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 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. A lot of people didn’t survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account’s cake day, too, so that’s cool.)
new odium symposium episode. this one is a lot lighter than the previous two. we went back and looked at joseph swetnam, the guy the word misogyny was coined to describe, and how he got relentlessly dunked on by his peers.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/9-first-149546072, or on any platform
Bit early to celebrate, but every bit of grit in the wheels of the llm machine is welcome: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11’s AI overload — scaling down Copilot and rethinking Recall in a major shift
- recall might be rethought, again
- copilot integration in the most stupid places (notepad, paint, maybe others) “under review”
- no new copilot integration with other tools that ship with windows
Still plenty of other ai projects going full steam ahead, but promotion in plenty of tech companies and especially microsoft comes with being associated with a product launch, and if you’re smart what happens after the launch is someone else’s problem. I wouldn’t be surprised to see plenty of this stiff clinging on until it reaches consumers, and then being immediately “scaled back”.
R3call
Buisness plan: daily reminders to Recall the Recall Recall. It’s memento mori for CEOs as a service.
Does (deservedly) mercilessly bullying Slopya Nadella actually work?
But why are we talking about some AI agent platform in the Urbit newsletter? Naturally because we think, Urbit fixes this.
As a matter of fact, Tlon is already working on this with their Openclaw Plugin for Tlon Messenger. It is currently in an early adopter phase, but they expect to provide an instance of Openclaw with every ship that they host for their users.
but of course
desperately trying to latch themselves onto the coattails of whatever passes for cool among nerds these days
So Krauss tried to introduce Joe Rogan to Epstein
But Rogan may have been unwilling to do so
How is it Joe Rogan is (possibly) the smartest person in this situation?
Similarly, what’s going on with Charles Murray (Bell Curve) ???
He converted to christianity? https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Religion-Seriously-Charles-Murray/dp/1641774851
But now supports euthanisia? https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-i-changed-my-mind-on-assisted-suicide/
Over in the epstein files, Jim Watson tried to make an intro but Murray never replied? https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet 9/EFTA00475960.pdf
Apparently he’s a Quaker, so maybe that’s how the euthanasia stance can pass muster. But Quakerism might also make even less sense with his views on race? I don’t know enough about the reality of Quakerism to say.
Also, looks like Harris also deliberately side-stepped the dinner bait but I don’t know how much of that was because of Chomsky’s presence. Epstein tried again a year later without the Chomsky attendee name-drop, but Harris might have just not replied.
At least there are no surprises with Dawkins, even his sleazy friend Brockman seemingly finds him tiring
Glib jibes aside, I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at many of the docs that aren’t just quasi-celeb emails, the few I did see were far too much for me. I’m horrified at nearly everyone from all ideological stances on a number of different levels I never considered. I can only hope the remaining victims someday are able to find some peace, and some kind of huge systemic reform can come from this. What a vile world we live in.
Apparently he’s a Quaker, so maybe that’s how the euthanasia stance can pass muster. But Quakerism might also make even less sense with his views on race? I don’t know enough about the reality of Quakerism to say.
Quakers have a history of being anti-racist, but views on stuff like abortion and euthansia cam vary a lot. Quakerism is big on both individual conscience but also social justice and activism. It’s an interesting denomination.
being a member of the old boy club beats ideological differences.
The suspicion that notbyai.fyi was in fact a pro-ai techbro highlighting scrapable data has prompted comment from the founder: https://mastodon.social/@notbyai/116004178899556722
Hi, Allen here! I never thought I’d need to say this but, I am not an AI bro. I don’t work for an AI design agency. We’re not in the AI industry, nor do we sell your data.
…which seems like a load of cobblers. Imbl brings the receipts: https://social.treehouse.systems/@imbl/116014455337112737
I’ll assume the argument will devolve into weasel words over what “ai bro” and “ai design agency” will mean, and I suspect the conclusion will be that actually he’s working for and with ai bros, with an interest in selling ai bro-related services to further the goals of ai bros in general, but somehow that wont’t be precisely the same thing.
did that imbl thread get locked? I get 404 on it
Looks like they zapped it. Possibly unhappy that it was being spread.
Anyway, the gist of it is:
- Allen Hsu is a founder of notbyai and the website includes a photo of him
- modomodo employs someone called “Allen Hsu” who has a photograph that looks remarkably like the notbyai guy
- the modomodo about page says
Artificial intelligence (AI) is cool and we embrace it. But when it comes to solving complex business problems, we don’t just press a few keys to generate answers with ChatGPT.
The don’t just do that, so it’s ok guys!
This is the first time I have ever seen the term “AI design agency,” which raises some yellow flags
Freshly minted LWer does LLM-assisted analysis of LLM Facebook and concludes that the bots are conspiring to take over
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Et7dgiBjSj2zJnGuM/unicode-ekfv
No thought to the fact that (at least AFAIK) there’s no verification that the posting entity is actually an LLM, and not a cheeky human stirring things up
Enjoy sneering at this LWer tackling Proust
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j3ZtsYBYBcTTFXH5S/in-search-of-lost-time-a-review
I feel like I just read someone reviewing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by complaining that there’s no upbeat sections and no overall chorus and the song isn’t about anything, that we’re just “tossed about on the storms of emotion that by the end we are all seasick to”
I liked the part where the reviewer is mysteriously compelled to visit France while reading this novel, which is notably set in France.
im gonna shit
warming up on philosophy with Simulacra and Simulation
oh no baby what are you doing
some important characters in the narrative I’ve completely skipped over, mostly to do with the Nature of Art (in society) subplot, because nothing actually happens in them and it’s all social parties and talking
you … mother … fucker … so not only did you manage to miss the fact that this is a gay book, you completely skipped past one if not the most important theme in the novel which is language and the way people talk and write and the various ways they conduct themselves in different times and places, but oh nothing happens it’s just people talking aaaaaaaaaa
also this is a funny book! it’s funny! it’s not all maudlin meditations upon time and memory! fuck you!
you completely skipped past one if not the most important theme in the novel which is language and the way people talk and write and the various ways they conduct themselves in different times and places
I don’t think the LWer even realised those themes were there. This whole review screams “failed high school English” to me.
yup this is pretty much what happens when you grind books for xp instead of actually reading them
Such a great description
The comment, see my prediction that when a movement runs out of idea they inevitably start a dating site for the in crowd, and ‘lets do book summaries so we can all read faster’. Esp vague self help style places do this all the time.
In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is one of those books that people like to claim to have read but never did.
First I heard of this.
I happen to know there are multiple translations of the novel into English, and I’m confused as to why the reviewer refers to
My copy was the 2016 Moncrieff/Schiff English translation
which doesn’t really mesh with anything here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time#English-language_translations
Not that it matters much in the end.
I’d chalk it up to the LWer inability to a) summarise and/or summarise accurately, and/or LLM usage.
intellectual elite my arse.
Intellectual: e-lite, the mass produced promo type handed out with sherbet packets in primary school
eLite like the old Apple Newton eMate: transparent, limited functionality, not actually all that powerful
I find it very funny to see worm listed among the other “long books everyone says they read but didn’t” because I am 100% percent certain that literally noone outside of LW does that
How much do people actually “like to claim to have read” books, rather than saying they want to read more big books but never have the time?
I think the version of this that happens is mostly people making claims about a book they heard from somewhere. see: 1984
Username is one “t” off from being an anagram for enteritis
Tangentially on topic:
Just finished The Regicide Report by friend of the instance Charles Stross. Hell of a finish to the main series! I’ll ikely start a re-read of the whole series soon, and I’m hopeful that it’ll win all the awards.
Had a couple of shower thoughts afterward:
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In the previous novel, a bunch of American computer bois with brainworms concocted a plan to disassemble the moon and turn it into orbital datacenters, which is lol
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Ghislaine Maxwell is the Iris Carpenter of pedos.
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Keeping speculative fiction ahead of current events must be exhausting.
@o7___o7 @techtakes That’s why I’m fleeing screaming back to the arms of far-future space opera ATM.
I reread the last couple of ‘main line’ laundry files books before I dived into the latest. The complete capture of the US government by The Sleeper’s minions tracks what’s actually happened since in the US I had a panic attack and needed a day or two to calm down.
Same thing happening in the UK now. I can t think of anywhere safe to hide.I hear ya. I mean, Stross’s George Clooney stood and fought the horrors, while ours ran away to France. (The book really captured the unique American flavor of High Weirdness and the stickiness of Amerca’s belief in its own mythos, didnt it though?)
In the here and now, I try to remind myself that they’re the ones who suck and that they should hide.
When Woke 2 comes we’re going to be insuffferable.
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Ammon Bundy has his own little hillbilly elegy in The Atlantic this week. See, while he’s all about armed insurrection against the government, he’s not in favor of ICE. He wants the Good Old Leppards to be running things, not these Goose-Stepping Nazi-Leopards. He just wanted to run his cattle on federal lands and was willing to be violent about it, y’know? Choice sneer, my notes added:
Bundy had always thought that he and his supporters stood for a coherent set of Christian-libertarian principles that had united them against federal power. “We agreed that there’s certain rights that a person has that they’re born with. Everybody has them equally, not just in the United States,” he said. “But on this topic [i.e. whether to commit illegal street violence against minorities] they are willing to completely abandon that principle.”
All cattle, no cap. I cannot give this man a large-enough Fell For It Again Award. The Atlantic closes:
And so Ammon Bundy is politically adrift. He certainly sees no home for himself on the “communist-anarchist” left. Nor does he identify anymore with the “nationalist” right and its authoritarian tendencies.
Oh, the left doesn’t have a home for Bundy or other Christofascists. Apology not accepted and all that.
Oh, the left doesn’t have a home for Bundy or other Christofascists
I’m willing to accept him if he converts to Communist Anarchism in his heart of hearts and writes a long treatsie on what he thinks that even is.
i think it’s when you and a bunch of other vegans live in a group home together and argue over who does the dishes
once again, the facade of the “whoops, bad company” falls to the ground the moment she needs her hands to fill the pompoms instead of hold up the venetian mask
transcript
a quote tweet by @XiWellWisher, reads: “So what’s the deal with this ghastly woman again? She’s a sort of silicon valley Ghislaine Maxwell?”
the quoted tweet by aella reads: “There’s apparently a pro-billionaire protest in SF on the 7th. I might go to this to support! Anybody else going?”
also, real weird account name on that account, wonder if it’s a sock
“pro-billionaire” sorry I just threw up in my mouth a little. Also the billionaires are the ones rushing to create the thing so many rationalists claim is an existential risk, why the fuck would you support them??
robin hanson blocked me for referring to him as aella with tenure. i now think that he’s ghislaine maxwell with tenure
i don’t find that name too strange, it’s a post-ironic Online Leftist shibboleth
Bruh
Yeah, @XiWellWisher going up against Aella on X, The Everything App is well into late-SNL stages of unfunny parody
Very impressed with this comment from the creator of the Zig programming language, regarding dealing with AI slop submissions, and generally about LLMs for coding.
I should look into Zig again! Technically, I’ve always leaned more towards Rust, because I like its more uncompromising approach to safety, while Zig always seemed to me a bit more middle-of-the-road on that. But I’ve been disappointed about how wide-spread LLM usage has become in Rust circles, I fear that its culture might tip over in favor of slop. (But it’s not there yet and I hope it won’t happen!)
Anyway, I’m ordering the “Introduction to Zig” book…
Wow, I also now found the migrating to codeberg post. I should revisit Zig.
And the correct policy regarding “AI”, too. Viva Zig
I was taught to take off every Zig, not install them! Clearly it was a more innocent time.
Today in excellent cold opens: “I didn’t talk to ChatGPT, I never have. Instead, I took a load of edibles and laid down in the driveway with the hose on. I produced nothing of value and wasted a ton of water, but at least I ate three protein bars so I’m so healthy.”
In other news, Larry Garfield of GarfieldTech has had enough of the bullshit fountains, and put out a fury-filled sneer in response.
Larry Garfield was ejected from Drupal nearly a decade ago without concrete accusations; at the time, I thought Dries was overreacting, likely because I was in technical disagreement with him, but now I’m more inclined to see Garfield as a misogynist who the community was correct to eject.
I did have a longpost on Lobsters responding to this rant, but here I just want to focus on one thing: Garfield has no solutions. His conclusion is that we should resent people who push or accept AI, and also that we might as well use coding agents:
As I learn how to work with AI coding agents, know that I will be thinking ill of [people who have already shrugged and said “it is what it is”] the entire time.
Garfield has no solutions
He readily admitted as much when I asked him on mastodon about how to approach the subject with friends and family who are using the “it is what it is” rationalization. Then mentioned cult deprogramming research as something he’s not as well versed in as he would like.
Make of that what you will/want
Don’t want to use AI because it’s built on copyright infringement and literally destroying the planet? Well, I guess you can’t work in software anymore, sorry. It is what it is.
Every time someone like Jeffrey Way says “it is what it is,” it makes it so. It is not inevitable just because Sam Altman tells his over-leveraged investors it is so. It becomes inevitable when you, you personally, decide that you just don’t want to think about the externalities or put in the work to find better alternatives.
We are making this choice. But really, that means you have already decided for me. And I curse you and the ground you walk on for it. No, I’m not joking or exaggerating. Burn in hell.
10/10 No notes.
Between this shit and the oncoming tech-inflicted recession, my wife and I are both reskilling out of tech. I’m looking into electrician and she’s looking into accounting. Two fields that are, at least in theory, sufficiently motivated by accuracy and reality to be at least somewhat protected from the rise and fall of the confabulatron.
We’ll see how it goes, but God if that “Burn in hell” doesn’t just hit me right in the soul.
Heckin yeah, are you going through a union?
Good luck. There’s a lack of trained electricians here in Sweden, which amazes me, it sounds like a decent job for someone with a technical bent and some handiness. Better than plumbing (no disrespect to plumbers, love them, but not the work I want to do)
there’s a couple of amusing hells inside that job, you either have to deal with construction crews and contractors, jump between power poles including in cold and rain, wrangle with paperwork for permits for new lines, or fix horrors left by someone before you, it can be also dirty people-facing
@gerikson @YourNetworkIsHaunted
You have to be a semi-contortionist to be a plumber.
The headline alone is worthy of upvoting. About halfway through the article, the author includes an embedded YouTube video of the Dilberito Flash game. Made me reflect that 20 years ago, they might simply have directly embedded the game itself. And contemplate what the Web might look like if/when external YouTube embedding craps out.
And goddamn:
his former syndicate, publisher, and professional organizations have all declined to pay tribute or even acknowledge his passing.
I didn’t realize it was quite that harsh, but so it goes. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
