Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy April Foolās in advance.)
a journalist wants to ask me about Urbit. Should I install Urbit so I can at least say Iāve tried it and can speak authoritatively?
[ ] no
[ ] hell no
[ ] jesus h. christ no why
i just had a 1.5 hour half-hour chat with another journalist about the Fucking Rationalists
i have a call with a third one scheduled for tomorrow
i have followed these fucks for 15 years in detail and i still donāt know how to properly explain them to our lovely pivot-to-ai readers
at least itāll be these suckersā job to do the explaining while i rant
fuck. itās rationalist season
@dgerard @BlueMonday1984 Iāve been following them for 35 yearsāhell, I hung out with Curtis Yarvin on usenet in the early 90s, visited him and fondled his lizard once in '93āand the only way I can explain them is that theyāre larping a bad post-cyberpunk novel and arenāt entirely clear on the whole concept of āfictionā.
Iām choosing to interpret that in the most euphemistically way possible
@gerikson I mean, I *literally* fondled his lizard: it was about two feet long, green, and quite bad-tempered. (He and his student house had a room full of iguanas and snakes and suchlike. And a kitchen fridge door full of designer phenylethylamine hallucinogens. Or at least test tubes with labels identifying them as such. It was an eye-opening experience ā¦
Sheesh. Everyone knows you keep the phenethylamines inside the fridge proper, not on the door, where the temperature is less stable. (Source: the Shulginsā Kitchen Procedures I Have Known And Loved.)
@blakestacey I believe there was rapid turnover. (PIHKAL was cited as the cookbook being used. This was in 1993, so it was pretty new ā¦)
now youāve got me thinking if storage in fridge is necessary at all, if these are salts. worst thing that can reasonably happen is that salt picks up some water from the air, on top of water condensing on sample when vial was opened while still cold. freebase would probably be air-sensitive, but for compounds that are known sensitive iād put them under argon/nitrogen, tape vial shut (with normal electrical tape, not parafilm) and store in freezer instead. sigma lists storage temperature for MDMA analytical standard (weak solution of freebase in methanol) as -20C, but some of this might be legal cover with excess requirements for cases where youād have to be absolutely sure that analytical standard didnāt decompose (like in evidence in drug cases)
Curtis Yarvin being into lizards is the most endearing thing Iāve ever heard about him
I also legitimately canāt tell the degree to which they donāt understand theyāre LARPing a dystopia versus how much they completely understand that and thatās why itās gonna be so awesome for them once they make fetch happen.
@YourNetworkIsHaunted Itās probably a mixture: some of them understand the relationship between beliefs and reality, a whole bunch of others are LARPing away (and weād all be better off if they signed up to play EVE Online instead), there are probably some today who look at Yarvin and see a ladder to power and wealth, and everything in between.
You canāt ascribe unity of understanding and intention to any group of n > 1 humans.
As a fellow Usenet junkie from way back, now Iām curious which newsgroups Yarvin hung out in.
@TinyTimmyTokyo alt.peeves, alt.tasteless, probably most of the comp.* hierarchy, not sure where else.
āimagine a perfectly spherical chud of uniform duncityā¦ā
Personally, focusing on their whacko beliefs around the Impending AI Apocalypsetm seems like a good place to start.
āYudkowsky sincerely believes the following. Youāll recognise it because Altman uses it as marketing buzzwords.ā
āThis Is What Yudkowsky Actually Believesā seems like a subtitle that would get heavy use in a future episode of South Park about Cartman dropping out after one semester at community college.
If South Park ever does get around to TESCREAL, I imagine Parker and Stone would have a goddamn field day with them.
No idea where they would land on what to mock and what to take seriously from this whole mess.
Donāt know what theyāre up to these days but last time I checked I had them pegged as enlightened centrists whose style of satire is having strong beliefs about stuff is cringe more than it is ever having to say anything of even accidental substance about said things.
We need something like Bare-faced Messiah, but with fedoras. People will stick with a bizzare, complex story with lots of moving parts as long as itās told well.