Want to wade into the snowy 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.)
WTF is this garbage in the Graurdain? "Let's assume!" is a terrible premise for even an opinion column to begin with, but "let's assume Musk is right and AI could allow us all to not work" is... bananas for the Guardian to publish. Even before considering that the author's bio says he's a business owner of a technology and financial management services company.
The article's entire premise is Musk saying some random shit. Remember how Musk said that he would land a man on Mars in 10 years 13 years ago? Honestly, I am incensed that people like Musk and Trump can just say shit and many people will just accept it. I can no longer tolerate it.
He says this after mentioning UBI. He really doesn't want to confront the unfortunate fact that UBI is entirely a political issue. Whatever magical beliefs one may have about how AI can create wealth, the question of how to distribute it is a social arrangement. What exactly stops the wealthy from consolidating all that wealth for themselves? The goodness of their hearts? Or is it political pushback (and violence in the bad old days), as demonstrated in every single example we have in history?
I'd say the problem is even worse now. In previous eras, some wealthy people funded libraries and parks. Nowadays we see them donate to weirdo rationalist nonsense that is completely disconnected from reality.
This is followed by four whole paragraphs about how the office sucks and wouldn't it be wonderful if AI got rid of all that. Guess what, we have remote work already! Remember how, during COVID, many software engineering jobs went fully remote, and it turned out that the work was perfectly doable and the workers' lives improved? But then there were so many puff pieces by managers about the wonderful environment of the office, and back to the office they went. Don't worry, when the magical AI is here, they'll change their minds.
Yes, there are "mindless, stupid, inane things" like chores that are unavoidable. There are also other mindless, stupid, inane things that are entirely avoidable but exist anyway because some people base their entire lives around number go up.
This isnt the only thing, the man made so many promises that were lies, or didnt work out it is almost amazing people give him the benefit of the doubt. But people have to or the economy might crash (which seems more and more inevitable now, as a fantasist related crash cant be avoided (and it is worse, if you have seen Andreessen latest weird interview it is clear Trump and Musk are not the only mental voids with a lot of money, so they might be all like that)).
The Blindsight vampires are here already.
@Soyweiser The irony is that if Musk was serious about landing a man on Mars by 2022, he had Falcon Heavy flying in 2017 and Crew Dragon flying with crew in 2020. The amount he's spent on Starship would have covered several fully-expended FH launches to Mars transfer orbit and development of a long duration crew module. We know how to soft-land ~1-2 tons on Mars.
… What, you wanted him to bring the astronauts *back* afterwards? Are you some kind of Commie?
(But my point stands.)