this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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TechTakes

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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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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.

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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 soo 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.)

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Part of me wants to see Google actually try this and get publicly humiliated by their nonexistent understanding of physics, part of me dreads the fact it'll dump even more fucking junk into space.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

how do you want to get butlerian jihad without kessler syndrome?

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Considering we've already got a burgeoning Luddite movement that's been kicked into high gear by the AI bubble, I'd personally like to see an outgrowth of that movement be what ultimately kicks it off.

There were already some signs of this back in August, when anti-AI protesters vandalised cars and left "Butlerian Jihad" leaflets outside a pro-AI business meetup in Portland.

Alternatively, I can see the Jihad kicking off as part of an environmentalist movement - to directly quote Baldur Bjarnason:

[AI has] turned the tech industry from a potential political ally to environmentalism to an outright adversary. Water consumption of individual queries is irrelevant because now companies like Google and Microsoft are explicitly lined up against the fight against climate disaster. For that alone the tech should be burned to the ground.

I wouldn't rule out an artist-led movement being how the Jihad starts, either - between the AI industry "directly promising to destroy their industry, their work, and their communities" (to quote Baldur again), and the open and unrelenting contempt AI boosters have shown for art and artists, artists in general have plenty of reason to see AI as an existential threat to their craft and/or a show of hatred for who they are.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 3 points 52 minutes ago (1 children)

i think you need to be a little bit more specific unless sounding a little like an unhinged cleric from memritv is what you're going for

but yeah nah i don't think it's gonna last this way, people want to go back to just doing their jobs like it used to be, and i think it may be that bubble burst wipes out companies that subsidized and provided cheap genai, so that promptfondlers hammering image generators won't be as much of a problem. propaganda use and scams will remain i guess

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 1 points 32 minutes ago

i think you need to be a little bit more specific unless sounding a little like an unhinged cleric from memritv is what you’re going for

I'll admit to taking your previous comment too literally here - I tend to assume people are completely serious unless I can clearly tell otherwise.

but yeah nah i don’t think it’s gonna last this way, people want to go back to just doing their jobs like it used to be, and i think it may be that bubble burst wipes out companies that subsidized and provided cheap genai, so that promptfondlers hammering image generators won’t be as much of a problem. propaganda use and scams will remain i guess

Scams and propaganda will absolutely remain a problem going forward - LLMs are tailor-made to flood the zone with shit (good news for propagandists), and AI tools will provide scammers with plenty of useful tools for deception.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 3 points 3 hours ago

@BlueMonday1984 @techtakes

The "daylight as a space-based service" bullshit is even worse.