Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 31st May 2026 (awful.systems)

submitted 3 days ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

142 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? 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.)

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top new old

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2 points 40 minutes ago* (last edited 36 minutes ago)

At minute 8 of "SpaceX IPO: Nice Try Though" Patrick Boyle mentions some circular finance: some of the banks which lent SpaceX $29 billion in March will be guaranteeing the IPO by promising to buy some shares to stabilize the price. Later he also points out that the banks financing the IPO have to buy Grok services and may be its main paying customers. Musk has done this sort of thing before eg. using Tesla (shareholder-owned) money to buy SolarCity which he partially owned. I knew a serial fraudster who moved to Texas for its business-friendly laws and courts.

He liked the piss-tinged blog post by Cape Fear Advisors and estimates that the Muskrat wants to raise $50-75 billion in the IPO.

It took Kaiser Bill to break the economic power of London and Paris, but the Muskrat thinks he can speedrun that game for the New York City map.

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 2 points 1 hour ago

Project Cybersyn but worse

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/argentina-launched-ai-predict-future-150104368.html

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

A Google employee was charged with commodities fraud for using insider information to win a Polymarket bet about who the most searched for people would be in 2025 (complaint, article, polymarket account).

So far the internet seems confused whether or not this all counts as commodities fraud at all or not and if so, how (this area of law is way too confusing which is one of the reasons I, of course, never use insider information to bet on polymarket).

It looks like the suspicious trades were discussed on social media back in december. e.g. here for example.

Aside: 1.2 million in profit is significant, but isn't a life changing amount of money for most staff engineers at Google. He probably could have just rested and vested for a few extra years and avoided all this...

Bonus:

According to Polymarket someone else was charged with insider trading this April. This other case is especially cursed because it involved bets around the US attacking Venezuela. According to the complaint he might have asked an LLM for legal advice:

In or about November 2025, VAN DYKE uploaded to his Google account a screenshot displaying the results of a Google Al query. The results stated, in substance and in part, that the U.S. military's special operations divisions have "numerous classified files, records, and operational details that are not available to the public"

It looks like this was his polymarket account.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 14 hours ago

Via, looks like wikipedia is going anti union.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 13 hours ago

The author of that piece outsources his thinking to the slop machine.

If anyone wants to read the discussion by the most pedantic nerds on Earth (complimentary), it starts here.

[-] mawhrin@awful.systems 3 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

it doesn't mean he's not inaccurate in that particular piece.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

No, but it does seem important to point out before anyone starts trying to parse the exact words line-by-line or otherwise give more attention to the details than it deserves.

And anyone who describes admitting to AI use as "coming out of the AI closet" deserves to be publicly shamed.

[-] mawhrin@awful.systems 3 points 13 hours ago

yes, but (i've corrected my bloody typo above), there are independent confirmations of veracity. so i think it's fine to complain here, but it would detract from the point outside the sneering area.

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 2 points 12 hours ago

ah thanks for informing

[-] Architeuthis@awful.systems 7 points 20 hours ago

While looking at ACX comments for the you should let claude vote for you thing I saw someone saying that the lumina guy (gobble designer microbes instead of brushing your teeth, boosted by siskind and aella who got free samples) has apparently pivoted to AI with a startup about producing AI generated literature around positive human-AI interactions to influence future generations of LLMs towards favorable alignment.

I think the later got mentioned here some time or other but I didn't realize it was also the teeth bacteria successor grift.

[-] Evinceo@awful.systems 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Aaron Silverbook, ex MIRI, still lists himself as the President on LinkedIn. The site now links to a defunct shopify page.

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 2 points 14 hours ago

They're about to test the LD 50/30 for huffing their own farts

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 9 hours ago

Introducing: Flatulr, the ground-beefing gut microbiome hacking service. With a regular subscription, every week you get a vaporised canister designed by our artisan Cloud Engineers. Simply huff the can contents and you’ll be on your way to better movement.

[-] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 3 hours ago

Cloud Engineers

Cloud-to-Butt comes full circle

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 22 hours ago

fuckin casey is at it again

haven’t got time to sneer it just yet, but had to share

[-] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 6 points 13 hours ago

And not a single question about the Claude Code source leak, which revealed how it's completely slapped together with string and bubble gum.

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

the only kind of spine casey has is the kind in his old school ringbinders, and you can't convince me otherwise

[-] sansruse@awful.systems 5 points 13 hours ago

really remarkable how they just expect us to swallow the hard pivot from "AI is going to take all your jobs and render your economic value to the amount of calories harvestable from your feeble body" to "AI will create undecillion jobs UwU (◠‿◠✿)"

Another quick sneer:

Cherny: I was so focused on shipping. As soon as I got the idea, I spent every night and every weekend on it — it was the only thing I thought about, the only thing I worked on. I started having dreams about Claude Code, and that's still all I dream about: what should we do next, what do we build next. There's a chance now to zoom out, because a lot of people are using it and there's a lot to learn about how. But for a long time we were so focused on building that I didn't even have a chance to think about what it was.

Emphasis mine. the ideology buried within statements like this makes me want to erase the idea of a computer from the collective human consciousness. I feel like moving to the woods with some goats, or something, when i consider the fact that literally every single one of the tech oligarchs thinks like this. Literally channeling the spirit of capitalism like your body is a portal to a lovecraftian dimension. Purge. purge. purge this evil

[-] fuzzyfuzzyfungus@cyberplace.social 6 points 13 hours ago

@sansruse @froztbyte It blows my mind that "But for a long time we were so focused on building that I didn’t even have a chance to think about what it was." doesn't raise alarm bells in anyone who hears it.

Sometimes you get in the flow and knock out a bit of it; but if you are 'so focused on building' that you don't have a chance to think about what you are building how well is that going to go? Might be a euphoric, manic, rush; but probably not a well-considered outcome.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago

From elsewhere on fedi: https://fuckoffaimusic.com/

[-] nfultz@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago

https://lbpost.com/news/education/california-state-university-renews-controversial-systemwide-contract-with-openai

A CSU spokesperson confirmed to EdSource on Wednesday that the university will pay $13 million a year for three years to provide systemwide access to its more than 470,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff. The previous 18-month subscription cost $17 million and expires at the end of June.

Are we so locked in we're going to put up with a 10% price hike? Couldn't be bothered to get a new vendor with a better deal, or use the Google one they are also paying for, or just use the free one? This is where the tuition increases are going, this is how we want to spend our taxes? :(

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago

new odium symposium episode (at the link and on all platforms). we talk to professor of africana studies danielle procope bell about her recent paper "'Pick-Me' Black women: tactical patriarchal femininity in the Black manosphere."

https://www.patreon.com/posts/17-introduction-159058420

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 4 points 15 hours ago

The abstract of her paper sounds interesting:

This essay analyzes anti-feminist (“Pick-Me”) Black women content creators on YouTube who exist within the Black manosphere—online spaces populated by Black men who support Black patriarchal dominance. These “Pick-Me” content creators use what I term “tactical patriarchal femininity” to attract the financial provision of an economically stable Black man and to derive income from sympathetic viewers.

Tactical patriarchal femininity is an elaborate, all-consuming embodied performance that is as much about emotion work as it is about exuding conventional attractiveness and behavior that is aligned with traditional femininity. Tactical patriarchal femininity exists to combat the matrices of oppression created by capitalism, white supremacy, and institutional patriarchy. Anti-feminist Black women work in reaction to the misogynoirist material realities that victimize Black women.

load more comments

this post was submitted on 24 May 2026

15 points (94.1% liked)

TechTakes

2586 readers

101 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

dgerard@awful.systems