this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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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.

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.)

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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 10 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Here is a video of Eric Schmidt getting loudly booed at a commencement speech

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5MYggR_PPRg

https://www.youtube.com/live/b1eM3jv0vWY?t=7923

It is an impressively bad speech.

I find it really funny how after he gets booed he says, "If you don't care about science, that's okay, because AI is going to touch everything else as well. Whatever path you choose, AI will become part of how work is done." Yeah, if you're worried that AI is only going to fuck up science, don't worry, it's going to fuck up everything else as well. Was he trying to stick to a (terrible) script, or is he genuinely this incapable of reading a room?

"When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on." No, my mom taught me about stranger danger. I know what to do when a sketchy old man named Eric Schmidt pulls up with a rocket ship that says FREE ICE CREAM.

"The rocket ship is here. Let me give you some advice. First, find a way to say yes. Listen." Thanks for revealing how AI adoption is really about coercion. It doesn't matter what you think, AI is inevitable and you ignorant Luddites are gonna have to find a way to like it.

Truly a masterclass in public speaking by Eric Schmidt. When the audience reacts negatively to what you said, just double down and shove it down their throats. You're a billionaire, so you know better than them.

[–] BurgersMcSlopshot@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

When some offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.

I don't know mate, I think I do neither of those things because the kid-diddling natalist doesn't seem to be good at making ones that don't go boom.

Christ what a fucking shitweasel.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 1 points 57 minutes ago (2 children)

When someone offers you a seat on a submarine, you do not ask which seat, you just get on

[–] BurgersMcSlopshot@awful.systems 3 points 49 minutes ago

Get in losers. We're going imploding.

[–] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 2 points 56 minutes ago (1 children)

@swlabr @BurgersMcSlopshot

Is this submarine made of carbon-fibre and is it driven with a knock-off PlayStation controller?

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 54 minutes ago

Don’t ask those questions just get on

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Benjamin Felix is a financial planner in Ottawa aimed at people with at least $1 million to invest. He has a BEng, a MBA, was on a sports team at university. And in April he titled his latest video SpaceX and OpenAI: The Mega IPO Grift. The podcast version is called episode 406 "when massive private companies go public."

He also uses the term "front running" from our friends in cryptocurrency.

Keeping the float (value of shares available to trade on the open market) low would enable scams like all the ways of keeping the USD price of cryptocurrency from collapsing.

Edit/ The podcast is pretty mild but contains the sentences "investing in IPOs on a secondary market is one of the worst investment strategies that you could possibly employ. They tend to have a first day pop where the price on the public market jumps up relative to the IPO price, but most investors don't get the IPO price."

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 6 hours ago

Mild nit: "frontrunning" was a term (and practice) in use before crapto trading.

[–] lurker@awful.systems 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

This from a while ago but I forgot about it until today: Eliezer jumpscare in this interview about Absolute Scarecrow (its very brief but is there)

on the topic of EY's book, the ratings on Goodreads have slowly crept down (from 3.97 to 3.92)

and on the topic of ratings, the AI Doc has also gone down to an 6.9 on IMDB

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 1 points 4 hours ago

That is still very high for pulp science fiction.

[–] lurker@awful.systems 4 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Might as well port this over here since I posted it late in the old thread

An actual interesting thought: If AI Causes a Mass Unemployment Crisis, Will the Public Explode Into Violence?

My opinion is yes. People absolutely despise AI and the tech companies, as we have seen time and time again, not to mention the spread of AI doom fears. The current state of America is a boiling pot as Trump gets worse and worse (and with upcoming midterms) so AI causing mass unemployment absolutely would be enough to make it boil over and cause violence

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

It isnt just causing unemployment, it is also causing drinkable water and energy problems. And apparently there might already be a wace of workers setting fire to warehouses going on in the usa (which is not being reported on if it is, not sure of it is an actual thing btw, but saw somebody on social media say the warehouse fires which they were tracking went from 100 to 150 in a short period. I do not know enough to say if this is real or somebody mistaking normal accidents with a revolution, i assume it is the former. The one fire I saw reported was due to a cost of living thing btw).

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 2 points 12 hours ago

The dreaded midnight hour of oblivion!