this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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SneerClub

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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As we don't have a top level post about this already (nor on reddit) I thought why not make one. Archive.is

Extremely likely the guy was a lesswronger, or at least radicalized by that sort of thinking.

But not much else seems to be known as far as I can tell. Corbin also posted about the HN reactions in the stubsack.

And remember, no fed posting.

Edit: looks like his house also got shot. Archive (after the speculation in this thread, makes you wonder if this was a follow up false flag, as the bottle didn't break last time).

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[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

So two thoughts:

  1. Per Saltman's comments the improvised incendiary bounced off the side of the house rather than breaking and spreading the gas on the house proper. Apparently if you want the bottle to break the way you intend you gotta really just whang that thing because glass bottles are sturdier than you'd think.

  2. One thing I find ironic about his referencing the New Yorker article on him was that part of my takeaway from that article was how mundane he is, individually. Like, he's a snake, but not in any way that isn't pretty standard once you start getting that level of wealth and power. He credibly pretended to be a proper AI cultist for the critihype, and then as the rubber started hitting the road he pivoted towards the direction that gave him and the company more money, even if it meant sacrificing the values that it turns out a lot of other people really cared about (however dumb I might think they are). That's shitty, but it's shitty in the most boring way that so many things are in the rot economy, and it's not like even if they had managed to kill Altman himself there wouldn't be another bunch of enterprising sociopaths ready to move into the same position. That profile is one of the strongest pieces of evidence why even if you are a hardcore AI doom cultist you shouldn't focus your ire on the man himself, because he's just not that special.

[–] Madison420@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

A bit of broken spark plug in the bottle makes them break much easier.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Waterballoon molotovs.

And indeed on nr 2. Even sillier is of course that the AI doom people thought they could control people like this.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago

Waterballoon molotovs.

Gasoline in a waterballoon is an extremely bad idea.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 4 points 15 hours ago

viton balloons are in. not sure who sells them. also wasn't one of their imagined risks that robot god will manipulate people for robot god goals? they sorta should be primed to that