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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)

  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 days ago

    trump just dumped half trillion dollars into openai-softbank-oracle thing https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/01/21/trump-stargate-ai-openai-oracle-softbank/77861568007/

    youā€™d think itā€™s a perfect bait for saudi sovereign wealth fund, and perhaps it is

    for comparison, assuming current levels of spending, this will be something around 1/10 of defense spending in the same timeframe. which goes to, among other things, payrolls of millions of people and maintenance, procurement and development of rather pricey weapons like stealth planes (B-21 is $700M each) and nuclear-armed nuclear-powered submarines ($3.5B per Ohio-class, with $31M missiles, up to 24). this all to burn medium-sized country worth of energy to get more ā€œimpressiveā€ c-suite fooling machine

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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      4 days ago

      itā€™s better than that, he didnā€™t dump a penny in

      the deal is:

      1. they get unregulated
      2. they promise to spend money they were going to anyway, theyā€™re totally getting round to it bro
    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      6 days ago

      The fact that the first thing a new fascist regime does is promise Larry Ellison a bunch of dollaridoos answers a lot of questions asked by my ā€œORACLE = NAZISā€ tshirt

    • blakestacey@awful.systemsOP
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      6 days ago

      Let them fight.gif

      Elon Musk is already casting doubt on OpenAIā€™s new, up to $500 billion investment deal with SoftBank (SFTBY+10.51%) and Oracle (ORCL+7.19%), despite backing from his allies ā€” including President Donald Trump. [ā€¦] ā€œThey donā€™t actually have the money,ā€ the Tesla (TSLA-1.13%) CEO and close Trump ally said shortly before midnight on Tuesday, in a post on his social media site X. ā€œSoftBank has well under $10 [billion] secured. I have that on good authority,ā€ Musk added just before 1 a.m. ET.

      One word: Foxconn

      I was mad about this, but then it hit me: this is the kind of thing that happens at the top of a bubble. The nice round numbers, the stolen sci-fi name, the needless intertwining with politics, the lack of any clear purpose for it.

      Ed Zitron:

      [mr plinkett voice] hey wait a minute wasnā€™t that meant to be a Microsoft project?

      Hey wasnā€™t that project contingent on ā€œmeaningfully improving the capabilities of OpenAIā€™s AIā€?

      (Referring to this newsletter of his from last April.)

      • blakestacey@awful.systemsOP
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        6 days ago

        Karl Bode comments:

        I like how none of the reporting Iā€™ve seen on this so far can be bothered to mention Softbankā€™s multi-year, very obvious history of failures

        I think I saw like one outlet mention it, and it was buried in the 18th paragraph