TechTakes

2668 readers

95 users here now

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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

dgerard@awful.systems

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 6th September 2026 (awful.systems)

submitted 1 day ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 7 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Sarah R. Constantin, who noticed that EA has a lying problem, now has a Substack. She reminds me of Julia Galef, because she does not advocate the most dangerous aspects of TESCREAL, but never says "my TESCREAL buddies are creeps pushing crank ideas funded by fascists." https://sarahconstantin.substack.com/p/getting-back-to-it

[–] nfultz@awful.systems 6 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

I looked her up, she was at MetaMed/Palantir/Longevity Research Inst, so definitely in the thick of things and in that world. That lying problem piece hits a lot harder post-sbf.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

she shares Roam links regularly on LW.

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Roam Research seems like a generic note-taking app endorsed by Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative and Sarah R. Constantin. Anything else notable about it?

Roam is also endorsed by an OpenAI staffer who thinks Scott Aaronson was one of her best professors.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 8 hours ago

I'm just going by memory here but I seem to recall Roam being either weirdly EA-adjacent or culty or both. Don't quote me.

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 3 points 18 hours ago

Did not know those parts of her CV! At least two of the four CFAR founders have said things like "The actual drive in the background was a lot more like "Keep running workshops that wow people" with an additional (usually consciously (!) hidden) thread about luring people into being scared about AI risk in a very particular way .... Even from the very beginning CFAR simply COULD NOT be honest about what it was doing or bring anything like a collaborative tone to its participants."

MetaMed was founded by Michael Vassar, and Palantir is Alex Karp's creature, and both of those are bad dudes.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 3 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Was she floating around the David Chapman/post-rationalist corner of TPOT? That seems to ring a bell for me

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Her twitter https://x.com/s_r_constantin says she is married to Andrew Rettek. Rufflejax accused Rettek and Vassar of emotional abuse while they were all in a polyamorous relationship and says he liked his women barely legal ("I deserve a hot nubile college girl every year until I turn 40"). https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1009625312844550146.html So Constantin is close to a lot of bad people.

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 3 points 17 hours ago

All I really know is her old Wordpress blog. She is the kind of person who keeps launching new sites without leaving a forwarding address on the last, not the kind who still runs her blogspot blog from 2004 so links won't break. I never really explored these people's history on livejournal or tumblr and just mine their Twitter history when needed.

She does not seem woo-friendly.