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 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 soo 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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
This exchange on HN, from the Wordpress meltdown, is going to make an amazing exhibit in the upcoming trial:
Anonymous: Matt, I mean this sincerely: get yourself checked out. Do you have a carbon monoxide detector in your house? … Go to a 10 day silent retreat, or buy a ranch in Montana and host your own Burning Man…
Matt Mullenweg: Thanks, I carry a co2 and carbon monoxide monitor. … I do own a place in Montana, and I meditate several times a day.
Ex-headliners Evergreen Terrace: “Even after they offered to pull Kyle from the event, we discovered several associated entities that we simply do not agree with”
the new headliner will be uh a Slipknot covers band
organisers: “We have been silent. But we are prepping. The liberal mob attempted to destroy Shell Shock. But we will not allow it. This is now about more than a concert. This is a war of ideology.” yeah you have a great show guys
Folks, I need some expert advice. Thanks in advance!
Our NSF grant reviews came in (on Saturday), and two of the four reviews (an Excellent AND a Fair, lol) have confabulations and [insert text here brackets like this] that indicate that they are LLM generated by lazy people. Just absolutely gutted. It’s like an alien reviewed a version of our grant application from an parallel dimension.
Who do I need to contact to get eyes on the situation, other than the program director? We get to simmer all day today since it was released on the weekend, so at least I have an excuse to slow down and be thoughtful.
I haven’t had to report malfeasance like that, but if that happened to me, I would be livid. I’d start by contacting the program officer; I’d also contact the division director above them and the NSF Office of Inspector General. I mean, that level of laziness can’t just have affected one review! And, for good measure, I’d send a tip to 404media, as they have covered this sort of thing. That might well go nowhere, but it can’t hurt to be in their contact list.
Total amateur here, but from quickly reviewing the process it looks like the program officer would be your primary point of contact within NSF to address this kind of thing? But then I would assume they read the reviews themselves before passing them back to you so I would hope they would notice? The bit of my brain that’s watched too much TV would like to see them answer some questions from an AI skeptic journalist, but that’s not exactly a great avenue for addressing your specific problem.
Mostly commenting to make it easier to keep track of the thread tbh. Thats some kinda nonsense you’re dealing with here.
nasb, fedi is for losers
been feeling this for a while too and wondering how to put it into words. especially in light of all the techfash, pressing climate and general market problems, etc
one of the things I’ve been holding onto (hoping in?) is my estimation/belief that I don’t think the current state of all the deeply-fucked systems is inherently stable, or viable. as I’ve said here before, that very instability is part of why so many of them are engaged in trying to set things up to protect those self-same systems, as they know the swingback is coming and they want to make it as hard as possible to claw things back from them
but how long until it breaks, and with how much splash damage, are things I haven’t really been able to estimate
Im reminded of the “Rationalism is systematized winning”. Post for some reason. This post and the recent musk chess post just makes me wonder about “what does winning” even mean. But in the spirit of wargames, i have not thought about it much more than that.
musk… chess… post… ?
actually, forget I asked. I’ve had an eventful enough week of bullshit, and am going to close my friday off with some careless daydrinking and relaxation
(e: I would add: good god “musk chess post” must be one of the craziest strings of words I’ve seen in a while)
The only one I’m aware of is the ages old “chess is too simple” and I feel like that one was stupidity distilled in such a high concentration I don’t ever need to hear any of his other opinions on chess, or games in general to be honest.
My computer crashed as I was writing a response. In short:
I think fedi existing and having the userbase it has is “victory” enough. Capitalism and fascism push us to think “winning” and “success” are the greatest thing to aspire to. To “win” over capitalism and fascism will require an unlearning and disavowal of those aspirations.
I can’t recall who proposed it (the original phrase)
oh yeah, I agree quite strongly with that sentiment too (and that’s why I didn’t re-use the words of the post I linked)
the fedi has some pretty dire threats (shit like threads etc) that I do think it needs to deal with by way of more teeth (consider it self-protective boundary setting), but in general I think a lot of the current state of it satisfying people just for being happy to be themselves is perfectly fine and good
side note: part of my problem is that my thinking on matters is a bit waterlogged due to shortage of knowledge/references, and backfilling that is … well, hard to find the right resources for reading, and perpetual spoon shortage. I’ve been working my way through some Graeber and some other stuff, but very slowly and need more things. also doesn’t help that ZA is, functionally, a desert island
This is absolutely an important idea, but in the context of anti-capitalism I think there’s a kind of catch-22 at play. The alternative systems that operate under a capitalist paradigm have serious externalities that come back to bite us whether we engage or not with them. My wife and I have spent some late nights over the last week trying to help family and friends in North Carolina keep track of which roads are usable, who is or isn’t confirmed to be alive yet, etc. Maybe I’m a little extra feisty about climate change today, but it seems like while the alternative doesn’t have to “win” in the same way that capitalists want to we do still need them to lose. Existing independently in parallel isn’t a sustainable end goal, though I do agree that parallel structures are an important part of the solution.