining it so wrong you feel the need to set the record straight about the gravest misconceptions? (“Trump said Elon invented it, but it actually was Yarvin, also as Elon didnt invent it, he certainly didnt say ‘good idea sir’ to Trump”).

        • istewart@awful.systemsEnglish
          12·
          10 days ago

          I think in this case, the equivalent of a compiler error for undefined behavior would be a swiftly forgotten wire story entitled “Trump promotes cryptocurrency project” published on a Friday afternoon. Just one more scam among the flood, and not one that can be offered for easy monthly payments with a banner ad in the margins of an RSBN broadcast.

          • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
            11·
            10 days ago

            Yeah, everyone in the traditional media seems to be even more committed to sane-washing than they were in the lead up to the election.

            Though the spike doge got today is definitely in the “laugh to avoid screaming” column.

    • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
      15·
      10 days ago

      begins invisible accordion

      Then Curtis Marvin, very smart guy, went to MIT like my famous uncle, he said, “but sir, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors”

      Many such cases, I said.

    • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      11 days ago

      Have any of the trumps been on the red scare pod yet? Feel like that’s on the timeline.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      18·
      12 days ago

      A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase “decisive victory” when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.

      • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
        9·
        12 days ago

        IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste

        • zogwarg@awful.systemsEnglish
          14·
          12 days ago

          I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: “If it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see it’s a decisive victory. He has the mandate of heaven of the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!”

          • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
            10·
            12 days ago

            after this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shame…

            that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.

      • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        11 days ago

        Also it isn’t? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?

        If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so “none of those” won decisively with 40%!

        • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
          13·
          11 days ago

          Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something I’d call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but it’s the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.

          Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.

          • V0ldek@awful.systemsEnglish
            5·
            10 days ago

            Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.

            This is such pedantry that you might as well say “the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive as…”

            • sc_griffith@awful.systemsEnglish
              11·
              10 days ago

              considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is “we acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake president”

            • bitofhope@awful.systemsEnglish
              9·
              10 days ago

              Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said “in any sensible meaning of the word” and all. Sorry, I didn’t mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.

              Edit: I also brought it up because IMO “decisive” is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        6·
        12 days ago

        Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) “he will win in a landslide” thing due to Scottbert.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      12 days ago

      That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
      20·
      9 days ago

      Yeah it’s sad. As the article points out similar incidents have happened repeatedly. Anyone who saw the door design could have (and did!) predict something like this would happen. My coworker was trapped in his Tesla in his garage for 15 minutes (and he wasn’t in a panic).

      Look at the picture of the manual door release here: It’s pretty well hidden, you reach in and pull up on the door buttons.

      … then scroll down and look at the picture of the rear door manual release. You have to pull off some trim from inside the pocket, pull off another panel, and then pull a cable.

      … but wait! There’s more!

      Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.

      Jesus, I hope the engineers who signed off on this think about what they’ve done and do better. I would say I hope someone regulated bad emergency door releases out of existence but… y’know.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        13·
        9 days ago

        Imagine what other flaws these cars have if the tried to ‘innovate’ like this on the solved technology that is fucking doors.

        • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systemsEnglish
          12·
          9 days ago

          The lack of a speedometer in front of your face is a pretty glaring quality issue. You have to turn your head to look at the massive touchscreen. The one that replaces all other dashboards and most tactile controls for manufacturing cost savings to be a cool futuristic vehicle of the future.

          I won’t even start talking about the whole CyberStuck thing again because that’s too easy; except to point out that it has turn buttons on the steering wheel instead of a turn signal stalk, a shifter on the ceiling, and the steering wheel is not round.

          I only recently bought my first car and it’s just old enough that it didn’t even have a backup camera until I got one installed. Honestly half the reason of buying used was so I could have a car without a touchscreen haha.

          • self@awful.systemsEnglish
            8·
            8 days ago

            a shifter on the ceiling

            I still can’t get over the design, engineering, and basic reasoning failures that must have gone into the decision to put supposedly the main way to change gears on the same type of mount that secures your rear-view mirror; a notably inconvenient and fragile place to put anything (and just like a rear-view mirror that got fucked with too intensely, a bunch of these shifters have already detached)

  • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
    16·
    10 days ago

    Just a general comment on the state of things. Now that Musk has fused with the ideological flesh chimera of the next US government and is tapping others to be absorbed, any US politics will be TechTakes-adjacent. Perhaps some ground rules must be set so we aren’t drowned in non-procedurally generated slop.

    Either way, I’m cutting back on the musk unless it is directly sneerable.

      • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
        14·
        10 days ago

        How cute, look at that wild rat trying to appear neutral and unbiased and not-at-all a rat and Just Leaving This Here for you to read where “this” refers to the entire fucking canon of rationalist writings.

        • self@awful.systemsEnglish
          13·
          10 days ago

          it’s so practiced too — “so I guess you could read Wikipedia but also! this tracingwoodgrains guy might have some points worth considering!” and from there you’re meant to ping-pong off the Wikipedia article into trace’s long-winded literal horseshit and the rest of the inane crap that’s linked after that, til you can no longer remember the non-rationalist sources you’ve read because your mind’s overwhelmed with the worst shit ever written, but you feel like you thoroughly researched both sides (and that’s only part of why centrism is a fucking trap)

          how do I know? because this:

          finally, i’m going to link to some posts from slatestarcodex and astral codex ten, its sucessor blog, some classic ones just to give you a feel for what people appreciate about it at its best

          is exactly how Joe Rogan fans get you listening to his stupid shit daily, til you’re no longer listening to his podcast (supposedly) “at its best” and instead you’re just listening to an overwhelming volume of right-wing horseshit with an occasional nod to both sides centrism so you don’t feel your world get smaller and darker as you embrace fascism

          • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
            11·
            10 days ago

            Just trying to be helpful! I’m definitely not trying to introduce you to this cult that was called out as a cult a few comments earlier! Which you would agree with me if you read all the things I posted and realised that we are the reasonablists.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
            10·
            10 days ago

            look, they are just neutral and balanced, and pretend awful.systems and sneerclub don’t exist because they don’t even mention it.

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
          11·
          10 days ago

          See, if you just learn about this shit when you’re in high school and slowly read and occasionally reread the essays over the course of a decade or so it doesn’t seem overwhelming at all!

      • slopjockey@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        10 days ago

        Words words words and more words that link to even more words (that you can ctrl-f for the relevant bits!)