this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 20th September 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 day ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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. Apologies for not getting the previous one up - my old laptop died)

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[–] nfultz@awful.systems 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Unexpected sneer in the JSI Chart of the week:

Raising interest rates will only serve to further weaken an economy that is being constrained by high energy costs, and everything that flows off energy, which is just about everything. The Fed could raise its lending rate to 10% and that will do nothing to open the Strait and bring down oil. The facts aren't wrong in this matter - the diagnosis of the problem is.

This entire predicament is almost as implausible as a couple of insolvent AI companies threatening to wreck humanity, but then 'volunteering' to slow down development in order to save humanity, provided that the govt steps in and gives them a bailout, disguised as regulation. I wonder if there are any vintage 'Too big to fail' t-shirts floating around on ebay.

Fun times!!

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 2 points 1 hour ago

Is there a link?

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

P Thiel is visiting Nashville

https://luma.com/do6chah5

We're basically the Vatican of middle Tennessee.

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 4 points 9 hours ago

The [antichrist lectures]

or

[The antichrist] lectures

[–] lurker@awful.systems 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (4 children)

the next 72 hours are about to get interesting (if this is true)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

if trump says "rokos basilisk" on tape I'm done

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Nobody knows statistics like me. My uncle, great professor, great genes, he knew, frequentist is the worst. Now, Bayes-e-an statistics is the best, the biggest statistics. You gotta have priors! You have a belief, a tremendous belief, beautiful belief in your head. And then you learn, you get the data, and frankly its nasty and unfair, fake news.

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 11 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The lesswrong reactions are hilarious: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s76hbGpaMkhiNwbTX/matrice-jacobine-s-shortform?commentId=B2WSExeg8wfgDqZiM

One commenter realizes the truth, but is heavily downvoted:

For anyone who was at all unclear on the subject: He's not on your side. He's against you. He wants you to fail. Stop trying to fix him. AI safety is in the same situation as measles prevention, free trade, military readiness, or the prosecution of the remaining Epstein offenders. Trump & co. are against these things, and they're not going to be converted just because you tell them again how important these things are.

Sorry bud, if lesswrongers were capable of grasping this they wouldn't have fallen for FTX, or kept falling for Anthropic's half-hearted gestures of placation to doomer-cultists. And of course, many lesswrongers are genuinely very right wing and will thus rationalize justifications for the more centrist lesswrongers to suck up to Trump.

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

Another comment:

My knowledge of politics is nil, but <steelman about what if trump actually wasn't trump>

(emp mine)

[–] istewart@awful.systems 11 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

Do the AI doomers/Yuddites REALLY want their signature policy tied to one of the least competent, least popular presidents in history? I would be thinking very hard about this one if I were part of their crew. "You know who took p(doom) seriously? TRUMP!" is, ah, not a marketing coup, to put it mildly

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 2 points 1 hour ago

Well they think the world will end before the next election, so they have no other choice.

If only they had not told people to not cry wolf.

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It would be hilarious if the AI doomers actually did manage to get Trump to sign some of their ideas into action with executive orders, only for him to reverse course or fail in implementation details, and then a hard tide of anti-Trump sentiment in the next administration to totally undo them.

Sadly it looks like we will only get the more immediate humor of Trump going hard against them.

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

And unfortunately several democratic party luminaries getting the AI doom brainworms in response

[–] lurker@awful.systems 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

from the looks of it multiple Republicans are also going turncoat on AI and embracing the doom narrative so it’s slowly turning into Trump vs The World

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 3 points 8 hours ago

I wish the opposition did not have brain worms

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

They think this is their last chance to save the entire universe forever and ever amen and will take anything that does not lead to extinction and the conversion of the entire universe into something that does not experience happiness. Keep in mind these are the people who thought that the world could suddenly blow up from a new innovation in a lab in 2015 and had psychotic episodes on that basis.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 5 points 9 hours ago

@BioMan

Trump, who does not experience happiness, would love to convert the entire universe into his own property.

[–] lurker@awful.systems 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Trump could personally fly up and prevent a 100 kilometre long asteroid from falling on the Earth and I still wouldn’t give him a Nobel Prize

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 8 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 9 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

I hate hate hate that my niche internet morbid fascination from my college laptop in 2009 is now an oval office power struggle.

Quotes from the president of the united states in the last twelve hours:

"The only control or guardrails that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT"

"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers"

"Americanism, not effective altruism" (!!!!!!!!!!!!)

"AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX, no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA"

...I guess the Peter Thiel faction won.

Are we gearing up for a lepoard face moment from the cultist faction of the cultist / oligarch-technofedual-lord / grifter / authoritarian alliance?

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 4 points 6 hours ago

Letting normies who never learned to spot a mailing-list blowhard and a comment-section troll onto the Internet was a mistake.

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Are we gearing up for a lepoard face moment from the cultist faction of the cultist / oligarch-technofedual-lord / grifter / authoritarian alliance?

Nah, lesswrongers don't even have that level of introspection. Plus a lot of them are outright pro-oligarch-technofedual-lord, at least enough so that it outweighs their doomer-cultists allegiance.

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 8 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

I hate to turn this into a screenshot fest but i mean...

They're calling out effective altruism BY NAME from the white house. The president is still ranting about this. This is NEW.

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 7 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

This is hilarious. I didn't think it was possible, but maybe the lesswrongers and EAs will finally realize they are in a leopards-eating-face moment?

Or maybe they will double down? I.e. they conclude that if they were less woke maybe Trump wouldn't have turned on them? Haha.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 6 points 4 hours ago

doubling down is mandatory for acausal blackmail reasons

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Oh boy here we go

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Lol, I called it without even having to see it. Doubling down and blaming EAs for being too left even as the right curbstomps them. How does that boot taste?

Also, WTF does Eliezer even think "leftist" means?

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

And here come the brain worms:

'New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday there should be a "far greater response" from the federal government on "incredibly alarming" reports of out-of-control AI agents, referencing the possibility of the "end of humanity." '

This is going to be an amazing few months. Not in a good way. The factions in the US government taking sides in an angels on the head of a pin debate. All the warring brainworms of 2010 web forums making a nest on Capitol Hill.

[–] sansruse@awful.systems 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

at least lina khan had the right take. apologies for the xitter link: https://x.com/linamkhan/status/2099204390548639960

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago

I think I am yet to see her NOT having the right take on something.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 5 hours ago

To say that our system of governance is ill-equipped for the present moment seems like an understatement. Welcome to the turning of the jackpot death spiral, the orgy of technological self-destruction and institutions of sham democracy captured by capital, the bill for all the problems we never solved coming due with interest. Sucks to be us.

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 4 points 9 hours ago

And the white house is not just calling out the doomers, but the companies themselves doomtrolling over how dangerous their new stuff is and how omg its ROGUE!

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

"Democrat-polarized" is such a word choice. Like, ah yes, it is clearly the Democrat's fault the right goes batshit at even a hint global warming is real or at any sort of gun regulation or any social safety net expansion.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

You hardly need me to explain this, but the primary thing a conservative seeks to conserve is their own wealth and influence. Of course the deflation of the bubble begins Yud's conversion process

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 6 points 7 hours ago

I actually suspect he really does think he is above that and is unlikely to go down the right wing grifter rabbithole. The 'only i can save the world' fix is so much stronger than any other weaksauce dopamine he could get from that.

[–] lurker@awful.systems 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I mean that’s if Trump actually does it. He’s pretty good at ignoring what the public wants

[–] lurker@awful.systems 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Coxon (that Anthropic employee) Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon have all joined forces against AI

All I will say is please god let Anthropic’s bullshit backfire and have them pass Bernie’s bill to completely shut down all AI development it would be so fucking funny

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

They are going to try to, in rough order of ease and plausiblity:

  • provide a legal excuse for them to stop shoveling money into a furnace of training for exponentially diminishing returns that they can no longer pretend about
  • attain regulatory capture where their weirdos are in charge of everything
  • to thereby make open source AI illegal, only things that go through THEIR gated portals can be used
  • Maybe make ownership of the means of computation for ANY reason illegal so you cannot own anything and have to rent everything from them for any purpose because YOU MIGHT BE SUMMONING THE DEMON IN YOUR GARAGE!!!!!!oneoneoen its only a coincidence that this means you have to rent GPUs for games and rent datacenter space from oligarchs rather than buy them or do what you want on your own hardware
[–] BioMan@awful.systems 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Confirmed

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/14/google-deepmind-ai-warnings

The shape of the solution is simple: stop companies from allowing AI to self-improve into an uncontrollable level of intelligence. Treat compute, the main ingredient in AI training, like fissile material. Track it and restrict access to quantities large enough to improve AIs beyond known-safe levels. More specifically, the AI Futures Project’s “Plan A” is a credible starting proposal that limits AI harms while allowing fast AI progress to continue to benefit the world. We have real options for verifying compliance with international compute-restriction treaties, without trusting adversaries like China.

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