Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th August 2026 - awful.systems - 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 for starting this.)

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.)

  • nfultzEnglish
    7·
    1 天前

    in which le gwern and sword guy neal sponsor a writing contest

    https://www.gpuworld.org/

    Premise

    Imagine that AI frontier progress stops as of 1 September 2026: AI becomes faster and cheaper, but it never becomes superhuman or improves considerably across the board.

    So the Singularity never happens—but GPUs keep getting made. By 2040, there may be the equivalent of 8 billion GPUs globally and everyone has access to a frontier LLM.

    What happens in this ‘business as usual’ future?

    I may as well through my name in the hat, I could use the cash. but, who the hell gave them $100k for this? I guess BTC is back up.

    • rhamphEnglish
      5·
      7 小时前

      Turns out the only cause of inequality in the world is that there’s just too much progress. Once the Best GPU has finally been designed, it’ll just keep rolling off the production line, and those charitable manufacturers will gladly distribute them at bargain prices to all the impoverished masses. Who all have a reliable source of energy to devote to churning out slop.

    • schnoopyEnglish
      6·
      9 小时前

      So I love Neal’s books, I think he’s a fun story-teller and anathems orbital mechanics scene has loads more tension than any slop in something like interstellar.

      But whenever he gets involved in social-technological commentary I am reminded of Ursala Le Guinn’s remarks on SciFi authors being professional liars, not prophets.

      Anyway, scour the submissions for little Lytton contest entrants

      • geriksonEnglish
        4·
        5 小时前

        I’m convinced Stephenson is personally very right wing but also smart enough not to advertise it publicly.

        • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
          6·
          5 小时前

          @gerikson I know Neal (we’ve gone drinking together) and I think he *is* right wing/conservative by disposition, but also thoughtful enough to understand nuance and shades of grey: he’s not a reflexive knee-jerk type, or willing to follow someone else’s flag.

    • mirrorwitchEnglish
      2·
      8 小时前

      writing a story that looks like it’s about everyone having their own LLMs but it’s actually about the predicted state of clime catastrophe by 2040 and the consequences of the fascist turn in world politics, and the GPUs don’t make the slightest difference to anything and don’t really matter for the plot

    • Amoeba_GirlEnglish
      6·
      16 小时前

      What the hell kind of prompt is this oh my god. I’m getting bored just contemplating the idea of trying to think up a story.

    • YourNetworkIsHauntedEnglish
      7·
      17 小时前

      AI Use: LLM use is permitted, but discouraged; we remind participants that LLM use tends to reduce originality and writing quality, and the flaws are especially obvious when LLM outputs are read as a group—unskillful use of LLMs will reduce the odds of being the best entry. We request disclosure of AI use.

      Lol. Lmao.

    • froztbyteEnglish
      3·
      20 小时前

      but, who the hell gave them $100k for this?

      the third name is a vc-type, and I bet it won’t take much scratching to find that linked to our good friends and the ongoing public image adjustment campaign that’s seeing funding from a few corners

    • BurgersMcSlopshotEnglish
      4·
      22 小时前

      s/gpu/Butt-Face Chester Cheeks/g and you got yourself a deal.

      “The year is 2040. Everybody has access to a Butt-Face Chester Cheeks. What happens in this butt-business as usual future?”

      • istewartEnglish
        3·
        12 小时前

        Keep in mind that Butt-Face Chester Cheeks is simply a special case of Tickle Me Elmo, and strategize accordingly

    • BioManEnglish
      4·
      22 小时前

      I suppose my only-half-joking grant proposal I talk about with linguist friends in which you run an entire large text through a base-model LLM, extract the residual stream, and score every token according to perplexity compared to the ground truth reality in order to ask and answer super interesting questions about information theory in human communication doesn’t count?