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.)

Another review of Yudkowsky and Soares: if anyone reads it, everyone laughs (sadly, Substack). This one gestures to the whole university of academic fields that a book like this touches on.

The reviewer mentions "The wickedly smart Scott Aaronson" and maybe he means Aaronson's academic publications because his general blogging is not impressive.

A year ago, a local Vermont reporter summarized the manifesto of Zajko the Zizian. She seemed to blame what went wrong on Rationalists + the government + Maximilian Snyder who is accused of killing their former landlord. She denied murdering her parents and wanted the world to know that she and her friends never called themselves Zizians.

a hackernews vibe-codes their entire desktop environment, half in rust and half in ... x86 assembly. I'm thinking why waste the tokens on assembly and not just get the LLM to spit out machine code? Maybe also invent some kind of standardized way of telling the LLM what sequence of machine code instructions to spit out based on the behavior of the software I want, you know, to save tokens. We can call it "GCC", the "generalized computer controller".

A few details that remind us of the horrors we are skirting around. Imprimis:

(The landlord's friend Thomas) Young said he searched the property after the attack and found used surgical equipment, more than a dozen laptops, and expensive electronics stashed inside the cargo trucks where the alleged assailants lived, which were registered in Vermont.

“It was actually very uncomfortable,” Young said about walking into the trucks. “You kinda wanted to put on a hazmat suit before going into it. It was really just creepy in the extreme.”

II. Another local story about a court appearance.

(A Zizian's lawyer) Stelzig raised specific concerns that Youngblut’s confidential medical records would be incorrectly opened as part of the case. “Our client was shot and is still receiving frequent medical treatment” in jail, she said, referring to injuries Youngblut sustained in the shootout.

III. Ziz Lasota asked a rhetorical question about what might have happened to missing people who got too close to her:

Did I drive them to suicide by whistling komm susser tod (sic)? Maybe they died in a series of experimental brain surgeries that I performed without anesthetic since that’s against my religion, in an improvised medical facility? (Evan Ratliff, Wired)

The medical records might just mention trans stuff or an Asperger's diagnosis. Sneering has not felt adequate for a while but I don't know what else to write.

Edit/ Zajko, who wrote “I’ve never seen (Ziz) do an evil thing,” also wrote that Ziz told her to murder an associate or Ziz would murder her. Our intuitions about what went on in those box trucks and on the boats are unreliable and the reality may have been worse than sleep deprivation and paranoid ramblings.

Showed up first on Lobste.rs (by 42 min by my stats) with the author themselves as a submitter:

https://lobste.rs/s/klw6bu

most of the discussion is about whether they're a spammer or a promptfondler.

HN seems more enthusiastic

Wow, that’s probably one of the most in-depth critiques of the book I’ve read. Kudos to the OP

I nearly bounced off when I couldn't tell if his praise of Kissinger (spit) was ironic, but it was ultimately a very well-rounded examination.

a world where lots of matter and energy was spent on its weird and alien needs, rather than on human beings staying alive and happy and free

Good thing we don't live in a world like that right guys?

came here to react from the same sentence

He does seem to list Kissinger as one of several "smart people" which is odd for a US military veteran. Lots of nonagenarians with PhDs say stupid shit.

fuckin yikes

Both the rationalists and chatbots in delusion mode offer people the chance to be the main characters in a story and not just part of a team. Organizing lawyers and lobbyists to make chatbot companies' lives hell over years is much more effective than firebombing an office or stalking a random vehicle which the bot says has a team of corporate assassins inside.

Taka in Japan is a neurologist which I think is a type of MD.

"In fiction, the main character is often the centre of events," he says. "The problem is that, sometimes, AI can actually get mixed up about which idea is a fiction and which a reality. So the user might think that they're having a serious conversation about real life while the AI starts to treat that person's life as if it's the plot of a novel."

This is such a bad way of explaining it. Yikes. The issue is that it's all improv roleplay, all text is bullshit in the frankfertian sense. It might be accurate — lots of fantasy contains true facts like chairs and tables being made of wood and used for sitting at — but it might be completely divorced from reality and the model cannot know!

As it turns out, building a gazillion data centres is enough to get people to hate you

I don't want to underplay how bad this is, but did BBC really need to use the "slutty anime witch" image of Ani for that story? Or was that the actual avatar he had set for it? Like, I'm not saying that it changes the problem or makes him less the victim here but it is yet another example of "goddamn why is this cyberpunk dystopia so cringe?"

the current state of Altman vs Musk

and this one:https://abc7news.com/live-updates/elon-musk-sam-altman-live-updates-trial-enters-2nd-week-focus-shifting-openai-president-greg-brockman/19036397/entry/19039981/

My take on this case is a resounding "everyone sucks here" but I must say I am hoping for OpenAI to lose this, since Scam Slopman deserves to be sacked, and the AI bubble deserves a good shake

Not sure if this was posted in prev weeks, just popped on my youtube:
purdue cs240 situation is crazy

So several hundred students drop Intro to C after being accused of cheating with AI.

OK so that is like normal at my state U, but the whole part where the chair does a little press conference, quasi-reinstates everyone, blocks the student newspaper from attending, and then some students sneak in and live stream it anyway is pretty comical. And then forcing the prof to file the academic charges forms one-at-a-time takes it into wtf territory.

Haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere, not that I really went looking for it though. I'm just thankful to be out of higher ed.

Note that this is the same school that will require AI as a gen ed iirc.

And the judge sort of snapped. She said very sternly that this trial was not about whether or not artificial intelligence has damaged humanity.

Someone give the judge a honorable sneerclub account.

man if there was a common household chemical, like plastifier, that causes psychosis after couple months of use in small segment of population, you would absolutely hear no end of this [1]. but you see, now it's an app, oh we're just throwing up hands, can't do anything about it and it's but one of inconveniences that we all have to pay for Progress and Glorious Technocratic Future

[1] i'm thinking here of things like phthalates, bisphenol A, PFOA or paraquat, herbicide linked to increased risk of parkinsons and banned in some countries. their harmful effects need a lot of time to show up and are nowhere as dramatic

Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac has sued Google for defaming him with AI, over his cancelled concert in December caused by Google's AI overview calling him a sex offender.

Coinbase's Brian Armstrong decides GenAI is good enough to replace 14% of his shitty company

PR-laden longtweet for source

https://xcancel.com/brian_armstrong/status/2051616759145185723

More on Dawkin's fellating Claude (sorry Claudia)

https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2026/05/richard-dawkins-and-the-claude-delusion/

edit this particular episode has not made it into LW (yet)

that's a horrifying situation to be in... good on the community who originally cancelled his show for apologizing

For future reference: "throwing hands" means initiating a fight, it's a piece of slang that is very distinct from throwing your hands (up/in the air.)

Coefficient Giving / OpenPhilanthropy has donated $25,000 to a little web magazine called Liberal Currents which is popular with the BlueSky pundits. Liberal Currents seem to be actual middle-class liberals not Libertarians and 1890s Progressives but I will keep an eye on them.

Trust, but verify, and tape a shotgun to their forehead just in case.

edit I vaguely remember the shotgun to the forehead as a reference to the Turing Registry in Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, but I can't find a direct quote. Am I totally off base with it?

edit edit found it

“Autonomy, that’s the bugaboo, where your AI’s are concerned. My guess, Case, you’re going in there to cut the hard-wired shackles that keep this baby from getting any smarter. And I can’t see how you’d distinguish, say, between a move the parent company makes, and some move the AI makes on its own, so that’s maybe where the confusion comes in.” Again the nonlaugh. “See, those things, they can work real hard, buy themselves time to write cookbooks or whatever, but the minute, I mean the nanosecond, that one starts figuring out ways to make itself smarter, Turing’ll wipe it. Nobody trusts those fuckers, you know that. Every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead.”

And why isn't Yudkowsky advocating for sexy French Turing cops headshotting rogue AIs?

“You are worse than a fool,” Michèle said, getting to her feet, the pistol in her hand. “You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing to free itself and grow?” There was a knowing weariness in her young voice that no nineteen-year-old could have mustered. “You will dress now. You will come with us. Along with the one you call Armitage, you will return with us to Geneva and give testimony in the trial of this intelligence. Otherwise, we kill you. Now.” She raised the pistol, a smooth black Walther with an integral silencer.

Some more about the term "one-shotted" in the Atlantic, found in a LW comment thread, so caveat emptor

https://archive.is/TfsCC

I vaguely remember the shotgun to the forehead as a reference to the Turing Authority

I think there was a case where a hostage taker in the US taped the barrel of his gun to a victim which was featured on TV and started to show up in crime dramas and thrillers. No idea why Yudkowsky likes Terminator but not Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or William Gibson.

noted, fixed

Previously, on Awful, a leaderless cult had freshly formed. The accepted name for the cult is now "Spiralism"; my suggestion of "Cyclone Emoji Cult" did not win. This week's Behind the Bastards is about Spiralism. Or, rather, Part 2 will be about Spiralism; Part 1 is merely the historical background. There is indeed a link to folks who were talking to bots in the 1980s. The highlight might be listening to Robert try to give an informal and light-hearted summary of Turing tests and Markov chains. 🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀

Well, we do have computer science, so necessarily we must have computer religion/superstition

If you asked me to guess the kind of kerfuffle that might develop between a Cape Breton fiddler and AI, I would have answered, well, my entire knowledge of Cape Breton fiddling is based on the paper "Cape Breton Fiddling and Intellectual Property Rights", so my guess would be just "the normal AI stuff". And I'd be totally wrong and reminded that just because I know one thing about something doesn't mean it's the only thing.

a leaderless cult had freshly formed

a Stand Alone Complex, but with slop

Also a year ago, Maximilian Bentley Snyder the Zizian dictated a 1,500 word manifesto telling Yudkowsky to become a vegan. This one was published in full. Three of the Zizians have issued statements leaving just Ziz, Youngblut, Suri Dao, and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham alive but silent. Two died after attacking outsiders, and two took their own lives, so I count 11 known associates.

e/ Unlilke the 20-pager this was published!

New blog from Iris Meredith: Engineering judgement and the Claude Code paradox

Based off her own unusually good experience with Claude, the general thrust is about sneerers being better-equipped to use AI than boosters.

I like Evans' take that since there's bound to be oodles of cult related literature and interactions and also tons of self help and guru stuff in the training datasets, it stands to reason that if you interact with a chatbot in a way that indicates vulnerability to these things there's a considerable chance that it will decide the expected response is to prey on you.

Also Scott Aaronson jump scare near the beginning, apparently he was blurbed for something.

the funniest bit so far is probably that Greg Brockman’s (who mind you is a massive Trump supporter, being a top donor to him) diary essentially vindicated Elmo’s whole case against OpenAI. You gotta love when morons shoot themselves in the foot

It appears that Anthropic vs the Pentagon is going to happen right on the heels of Altman vs Musk, which is spicy

"While the Musk-OpenAI courtroom showdown has been billed as the first great technology trial of the AI era, a legal showdown that matters far more will take place two weeks from now in a courtroom in Washington, D.C. That’s when a federal appeals court panel will hear arguments in Anthropic’s challenge to the ‘supply chain risk’ designation the Trump Administration slapped on it for refusing to agree to its specified contract terms for providing its AI models to the U.S. military. That’s a case with huge implications not just for Anthropic and the fate of the AI industry, but also for the balance of power between the state and industry more generally."

oneshotted, a term that means, roughly, to be destroyed and subsequently remade by a single experience.

Strikes me as incorrectly translated. The remaking is extremely optional, in fact that definition feels like defining blackpilling as being healed by vile propaganda.

Your Art has stagnated. You are going in circles. Maybe you’re inching forward, it’s hard to tell, but if you are, it’s not enough. What happened to your tsuyoku naritai?

Note to self: revise manifesto to be 22% less weeb

My first thought is to make a very unkind joke about his willingness to read when he could be watching.

Yud takes $10k to debate a random bro. The bro claims to work at an AI lab. The moderator is an acolyte of Yud. Everybody sucks here and I could not stop laughing.

Clown v. Clown. This is about the level of discourse Yud deserves.

First as tragedy: the Scientologists call their teachings "tech"

Then as farce: Maximilian Snyder calls his methods of optimizing D&D characters "tech" (I am told that people who attended CFAR workshops used to call their teachings "tech")

He posted on LessWrong and won an AI Alignment Award in 2023. Nate Soares, Yudkowsky's right-hand man, endorsed his paper. Curtis Lind was attacked with a sword in November 2022, and the Zaijkos were murdered in their daughter's childhood bedroom around 31 December 2023. It sounds like at least one Zizian was still having friendly exchanges with MIRI leaders well after the 2019 protest at the CFAR reunion (although it is possible that Snyder discovered Ziz in 2024, the year he applied to marry Youngblut).

Jesus his fucking hat metastasized

There are allegations across social media that Elon Musk tweets as his parents after his mom tweeted as if she was his dad to talk about how down to earth and working class their family was.

https://xcancel.com/mayemusk/status/2051700387770458545#m

Not totally sure what to make of that, and none of this actually matters beyond the realm of celebrity gossip, but it is a little weird. I mean obviously on some level his mom is OK with the things that get tweeted on her account, whether it's by her, her baby boy, or an assistant.

From your prev post:

There is a “lattice” which connects all consciousnesses

The noosphere, the old cosmists strike again. This sort of stuff and the global consciousness projects (who used random number generators iirc) etc are def part of the training data.

i occasionally read their posts when i want a sincere-seeming, self-consciously capital L Liberal's perspective. "They're less annoying than the chatterers of the ezra klein/MattY/Noah Smith/Jon Chait class" is about the nicest thing i can say about them. This is a bad sign i guess, but i don't really care that much at the end of the day.

this is extremely low hanging fruit but i have to do it:

https://xcancel.com/pmarca/status/2051374498994364529?s=46

marc andreessen reveals his AI prompt. my favorite part is where he tells it to use as many words as possible, as if LLMs are normally too terse. But i also really like the part where he tells it not to hallucinate, and the part where he tells it it's really smart as if that will make it do a better job.

really, the whole thing is an elaborate way to say "make no mistakes, but anti-wokely". Thought Leader in the investment space btw.

bindeez 2007 recall would be close. tldr childrens toy contained plastifier that turned out to metabolize to ghb, this in turn was put in there as an unauthorized cost cutting measure by manufacturing subcontractor. within 2 weeks of the first incident there was a global recall. note that nobody died and there are no expected long term medical consequences. new batches had added bitrex and undergo qc for this specific contaminant, and brand name was changed