this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
21 points (95.7% liked)

TechTakes

2185 readers
70 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago (5 children)

From RationalWiki: Yud claims that the only women he gave orgasms for completing math homework was his future wife. If he ever denied dating / playing with people from his foundation or making people who wanted to play with him fill out an IQ test I can't find it.

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

and the person who made up the "math pets" allegation claimed no such source

I was about to point out that I think this is the second time he claimed math pets had absolutely no basis in reality (and someone countered with a source that forced him to) but I double checked the posting date and this is the example I was already thinking of. Also, we have supporting sources that didn't say as much directly but implied it heavily: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/42iv09/a_yudkowsky_blast_from_the_past_his_okcupid/ or like, the entire first two thirds of the plot of Planecrash!

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

TvTropes says that the Yudkowsky-insert protagonist of Project Lawful/Planecrash! is driven by desire to have 144 children (and prove his society wrong for not paying him to have 144) which sounds like Scott Aaaronson? Did they know each other in those days?

I am glad that all I knew about Yud in 2022 was "wrote a Harry Potter fanfic that I did not finish, and runs a website where people pretend to be experts."

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

He does not admit "I was wrong" very often does he? And if I were a kinky polyamorist, I would be much quicker to respond to "have you dated staff at the organization that funds your life?" than "did you play a specific scene?"

Planecrash seems to be the 1.8 million word Pathfinder fic with tumblr's UnitOfCaring

And how the eff does someone claim to love Pterry in his dating profile but see people as things? Greg Egan is basilisk-unfriendly too.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I need you to understand how nearly I added myself to even more watch lists because of that analogy. Avalanche!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

Developers of the 12-megawatt facility said it will bring jobs and investment to Nashville, but neighbors aren’t so sure.

The neighbors are right.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago

New premium column from Ed Zitron: OpenAI Needs A Trillion Dollars In The Next Four Years. Features Ed calling Google and Oracle out for failing to protect their investors from Saltman before the cutoff.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Found a well-done essay by Jared White recently: AI Apologists and the Humanist Legacy of Steve Jobs, which does a good job sneering the ideology of AI and arguing for a more pro-human approach to tech.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago

This article also reminded me of how when they are trying to promote AI agents they dont get further than shopping, a secretary, or help you cook with random ingredients. No real human connections

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago

Satire warning!!! 🚨🚨🚨 You have been warned!!!

Some great tips for using ChatGPT to stop being a “Brain only” person to a fully optimised person!

[–] corbin@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

House Democrats have dripped more details from Epstein files and we have surprise guests! They released an un-OCR'd PDF; I'll transcribe the mentions of our favorite people:

Sat[urday] Dec[ember] 6, 2014 ZORRO … Reminder: Elon Musk to island Dec[ember] 6 (is this still happening?)

Zorro is a ranch in New Mexico that Epstein owned; Epstein was scheduled to be there from December 5-8, so that Musk and Epstein would not be at the island together. Combined with the parenthetical uncertainty about happenstance, did Epstein want to perhaps grant Musk some plausible deniability by not being present?

Mon[day] Nov[ember] 27, 2017 NY … 12:00pm LUNCH w/ Peter Thiel [REDACTED]

From the rest of the schedule formatting, the redacted block following Thiel's name is probably not a topic; it might be a name. Lunch between two rich financiers is not especially interesting but lunch between a blackmail-gathering Mossad asset and an influencer-funding accelerationist could be.

Sat[urday] Feb[ruary] 16, 2019 NY-LSJ 7:00am BREAKFAST w/ Steve Bannon

Well now, this is the most interesting one to me. This isn't Epstein's only breakfast of the day; at 9 AM he meets with Reid Weingarten, one of his attorneys, about some redacted topic. Bannon's not exactly what I think of as a morning person or somebody who is ready to go at a moment's notice, so what could drag him out of bed so early? (Edit: This vexed me so I looked it up and sunrise was 6:48 AM that morning at sea level. It would have been the crack of dawn!) Epstein's Friday evening had had two haircuts, too, with plenty of redacted info; was he worried about appearing nice for Bannon? (The haircuts might not have been for Epstein, given context.) This was a busy day for Epstein; he had a redacted lunch date, and he also had somebody flying in/out that morning via JFK connecting to Saint Thomas and staying in a hotel room there. He then flew out of Newark in the evening to visit the infamous island itself, Little Saint James. The redaction doesn't quite tell us who this guest is, but it can't be Bannon because the Dems fucked up the redaction! I can see the edges of the descenders on the name, including a 'g' and 'j'/'q', but Bannon's name doesn't have any descenders.

Also Prince Andrew's in there, I guess?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

I eagerly await the day when we hear about these people from 1-900-HOTDOG instead of Behind the Bastards

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago (5 children)

OT: I had a realization awhile back that I’d basically cut American scifi out of my life. The politics are just gross to me now, and the overseas stuff is just plain more fun.

What comes out of the states seems to reduce to libertarian (closeted white nationalist) wank fodder, and I guess its been this way since…Campbell? Certainly Niven-Pournelle. It just got gross.

(Partially prompted by me listening to Iron Council again).

[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Dunno I just enjoyed the fuck out of "Landlocked in Foreign Skin", like it's been a long time since I pause my life to devour a book in one sitting like this, and given that Drew Huff writes from Seattle I'm thinking they're a USian? And I was really engrossed by Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire which resonated a lot with my experiences as a Third World immigrant, with a certain honesty in portrayal of what it feels like to admire "culture" at a distance from a colony that I seldomly see (I'm on book #2 currently). I'm more of a fantasy reader, but Octavia Butler and Le Guin's sci-fi were absolutely formative to me, and if you ask me one modern sci-fi series I liked besides those mentioned so far, I'd probably say Wayfarers or Monk & Robot. Plenty of good SF authors from the USA whose politics are more or less the opposite of what you describe.

The trick is I read books by queer folk, women and PoC almost exclusively. Absolutely don't regret it, all the fun stuff is there in the margins.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] macroplastic@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

On a semi-related note, I recently got around to reading Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future (loved the Mars trilogy and thought I should get to his latest), and this chapter had me wanting to give up sci fi as well, so I will subject you all to it:

I am a secret so everyone can know me. First you must count every part of me, then translate those parts into signs that do not describe me. Together we are shackled, and with the sign that does not describe me you can open me up and read me as I am. People will give you their promises for me, and if wrongdoers try to take me away from you, you can find me and tell the world where I am hidden. I began as a silent speaking, a key to open every door; now that I have opened all the front doors, I am the key that locks the back doors by which wrongdoers try to escape the scene of the crime. I am the nothing that makes everything happen. You don’t know me, you don’t understand me; and yet still, if you want justice, I will help you to find it. I am blockchain. I am encryption. I am code. Now put me to use.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›