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.)

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[–] 12 points 1 day ago (19 children)

that's just "machine god will figure out relativity from three video frames" in another form

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  • [–] 9 points 23 hours ago* (16 children)

    Good God. Sometimes I wonder how small the population that understands all these references and knows all this deep lore and history is. How few people really understand the true nature of this bunch of people and how their ideas have ruined so much. When I go to conferences I get to have 4 hour conversations over beer with astrobiologists explaining how ideas from a blog in 2009 started showing up uncited in their literature 8 years later (when late undergrads who read a blog post start writing papers during their PhDs) and have since completely fucked whole subfields. They are flabbergasted at first, but then they see it, and see the damage done. So few people actually see this.

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  • [–] 3 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

    right? and even then you have to go slow with explanation, otherwise you just sound like a crank

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  • [–] 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

    It helped that the first person I explained this to at a conference was explicitly working on deconstructing models of the origin of complex life that imply that it's slow and unlikely that have been uncritically accepted in a lot of circles without actual evidence, and he was already confused about why following the chain of citations bottomed out at weird economist named Robin Hanson and why his naive model was ever taken seriously... oh MAN we had a fun evening.

    Amusingly enough, something much like this has happened to me twice two years apart. The scientists deconstructing this stuff are always the most interesting people too.

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  • [–] 6 points 13 hours ago (1 child)

    "there is a global far right conspiracy that attempts to reinvent alchemy, colonize space and build a machine god, which they intend to use to enslave everyone else. it's informed by misreading of old scifi and racism, but it only took off after certain hp fanfic was written. currently it's commanded by a californian polycule with a drug problem, but also counts in their ranks white house officials, and possibly some from russian government"

    unfortunately this does not make a great conversation starter. whaat? a cult took over an entire government of south korea? this could never happen here

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  • [–] 6 points 12 hours ago

    You'd be surprised. The usual icebreaker is the topic of the deep-seated unstated assumptions that people have in their mind when the construct models of evolutionary history, the future of Earth's biosphere, and the place of biology in the universe. I am lucky enough to run in the circles with astrobiologists, evolutionary biologists interested in the evolution of complex life, and abiogenesis types, who tend to appreciate the deep importance of unstated assumptions. It is very easy to point out a set of unstated assumptions that have poisoned areas of science near them... which always points back to the god damned singulatarians because when you assume the future is Humanity's Grand Destiny Among The Stars OR BUST, it severely constrains your notions of what is possible in a universe that looks like ours and inevitably mutilates the study of the topics they/we run in.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (10 children)

    In the TESCREAL lore iceberg, "Aella Sankey chart" is above the waterline.

    • Existence of HPMoR
    • Existence of Zizians
    • Aella Sankey chart
    • Aella not showering

    ...

    • Topher Brennan leaks Siskind emails

    ...

    • "AI datacenter water usage is fine actually" Substack

    ...

    • Cremieux's alleged old Reddit handle

    ...

    • Scott Aaronson anti-feminist breakdown
    • Scott Aaronson goes full Zionist

    ...

    • Glowfic

    ...

    • su3su2u1 review of HPMoR

    ...

    • Robot God deduces general relativity in three frames with the power of Bayes

    ...

    • Scott Aaronson makes airport cops sympathetic

    ...

    • TracingWoodgrains attempted hatchet job against David Gerard

    ...

    • Eliezer Yudkowsky is That Guy when recommending scifi books
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  • [–] 5 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    TracingWoodgrains attempted hatchet job against David Gerard

    Out in the wild, I’ve actually seen somebody cite that piece earnestly… as an example of how Wikipedia still has problems even if it’s generally a useful source of information.

    It’s like praising with faint damnation.

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  • [–] 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

    su3su2u1 review of HPMoR

    obi-wan-theres-a-name.png

    what ever happened to them anyway? Probably has tenure by now, hopefully?

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  • [–] 2 points 13 hours ago

    As someone who has started guarding their internet anonymity jealously after a series of VERY weird events (which fortunately do not involve our 'friends') I remember this incident soooo much...

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  • [–] 3 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

    Aella Sankey chart

    I'm really being tested on my liberation and sex positive values here. Gosh that's a very weird and kinda gross thing to do.

    What motivates someone to chart their fetish fulfillment?

    Well whatever. I hope people had fun, seems like it must have been very scheduled and regimented though...

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  • [–] 5 points 20 hours ago

    It was kinda wild studying physics while this was starting.

    People were getting all these starry-eyed ideas while anyone actually doing well was realising that the future is going to look a lot like the present because god hates us and we're not allowed nice things.

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