Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 27th September 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 for starting this.) (OT: 🎶 Do you remember…)

(The spooks shall soon be upon us.)

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.)

  • rhamphEnglish
    3·
    2 hours ago

    This is his rationale:

    (For the otherwise confused, I do not advocate that people individually refuse to avail themselves of pre-superintelligent AI or AGI. Because AI is not a linear system where slightly less input results in slightly less damage; because the “now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind” trap is real; and because I personally think it wise to learn and understand the frontiers in whatever ways I most easily find energy to invest there. I would give it all up in a heartbeat if there were an effective and collective treaty to stop it all at once. Don’t be the “Yet you participate in the system. Curious!” meme.)

    And yet you fail to name ‘Mr. Gotcha’. Curious!

    I still haven’t managed to decipher what he means by ‘the “now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind” trap’, or how that apparently justifies sending money to the organisations most at risk of destroying the world? But it sounds like submitting to a kind of blackmail.

    If he just meant that not having access to chatbots put you at some sort of societal disadvantage, that isn’t a trap. It’s just something you would do. ‘Trap’ implies that, what, this is only a problem if you start slopping things? So how does that mean that you should?

    • lurkerEnglish
      1·
      2 minutes ago

      “now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind” trap is real

      I’m baffled by this too. If I was Yud I would prefer to fall behind than to give money to the people I wholly believe will end the world so they can keep developing the things that I believe will end the world.

      Because AI is not a linear system where slightly less input results in slightly less damage

      So I’m assuming this means “well less people using AI doesn’t mean less damage overall done”, which is dumb because AI has very well documented effects of damaging the individual who uses it: just look at all the AI psychosis and suicide cases.