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.)
Re-begun, the edit wars over EA have:
And sure enough, just within the last day the user āHand of Lixueā has rewritten large portions of the article to read more favorably to the rationalists.
User was created earlier today as well. Two earlier updates from a non-account-holder may be from the same individual. Did a brief dig through the edit logs, but Iām not very practiced in Wikipedia auditing like this so I likely missed things. Their first couple changes were supposedly justified by trying to maintain a neutral POV. By far the larger one was a āculling of excessive referencesā which includes removing basically all quotes from Cade Metzā work on Scott S and trimming various others to exclude the bit that says āthe AI thing is a bit weirdā or ānow they mostly tell billionaires itās okay to be richā.
I suppose you could explain that on the talk page, if only you expressed it in acronyms for the benefit of the most pedantic nerds on the planet.
Also, not sure if thereās anything here but the Britannica page for Lixue suggests that thereās no way in hell its hand doesnāt have some serious CoIs.
Ed:
Also shout-out to the talk page where the poster of our top-level sneer fodder defended himself by essentially arguing āI wasnāt canvassing, I just asked if anyone wanted to rid me of this turbulent priest!ā
also: lol @ good faith edits.
A glorious snippet:
The movement
connected toattracted the attention of the founder culture of Silicon Valley andleading to many shared cultural shibboleths and obsessions, especially optimism about the abilityof intelligent capitalists and technocrats to create widespread prosperity.At first I was confused at what kind of moron would try using shibboleth positively, but it turns itās just terribly misquoting a citation:
Rationalist culture ā and its cultural shibboleths and obsessions ā became inextricably intertwined with the founder culture of Silicon Valley as a whole, with its faith in intelligent creators who could figure out the tech, mental and physical alike, that could get us out of the mess of being human.
Also lol at insiting on āexonymā as descriptor for TESCREAL, removing Timnit Gebru and Ćmile P. Torres and the clear intention of criticism from the term, it doesnāt really even make sense to use the acronym unless youāre doing critical analasis of the movement(s). (Also removing mentions of the espcially strong overalap between EA and rationalists.)
Itās a bit of a hack job at making the page more biased, with a very thin verneer of still using the sources.
So many of those changes are just weird and petty, too. Like, I canāt imagine a good reason to not reference Vitalik Buterin as āEthereum Founderā rather than just a billionaire. Iām sure that I can level the same critique at some pages that are neutrally trying to meet Wikipediaās standards, but especially in this context itās pretty straightforward to see that itās an attempt to remove important context and accurate information that might make them look bad.
There might be enough point-and-laugh material to merit a post (also this came in at the tail end of the weekās Stubsack).
The opening line of the āBeliefsā section of the Wikipedia article:
Rationalists are concerned with improving human reasoning, rationality, and decision-making.
No, they arenāt.
Anyone who still believes this in the year Two Thousand Twenty Five is a cultist.
I am too tired to invent a snappier and funnier way of saying this.
That hatchet job from Trace is continuing to have some legs, I see. Also a reread of it points out some unintentional comedy:
This is the sort of coordination that requires no conspiracy, no backroom dealingāthough, as in any group, Iām sure some discussions go onā¦
Getting referenced in a thread on a different site talking about editing an article about themselves explicitly to make it sound more respectable and decent to be a member of their technofascist singularity cult diaspora. Iām sorry that your blogs arenāt considered reliable sources in their own right and that the āheterodoxā thinkers and researchers you extend so much grace to are, in fact, cranks.
Unilever are looking for an Ice Cream Head of Artificial Intelligence.
I think I have found a new favorite way to refer to true believers.
This role is responsible for the creation of a virtual AI Centre of Excellence that will drive the creation of an Enterprise-wide Autonomous AI platform. The platform will connect to all Ice Cream technology solutions providing an AI capability that can provide [blah blah blahā¦]
itās satire right? brilliantly placed satire by a disgruntled hiring manager having one last laugh out the door right? no one would seriously write this right?
I mean it does return a 404 now.
maybe they filled that position already
Easy Money Author (and former TV Star) Ben Mckenzieās new cryptoskeptic documentary is struggling to find a distributor. Admittedly, the linked article is more a review of the film than a look at the distributor angle. Still, it looks like itās telling the true story in a way that will hopefully connect with people, and it would be a real shame if it didnāt find an audience.
New Tante piece: āChatBotā is bad design
Finally circling back around to this.
Feels like I am not just doing my job but also the work the operator of the service or product I am having to use through chat should have paid professionals to do. And Iām not getting paid for it.
Speaking as someone who has worked extensively in IT support, I think thatās the sales pitch for these chatbots. They donāt want to give users tools and knowledge to solve their own problems - or rather they do but the chatbots arenāt part of that. The chatbots are supposed to replace the people who would interact with the relevant systems on your behalf. And honestly, working with a support person is already a deeply unsatisfying interaction in the vast majority of cases. In even the best case scenario it involves acknowledging that some part of your job has exceeded your ability and you need specialized help, and handling that well is a very rare personality trait. But the massive variety of interconnected systems that we rely on are too complex for this to not be a common occurrence. Even if you did radically open everything from internal bug trackers to licensing systems to communications there wouldnāt be enough time in the day for everyone to learn those systems well enough to perfectly self-solve all their problems, and that lack of systems knowledge would be a massive drain on your operations. But trying to fit in an LLM chatbot is the worst of both worlds, in that your users are both locked away from the tools and knowledge that would let them solve their own issues but still need to learn how to wrangle your intermediary system, and that system doesnāt have the human ability to connect and build a working relationship and get through those issues in a positive way.
OT: boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, thats why I listen to audiobooks on company time.
(Holy shit I should have got airpods a long time ago. But seriously, the jobs going great.)
More network state nonsense is afoot: https://frontiervalley.com/ https://www.thenerdreich.com/startup-seeks-trump-ai-emergency-for-california-tech-city/
They (who?) have publicly drafted an executive order because they want to take over the Alameda Naval Air Station (a superfund site).
Edit: Per the twitter account the weirdo behind this is James Ingallinera.
network state
Great, a new stupid thing to know about. How likely is it that a bunch of people that believe they are citizens of an online state will become yet another player in the Stochastic Terrorism as a Service industry?
Iām using the term a bit loosely to mean ālibertarian citadel except with techiesā. Though I think the phrase is technically supposed to mean a nation that starts out as an online community.
Anyway for some reason these weirdos all have this idea that if it wasnāt for all those pesky regulations and people they could usher in a glorious new sci-fi and/or cryptocurrency society. Like look at this example: this B-list CEO in the apartment rental business thinks heāll be the ruler of a fiefdom that brings about AGI, Quantum Computing, a nuclear energy revolution, bladerunner style flying cars, and sci-fi materials. Itās delusional; or at best grift.
The canonical example of network state is Balaji Srinivasanās Network School. He owns(?) a building in Forest City, Malaysia (or as he calls it: an island in an undisclosed location off the coast of Singapore). But in a broad sense itās useful to consider everything from Sidewalk Labs to California Forever to the M.S. Satoshi as thematically in the same sort of ballpark.
He owns(?) a building in Forest City, Malaysia (or as he calls it: an island in an undisclosed location off the coast of Singapore)
Sounds like a houseboat. Itās a houseboat, isnāt it.
I think an actual building. Though Forest City is not exactly prime real estate.
Thereās some pictures here: https://www.ryanchern.com/posts/network_school (and probably a few other sites scattered across social media). I could geolocate it better than that but Iām currently on shitty mobile hotspot internet.
itās funny to me that these futurist/thought leader/tech genius utterly fail to build their cult compounds where a goofy ass cult like Scientology has blown past them completely
I think the idea is to build the fortified cult compound in the Internet. That way your disciples can lock themselves inside and start flagellating wherever they may be in the physical world.
They wouldnāt be caught dead in Hemet.
Bears. This always leads to some of them being eaten by bears.
James Ingallinera
Wasnāt he one of those āhey techies move into my cultlike terrible coliving / working space / company townā people?
AllTrails doing their part in the war on genAI by disappearing the people who would trust genAI: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/06/17/news/alltrails-ai-tool-search-rescue-members
Donāt make tap the sign:
Donāt feed the bears!
My AllTrails told me bears keep eating his promptfondlers so I asked how many promptfondlers he has and he said he just goes to AllTrails and gets a new promptfondler afterwards so I said it sounds like heās just feeding promptfondlers to bears and then his parks service started crying.
Amazing. Canāt wait for the doomers to claim that somehow this has enough intent to classify as murder. I wonder if theyāll end up on one of the weirdly large number of ābad things that happen to people in the national parksā podcasts.
Darwin Award-as-a-service
ZITRON DROPPED (sadly, its premium)
First confirmed openly Dark Enlightenment terrorist is a fact. (It is linked here directly to NRx, but DE is a bit broader than that, it isnāt just NRx, and his other references seem to be more garden variety neo-nazi type (not that this kind of categorizing really matters)).
his other references seem to be more garden variety neo-nazi type
Also apparently pro LGBT neo-nazis, which I refuse to believe are not a parody. See this cursed screenshot:
That felt as a trollish misdirection to me tbh.
Its a thing believe it or not.
The Nashville chudās handle is even ārohmstuffā.
LGBT neo-nazis
Modern twitter is a parody of itself.
They have a badge now, JFC
I misinterpreted this reply as the guy in the post being hired as a police officer. Thank god.
Nope. That would be more immediately concerning but less dumb than the reality.
Me, a Nashvillian: I would like one bonaroo please
God: sorry Iām fresh out of bonaroo, have some weird nazis instead
One of the pedo crew to boot apparently.
altman brings the orb to reddit for some reason https://www.semafor.com/article/06/20/2025/reddit-considers-iris-scanning-orb-developed-by-a-sam-altman-startup
This guy is a real self-licking ice cream cone (flavor: pralines and dick)
new rant from me about how boosters asking critics to admit that AI is āusefulā is not the win they think it is vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcBCji6XvE audio: https://pnc.st/s/faster-and-worse/94cb1cda/useful-is-nothing
There should be a weekly periodical called Business Idiot.
I donāt like to speculate, but it seems tptacek is not happy about it for some reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44291623
If tptacek werenāt a chicken heād go ask Ed directly. Aināt like heās hard to find.
Given the relative caliber of those two I think this may be considered an attempted inducement to suicide by better writer. Not that Iām complaining, mind you.
I do think Ed is overly critical of the impact that AI hype has had on the job market, not because the tools are actually good enough to replace people but because the business idiots who impact hiring believe they are. I think Brian Merchant had a piece not long ago talking about how mass layoffs may not be happening but thereās a definite slowdown in hiring, particularly for the kind of junior roles that we would expect to see impacted. I think this actually strengthens his overall argument, though, because the business idiots making those decisions are responding to the thoughtless coverage that so many journalists have given to the hype cycle just as so many of the people who lost it all on FTX believed their credulous coverage of crypto. If weāre going to have a dedicated professional/managerial class separate from the people who actually do things then the work of journalists like this becomes one of their only connectors to the real world just as its the only connection that people with real jobs have to the arcane details of finance or the deep magic that makes the tech we all rely on function. By abdicating their responsibility to actually inform people in favor of uncritically repeating the claims of people trying to sell them something theyāre actively contributing to all of it and the harms are even farther-reaching than Ed writes here.
Doing some reading about the SAG-AFTRA video game voice acting strike. Anyone have details about āEthovoxā, the AI company that SAG has apparently partnered with?
New article from Axos: Publishers facing existential threat from AI, Cloudflare CEO says
Baldur Bjarnason has given his commentary:
Honestly, if search engine traffic is over, it might be time for blogs and blog software to begin to deny all robots by default
Anyways, personal sidenote/prediction: I suspect the Internet Archiveās gonna have a much harder time archiving blogs/websites going forward.
Up until this point, the Archive enjoyed easy access to large swathes of the 'Net - site owners had no real incentive to block new crawlers by default, but the prospect of getting onto search results gave them a strong incentive to actively welcome search engine robots, safe in the knowledge that theyād respect robots.txt and keep their server load to a minimum.
Thanks to the AI bubble and the AI crawlers its unleashed upon the 'Net, that has changed significantly.
Now, allowing crawlers by default risks AI scraper bots descending upon your website and stealing everything that isnāt nailed down, overloading your servers and attacking FOSS work in the process. And you can forget about reigning them in with robots.txt - theyāll just ignore it and steal anyways, theyāll lie about who they are, theyāll spam new scrapers when you block the old ones, theyāll threaten to exclude you from search results, theyāll try every dirty trick they can because these fucks feel entitled to steal your work and fundamentally do not respect you as a person.
Add in the fact that the main upside of allowing crawlers (turning up in search results) has been completely undermined by those very same AI corps, as āAI summariesā (like Googleās) steal your traffic through stealing your work, and blocking all robots by default becomes the rational decision to make.
This all kinda goes without saying, but this change in Internet culture all-but guarantees the Archive gets caught in the crossfire, crippling its efforts to preserve the web as site owners and bloggers alike treat any and all scrapers as guilty (of AI fuckery) until proven innocent, and the web becomes less open as a whole as people protect themselves from the AI robber barons.
On a wider front, I expect this will cripple any future attempts at making new search engines, too. In addition to AI making it piss-easy to spam search systems with SEO slop, any new start-ups in web search will struggle with quality websites blocking their crawlers by default, whilst slop and garbage will actively welcome their crawlers, leading to your search results inevitably being dogshit and nobody wanting to use your search engine.
I donāt like that itās not open source, and there are opt-in AI features, but I can highly, highly recommend Kagi from a pure search result standpoint, and one of the only alternatives with their own search index.
(Give it a try, theyāve apparently just opened up their search for users without an account to try it out.)
Almost all the slop websites arenāt even shown (or put in a āListiclesā section where they can be accessed, but are not intrusive and do not look like proper results, and you can prioritize/deprioritize sites (for example, I have gituib/reddit/stackoverflow to always show on top, quora and pinterest to never show at all).
Oh, and they have a fediverse ālensā which actually manages to reliably search Lemmy.
This doesnāt really address the future of crawling, just the āGoogle has gone to shitā part š
FWIW, due to recent developments, Iāve found myself increasingly turning to non-search engine sources for reliable web links, such as Wikipedia source lists, blog posts, podcast notes or even Reddit. This almost feels like a return to the early days of the internet, just in reverse and - sadly - with little hope for improvement in the future.
Searching Reddit has really become standard practice for me, a testament to how inhuman the web as a whole has gotten. What a shame.
Sucks that a lot of reddit is also being botted. But yes reddit still good. Still fucked that bots take a redit post as input, rewrite it into llm garbage and those then get a high google ranking, while google only lists one or two reddit pages.
