Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 27th April 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.)

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[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The link opened up another google search with the same query, tho without the AI summary.

image of a google search result description

Query: “a bear fries bacon meaning”

AI summary:

The phrase "a bear fries bacon" is a play on the saying "a cat dreams of fish" which is a whimsical way to express a craving. In this case, the "bear" and "bacon" are just random pairings. It's not meant to be a literal description of a bear cooking bacon. It's a fun, nonsensical phrase that people may use to express an unusual or unexpected thought or craving, according to Google Search.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

It really aggressively tries to match it up to something with similar keywords and structure, which is kind of interesting in its own right. It pattern-matched every variant I could come up with for "when all you have is..." for example.

Honestly it's kind of an interesting question and limitation for this kind of LLM. How should you respond when someone asks about an idiom neither of you know? The answer is really contextual. Sometimes it's better to try and help them piece together what it means, other times it's more important to acknowledge that this isn't actually a common expression or to try and provide accurate sourcing. The LLM, of course, has none of that context and because the patterns it replicates don't allow expressions of uncertainty or digressions it can't actually do both.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

You, a human can respond like that, a llm, esp a search one with the implied authority it has should admit it doesnt know things. It shouldn't make up things, or use sensational clickbait headlines to make up a story.

this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025

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