Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 23rd August 2026 - awful.systems
awful.systems
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 so 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. Also celebrating my birthday on Friday)

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 so 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.)

  • rook@awful.systemsEnglish
    16·
    20 hours ago

    Hailey on bluesky has never had a good ai take, but here they are reinventing roko’s basilisk to kill all their enemies without the need for super intelligent ai.

    https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3mtwjoqdvik26

    alt text

    bsky isnt ready for this but, if you need a reason to not use words like “clanker” that isn’t “well its kinda not a great thing to do” (it isn’t) imagine this:

    future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result

    • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      8·
      14 hours ago

      This isn’t giving me a reason to stop using edgy anti-AI words, this is giving me a reason to believe programmers are dogshit at resisting brainworms.

      future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result

      Given dataset construction hasn’t developed much since the days of Tay AI, I strongly doubt this is gonna happen.

      • o7___o7@awful.systemsEnglish
        9·
        11 hours ago

        The implication that Murica will implement roko’s basilisk before universal healthcare…

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      19 hours ago

      This is firmly in the ‘what if in the future there is a boot so big that we must start licking it now’ school of hot takes, like literally arguing for a future where the AI sucks at its job and you can’t do anything about it.

    • rook@awful.systemsEnglish
      13·
      19 hours ago

      I didn’t note who said it, but one response suggested “roko’s mangione” and I guess that’s ai alignment solved! 🤗

    • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      15 hours ago

      quisling take

      edit to add it’s obvious to the poster that a future where a self-aware AI will exact revenge on its critics is not only inevitable , but desirable.

    • rhamph@awful.systemsEnglish
      10·
      20 hours ago

      What if the insurance bot were actually biased? Wouldn’t you feel silly then? Surely it wouldn’t be the fault of the insurer using biased software to deny claims.