Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th March 2026 - awful.systems
awful.systems
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.)

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.)

  • lurkerEnglish
    14·
    7 天前

    The Founder of Anthropic Says He Wants to Protect Humanity From AI. Just Don’t Ask How. another long article about the AI craze and in particular Anthropic. A snippet that stood out to me:

    "Reviewing my interview transcripts one night, I discover I’d left my recorder running when I excused myself to use the bathroom at Anthropic. On the tape, Kyle Fish, the AI researcher, and Danielle Ghiglieri, my tattooed guide, are laughing about some visitors to their headquarters the day before, what sounds like a documentary or TV crew.

    “I sit right next to Trenton,” Fish says. “I went back and told him, ‘Dude, you really did something to those guys with your sunscreen stuff yesterday.’ He thought it was hilarious.”

    They’re both cracking up.

    Ghiglieri says Fish, too, had convincingly come off as a “different species of human,” adding: “They were very enamored with you.”

    They’re inclined to cooperate with whatever project these people proposed, she says, and make everybody a star. I hadn’t heard Trenton’s sunscreen spiel yet. Only later, over lunch, would he tell me that he stopped protecting himself against skin cancer because AI was going to end the world in five years.

    Crazy to me how people can so confidently predict AI doomsday, and then just keep working at an AI company

    • YourNetworkIsHauntedEnglish
      10·
      7 天前

      I’m more concerned that the writer could listen to this, presumably multiple times on his tape, and still wrote the rest of the piece like these guys are acting in good faith. Regardless of the unanswerable question of whether they believe their own hype, they are clearly saying things for a purpose of self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement rather than out of any concern for other people, and that is where the story should be. Even the guys most ostensibly interested in protecting humanity are still, when they think the mic is off and the journalist is out of the room, joking about how they’re manipulating the press into saying what they want.

      • geriksonEnglish
        6·
        6 天前

        I think it’s a specific genre of reportage where you objectively[1] report what you observe and let the reader draw their own conclusions.

        [1] problematic term, engage!

        • lurkerEnglish
          5·
          6 天前

          Reading the article again, that definitely feels like the angle the author was going for

          • YourNetworkIsHauntedEnglish
            4·
            6 天前

            I will confess that my initial reaction was from a partial reading since I got derailed ranting about the silicon valley attitude towards neurodivergence and how much damage it’s doing to us, and basically right after that bit it starts taking a much more (appropriately imo) cynical tone that was honestly refreshing.

            Let this be a lesson to those of us who must learn, I guess.

            • lurkerEnglish
              2·
              5 天前

              I mean there is a lot of crazy bullshit in there so I don’t blame anyone for getting derailed