People are so, so, so bad at telling what’s a bot and what’s real. I know social media is swarming with bots, but if you’re interacting with somebody who’s saying anything more complicated than “P o o s i e I n B i o” it’s probably not a bot. A similar thing happens in online games, too, and it’s usually the excuse people use before harassing someone else

But damn the lengths people will go to to avoid admitting they were wrong. This comment chain just keeps going on with somebody who’s convinced {origin="RU"}{faith="bad"}{election_manipulation="very yes"} must be real because something something microservices: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1dlg8ni/russian_bot_falls_prey_to_a_prompt_iniection/l9pbmrw/ It reads like something straight off /r/programming or the orange site

Then it comes full circle with people making joke responses on Twitter imitating the first post, and then other people taking those joke responses as proof that the first one must be real: https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1dimlyl/twitter_is_already_a_gpt_hellscape/l9691c8/

This account kind of kicked up some drama too, basically for the same reason (answering an LLM prompt), but it’s about mushroom ID instead: https://www.reddit.com/user/SeriousPerson9 I’ve seen people like this who use voice-to-text and run their train of thought through ChatGPT or something, like one person notorious on /r/gamedev. But people always assume it’s some advanced autonomous bot with stochastic post delays that mimic a human’s active hours when like, it’s usually just somebody copy/pasting prompts and responses.

Sorry if you contract any diseases from those links or comment chains

This is tangential, but there’s a surprisingly interesting article about penis enlargement from ProPublica. It’s sobering to see people who’ve convinced themselves it must have worked, because it’s too horrible to consider whether they actually made things worse. If there are any crazy, invasive age therapies out there, maybe there’d be similar themes.

https://www.propublica.org/article/penis-enlargement-enhancement-procedures-implants

Yesterday before bed I saw some galaxy-brained takes on PKM (personal knowledge management software) from a 7-day old account, and curiosity took over me. I was not disappointed. (sadly they deleted their account after I woke up: /u/Few-Elephant-2600 if you’re bored and have moderator API access)

Link

Since GPUs continuously generate large amounts of waste heat during AI training, could electric/GPU stoves utilize this unused thermal energy resource through on-demand tickets as distributed networks instead of citizens using a wasteful private electric stove? What are the scientific challenges?

Honey can you preheat the porn generator?

Maybe you could pair it with this accursed AI of Things Smart Oven. Fun quotes:

“Users aren’t aware of any of the oven’s learning processes,”

Ovens that learn from one another

Finally, I can experience Windows progress bars when baking potatoes:

The predictive model updates the remaining baking time every 30 seconds

Unsure if this meets even the lowest bar for this thread but I was jumpscared by Aella while browsing Reddit

They deleted their account, but it was here: /u/confessionsftheburbs. I think if you moderate a subreddit you could look through the Pushshift database to see what they posted. Someone on SubredditDrama (where this first popped up) has an open offer to do that for anything fun that was deleted, but I don’t remember their name.

I know I screenshotted all the crazy stuff but I have no idea which month they were from, sadly. I checked the past couple months and May. The Internet Archive has a post saved of her from May where she says her husband (boyfriend at the time; they needed Robert Mercer’s approval to get married) earns $500k/year. She talks a lot about expensive gemstones and rings, how taxes are unfair, utterly unhinged antisemitic antivax conspiracy theories that equate to “we need to kill the Marxists before they exterminate White people”, and of course dogs with censored giblets. I have no idea what her husband does, but he’s a white supremacist with lots of Blue Lives Matter insignia that she met on Hinged.

Robert Mercer is apparently big on computer science in the family, and she was strongly encouraged to study it. She often tells people to consider a CS degree to earn more money and start businesses like her husband. She says that, but she mentioned a job that was so easy she barely had to do anything and I wonder if that was the $120k/year position at the rebranded Cambridge Analytica. It’s a little annoying to tell people “just get into software engineering!” when your grandfather paid $40k for your house and gave you a cushioned job at the family business. Ugh

I only learned it was her because she said she just donated money to a Gofundme, and I was kind of curious whose name was on the donation.

Here, though, was someone who had a name and an active social media presence, whose LinkedIn resume was expansive, whose listed address is a multimillion-dollar home near Golden Gate Park. On Facebook he carped about San Francisco politics and pride-posted about his daughter.

There’s just enough information here that it’d be fun to try and guess who it is

I can never resist tracking down crazy people because sometimes it’s just a goldmine of weirdness. I saw someone on Reddit who was censoring her dog’s genitals, and when people made fun of her she accused them all of being pedophiles. It turns out she’s Robert Mercer’s granddaughter and probably works at Cambridge Analytica’s successor, which is apparently either the easiest $120k paycheck ever or a $160k living hell full of long hours and crunch (unclear which).

Something like masstagger for Lemmy would be great. I can only hope

A Minecraft server, a Discord channel, and maybe a Matrix server all bridged together would be really goofy and I’m all for it

God I cannot believe that Harry Potter fanfiction is such a big part of Rationalism.

I made the mistake of reading too many comments down in a Reddit thread and a ephebophilepedophile showed up. I looked at their profile and was just totally blindsided by Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fanfiction and it apparently being their second favorite book ever. I think their first was Lolita but I don’t remember.

I’ve heard that (maybe?) SBF had Harry Potter orgies, detailed on his girlfriend’s cryptofascist tradwife Tumblr blog. I know I shouldn’t but I kind of want to see if I can dig around the Internet Archive and find out how much of that really happened. Just making myself suffer for fun

The descriptions are already perfect

I feel like the article ends pretty suddenly, but maybe that’s just because I can already imagine the next 30 pages of explaining TESCREAL bullshittery in my head

I am so lost on what even happened there. Was that at the peaceful protest where they were surrounded by police?

I went digging through some old threads on sneerclub and came away more confused than I started

Not going to namedrop as I have no idea how involved and connected he is to all this

I totally will 😎

Robert Miles was my first heartbreaker. He seems like a great educator; I just like listening to him explaining things and talking about computer science. But damn it came as a shock to see he’s the narrator of a Rationalism for Kids cartoon series and is neck-deep in EA.

I don’t even want to watch that video because I know I’m going to get annoyed by it. Veritasium’s video on self-driving cars was so awful, it was enough for me to just sort them into the Sketchy Pop-Sci YouTube Channels bucket for good. I’ve heard that their videos on electricity and that one physics bet were also pretty shaky.

I’m not falling for Freezerburn’s Wager a third time

Old post but one of my favorite things on here is seeing people you recognize tearing apart TESCREAL garbage