Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 28th September 2025 - awful.systems

Man, knowing nothing else about your coworker, they sound like a completely joyless person. Coming up with fake titles for things is like, such a high fun-to-effort ratio. “Creativity and the essence of Human Experience” by Chat GPT. Boom, there’s one. “Cooking With Olive Oil” by Sam Altman. “IQ184” by Harukiezer Murakowsky. This is so fun and easy that it’s basically hack outside of situations where it is solicited.

God, we had so much fun doing this at my uni when creating an example DB table for an exam (only it was fake song/band combinations). Are you sure your coworker isn't a robot themselves?

Who's left to do actual work? Who would start a new project that depends on these institutions? Does ruby just die now?

Also:

When the Advanced Custom Fields plugin was stolen by WordPress, DHH said “This is totally crazy. Like if the operators of rubygems dot org just decided to expropriate the official Rails gems, hand over control to a new team, and lock the core team out of it. We’re in uncharted and dangerous territory for open source now. What a sad sight."

lol

Today’s related news: the tailwind css guy is a big fan of dhh and the rubygems takeover.

https://bsky.app/profile/jaredwhite.indieweb.social.ap.brid.gy/post/3lzofv4wi4yz2

I miss the days when being publicly fashy was considered poor pr, but on the other hand it does make it a lot easier to avoid their companies and products.

Tailwind is pointless, incidentally.

I have no idea about Ruby or the politics behind the scenes, but I do know who DHH is and so it seems like literally none of this would've happened if not for point 2. on the list?? Just like, don't platform the rancid toxic cesspit of a man and you're fine??

“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life”

This quote is just... something.

Is the plan to literally create 8 billion podcasts in the near future? This company doesn't think that might be a tad excessive?

The Ai bubble has taught me that the luddites are really misunderstood.

The Luddites were a 19th century guerrilla movement that smashed textile machines, burned factories and threatened their owners. But they were not motivated by a fear of technology [...] the luddites [...] were engaged in the most science-fictional exercise imaginable – asking not what a technology does, but who it does it to and who it does it for. The Luddites, you see, were skilled weavers whose intense physical labor produced the textiles that clothed the nation. The difficulty of their trade – both in terms of esoteric knowledge and physical prowess – allowed them to command high wages and good working conditions.

All that was threatened by the advent of textile machines, which produced more fabric in less time, and required less skill. The owners of textile factories bought these machines with profits derived from the weavers' labor, and then used those machines to grind down the weavers. Their hours got longer, their pay got shorter, and many of them were maimed or killed by the new machines.

Weaving engines are ingenious and delightful machines. The Luddites had no beef with the machines – their cause was the social relations that governed those machines. By painting Luddites as mere technophobes, we strip ourselves of the ability to learn from history. The lesson of the Industrial Revolution is that merely asking what a machine does and not who it does it for and to can lead to literal genocide.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/04/general-ludd/

crikey. I assume the CV is in good order and kept updated on the job sites just to see what comes in.

You would hope that, if they take their job seriously, the managers who predict AI mooning, that they also write predictions for the other situations. And not just the best case scenarios.

take care and step carefully. there's a moment where the stress from working for a company with goals that counter your personal ethics is going to be hard to bear, and the worst thing you can do then is to change your value system to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

TIL about Omarchy.

Of course it uses Hyprland. Of course the demo video on the website shows using Grok in it.

Still can't believe that choosing a Linux distribution now involves decision-making factors like "what's their take on fascism". But I guess the real problem is that such questions weren't asked for way too long before.

why the hell are they sponsoring omarchy
how is a customized hyprland config "helping the open web"

Damn, I was kinda hoping the Ladybird guy wouldn't turn out awful but nah, can't have shit in IT.

Red site's having a normal one about it

I mean, of course they are. Perfect culture fit, both projects.

Doubt that is legal, but yeah good luck suing Thiel over an event like this and keeping a job. Stuff is so fucked. Remember when hackers were proud to leak this stuff, like how people worked together to go after scientology.

Ted Chiang rules.

My name is Rocco Pa'perclip Basilico Yudkowski Way...

Okay, let's see what the dumbshits are trying to sell this time

(This took longer than I'd liked, because copy-paste is pretty laggy on Cloudflare's shit-ass page)

Built for the rise of agents and machines, NET Dollar will enable seamless, automated transactions without human intervention.

"Agents" are automatic data breach machines, letting them repeat that time they stole vibe-coders' crypto on a larger scale is a terrible idea

The rise of autonomous agents and connected devices is creating a new economic paradigm

Autonomous agents don't exist, and the only "new economic paradigm" being made is one where tech is completely unmoored from reality

These systems need a reliable medium of exchange that can handle high-frequency, automated transactions without human intervention.

See my previous point

Rules, triggers, and workflows can be embedded directly into payments, making them smarter and adaptable.

Went so well for Wolf Game, didn't it?

NET Dollar will work across networks and ecosystems, enabling frictionless, global commerce.

And by "frictionless, global commerce", I presume they mean "sanctions evasion and ransomware"

Every coin will be fully collateralized by a U.S. dollar, ensuring transparency, reliability, and price stability.

Just like Tether! /s

NET Dollar will be made available soon.

How about never.

Any mention of my name is now often met by a claim that I keep a harem of young submissive female mathematicians who submit to me and solve math problems for me, and that I call them my "math pets".

I see he did the whole 'making an accusation sound more silly to undermine it' thing here, nobody said things about a whole harem of mathematicians, who just solve math problems. Nice steelman. I expect nothing less of somebody who was the subject of seven broadway plays.

(Amazing he basically admits the story is true after that, but continues to debunk the strawman).

and the person who made up the "math pets" allegation claimed no such source

I was about to point out that I think this is the second time he claimed math pets had absolutely no basis in reality (and someone countered with a source that forced him to) but I double checked the posting date and this is the example I was already thinking of. Also, we have supporting sources that didn't say as much directly but implied it heavily: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/42iv09/a_yudkowsky_blast_from_the_past_his_okcupid/ or like, the entire first two thirds of the plot of Planecrash!

Any of the big Rationalists get mentioned yet?

This article also reminded me of how when they are trying to promote AI agents they dont get further than shopping, a secretary, or help you cook with random ingredients. No real human connections

I need you to understand how nearly I added myself to even more watch lists because of that analogy. Avalanche!

Developers of the 12-megawatt facility said it will bring jobs and investment to Nashville, but neighbors aren’t so sure.

The neighbors are right.

this you?

again, I ask you: please make better posts. you could start by not shooting from the hip about things you know little to nothing about. even better would be asking questions to learn.

there's plenty to read; an incomplete list of authors just off the top of my head: nnedi okorafor, ann leckie, martha wells, kate elliott, annalee newitz, sarah gailey, malka older, sarah jane anders…

Dunno I just enjoyed the fuck out of "Landlocked in Foreign Skin", like it's been a long time since I pause my life to devour a book in one sitting like this, and given that Drew Huff writes from Seattle I'm thinking they're a USian? And I was really engrossed by Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire which resonated a lot with my experiences as a Third World immigrant, with a certain honesty in portrayal of what it feels like to admire "culture" at a distance from a colony that I seldomly see (I'm on book #2 currently). I'm more of a fantasy reader, but Octavia Butler and Le Guin's sci-fi were absolutely formative to me, and if you ask me one modern sci-fi series I liked besides those mentioned so far, I'd probably say Wayfarers or Monk & Robot. Plenty of good SF authors from the USA whose politics are more or less the opposite of what you describe.

The trick is I read books by queer folk, women and PoC almost exclusively. Absolutely don't regret it, all the fun stuff is there in the margins.

On a semi-related note, I recently got around to reading Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future (loved the Mars trilogy and thought I should get to his latest), and this chapter had me wanting to give up sci fi as well, so I will subject you all to it:

I am a secret so everyone can know me. First you must count every part of me, then translate those parts into signs that do not describe me. Together we are shackled, and with the sign that does not describe me you can open me up and read me as I am. People will give you their promises for me, and if wrongdoers try to take me away from you, you can find me and tell the world where I am hidden. I began as a silent speaking, a key to open every door; now that I have opened all the front doors, I am the key that locks the back doors by which wrongdoers try to escape the scene of the crime. I am the nothing that makes everything happen. You don’t know me, you don’t understand me; and yet still, if you want justice, I will help you to find it. I am blockchain. I am encryption. I am code. Now put me to use.

Do like somebody left a nice trap there:

You write "you can buy it here" but there is no link.

However, you can do better: the whole thing is available for free online. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html on the author's website is a good place to start; it has links to various versions of the book and also a little bit of explanatory material.

(Unrelated, hope Stross's recovery is going well, sorry for being a bit parasocial relationshippy here).

I like singularity sky more as a sort of critical book about how a post scarcity singularity would be easy to mess up. Very funny that it inspired the US to give free phones to Afghans to try and combat the Taliban.

I keep meaning to reread it and report back on zeerust aspects!

i assume this is in relation to this cognitohazard