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.
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.)
Kevin Roose mentioned that in 2023 Yud started a relationship with a Gretta Duleba in Washington State. Her professional site is here. She started out in IT, and retrained to be a Marriage and Family Therapist. "Gretta’s other areas of clinical focus include neurodivergence, ethical non-monogamy, LGBTQ+ issues, sexuality, and kink." In her prediction market on the relationship she says that they started dating in September 2022 and they moved to the same city in January 2023.
In 2023 she said she shut down her practice (although the NYT implies she is still working) and started full-time jobs at MIRI as communication director then executive assistant to Eliezer Yudkowsky. She says she left by the end of 2025, but she still has a Staff page on the MIRI website. "Right now: I’m doing independent technical alignment research."
She met one of her long-term partners, Duncan Sabien, at a CFAR workshop in 2015. Sabien is also in a relationship with one of Yud's former long-term partners who has changed names and gender presentations. That seems a bit incestuous and explains some of the drama and incompetence in these spaces. She and the former partner both use the A-word about themselves.
Her social media presence is mostly Substack, Twitter, and Discord, and she has a whole blog sharing letters to former partners and an invitation to proposition her by email because of course she does. And she organizes orgies with Aella. Yud sometimes seems flirty with Aella on twitter.
They seem happy together but giving up your career for a partner you are not married to is a big risk. She has 8 ~~17~~ years of Google money and was paid $200k by MIRI in 2024. She is also another female LWer who has much more impressive academic and professional achievements than any of the men.
Basically admitting to being evil
The newest addition to her polycule "got my attention by radiating Dark Lord energy while actually trying to save the world. He’s ruthlessly excellent."
When he funded Manifold, Scott Alexander said that it was "Chaotic Evil." These people keep switching between cutesy language and rawr I am the dark lord language, and their examples of evil are often bathetic while their serious plans are things like "expel brown people so they don't pollute our blood" and "better nuclear war than giving sand anxiety." They reject history, and they reject real-life adventures and contact with people with diverse experience, so evil is a very abstract concept to them.
I think that's a romantasy thing, it's a compliment
I think this means we need a moratorium on fantasy TTRPGs until we figure out what's going on
This is exactly what a white MtG main would say.
@CinnasVerses
"got my attention by radiating Dark Lord energy"
Looks more like "PUA energy" to me.
Isn't this mostly a pretentious way of saying someone I recently fucked?
Polycule implies some level of ongoing relationship that probably involves more than just meeting up for sex.
Source: I live in Somerville, Massachusetts
someone i recently fucked for the second time
There is a difference between "sleeps or plays around" and "has extended physical and emotional relationships outside of cohabitation and shared bank accounts." It sounds like she has four ongoing long-term relationships and attends kink events, and that her partners know she has other partners and attends kink events.