blakestacey

joined 2 years ago
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[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

ChatGPT now relies upon the degenerate copy of Wikipedia made by the child pornography bot:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/24/latest-chatgpt-model-uses-elon-musks-grokipedia-as-source-tests-reveal

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Self-hating nerd"... Is this the time to mention that I was Prom King in high school?

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 4 days ago

"Proud of the culture"?

He drew Dilbert, you fucking buffoon.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)

"Gas Town"?

"Gas Town?!"

He unironically made the postapocalyptic wasteland from the cautionary tale, Mad Max: Do Not Make the Postapocalyptic Wasteland

This is the same pre-emptive irony as naming your brand of New Age crap "Goop", only now with voluntarily plugging yourself into the machine that statistically simulates the ravings of a schizophrenic when it's not generating child pornography, while setting up direct deposit to your dealer of meth, jimsonweed and Substance D

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 6 days ago

The #5 article of the year was a crock of a few kinds of shit, and I have already spent too much time thinking about why

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 13 points 6 days ago

Duviri:

10/10 i'm glad i can't afford RAM for this to be possible

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 12 points 1 week ago

Charlie Stross writes:

... a member of the Irish parliament (the Dail) who happens to be a barrister (an attorney specialising in advocacy in front of a judge, including criminal prosecution/defense) has formally written to the head of the Irish cybercrime unit setting out applicable charges against X/Grok and sternly requesting formal prosecution of that company on child pornography/trafficking charges.

Text of letter:

collapsed for brevity

To: Detective Superintendent Pat Ryan Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau

Dear Superintendent,

You will no doubt be aware of the social media company X and its Grok app, which utilises artificial intelligence to generate pictures and videos. I understand you are also aware that, among its capabilities is the generation, by artificial intelligence, of false images of real people either naked or in bikinis, etc. There has been a great deal of controversy recently about the use of this technology and its ability to target people without their knowledge or consent.

Whatever about the sharing of such images being contrary to the provisions of Coco’s Law (sections 2 and 3 of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020), the Grok app is also capable of generating child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or child pornography as defined by section 2(1) of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 (as substituted by section 9(b) of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017).

In the circumstances, it seems there are reasonable grounds that the corporate entity X, as owner of Grok, or indeed the corporate entity Grok itself, is acting in contravention of a number of provisions of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 (as amended). Inter alia, it is my contention that the following offences are being committed by X, Grok, and/or its subsidiaries:

1.⁠ ⁠Possession of child pornography contrary to section 6(1) in that the material generated by the Grok app must be stored on servers owned and/or operated by X and with the company’s knowledge, in this jurisdiction or in the European Union [subsections 6(3) and (4) would not apply in this case];

2.⁠ ⁠Production of child pornography contrary to section 5(1)(a) as substituted by section 12 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, in that material is being generated by the Grok app, which constitutes child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or child pornography as defined by section 2(1), since it constitutes a visual representation that shows person who is depicted as being a child “being engaged in real or simulated sexually explicit activity” (per paragraph (a)(i) of the definition of child pornography in section 2(1) as amended by section 9(b) of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017);

3.⁠ ⁠Distribution of chiid pornography contrary to section 5(1)(b) as substituted by section 12 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, in that the said images that constitute child pornography are being distributed, transmitted, disseminated or published to the users of the Grok app by X or its subsidiaries;

4.⁠ ⁠Distribution of chiid pornography contrary to section 5(1)(c) as substituted by section 12 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, in that the Child pornography is being sold to the users of the Grok app by X or its subsidiaries, now that the app has been very publically put behind a pay wall;

5.⁠ ⁠Knowing possession any child pornography for the purpose of distributing, transmitting, disseminating, publishing, exporting, selling or showing same, contrary to section 5(1)(g) as substituted by section 12 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017.

You will also be aware that, pursuant to section 9(1) of the 1998 Act, a body corporate is equally liable to be proceeded against and punished as if it were an individual.

Given the foregoing, as well as the public outcry against public decency, it is clear to me that X is flagrantly disregarding the laws of this country put in place by the Oireachtas to protect its citizens.

I am formally lodging this criminal complaint in the anticipation that you will investigate it fully and transmit a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions without delay; I would be grateful to hear from you in this regard.

Yours sincerely,

Barry Ward TD Senior Counsel

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 11 points 1 week ago

Also, a potential advisor who refuses to work with a student who stood up for their rights is not an advisor worth working with.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago

The alt text of the image:

Tweet exchange in which a photo of Anne Hathaway is posted by @TheRoyalSerf, to which user @VvSchweetz24 replies "@grok...do your thing.

@Grok replies: Anne Hathaway isn't Jewish; she was raised Catholic but left the church. She married Adam Shulman (who is Jewish) in 2012 and celebrates Jewish holidays with their kids. SHe's played Jewish roles, like in "Armageddon Time."

Bluesky user Séamas O'Reilly adds the commentary,

pretty sure he meant the other thing, grok, but very cool that those are your two things

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The "author" used Claude to write it. It's warmed-over slop.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 1 week ago

Transcribing (the nested blockquote is a self-quote-tweet):

Some day I'll be able to write about my experience with Aella's organizing/friend group who used their community power to slander me, bully me and ruin my life simply bc I told the truth and patiently sought understanding:

Idk what you're referring to but she/RMN team, when I brought up concern about my abuser, strung me along for months promising a conversation, then ultimately banned me, publicly slandered/victim blamed me, and continue to invite my abuser and his enablers to their events.

Note: after months being strung along w no clear answers/dialogue, one RMN organizer told me I was disinvited bc theyre "risk averse" w who gets invited.

Risk averse about... someone EXPERIENCING abuse/CVs/retaliation (not reporting it), but not about the ppl actually doing it.

I hope they understand how that's just not how you should be risk averse with your events... After experiencing the RMN team participation in the retaliation (again, all i did was talk about things that happened n correct lies), of course my disappointment & concern grew.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That "Hereticon" link looks broken; I think it should point to this RationalWiki page.

 

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 soo 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.)

 

Since Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is apparently still a thing, I figured I'd spend a few minutes before fediverse monster-movie night to collect relevant links:

And a question dug up from one of those old threads: OK, so, Yud poured a lot of himself into writing HPMoR. It took time, he obviously believed he was doing something important — and he was writing autobiography, in big ways and small. This leads me to wonder: Has he said anything about Rowling, you know, turning out to be a garbage human?

 

Mother Jones has a new report about Jordan Lasker:

A Reddit account named Faliceer, which posted highly specific biographical details that overlapped with Lasker’s offline life and which a childhood friend of Lasker’s believes he was behind, wrote in 2016, “I actually am a Jewish White Supremacist Nazi.” The Reddit comment, which has not been previously reported, is one of thousands of now-deleted posts from the Faliceer account obtained by Mother Jones in February. In other posts written between 2014 and 2016, Faliceer endorses Nazism, eugenics, and racism. He wishes happy birthday to Adolf Hitler, says that “I support eugenics,” and uses a racial slur when saying those who are attracted to Black people should kill themselves.

 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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 soo 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.)

 

Everybody loves Wikipedia, the surprisingly serious encyclopedia and the last gasp of Old Internet idealism!

(90 seconds later)

We regret to inform you that people write credulous shit about "AI" on Wikipedia as if that is morally OK.

Both of these are somewhat less bad than they were when I first noticed them, but they're still pretty bad. I am puzzled at how the latter even exists. I had thought that there were rules against just making a whole page about a neologism, but either I'm wrong about that or the "rules" aren't enforced very strongly.

 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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 soo 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.)

 

Retraction Watch reports:

All but one member of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), an Elsevier title, have resigned, saying the “sustained actions of Elsevier are fundamentally incompatible with the ethos of the journal and preclude maintaining the quality and integrity fundamental to JHE’s success.”

The resignation statement reads in part,

In fall of 2023, for example, without consulting or informing the editors, Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production, creating article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns (e.g., formally recognized epochs, site names, countries, cities, genera, etc.) as well italics for genera and species. These AI changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already been properly formatted by the handling editors.

(Via Pharyngula.)

Related:

 

Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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 soo 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.

Last week's thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

 

Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? 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 facts of 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 soo 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.

 

[Eupalinos of Megara appears out of a time portal from ancient Ionia] Wow, you guys must be really good at digging tunnels by now, right?

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