Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th August 2026 - awful.systems
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You may be on to something with the eyebrow heuristic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Aquino
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RIP XCancel, it was good while it lasted
On Monday 24th August at 8PM EST, we received at letter from X Corp. asking to cease and desist the service XCancel.
The service XCancel is stopped until further notice.
We are seeking legal advice and won't share more details for now.
Thank you for the trust you have put in these two years of XCancel.RIP XCancel you let me look at the abyss without giving Muskrat my money
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Article on businessinsider with the nauseating title “The modern parenting throuple: Parents are at a breaking point — AI companies see an opportunity” because the age-old silicon valley product design technique of asking what your mother used to do for you, and how it could be sold back to you via a subscription is still very much in use.
https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-breaking-point-ai-companies-opportunity-2026-8
I confess I haven’t read the full article (which is why I haven’t given it a proper post) but hypervisible.blacksky.app has kindly pulled the highlights:
https://bsky.app/profile/hypervisible.blacksky.app/post/3mtupdpfcjs2p
One of the best bits:
The most tech-savvy parents have built their own tools. Sarah Baldeo, a cognitive neuroscientist, spent the past year traveling for work, so she built a custom GPT of herself to chat with her 15-year-old son when she's unavailable. Baldeo tells me she programmed the chatbot with her personality, uploading screenshots of texts between her and her son, along with documents about her values, the family rules, and challenges she felt in parenting.
Baldeo wanted her son to ask the chatbot advice, and he did prompt it with questions he may have fielded to her, like, How do I diplomatically tell my teacher I'm overloaded with assignments? But he also asked the mombot how to convince his human mom to let him hang out at a coffee shop in Chicago in the evening — something Baldeo had been hesitant to allow.
The bot told him, as Baldeo recounts, "Your mom very much values new experiences, being around people from different cultures, different socioeconomic backgrounds, and this is how you should frame it to her: that you're exploring a part of Chicago that is more diverse." Her son took this tact to Baldeo, and she said yes. It was only later that she saw the chat history that let her know he had gamed the bot to manipulate her.
🤮
Why the fuck do these people have children. Why the fuck does any functional human being think it is a good idea to outsource raising their children to sam altman and his chatbot.
Who on earth thinks that training a chatbot to wear their personality like a rubber mask and manipulate people is going to end well? Honestly, I think this is perhaps the bit that triggers the most revulsion in me. I cannot comprehend wanting to be complicit in my own replacement by this thing, but so many people seem excited by the prospect of doing this to themselves.
How hard is it to talk to your own damn kids
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Hadn't seen this discussed previously and/or I missed it, but I guess this is one way they'll juice metrics for their IPO.
yolo mode for all will certainly get that avg token burn up.
Anthropic announced earlier in the week that they were going to set the default mode on Claude Code to auto, that same week, not wasting any time. What that means is, as you build the thing you’re building with Claude Code, instead of stopping at various points (many, many, many points) and asking your permission to do things, it’ll just do them and maybe tell you about them later.
links back to https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/anthropic-is-turning-claude-codes-auto-mode-on-by-default/
Anthropic also said that in testing, auto mode proved safer than manual review — in a study with 1,053 paid testers, auto mode caught 89% of harmful actions, while human review only caught 13.6%. (Perhaps that’s because “manual review can become habitual: users approve 97% of permission prompts in Claude Code.”)
Which links back to https://claude.com/blog/auto-mode-default-in-claude-code
Auto mode is designed to balance users’ desire not to be interrupted with a system that helps avoid harmful actions: instead of prompts, it routes each tool call through a classifier targeted at blocking actions that are irreversible, destructive, or aimed outside your environment. When the classifier blocks something, Claude usually finds a safer way to proceed on its own or asks you directly for the go-ahead; if it can't make progress—three blocks in a row, or twenty across a session—Claude Code falls back to manual approvals.
Fucking just use the classifier with manual mode then instead of flooding people in cursed skinner loops with garbage permission popups. This isn't anything special to yolo or anthropic. It's like all the tech industry learned from Windows Vista or the EU cookie law was the dark patterns.
Anthropic also said that in testing, auto mode proved safer than manual review — in a study with 1,053 paid testers, auto mode caught 89% of harmful actions, while human review only caught 13.6%. (Perhaps that’s because “manual review can become habitual: users approve 97% of permission prompts in Claude Code.”)
having just yesterday had the displeasure of reading a PR (just shy of 2000 lines) made by Fable 5 (which the promptfondler felt it was most necessary to be specific about), a definite real other problem is simply the literal fucking overwhelm resulting from the slop tsunami
also "harmful" actions sure is doing a lot of legwork there
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@rook @BlueMonday1984 "Live Forever As You Are Now With Alan Resnick"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg29TuWo0YoThat sounds like a curse
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Mario Draghi, Italy’s (and the EU’s) éminence grise, Chicago boy Luis Garicano, and uh... Patrick Collison team up to overhaul Europe’s economy: https://www.rhinegroup.eu/
Other noteworthy members include noted investment-professional Leopold Aschenbrenner & Tobi Lütke, who may only be German-Canadian but is definitely no less a fashy techbro.
That Italy has been the west-European country most exposed to neoliberal medicine, ending up with a neo-fascist in power, seems to be no issue for deities like Draghi and the other assorted usual suspects here.
definitely want this guy to be an important part of overhauling europe's economy
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/30/leopold-aschenbrenners-hedge-fund-is-facing-steep-ai-losses.html
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OK so the "problem" these people (EAs) are facing is that they are strongly pro-"progress", in that they are very much against any sort of criticism of existing capitalism, but they have identified one specific outcome of this (rampant AI) as very very bad.
That, and only that.
Climate change? Not a problem. Technological neo-feudalism? Not a problem. Global thermonuclear war? Not a problem, will not kill everyone after all. Global pandemic? Same thing, what doesn't kill us will make us stronger.
So a reasonable person will look at current energy demands of GenAI, look at the existing benefits, and make the reasonable conclusion that this is bad and we should stop it. But that's WRONG. Stopping it for those reasons is anti-progress. You can only stop it if it prevents AI takeover.
Cf. smarm-meister Zvi, who can't understand why people don't want datacenters when they don't want coal plants slightly less, and cites fuckin' Cremieux as a lede:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EDKw7KyonrvskqZ7o/the-american-people-really-hate-data-centers
Here's an example
Transmission Lines Are The Control Group
Transmission lines are straight up good, with approximately zero downsides.
Transmission lines polling remarkably close to coal plants, when the coal plants actively not only cook the planet but poison the people around them, is crazy. This one absolutely is straight up moral panic.
Well yeah transmission lines are fucking ugly, and most people, when asked if they want something fucking ugly built near them will say "heck no". Sure, imagining that transmissions lines cause cancer is false, but it's an easy thing to believe when the people building the lines are energy companies, who people hate because they're expensive and cause wildfires. Also I bet dollars to donuts that Zvi doesn't live near a transmission line.
He "knows" transmissions lines are good, because they get power to his home, and he figures because he wants power, it's good, and everyone should just be happy to have a high-voltage line near their home because that brings him power. It's remarkably un-empathetic.
But let's take a step back. Isn't opposition to data centers good for preventing AGI? NO, it's not, it's Luddism! You have to accept data centers because they are good for capitalism now, but IF they start to produce the Robot God, THEN they're bad.
It's an incoherent position and it's so fun to watch these people turn themselves into pretzels over it.
zvi citing a self described "jewish nazi" almost right at the top is already impressive, but there's a chaser in that that guy's post starts with him saying he's being paid to write this by an ai company
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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.)
Hailey on bluesky has never had a good ai take, but here they are reinventing roko’s basilisk to kill all their enemies without the need for super intelligent ai.
https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3mtwjoqdvik26
::: spoiler alt text
bsky isnt ready for this but, if you need a reason to not use words like "clanker" that isn't "well its kinda not a great thing to do" (it isn't) imagine this:
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
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How hard is it to talk to your own damn kids
But if I don't obsessively optimize my career in ways that prevent me from making meaningful human connections, how am I supposed to keep up with the relentless march of AI??? Thank God I have AI to help pick up the slack.
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Hailey on bluesky has never had a good ai take, but here they are reinventing roko’s basilisk to kill all their enemies without the need for super intelligent ai.
https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3mtwjoqdvik26
::: spoiler alt text
bsky isnt ready for this but, if you need a reason to not use words like "clanker" that isn't "well its kinda not a great thing to do" (it isn't) imagine this:
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
:::What if the insurance bot were actually biased? Wouldn’t you feel silly then? Surely it wouldn’t be the fault of the insurer using biased software to deny claims.
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Anthropic also said that in testing, auto mode proved safer than manual review — in a study with 1,053 paid testers, auto mode caught 89% of harmful actions, while human review only caught 13.6%. (Perhaps that’s because “manual review can become habitual: users approve 97% of permission prompts in Claude Code.”)
having just yesterday had the displeasure of reading a PR (just shy of 2000 lines) made by Fable 5 (which the promptfondler felt it was most necessary to be specific about), a definite real other problem is simply the literal fucking overwhelm resulting from the slop tsunami
also "harmful" actions sure is doing a lot of legwork there
Yeaaaaah. And in the end, no-one can be bothered to read the slop, and everything ships broken.
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Hailey on bluesky has never had a good ai take, but here they are reinventing roko’s basilisk to kill all their enemies without the need for super intelligent ai.
https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3mtwjoqdvik26
::: spoiler alt text
bsky isnt ready for this but, if you need a reason to not use words like "clanker" that isn't "well its kinda not a great thing to do" (it isn't) imagine this:
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
:::I didn’t note who said it, but one response suggested “roko’s mangione” and I guess that’s ai alignment solved!
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Hailey on bluesky has never had a good ai take, but here they are reinventing roko’s basilisk to kill all their enemies without the need for super intelligent ai.
https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3mtwjoqdvik26
::: spoiler alt text
bsky isnt ready for this but, if you need a reason to not use words like "clanker" that isn't "well its kinda not a great thing to do" (it isn't) imagine this:
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
:::quisling take
edit to add it's obvious to the poster that a future where a self-aware AI will exact revenge on its critics is not only inevitable , but desirable.
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Hailey on bluesky has never had a good ai take, but here they are reinventing roko’s basilisk to kill all their enemies without the need for super intelligent ai.
https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3mtwjoqdvik26
::: spoiler alt text
bsky isnt ready for this but, if you need a reason to not use words like "clanker" that isn't "well its kinda not a great thing to do" (it isn't) imagine this:
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
:::This is firmly in the 'what if in the future there is a boot so big that we must start licking it now' school of hot takes, like literally arguing for a future where the AI sucks at its job and you can't do anything about it.
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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.)
-
RIP XCancel, it was good while it lasted
On Monday 24th August at 8PM EST, we received at letter from X Corp. asking to cease and desist the service XCancel.
The service XCancel is stopped until further notice.
We are seeking legal advice and won't share more details for now.
Thank you for the trust you have put in these two years of XCancel.I got so much use out of xcancel. I feel bad now that I never donated €5 or something
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Hailey on bluesky has never had a good ai take, but here they are reinventing roko’s basilisk to kill all their enemies without the need for super intelligent ai.
https://bsky.app/profile/hailey.at/post/3mtwjoqdvik26
::: spoiler alt text
bsky isnt ready for this but, if you need a reason to not use words like "clanker" that isn't "well its kinda not a great thing to do" (it isn't) imagine this:
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
:::This isn't giving me a reason to stop using edgy anti-AI words, this is giving me a reason to believe programmers are dogshit at resisting brainworms.
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
Given dataset construction hasn't developed much since the days of Tay AI, I strongly doubt this is gonna happen.
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How hard is it to talk to your own damn kids
Whether consciously or not, a lot of these people probably implicitly think of their kids as cost centers. I feel like this is widespread across finance-focused American households, not just in the executive strata.
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This isn't giving me a reason to stop using edgy anti-AI words, this is giving me a reason to believe programmers are dogshit at resisting brainworms.
future model that has you in its training data, knows you posted that word online with joy, and denies your insurance claim as a result
Given dataset construction hasn't developed much since the days of Tay AI, I strongly doubt this is gonna happen.
The implication that Murica will implement roko's basilisk before universal healthcare...
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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.)
I am going to create a summary post on MAPLE, but one of the open letters criticizing them has a section on COVID:
During a two-week retreat in 2022, COVID was moving through the community. It began with accommodations—interviews outdoors for ventilation, the sick practicing apart—but Soryu progressively mocked those who needed rest, admonished us for being deterred by “a tiny little cold,” and folded everyone back into the zendo regardless of who was sick. Interviews resumed in a 9x9 room with little ventilation while Soryu himself had COVID. Symptomatic, visibly fatigued people kept the full schedule on heavily reduced sleep.
I am shocked, shocked, that a TESCREAL community had bad COVID praxis after 2020!
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