this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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TechTakes

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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

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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. Also, happy April Fool's in advance.)

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[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

SMBC using the ratsphere as comics fodder, part the manyeth:

transcriptionRetrofuturistic Looking Ghost: SCROOOOOGE! I am the ghost of christmas extreme future! Why! Why did you not find a way to indicate to humans 400 generation from now where toxic waste was storrrrrrrred! Look how Tiny Tim's cyborg descendant has to make costrly RNA repaaaaaaairs!

Byline: The Longtermist version of A Christmas Carol is way better.

bonus

spoiler transcription Scrooge: I tried, but no, no, I just don't give a shit. :::

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

OpenAI: Nah, I'd become profitable

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 4 days ago

Finally Tim Pool will get what is wrong with AI

Jesus, fine, I'll watch it already, God.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Gamers Nexus put out their April Fool's joke for this year, and became the first journalistic outlet to break Betteridge's law of headlines in the process.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

they should’ve had an overlay tracking counter in that opening montage, goddamn

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 4 days ago

(just got to 4min:) “oh! it’s not just opening montage” ahahaha

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 18 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I knew the HN reaction to Marine Le Pen being banned from being elected to public office would be unhinged, but weirdly I did not have "good, she's a woman and weak so now a strong man can lead RN to glorious victory" on my bingo card. More fool me, misogyny is always on the card.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43534140

[–] maol@awful.systems 8 points 4 days ago

There's a comment in there about how well it reflects on the British system that Bobby Sands was allowed to stand as an MP for Sinn Féin despite being an IRA member and a prisoner. This ignores that a) Sinn Féin policy was and is not to take seats in the British parliament, so he wouldn't have been voting or sitting on any committees, and b) Bobby Sands died in prison on hunger strike.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 10 points 5 days ago

Why yes, I'm sure 29 year old Jordan "El italiano 93" Bardella, who 10 years ago was uploading Call of Duty videos to youtube, is a much stronger candidate.

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 4 days ago (2 children)
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[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Derek Lowe casually points to Yarvin and Thiel in his writeup on how trumpists are destroying american science, in part 7 specifically. nrx have fully broke containment

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

On the bright side, Derek Lowe has also escaped containment, which is nice

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)
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[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

A recent chapter of one of the official Touhou Project manga had a jab at crypto schemes. This isn't one of the works of art I expected to so explicitly dunk on these unscrupulous scams, but I welcome it all the more for that.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This isn’t one of the works of art I expected to so explicitly dunk on these unscrupulous scams, but I welcome it all the more for that.

Crypto is nigh-universally hated outside of the techbrosphere (doubly so for NFTs) - they are synonymous with scams and cringe in the public eye. I'd be more shocked if you found a work which presents crypto without immediately dunking on it.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 7 points 5 days ago

I didn't mean I expected it to be pro-crypto, just a little surprised it actually namedropped NFTs and blockchain at all.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 16 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Anyone who uses gen AI is my opp, status report:

  • so far every restaurant that I've been to where I noticed AI slop as part of the decor has sucked. One of the ones local to me closed, hooray!
  • IDF: haha look we are Ghibli please send us more machine guns
  • a third thing
[–] mirrorwitch@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

jesus fucking christ I think that IDF tweet is the worst thing that has ever existed

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago

Taking the "insult to life itself" to a whole another level.

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I've been browsing bluesky a fair amount recently and it's chock full of artists making non-AI Ghibli inspired art in response to the AI trend. Which is neat.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago

That’s great. In a better world, all genAI users would become black goo-producing inhuman monsters to reflect their inner selves, but I suppose this is as much justice as we’ll get

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ran across an animation mocking AI art on Newgrounds recently - found it a pretty good watch.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

wow, surprisingly 00s in its feeling, nice

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Update on The Shadiversity Drama^tm^: he's still malding about being an utterly soulless waste of oxygen:

Now, some of you may be wondering "Monday, how is that AI-generated? That piece actually has a soul!" Well, as it turns out, it wasn't AI - Shad quite literally stole someone's artwork and passed it off as AI.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ok. Full disclosure. When you said “Shad”, I thought you meant a different internet person who is shitty for creating morally degenerate art, so when I read this I thought that they had pivoted to AI and was like, I guess that tracks. But no, different shithead.

Anyway. Bland and uninspired? All actual art is inspired, just by default. If it were truly bland, you wouldn’t be able to discern anything from it, which is just not the case. So Shad isn’t actually giving a valid opinion, he’s throwing out an insult, just so that he can elevate AI slop.

Now AI slop, on the other hand, is uninspired and bland. It is uninspired because machines do not have the ability to be inspired. It is bland because it has no intention to be discerned, so contains nothing of substance.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Not that you, under any circumstances, "have to hand it to" alleged convicted assaulter Shädman, but at least he drew his immature shock porn using his own mid artistic skills.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 5 days ago

Not to mention he also didn't write a third-rate rapey-as-shit "dark fantasy" novel, throw nonstop tantrums about people criticising/making fun of him, or jump on the anti-woke content mill grift train.

Just to make this perfectly clear, yes, I am saying that >shadman has more dignity than Shadiversity.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Addendum: If you wanna support the artist, she has a Tumblr and a personal portfolio.

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

In other news, the Guardian landed an exclusive scoop on cuts to "AI cancer tech funding in England". Baldur Bjarnason's given his commentary:

Turns out rebranding even the genuinely useful Machine Learning as “AI” doesn’t help them get funding. The only beneficiaries of the bubble seem to be volatile media synthesis engines

You want my opinion, future machine learning research is probably gonna struggle to get funding once the bubble bursts, both due to the "AI" stench rubbing off on the field, and due to gen-AI sucking up all of the funding that would've gone towards actually useful shit. (Arguably, its already struggling even before the bubble's burst.)

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 3 points 4 days ago

OK hear me out: they make a new season of Hell Girl, but she only gets people who use gen ai

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

"Goonernomicon: Grummz | Part 1" just dropped! Posting this as a stub because it's only adjacent to the ordinary purview. A+++ chud hater content.

full disclo: I did not know who Grummz was before this

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Another good older vid mostly about Grummz, buy youtube essayist Shaun: Stellar Blade: The Fake Outrage. A bit on the more twitch/video game side of things.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

Great vid. A good reminder that all the culture war people are real fucking stupid and I am right to disengage from scrapping with them.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It must be nice not being so terminally online as myself, for reasons which at least partially escape my ken, I occasionally visit Twitter, and I am subscribed to it's dear leader, I get to enjoy a lot of the boosted nazi nonsense. (His account is followed by Elon)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 6 days ago

It must be nice not being so terminally online as myself

Don't worry, I assure you that I am suffering in different ways

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