Want to wade into the snowy 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 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 so 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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. What a year, huh?)

    • blakestacey@awful.systemsEnglish
      13Ā·
      20 days ago

      Chris Lintott (@chrislintott.bsky.socialā€¬):

      Weā€™re getting so many journal submissions from people who think ā€˜it kinda worksā€™ is the standard to aim for.

      Research Notes of the AAS in particular, which was set up to handle short, moderated contributions especially from students, is getting swamped. Often the authors clearly havenā€™t read what theyā€™ve submitting, (Descriptions of figures that donā€™t exist or donā€™t show what they purport to)

      Iā€™m also getting wild swings in topic. A rejection of one paper will instantly generate a submission of another, usually on something quite different.

      Many of these submissions are dense with equations and pseudo-technological language which makes it hard to give rapid, useful feedback. And when I do give feedback, often I get back whatever their LLM says.

      Including the very LLM responses like ā€˜Oh yes, I see that <thing that was fundamental to the argument> is wrong, Iā€™ve removed it. Hereā€™s something elseā€™

      Research Notes is free to publish in and I think provides a very valuable service to the community. But I think weā€™re a month or two from being completely swamped.

      • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOPEnglish
        14Ā·
        20 days ago

        It gets worse:

        One of the great tragedies of AI and science is that the proliferation of garbage papers and journals is creating pressure to return to more closed systems based on interpersonal connections and established prestige hierarchies that had only recently been opened up somewhat to greater diversity.

      • Evinceo@awful.systemsEnglish
        12Ā·
        20 days ago

        people who think ā€˜it kinda worksā€™ is the standard to aim for

        I swear that this is a form of AI psychosis or something because the attitude is suddenly ubiquitous among the AI obsessed.

        • fullsquare@awful.systemsEnglish
          7Ā·
          19 days ago

          they prompted so hard and thatā€™s all they get, so obviously thereā€™s nothing better and they stop st that

          theyā€™ll do anything except actually learn shit or put in effort