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.)
tip from a discord:
I’ve been doing some micro tasking to train LLM’s the last few months to earn some extra cash, the last month it’s all dried up, no tasks available. I can’t help thinking that is a sign of a bubble deflating.
Please please please
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.
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.
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.
Misogyny is the free square, easy to forget
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
jesus fucking christ I think that IDF tweet is the worst thing that has ever existed
Taking the “insult to life itself” to a whole another level.
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.
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
Today on the orange site, an AI bro is trying to reason through why people think he’s weird for not disclosing his politics to people he’s trying to be friendly with. Previously, he published a short guide on how to talk about politics, which — again, very weird, no possible explanation for this — nobody has adopted. Don’t worry, he’s well-read:
So far I’ve only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.
The thread is mostly centered around one or two pearl-clutching conservatives who don’t want their beliefs examined:
I find it astonishing that anyone would ask, [“who did you vote for?”] … In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.
To which the top reply is my choice sneer:
In my friend group it’s clear as day: either you voted to kill and deport other people in the friend group or you didn’t. Pretty obvious the group would like to know if you’re secretly interested in their demise.
Wow, farriers are going crazy with these modern horseshoe designs!
image transcription
Above: a single axis scatter plot. The ends of the axis are labeled “Left” and “Right”. Data points are distributed similarly to normal distribution, the center being more concentrated than the extremes. Caption: “What people think the political spectrum is vs What it actually is”.
Below: A two-dimensional scatter plot. The ends of the horizontal axis are labeled “Left” and “Right” and the vertical axis is labeled “Independent Thought” at the top and “Groupthink” at the bottom. The data points are evenly distributed inside a bell curve shape, with the peak of the hump at Independent Thought and between Left and Right, and the wide bottom of the bell spanning the whole Left-Right axis at maximum Groupthink.
Data points near the top of the bell (Independent-Center) labeled ‘“Un-intentional moderates” (from Paul Graham’s The Two Kinds of Moderate)’. [Original image uses double quotes around the term Un-intentional moderates and single quotes around the title of Paul Graham’s shitpost.]
Data points at the bottom center of the bell (Groupthink-Center) labeled “Intentional moderates”.
In the bottom corner a watermark crediting the image to “@shw1nm”.
I love the implication that being an independent thinker means agreeing with both the majority and other independent thinkers.
Hi, I’m an unimtentional moderate centrist! I don’t have an ideology, only views! My overton window is a peephole! Kamala is a far leftist! Trump is orange! People should stop treating politics like team sports and join the non team sports tribe like me! Political correctness gone mad! Let me tell you about Chesterton’s fence! Everyone’s sheeple except my flock! Say it with me: I’m an independent thinker!
I’m just glad all my friends are such smart rational independent thinkers that we’ve all independently come to the same conclusion that the status quo is perfect!
Did they try to add a bell curve in a place where it shouldn’t be te last image? Im fascinated by how little sense it makes, and by how bad the adding a groupthink axis is.
Finally, someone has solved the political compass. No-one will ever come up with a new political spectrum again. Soon we will have world peace
This is only the beginning. Check these out!
Chart 1
Left edge of the image labeled “Progressivism”, right edge labeled “Libertarianism”.
Above: A series of points on a horizontal line, each labeled with the name of a political ideology or system and a representative picture. Rightmost two of the dots are blue, others are red. From left to right:
- Monarchism (crown)
- Communism (red star with yellow hammer and sickle)
- Liberalism (Democratic Party Donkey) and Socialism (red flag)
- Nazism (swastika)
- Conservatism (Republican Party elephant) and Fascism (fasces)
- Anarchism (Circled letter A) and Democracy (no symbol)
- Unlabeled dot
- Republic (Statue of Liberty)
Below: Flags labeled with political ideologies and systems. Arrangement of flags notated as [X, Y, Flag, Label] where X represents approximate relative distance from left edge and Y represents approximate relative distance from bottom edge.
- 1, 5, China, Communism
- 2, 4, Soviet Union, Socialism
- 3, 3, Nazi Germany, Nazism
- 3, 1, Likely fictitious flag featuring a green field with white crescent and star and a black tilted swastika on the crescent, Islamo-Fascism
- 4, 2, War flag of the Italian Social Republic, Fascism
- 7, 5, United States, Republic
Chart 2
A square chart divided in quadrants and colored with a gradient, which is symmetric with respect to the origin. Each quadrant is subdivided into a 19x19 grid. Axes are labeled and the labels’ background colored as follows:
X-axis left: “Post-Modern Relativism/Religiosity” (blue), middle: “Strong Fact Based Inter-subjective Analysis” (yellow), right: ‘Pseudo-Objective “Science” Worship’ (blue).
Y-axis top: “Status Quo” (red), middle: “Swift, Pragmatic Reform for Social + Economic Justice” (yellow), bottom: “Regressive Revolutionary” (red).
Each quadrant it yellow at origin and purple near their respective outermost corners. The remaining corners are orange next to Y axis and green next to X axis.
Caption At the bottom “On all axes, to be closer to the middle is to trend towards the path to an ideal”
Labeled points by quadrant:
Top left:
- (-14, 19) Conservatism
- (-16, 17) Corporate Buddhism
- (-16, 8) New Age Populism
Top Right:
- (19, 19) Modern Fascism
- (18, 15) Objectivism
- (14, 14) Anarcho-Capitalism
- (2, 12) Liberalism
- (19, 11) New Atheism
- (0, 6) Mutualism
- (4, 5) Democratic Socialism
- (11, 3) Second-Wave Feminism
Bottom Left:
- (-4, -1) Anti-Work Populism
- (-14, -2) Third-Wave Feminism
- (-19, -16) Jihadism
- (-17, -19) Italian Fascism
Bottom Right:
- (1, -1) Post-Scarcity Anarchism
- (1, -2) True Communism
- (17, -7) Deweyite Progressivism
- (1, -11) Anarcho-Communism
- (19, -17) Nazism
- (18, -19) Marxism-Leninism
Chart 3
A blue question mark shape on white background. Image titled “Matt Boyle’s Question Mark Politics”. Ideologies and political figures are marked along the curve of the question mark, starting from the "upper end of the hook and towards the dot at the bottom:
- Communism
- Vladimir Lenin
- Socialism
- Bernie Sanders
- Liberalism
- Rand Paul
- Conservatism
- Ted Cruz
- Fascism
- Adolf Hitler
On the dot at the bottom of the question mark:
- Idiocy
- Donald Trump
Chart 4
An equilateral triangle formed from four smaller congruent equilateral triangles (AKA a Triforce shape) with political ideologies written in bubble-style labels arranged as follows:
- Top vertex: “Jihadists”
- Inside the top triangle: “Islamists”
- Inside the inverted central triangle: “Secular Liberals”
- Inside the bottom left triangle: “Regressive Left”
- Inside the bottom right triangle: “Conservative Right”
- Bottom left vertex: “Violent Left”
- Bottom right vertex: “Violent Right”
Written directly on the triangle edges without a bubble:
- Between Islamists and Secular Liberals: “Liberal Muslims”
- Left of Regressive Left: “Pluralists”
- Between Regressive Left and Secular Liberals: “Liberal Leftists”
- Between Secular Liberals and Conservative Right: “Conservative Liberals”
- Right of Conservative Right: “Nationalists”
- Below Regressive Left and right of Violent Left: “Antifa Fascists”
- Below Conservative Right and left of Violent Right: “Fascists”
Chart 5
X-axis goes from “SOCIALISM” on the left to “CORPORATISM” on the right. Y-axis goes from “LIBERTY” at the top to “TYRANNY” at the bottom. On the Y-axis lies a thick double arrow labeled “GOVERNMENT” and colored with a gradient from white at the top arrowhead labeled “LESS” to red on the bottom arrowhead labeled “MORE”, resembling a compass needle.
Near the top left and right corners of the diagram are labels “LEFT” and “RIGHT”, respectively.
Around the arrow’s shaft is a yellow circle of curved directional arrows, each pointing along the arc towards the bottom of the circle.
Dashed lines from the top of the diagram curve around the needle and yellow circle similarly to magnetic field lines, converge back towards the center below the compass, and end in downward pointing arrowheads.
Arranged around the yellow circle in terms of clock face hour hand positions:
- 1 o’clock: “INDEPENDENTS”
- 2 o’clock: “CLASSICAL CONSERVATIVES”
- 5 o’clock: “NEO-CONSERVATIVES”
- 7 o’clock: “PROGRESSIVES/NEO-LIBERALS”
- 10 o’clock: “CLASSICAL LIBERALS”
- 11 o’clock: “LIBERTARIANS”
The left half of the X-axis is labeled “LIBERALS” above and “DEMOCRATS” on the bottom and a blue donkey symbol next to the needle. The right half is similarly labeled “CONSERVATIVES” and “REPUBLICANS” with a red elephant symbol.
Above and below the X-axis are dashed horizontal lines. The area between the dashed lines is labeled “MODERATES”. The top dashed line is labeled “Libertarianism” with arrows pointing upwards and the bottom dashed line is labeled “Secular Moralism” with arrows pointing downwards.
The top left of the moderates area is labeled “JEFFERSONIAN”, top right is “JACKSONIAN”, bottom left is “WILSONIAN” and bottom right “HAMILTONIAN”.
The field lines converging in from the left/right sides of the compass towards the bottom pass by labels “POLITICALLY CORRECT”/“PIOUSLY CORRECT”, “ECONOMIC INTERVENTIONISM”/“MILITARY INTERVENTIONISM”, “COMMUNISM”/“THEOCRACY”, respectively. They meed in the middle and pass through “COLLECTIVISM”, “FASCISM” and “TOTALITARIANISM”.
Chart 6
Blue circle labeled “Patriarchy” partially covering a pink circle labeled “Matriarchy”. Left side represents “Gender Atheism”, right side “Sexuality Atheism”. Yellow arrow pointing from top left to bottom right labeled “Axis of Care”. Red arrow from bottom left to top right labeled “Axis of Knowledge” The intersection of the axes of Care and Knowledge is labeled “Market Economy”.
Left of the Patriarchy circle is “Men’s Rights Movement” and to the right of the circle is “Fourth-Wave Feminism”. Left of the Matriarchy circle is “Radical Feminism” and to the right “Liberal Feminism”.
Labels connected by small black arrows are arranged on the circles like so:
Near the bottom end of the Axis of Knowledge is “Cultural Marxism”, from which an arrow points along the axis to ‘“True” Anarchy’. Slightly further along the axis, close to the overlapping edge of the blue circle is “Soft Sciences” from which arrows point in two directions. The first one points towards the arrowhead at the bottom end of Axis of Care. On the arrowhead is “Welfare State”, which leads to “Left Totalitarianism” at the tip of the arrow, then to “Marxism-Leninism” to the left and back to Welfare State.
The second path from Soft sciences is three consecutive arrows following the edge of the Patriarchy circle to “Positivist Materialism” at the tip of the Axis of Knowledge arrow, which leads to “Real Anarchy” on the arrowhead. Between Market Economy and Real Anarchy on the Axis of Knowledge is “Hard Sciences”, from which another three arrow chain along the covered edge of Matriarchy circle leads to Cultural Marxism.
Opposite to Real Anarchy, on the Patriarchy side of Axis of Care is “Theocracy”, which leads backwards on the Axis to “Right Totalitarianism”, to “Austrian School” on the right, and again through Positivist Materialism to Real Anarchy.
Transcriptions for the last two will be in follow-up reply. I’m hitting the character limit.
holy shit some of these are beyond cursed
LOL it’s almost as if the prerequisite to making a political compass is to be completely fucked in the head
What’s almost causing me to spiral is the commonality of socialism and communism being portrayed as on the road to monarchism. I’m not spiralling because I very quickly realise that these are all made by idiots, and/or that what they are focusing on is the perception of socialism and communism as being authoritarian.
That and “antifa fascists” in chart 4. AKA the Scists. lol
yeah the “antifa fascists” absolutely sent me
These people really want to complicate things when it’s really quite simple. Let me demonstrate with an elegant diagram.
...
yes i spent an hour making this
Chart 7
“THE REAL POLITICAL SPECTRUM”
On the left “SERVANTS OF THE AEONS”, humanoid energy beings among space nebulae. On the right “SLAVES OF THE ARCHONS”, reptilian humanoids.
The spectrum from left to right, with symbols in parentheses:
- Gnosis(Ringed cross): Release from the mortal coil renders politics useless. All achieve oneness with the Monad and harmony is restored to the cosmos. See: The Nag Hammadi Library
- Erisianism (chaos star): Total freedom. Management of affairs is unnecessary as universally well aligned chakras promote benevolent behaviour from all. See: Atlantis
- Syndicalism (five-pointed star): Public participation in institutions is combined with no state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: The Pirate Kingdom of Libertalia
- Libertarianism (Gadsden rattlesnake): Public oversight of institutions is combined with a limited state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: Early United States
- Republicanism (classical colonnade): Influence of industry and finance on the state is controlled by a constitution and a system of check and balances. See: Early United States
- Corporatocracy (dollar sign): State and industry form a de-facto alliance. Resource allocation subject to secret policy favouring the elite. See: The United States, European Union
- Communism (hammer and sickle): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation subject to central policy. See: Soviet Russia, North Korea
- Fascism (swastika): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation and reproduction subject to central policy. Eugenics in effect. See: Nazi Germany.
- Monarchism (crown): All resources under the authority of hereditary elite. Elite practices eugenics in its own ranks. Underclass viewed as different species. See*: Feudal Europe*
- Illuminism (eye of providence): Elite and underclass now form two distinct species. All world’s resources controlled by the elite. All activities subject to central policy. See: Brave New World, Nineteen-Eighty Four
Chart 8
A conventional two-axis (Left/Right, Authoritarian/Libertarian) political compass chart. Authoritarian left, authoritarian right, and libertarian right all represented by a spooky profile portrait of Max Stirner smoking a cigar. Libertarian Left quadrant contains a smaller image of the diagram itself, which contains still smaller image of the diagram itself, except the libertarian left quadrant says “decentralized chomskian anarcho-molotov-cocktailism” in unreadably small type.
I feel I’ve lost enough sanity transcribing these that I’m almost ready to make a political compass chart myself.
none of these are complete without posadism
Charts 5 and 7 in particular are giving Pyramid Power and/or Flat Earth.
So “unintentional moderates” are those that both choose deliberately to believe in centrist political ideology and to participate in groupthink?
It is some Paul Graham thing apparently, i have not read that blog post.
So far I’ve only read Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality, but can say it is an excellent place to start.
beware the man of one book
“Drink deep, or taste not the fanfiction spring”
“Only if he’s read it 10000 times.” -Bruce Lee
OpenNutrition –
a datasetan LLM that allows you to play “vibe nutritionist”https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43569190
First response is good quality:
This is not a dataset. This is an insult to the very idea of data. This is the most anti-scientific post I have ever seen voted to the top of HN. Truth about the world is not derived from three LLMs stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat.
Dang… The author realized an actual problem / inconvenience people had, and somehow went on to think “I know! I’ll have a random nonsense generator make up the data! That’s a great solution!”
My University Keeps Sending Me Stupid Emails About AI, a continuing series:
From the email:
The debate will be chaired by Michael Pike. Speaking for the motion are Prof. Gregory O’Hare (TCD), Maeve Hynes, Prof. Gary Boyd and Chatgpt assisted by Student Curator Ruan McCabe, all UCD. Speaking against the motion are David Capener (UU), Lucy O’Connell, Peter Cody and Meabh O’Leary, all UCD.
Artificial Intelligence is the future of climate resilient design in the same way that asian pseudo-medicinal ED treatments are the future of the white rhinoceros.
Notwithstanding the subject matter, I feel like I’ve always gotten limited value from these Oxford-style university debates. KQED used to run a series called Intelligence Squared US that crammed it into an hour, and I shudder to think what that’s become in the era of Trump and AI. It seems like a format that was developed to be the intellectual equivalent of intramural sports, complete with a form of scoring. But that contrivance renders it devoid of nuance, and also means it can be used to platform and launder ugly bullshit, since each side has to be strictly pro- or anti-whatever.
Really, it strikes me as a forerunner of the false certainty and point-scoring inherent in Twitter-style short-form discourse. In some ways, the format was unconsciously pared down and plopped online, without any sort of inquiry into its weaknesses. I’d be interested to know if anyone feels any different.
I have no knowledge or insight on the topic, but I used to get recommendations for “intelligence squared” videos on YouTube and I always thought it was a terrible, self-aggrandizing title for a series or event. Smart People Taking About Smart Things.
Intelligence Time Cubed now, that’s the real deal.
Intelligence2 didn’t seem half bad when Robert Anton Wilson was the one talking about it way back when, in retrospect all the libertarianism was a real time bomb.
I did two Intelligence Squared debates in the UK. The best bit was I got paid. The second best was the people running it were actually very nice and quite competent. Recommend to all.
As for content, the first one featured the guy behind Liberland, so lol
Competitive forensics is an intellectual exercise, not a way of addressing or solving social problems. It’s like translating Cæsar’s Commentaries — you’re not likely or expected to have any new and valuable insights that previous translators missed, but it builds and demonstrates certain kinds of abilities and readiness.
Seeing it any other way, using it any other way, is a conceptual error with the usual outcomes.
Why even involve ChatGPT? The “against” side should have been allowed to bring a speak 'n spell.
a journalist wants to ask me about Urbit. Should I install Urbit so I can at least say I’ve tried it and can speak authoritatively?
[ ] no
[ ] hell no
[ ] jesus h. christ no whyi just had a 1.5 hour half-hour chat with another journalist about the Fucking Rationalists
i have a call with a third one scheduled for tomorrow
i have followed these fucks for 15 years in detail and i still don’t know how to properly explain them to our lovely pivot-to-ai readers
at least it’ll be these suckers’ job to do the explaining while i rant
fuck. it’s rationalist season
@dgerard @BlueMonday1984 I’ve been following them for 35 years—hell, I hung out with Curtis Yarvin on usenet in the early 90s, visited him and fondled his lizard once in '93—and the only way I can explain them is that they’re larping a bad post-cyberpunk novel and aren’t entirely clear on the whole concept of “fiction”.
fondled his lizard
I’m choosing to interpret that in the most euphemistically way possible
@gerikson I mean, I *literally* fondled his lizard: it was about two feet long, green, and quite bad-tempered. (He and his student house had a room full of iguanas and snakes and suchlike. And a kitchen fridge door full of designer phenylethylamine hallucinogens. Or at least test tubes with labels identifying them as such. It was an eye-opening experience …
Sheesh. Everyone knows you keep the phenethylamines inside the fridge proper, not on the door, where the temperature is less stable. (Source: the Shulgins’ Kitchen Procedures I Have Known And Loved.)
@blakestacey I believe there was rapid turnover. (PIHKAL was cited as the cookbook being used. This was in 1993, so it was pretty new …)
now you’ve got me thinking if storage in fridge is necessary at all, if these are salts. worst thing that can reasonably happen is that salt picks up some water from the air, on top of water condensing on sample when vial was opened while still cold. freebase would probably be air-sensitive, but for compounds that are known sensitive i’d put them under argon/nitrogen, tape vial shut (with normal electrical tape, not parafilm) and store in freezer instead. sigma lists storage temperature for MDMA analytical standard (weak solution of freebase in methanol) as -20C, but some of this might be legal cover with excess requirements for cases where you’d have to be absolutely sure that analytical standard didn’t decompose (like in evidence in drug cases)
Curtis Yarvin being into lizards is the most endearing thing I’ve ever heard about him
I also legitimately can’t tell the degree to which they don’t understand they’re LARPing a dystopia versus how much they completely understand that and that’s why it’s gonna be so awesome for them once they make fetch happen.
@YourNetworkIsHaunted It’s probably a mixture: some of them understand the relationship between beliefs and reality, a whole bunch of others are LARPing away (and we’d all be better off if they signed up to play EVE Online instead), there are probably some today who look at Yarvin and see a ladder to power and wealth, and everything in between.
You can’t ascribe unity of understanding and intention to any group of n > 1 humans.
As a fellow Usenet junkie from way back, now I’m curious which newsgroups Yarvin hung out in.
@TinyTimmyTokyo alt.peeves, alt.tasteless, probably most of the comp.* hierarchy, not sure where else.
“imagine a perfectly spherical chud of uniform duncity…”
“i have followed these fucks for 15 years in detail and i still don’t know how to properly explain them to our lovely pivot-to-ai readers”
Personally, focusing on their whacko beliefs around the Impending AI Apocalypsetm seems like a good place to start.
“Yudkowsky sincerely believes the following. You’ll recognise it because Altman uses it as marketing buzzwords.”
“This Is What Yudkowsky Actually Believes” seems like a subtitle that would get heavy use in a future episode of South Park about Cartman dropping out after one semester at community college.
If South Park ever does get around to TESCREAL, I imagine Parker and Stone would have a goddamn field day with them.
No idea where they would land on what to mock and what to take seriously from this whole mess.
Don’t know what they’re up to these days but last time I checked I had them pegged as enlightened centrists whose style of satire is having strong beliefs about stuff is cringe more than it is ever having to say anything of even accidental substance about said things.
We need something like Bare-faced Messiah, but with fedoras. People will stick with a bizzare, complex story with lots of moving parts as long as it’s told well.
Check out the unhinged classism from one of the lesser figures who’s popped up here from time-to-time (with an added bonus shout-out to Ayn Rand further down the thread)
Jesus, what a fuck. Having spent time in both SF and NYC my guess is that this shithead’s SF pedestrian experience is getting in and out of ubers and the treadmills at equinox. That, and he is probably outwardly disdainful, which doesn’t go over well in NYC.
Wow, that’s some venomously hateful text.
new york city truly is a first and fourth word city overlayed atop each other
Jesus Christ learn what words mean. Even if you use “Third World” to mean “poor countries”, fourth world is not a thing and people living in extreme poverty in developing countries are in fact not better off than non Wall Street New Yorkers.
well ackthscthually after 9/11, the whole world got isekai’d where everyone exists in a game-like status point system. The 1st world is reserved for the top rank of humans, the n+1th world is worse than the nth world. IQ points = your int stat. This is just how it is, sorry
It’s easy to read it as first and fourth “world” but it’s actually first and fourth “word”. But the first and fourth word of what? Mein Kampf? The 18 words?
Assuming the common use of third world to mean “poor countries”, then I suppose a “fourth world” country would be one that is poor and *also *not really a functional state, perhaps with some armed conflict going on.
But to describe NYC as that? Nonsense.
Talk about annoyingly vague. I read the whole thing and he never actually says what his problem is. I guess like so much classism I’m supposed to fill in the blank or something.
If he got into specifics people might think “Damn, I’ve never had that kind of experience with working-class New Yorkers. What gives?” and he might have to consider let alone admit that he was an asshole to someone.
Wow, this wrong and unfair but it’s also just stupid. Especially this:
The homeless theory of cities:
SF is idealistic and trusting because the homeless are mostly peaceful addicts commiting slow suicide
NYC is ruthless and status-obsessed because the homeless are aggressive and confrontational
deleted by creator
if you, like me, were wondering what the point of that 25 hour non-filibuster filibuster by Booker was, here’s one potential answer.
Booker held a filibuster that wasn’t a filibuster - and he scheduled it to let him avoid attending his own committee’s probe of his Big Tech pals. […] Oh and Booker and Dems provided unanimous consent to advance a Trump nominee right after Booker’s speech.
Sorry im going to go offtrack here again, I mentioned it on bsky, and got no traction (not odd, as I think nobody cares about Booker his filibuster thing (stick a pin in that)), but I have some weird leading into conspiratorial questions about the whole thing.
First I heard about this thing is when people said it had gotten 200m likes on tiktok. Which seemed a bit high so I checked, and saw articles say it had gotten 300m. This seems impossibly high. For example, the global K-pop phenomenon ‘Gangam style’ has gotten 5.5B views and 30M likes in 12 years. I have a hard time believing that in 24hs this centrist political debate thing (which are not popular) has gotten 350m (the highest count I saw on a news site) likes.
Which makes me wonder a lot more if tiktok has simply given up on properly counting likes and just is winging it. Esp for larger events. Could be that people just like things instinctively on tiktok (I did check if you could like a thing multiple times, but nope, one account one like it seems). I found the whole thing weird.
That is didn’t do jack shit (apart from giving people hopium about Booker, while it seemingly being his way of avoiding responsibilities) is the cherry on top.
I’m noticing my confusion.It is fucking weird.not odd, as I think nobody cares about Booker his filibuster thing (stick a pin in that)
I agree, or at least anyone thinking critically. I think that anyone would agree that the speech was, as you said, hopium. He’s giving braindead dem voters what they want: a nice, tall, liberal man who looks like he is resisting the reds. Expect him to run for the democratic nomination in 2028, assuming the trump presidency lets an election happen.
RE: view counts. Most charitably, maybe it’s 300m views aggregated across different sources. Neutrally, I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if tiktok, or any other social media platform was manipulating view counts. Least charitably, someone probably asked an LLM for the view counts and just took the answer because people are fucking stupid
No it was 350m likes, not views. That is why im so confused. even at an high rate of 1 in 10 people liking it, it is just so large I’m confused.
“How about a source senator?” another source on hopium, not noticing that in no world do those numbers align properly. “since amassed over 700,000 followers. … It garnered over 350 million likes, with over 150,000 active viewers at the tail end …”
Are you telling me it’s improbable that the equivalent of every single American and then some liked that video?
I mentioned this on bsky and somebody went ‘well it was very popular all over the world’, and I, the weird european who focuses too much on the US politics had not even heard of it. So I just had a few alarm bells going off. But yeah, lets say 1 in 5 people like it, that is a casual 1.7 billion viewers. Large part of the worlds population joined in.
As a Canadian I knew it was happening, but I never tuned in or anything like that.
OH. so two things.
- I obviously misread your comment, as my brain filtered “likes” into “views” as I guess it subconsciously thought that was more plausible.
- I believe on tiktok live specifically, you can like something multiple times, and it is counted. I occasionally watch a stream that floats at about 100 viewers, and sometimes this hits 100k likes over the course of two hours. So to hit 350m likes over the course of 25 hours, you might need like 280 viewers on average, which seems doable.*
*Please fact check this arithmetic. I have run out of motivation, in general
Edit #100: I jumped on said stream to see how it was going. Floating around 100, but hitting maybe 10k likes per hour. Apparently the booker stream hit 170k viewers at the tail end. 350m likes might actually be a little low, the dems need to up their spend on tiktok boosting
That would explain a lot and would remove all my confusion about it. (also makes the number useless and lol at everybody running with it even more then).
oh, cool, I didn’t think I’d learn a new way to hate the “likes” clusterfuck that plagues the internet, but here we are!
My favorite meme message board on the internet keeps putting out bangers, but this one is extra good and relevant http://www.b3ta.com/board/11416629
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.
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.
I didn’t mean I expected it to be pro-crypto, just a little surprised it actually namedropped NFTs and blockchain at all.
An AI faceswapper/nudifier’s database got leaked thanks to its nonexistent security - unsurprisingly, its loaded with explicit images, including massive amounts child porn and almost certainly some revenge porn.
WIRED tried reaching out to the company behind the “imagery”, but they nuked everything and closed their doors in response.
Linking this article just for the Palantir CEO quote at the end https://www.wired.com/story/doge-hackathon-irs-data-palantir/
“We love disruption and whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said in a February earnings call. “Disruption at the end of the day exposes things that aren’t working. There will be ups and downs. This is a revolution, some people are going to get their heads cut off.”
This is a revolution, some people are going to get their heads cut off
Holy smokes
there was a reddit ama with an ukrainian dude who was in charge of procurement of certain drones for ukrainian army. among these were uavs from anduril, and uaf decided not to buy them, chiefly because these drones don’t work and cost something like 20-50x more than equivalent ukrainian designs that do work. the reason why they don’t work is russian jamming, about which anduril people presumably were informed, yet somehow they still were complete assholes (to foreigners only) through entire process. which also means that ukrainian elint captured how russian jamming works, gave that data to anduril who proceeded to do fuck all with it, possibly leaking this intel in some signal chat
the reason why these were on the table to begin with is that (part of) american weapons aid is provided in form of money to be spent at american manufacturers, it’s not pallets of cash like fox news would like you to believe. (private donations to places like united24 do work this way, but also for example denmark does provide money with no strings attached, at least not these). (yea i’m effectiving my weaponized altruism, cranking up these numbers of dead russians per thousand euros). reasons for that are slight wage discrepancy between poltava and berkeley, compounded by scale (how many drones does anduril make per year, 20? ukrainians make low millions, probably with thousands to hundreds of thousands per type). most of costs in drone development is driven by software. doesn’t help that thiel’s people are swamped in vc money, therefore they don’t have to work efficiently, neither have their drones, or even they don’t need to work at all. ukrainians don’t have the luxury to blow millions into ai swarming that doesn’t work and instead put that effort into signal processing to avoid jamming, which does work, which they can check pretty quickly too.
this is the disruption they’re cooking. invest in eastern europe or something
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 Peter Thiel could be one of those who are going to lose their head in that revolution…
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 This has always been how he, and Palantir, think about the world. It’s a terrible company, full of terrible people, selling horrifying products to terrible countries and companies.
@sailor_sega_saturn getting this in now: “I never thought *my* hed would get cut off,” sobs CEO of Cuttin’ Off Heds, Inc.
Maximilien Robespierre
I’ve already depicted you as the virgin Robespierre… and that’s the limit of my knowledge wrt figures in the french revolution.
@bitofhope Indeed.
@sailor_sega_saturn I hate how these death cult douchebros appropriate Tolkien to name their companies selling fascism in bulk to the government.
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 At least one of the DOGE team has a recent criminal past, which should, in a sensible world, bar him from accessing such data: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-graduated-from-the-com/
Thats the same place the 764 people came out of.
Of course it’s the dweebiest looking one.
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their thesis might be right, their guess as to the subjects of the sentence however…
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 we should make sure he is at the head of the line…
@hub @sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 Is it too early for head jokes?
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 He is a Nazi with lots of cash.
@sailor_sega_saturn Yeah, let’s start right with those who say such things!
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 he’s not wrong about that
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@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984
Better them than us.
NaNoWriMo? Na, No Mo’. Does this have anything to do with their bungled AI policy? Maybe, maybe not, but hey, the news article that I saw this announcement in thought that it was pertinent to mention.
Why does NaNoWriMo need a nonprofit anyway? What’s next, No Nut November LLC?
As funny as that is, I am sure that there are nonprofits that are aiming to stop fapping.
There’s a fucking for profit that does this and it’s used by the god damn USA Speaker of the House so that his son can monitor his fondling
I am familiar. Not a problem!
however they are exactly canceled out by nonprofits aiming to promote fapping
the Effective Onanism movement
Refractorive Altruism
I am fairly certain that their stupid AI stance at least played a role. I’m part of a largish writing community, where at least several hundred people did NaNo each year, a good part of them donated too. Last year, no one partook, instead we did our own internal thing.
If this happened across other communities too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it did, they must have felt it financially.
I’ll believe it! I didn’t want to make that claim since I had no evidence.
considering their endless history of scandal, good riddance
Not dating your press releases on your own site is a choice. (Lot more places do this and it is driving me slowly mad) So, did they drop this yday? Some weird schrodingers april fools joke deflection attempt?
Their dumb contraction should have doomed the project from the start…
It is a CIA psyop to prevent revolutionary thought from arising in written media, in that it’s a self-inflicted PIP that makes you feel inadequate in your creative writing ability. CIA funding (obviously funneled through NGOs via CIA front USAID) is how it’s survived so long with such a stupid name. Of course, now that government spending on the CIA is going down, so is NaNoWriMo. All that’s left is for it to be supplanted by some benevolent Chinese competitor that people will say steals your data, or something.
/s /s /s
[This is what tankies actually believe!!2!one!!!]
I demand you prove your assertion! preferably using wallspaghetti and alphabet soup, of course. so’s I know it’s totes legit and original!
(/s ofc, and link too (incase anyone didn’t see that))
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.)
