"We convinced the dumbest people in the country that our made-up problems were real, and now we have a sad because they took us seriously."

Yeah thought the same, "can't make it much worse"

As previously mentioned, the "Behind the Bastards" podcast is tackling Curtis Yarvin. I'm just past the first ad intermission (why are all podcast ads just ads for other podcasts? It's like podcast incest), and according to the host, Yarvin models his ideal society on Usenet pre-Eternal September.

This is something I've noticed too (I got on the internet just before). There's a nostalgia for the "old" internet, which was supposed to be purer and less ad-infested than the current fallen age. Usenet is often mentioned. And I've always thought that's dumb because the old internet was really really exclusionary. You had to be someone in academia or internet business, so you were Anglophone, white, and male. The dream of the old pure internet is a dream of an internet without women or people of color, people who might be more expressive in media other than 7 bit ASCII.

This was a reminder that the nostalgia can be coded fascist, too.

Problematic developer with AI crush realizes she's just dust under the wheels of progress

https://justine.lol/history/

You know those polls that say fewer than 20% of Americans trust AI scientists? It shouldn't be the case, because no group is doing more right now to elevate the universe to a higher state of complexity. You know who the public does trust? Open source developers.

Justine, LOL indeed.

Mosaic creator Marc Andreessen

I appreciate this deep cut.

Others in San Francisco are calling it “The Nerd Reich.”

Good one.

Couldn't find the way to turn this into a pithy blog post so just dumping it here:

does anyone else feel that the rationalists want a future of a billion trillion virtual humans, each and every one with an immutable gender bit set?

rabbit data breach: all r1 responses ever given can be downloaded

AI continues to be going great...

Ah yes the famous trial where HRC was prosecuted and convicted, I remember that, very analogous to Trump’s case, yes.

Big Yud has been huffing AI farts for so long he’s starting to hallucinate like one!

edit the replies once again prove that a blue check is an instant -10 point to credibility.

remember when Tea Partiers were teabagging?

Can launder money in multiple jurisdictions.

"It wAs aCtuALLy a lAB LEaK" is such a right-wing shibboleth that it's extra delicious that some wingers[1] put their money where their mouths and were comprehensively disproven. Kudos to the Lesswronger who went through all this, even though a 100K payout made it rATioNaL

[1] I don't have any evidence that Rootclaim are right-wingers but my priors tell me they are

So many of these people are just very young and getting in contact with the real grown-up world of money for the first time. They keep that teenage mindset of "you can't tell me what to do!" to which the bank replies "fuck off" politely.

Edit just read a bit more, and it's amazing how many commenters who live in some of the most free and prosperous countries in the world dare to compare themselves to actual serfs.