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.)

  • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    But anyways - why is there a vacuum in the jar? To preserve the jam? Isn’t jam a preserve? Like, I thought the whole raison d’etre of jam was as a way to make fruit keep, unrefrigerated, through the winter? Why must we preserve the preserve? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

    this is “fucking magnets, how do they work” translated to rationalist, except that explaining magnets involves quantum mechanics and explaining jam jars involves high school physics (saturated vapor pressure vs temperature. that might be before high school). i also like how one linked explanation sits near two pieces of slop and is wrong

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      The comments section really is incredible, the level of ignorance about basic kitchen things, which since it’s womanly knowledge instead of dyson spheres they seem to be completely incurious about …

      • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
        10·
        2 days ago

        their practical skills are weak, and they won’t survive the winter (because they don’t know how to make jam)

        but frame the same physics in terms of what makes steam turbine spin, and they’ll pretend to get it but won’t apply it anywhere else. the longer you look the worse it gets. it’s like they have never watched how it’s made as kids

        • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
          7·
          23 hours ago

          From the post linked therein:

          There’s this thing Nate and Eliezer do where they proclaim some extremely nonobvious take about alignment, say it in the same tone they would use to declare that grass is green, and don’t really explain it.

          Gambling? In this establishment?!

          Nate thinks in a different ontology from everyone, and often communicates using weird analogies

          This feels like a misuse of the word ontology, but what do I know?

          when Nate thinks you don’t understand something or have a mistaken approach, he gets visibly distressed and sad. I think this conditioned us to express less disagreement with him. I have a bunch of disagreements from his world model, and could probably be convinced to his position on like 1/3 of them, but I’m too afraid to bring them all up and if I did he’d probably stop talking to me out of despair anyway.

          Wow, that’s a bad research supervisor.

          The structure where we would talk to Nate 4h/day for one out of every ~6 weeks was pretty bad for feedback loops. A short meeting every week would have been better, but Nate said this would be more costly for him.

          Wow, that’s a bad research supervisor.

          (Every functional research group I’ve been part of has had weekly staff meetings. Even the undergrads were encouraged to participate and got at least that much talking time with the professor.)

          In my frustration at the lack of concrete problems I asked Nate what research he would approve of outside of the main direction. We thought of two ideas […] I worked on these on and off for a few months without much progress, then went back to Nate to ask for advice. Nate clarified that he was not actually very excited about these directions himself, and it was more like “I don’t see the relevance here, but if you feel excited by these, I could see this not being totally useless”.

          Wow, that’s a bad research supervisor.

        • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
          9·
          1 day ago

          D: Not only does this community have a missing stair, but they’re all explaining to each other how to avoid the missing stair, and the missing stair is in the chat replying to comments?!

        • maol@awful.systemsEnglish
          8·
          1 day ago

          So much debate about whether his employer was diligent enough at tyre-pumping when the obvious solution is “pump your own tyres yourself, you buffoon”

        • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
          11·
          1 day ago

          What The Shit

          I’ve been dating Nate for two years (tho wanna clarify we are not doing marriage-kids and we’re both actively looking for more serious other partners).

          Nate is profoundly wonderful in many ways, like often surprises me in new ways of wonderfulness, and has raised my standards in partners. He’s deeply caring, attentive, competent, hilarious, and of course brilliant.

          […]

          Iirc he’s explicitly said he doesn’t respect my thinking (edit: he clarifies he respects it in some areas but not others)

          The way these people are larping conflict resolution is so exhausting aaaaaaa please can you just do normal abuse

          • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
            4·
            23 hours ago

            From elsewhere in the comments:

            … I am constantly aware that having an angry outburst is massively socially unacceptable, to the point where if I let such things happen regularly I would lose my job / my standing in the community / all my friends / everyone close to me. This creates an extremely strong incentive for me to self-regulate at least my outward reactions, even when it’s really hard. But because Nate is so high-status, he is allowed to make such outbursts without being faced with losing his job, his standing in the community, or his friends. This means he is insufficiently incentivized to self-regulate, and thus has been unable to learn.

            High-status? Why?!! Jesus H. Fuck, I hope that if anyone ever gives me a get-out-of-social-consequences-free card, it’s for a better reason than my blogging.