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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)
Project Gutenberg has AI generated summaries?? How the mighty have fallen.
I was researching a bizarre old sci-fi book I once read (donāt judge; bad old sci-fi is a trip), and Gutenbergās summary claims it was written in the 21st century. Thereās actually no accurate information about this book online, as far as I can tell the earliest reference is Project Gutenberg typing it up into a text file in 2003.
Given that itās in the public domain, no one has any idea where it came from, and it has old sci-fi vibes; I strongly suspect it was written in the 20th century*; making that misinformation. Itās also just a bad summary that, while not wrong, doesnāt really reflect the (amusingly weird) themes of the book.
Anyway someone needs to tell them that no information is leagues better than misinformation.
* maybe the '70s give or take but Iām not a professional date guesser
Is there anything written up anywhere about these AI book summaries? I know they were doing āAIā audiobooks.
(After sleeping on it itās possible the book I was thinking of was written in the earliest 21st century).
There was an announcement on their mailing list here: https://lists.pglaf.org/archives/list/gmonthly@lists.pglaf.org/thread/MTHHI3TD7YXD3EHLKVBBA57KRBBWRI72/
Based off Wayback Machine poking around it looks like they were added sometime between September 20th to October 1st.
It definitely has that old sci-fi weirdness to it, but the earliest edition Iām seeing on goodreads was in '03.
The file metadata of the oldest copy on the gutenberg webserver says 2003 ā and the document itself says Gutenberg created it in 2003 and published it in 2005 (whatever that means, maybe they were delaying ebook releases to ensure a steady stream)
Anyway this 2003 copy had their public domain boilerplate; it was described as a book in the public domain.
There are indeed a lot of websites about this, but none with any more information that Project Gutenberg so Iām guessing they all trace back to the Gutenberg release. Probably youād have to find some physical information about it in an actual library to trace it further.
But Iām not like a professional book researcher or anything, thatās just my opinion!
That is indeed troubling, casts a shadow on Project Gutenbergās judgement. Now I wonder how long until Wikipedia falls too :( Gosh, I miss being excited about new tech. Now new tech is just making things worse.
About that book, so it is more āgood badā instead of ābad badā? Maybe Iāll take a look, some light/weird reading might be better than doomscrolling (and these days thereās so much doom to scroll).
I donāt remember (reading it was a bit like a fever dream) but thereās a non-zero chance it has racist vibes in parts you have been warned.
But oh so quotable:
I myself have a collection of dutch science fiction from the 70s (doubt any of it was ever translated) and wow does it get wild at times. At least that is what I remembered from reading it when younger (the books came from my parents), the thing i remember the most was about a dude having some weird sexual relation with a spider alien. (Out of wtf factor, not out of āthis awakened somethingā factor, not that there is something wrong with that, just eurgh spiders). Often thought about that story in relation to the puppies saying they wanted to go back to their imagined past science fiction. Bunch of reactionaries
Okay thanks for the heads-up, I will give it a try. The āNote to the readerā it starts with is already pretty wildā¦ (unless thatās just part of the fiction. Edit: I assume itās part of the fiction)
Edit: okayā¦ a few pages in, I donāt think I can do thisā¦ not my thing.
Ick.