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 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 soo 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. Also, happy April Foolās in advance.)
Just had a video labeled āauto-dubbedā pop up in my YouTube feed for the first time. Not sure if it was chosen by the author or not. Too bad, it looks like a fascinating problem to see explained, but I donāt think Iām going to trust an AI feature that I just saw for the first time to explain it. (And perhaps more crucially, Iām a bit afraid of what anime fans will have to say about this.)
Those tariff rates, and especially the targets, were 100% pooped out by grok.
Today on the orange site, an AI bro is trying to reason through why people think heās weird for not disclosing his politics to people heās trying to be friendly with. Previously, he published a short guide on how to talk about politics, which ā again, very weird, no possible explanation for this ā nobody has adopted. Donāt worry, heās well-read:
So far Iāve only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.
The thread is mostly centered around one or two pearl-clutching conservatives who donāt want their beliefs examined:
I find it astonishing that anyone would ask, [āwho did you vote for?ā] ā¦ In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.
To which the top reply is my choice sneer:
In my friend group itās clear as day: either you voted to kill and deport other people in the friend group or you didnāt. Pretty obvious the group would like to know if youāre secretly interested in their demise.
Wow, farriers are going crazy with these modern horseshoe designs!
image transcription
Above: a single axis scatter plot. The ends of the axis are labeled āLeftā and āRightā. Data points are distributed similarly to normal distribution, the center being more concentrated than the extremes. Caption: āWhat people think the political spectrum is vs What it actually isā.
Below: A two-dimensional scatter plot. The ends of the horizontal axis are labeled āLeftā and āRightā and the vertical axis is labeled āIndependent Thoughtā at the top and āGroupthinkā at the bottom. The data points are evenly distributed inside a bell curve shape, with the peak of the hump at Independent Thought and between Left and Right, and the wide bottom of the bell spanning the whole Left-Right axis at maximum Groupthink.
Data points near the top of the bell (Independent-Center) labeled āāUn-intentional moderatesā (from Paul Grahamās The Two Kinds of Moderate)ā. [Original image uses double quotes around the term Un-intentional moderates and single quotes around the title of Paul Grahamās shitpost.]
Data points at the bottom center of the bell (Groupthink-Center) labeled āIntentional moderatesā.
In the bottom corner a watermark crediting the image to ā@shw1nmā.
I love the implication that being an independent thinker means agreeing with both the majority and other independent thinkers.
Finally, someone has solved the political compass. No-one will ever come up with a new political spectrum again. Soon we will have world peace
So āunintentional moderatesā are those that both choose deliberately to believe in centrist political ideology and to participate in groupthink?
It is some Paul Graham thing apparently, i have not read that blog post.
Hi, Iām an unimtentional moderate centrist! I donāt have an ideology, only views! My overton window is a peephole! Kamala is a far leftist! Trump is orange! People should stop treating politics like team sports and join the non team sports tribe like me! Political correctness gone mad! Let me tell you about Chestertonās fence! Everyoneās sheeple except my flock! Say it with me: Iām an independent thinker!
Did they try to add a bell curve in a place where it shouldnāt be te last image? Im fascinated by how little sense it makes, and by how bad the adding a groupthink axis is.
My University Keeps Sending Me Stupid Emails About AI, a continuing series:
From the email:
The debate will be chaired by Michael Pike. Speaking for the motion are Prof. Gregory OāHare (TCD), Maeve Hynes, Prof. Gary Boyd and Chatgpt assisted by Student Curator Ruan McCabe, all UCD. Speaking against the motion are David Capener (UU), Lucy OāConnell, Peter Cody and Meabh OāLeary, all UCD.
Artificial Intelligence is the future of climate resilient design in the same way that asian pseudo-medicinal ED treatments are the future of the white rhinoceros.
Notwithstanding the subject matter, I feel like Iāve always gotten limited value from these Oxford-style university debates. KQED used to run a series called Intelligence Squared US that crammed it into an hour, and I shudder to think what thatās become in the era of Trump and AI. It seems like a format that was developed to be the intellectual equivalent of intramural sports, complete with a form of scoring. But that contrivance renders it devoid of nuance, and also means it can be used to platform and launder ugly bullshit, since each side has to be strictly pro- or anti-whatever.
Really, it strikes me as a forerunner of the false certainty and point-scoring inherent in Twitter-style short-form discourse. In some ways, the format was unconsciously pared down and plopped online, without any sort of inquiry into its weaknesses. Iād be interested to know if anyone feels any different.
I have no knowledge or insight on the topic, but I used to get recommendations for āintelligence squaredā videos on YouTube and I always thought it was a terrible, self-aggrandizing title for a series or event. Smart People Taking About Smart Things.
I would also like to complain that I have finally started getting AI summaries in Google, and I may have to switch to a different search engine. Neither wanted nor needed!
The url manipulation trick doesnt work for you?
E: this I mean, somebody even made a site for it. My own setup is weird and I have ancient strange habits so I just added it to my search bookmark.
I should probably give it a go!
"So, [Elsevier] added an AI question and answer to my article in Computer & Education.
The answers are wrong! They did not ask permission! The answers are WRONG!
How is this science?!"
misread as Eliezer, semantic content unchanged
AI-Powered Wi-Fi 7 Versatile Outdoor/Indoor Mesh AP
weāre at the āthe washing machine without a dateclock is marked millenium-bug safe in its marketing brochuresā level of stupid
(that might seem like a stupid comparison but itās one of the things I most viscerally remember seeing from that time (when I was still a youngin who was still largely years away from computertouching))
An AI faceswapper/nudifierās database got leaked thanks to its nonexistent security - unsurprisingly, its loaded with explicit images, including massive amounts child porn and almost certainly some revenge porn.
WIRED tried reaching out to the company behind the āimageryā, but they nuked everything and closed their doors in response.
New video from Jessie Gender, providing one long sneer at gen-AI: How AI is Destroying our Dreams
NaNoWriMo? Na, No Moā. Does this have anything to do with their bungled AI policy? Maybe, maybe not, but hey, the news article that I saw this announcement in thought that it was pertinent to mention.
considering their endless history of scandal, good riddance
Not dating your press releases on your own site is a choice. (Lot more places do this and it is driving me slowly mad) So, did they drop this yday? Some weird schrodingers april fools joke deflection attempt?
Why does NaNoWriMo need a nonprofit anyway? Whatās next, No Nut November LLC?
As funny as that is, I am sure that there are nonprofits that are aiming to stop fapping.
however they are exactly canceled out by nonprofits aiming to promote fapping
the Effective Onanism movement
Refractorive Altruism
Thereās a fucking for profit that does this and itās used by the god damn USA Speaker of the House so that his son can monitor his fondling
I am familiar. Not a problem!
I am fairly certain that their stupid AI stance at least played a role. Iām part of a largish writing community, where at least several hundred people did NaNo each year, a good part of them donated too. Last year, no one partook, instead we did our own internal thing.
If this happened across other communities too, and I wouldnāt be surprised if it did, they must have felt it financially.
Iāll believe it! I didnāt want to make that claim since I had no evidence.
Their dumb contraction should have doomed the project from the startā¦
It is a CIA psyop to prevent revolutionary thought from arising in written media, in that itās a self-inflicted PIP that makes you feel inadequate in your creative writing ability. CIA funding (obviously funneled through NGOs via CIA front USAID) is how itās survived so long with such a stupid name. Of course, now that government spending on the CIA is going down, so is NaNoWriMo. All thatās left is for it to be supplanted by some benevolent Chinese competitor that people will say steals your data, or something.
/s /s /s
I demand you prove your assertion! preferably using wallspaghetti and alphabet soup, of course. soās I know itās totes legit and original!
(/s ofc, and link too (incase anyone didnāt see that))
[This is what tankies actually believe!!2!one!!!]
My favorite meme message board on the internet keeps putting out bangers, but this one is extra good and relevant http://www.b3ta.com/board/11416629
tip from a discord:
Iāve been doing some micro tasking to train LLMās the last few months to earn some extra cash, the last month itās all dried up, no tasks available. I canāt help thinking that is a sign of a bubble deflating.
Please please please
Gamers Nexus put out their April Foolās joke for this year, and became the first journalistic outlet to break Betteridgeās law of headlines in the process.
they shouldāve had an overlay tracking counter in that opening montage, goddamn
(just got to 4min:) āoh! itās not just opening montageā ahahaha
SMBC using the ratsphere as comics fodder, part the manyeth:
transcription
Retrofuturistic Looking Ghost: SCROOOOOGE! I am the ghost of christmas extreme future! Why! Why did you not find a way to indicate to humans 400 generation from now where toxic waste was storrrrrrrred! Look how Tiny Timās cyborg descendant has to make costrly RNA repaaaaaaairs!
Byline: The Longtermist version of A Christmas Carol is way better.
bonus
transcription
Scrooge: I tried, but no, no, I just donāt give a shit.
Your mistake, distant future ghost, was in developing RNA repair nanites without creating universal healthcare.
Ed Zitron breaking out the anime references for April Foolās:
Jesus, fine, Iāll watch it already, God.
OpenAI: Nah, Iād become profitable
every so often I think of how Rat-brain is just bleach-dyed āthe power of positive thinkingā for nerds who donāt get out in the world enough
Finally Tim Pool will get what is wrong with AI
