18
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 6th September 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/techtakes@awful.systems
145 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 6 points 16 hours ago (7 children)

in which le gwern and sword guy neal sponsor a writing contest

https://www.gpuworld.org/

Premise

Imagine that AI frontier progress stops as of 1 September 2026: AI becomes faster and cheaper, but it never becomes superhuman or improves considerably across the board.

So the Singularity never happens—but GPUs keep getting made. By 2040, there may be the equivalent of 8 billion GPUs globally and everyone has access to a frontier LLM.

What happens in this 'business as usual' future?

I may as well through my name in the hat, I could use the cash. but, who the hell gave them $100k for this? I guess BTC is back up.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 14 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 33 minutes ago

    writing a story that looks like it's about everyone having their own LLMs but it's actually about the predicted state of clime catastrophe by 2040 and the consequences of the fascist turn in world politics, and the GPUs don't make the slightest difference to anything and don't really matter for the plot

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 1 hour ago*

    So I love Neal's books, I think he's a fun story-teller and anathems orbital mechanics scene has loads more tension than any slop in something like interstellar.

    But whenever he gets involved in social-technological commentary I am reminded of Ursala Le Guinn's remarks on SciFi authors being professional liars, not prophets.

    Anyway, scour the submissions for little Lytton contest entrants

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 5 points 9 hours ago

    AI Use: LLM use is permitted, but discouraged; we remind participants that LLM use tends to reduce originality and writing quality, and the flaws are especially obvious when LLM outputs are read as a group---unskillful use of LLMs will reduce the odds of being the best entry. We request disclosure of AI use.

    Lol. Lmao.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 12 hours ago (1 child)

    but, who the hell gave them $100k for this?

    the third name is a vc-type, and I bet it won’t take much scratching to find that linked to our good friends and the ongoing public image adjustment campaign that’s seeing funding from a few corners

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    s/gpu/Butt-Face Chester Cheeks/g and you got yourself a deal.

    "The year is 2040. Everybody has access to a Butt-Face Chester Cheeks. What happens in this butt-business as usual future?"

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 14 hours ago

    I suppose my only-half-joking grant proposal I talk about with linguist friends in which you run an entire large text through a base-model LLM, extract the residual stream, and score every token according to perplexity compared to the ground truth reality in order to ask and answer super interesting questions about information theory in human communication doesn't count?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent