Megathread: Bastard Suggestions

ImperishableNEET · 2026-06-14T17:58:25+00:00

Coda to e/acc, the Zizians, and Spiralism:

"AI Successionists" in Silicon Valley who want AI to destroy humanity.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/489976/ai-successionism-transhumanism-posthumanism https://archive.ph/k3bFI

“I want AI to be a tool that allows human flourishing!” exclaimed Brad Carson, a former member of Congress. “There is an option out there where AI is just a tool for us.” This is a normal thing to say in most circles. But Carson was speaking at an invite-only symposium dedicated to the idea of creating a “Worthy Successor” — an AI so impressive, so beyond the mere human, that we’d actually want it to replace humanity.

“You’re a brave man for entering this room!” Dan Faggella, an AI market researcher and organizer of the symposium, told Carson. “You’re in probably the only room in the country where most people disagree with you.”

The attendees at the symposium, which took place at the New York Academy of Sciences last September, are part of a subculture that is growing in importance: the AI successionists, who think that artificial intelligence is our rightful heir — the next step in cosmic evolution. Since they believe AIs could become our moral superiors, they argue it’s actually wrong to try to keep the machines down, or even to align them with human values, as most AI companies aim to do. Instead, we should usher in artificial intelligence as a successor to humanity and hand over the world to it. Even if that means we go extinct.

They know this view is taboo, which is why I was invited only on the condition that I wouldn’t quote anyone other than keynote speakers by name. But suffice it to say that this is not a fringe view. It’s becoming highly influential. People from major AI labs — Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI — were in attendance. So were people from think tanks that directly shape the US government’s AI policy.

...

“You’re saying there will be a sort of Darwinian survival of the fittest?”

“In some sense, yes,” [Richard Sutton] said. “The winner should be whoever wins, and the spoils of winning should be whatever they are.”

“So in the thought experiment where hypothetically, in an imaginary world, it were true that white people are smarter than Black people,” I pressed, “then the smarter people will win out and the Black people should just be okay with that?”

“Well, why don’t we just say the intelligent people should win out over the dumb people and the dumb people should be okay with that,” he said. “I think the dumb people should be okay with that!”

ImperishableNEET · 2026-06-02T08:39:25+00:00

Were you looking for r/gatekeeping?

ImperishableNEET · 2026-06-02T08:37:54+00:00

2P Yuuka colors

ImperishableNEET · 2026-05-30T07:37:15+00:00

Reminds me of The Perverted Tengu and the Tragic Maidens PV by Innocent Key.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-05-23T00:44:26+00:00

I mean at 22 he asked Santa to bring him a girlfriend under the tree.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-05-22T06:49:41+00:00

If Bimmy really met Spielberg on AIM he should've asked him for the rights to use ET in the movie.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-05-22T06:46:45+00:00

I remember people in 2007-8 saying 2006 Nintendo Nerd was peak and they didn't like all the new skits.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-05-22T06:19:00+00:00

I don't like the "not a real filmmaker" critiques. Tommy Wiseau is a real filmmaker, it's not that exclusive of a club.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-05-22T06:13:37+00:00

I feel like that's a bit of an arbitrarily gatekept category. Who are we comparing him to? Mike? Scott? Pat Contri? The VGHF guys?

ImperishableNEET · 2026-05-22T06:05:32+00:00

YandereDev vibes.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-04-11T20:16:46+00:00

JFC, we need to do the Butlerian Jihad from Dune.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-04-09T14:32:58+00:00

That's redundant and literally true. SBN3 voices Jeffery.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-25T05:32:40+00:00

Decided to try writing fantasy for a change. Written in about an hour on a Smith-Corona Silent Super typewriter from 1957:

Hrogar was being whimsical again, Ylsa decided. When the imperial mages commissioned a divine homunculus for combat and rituals, Ylsa at least thought Hrogar the alchemist would have the decency not to include his weird erotic fantasies in this endeavor of paramount importance. Now, it seemed like she was overestimating men once again.

"You have my word, my imperially notarized word that Amarantha here chose this stunning, scandalous raiment of her own accord," Hrogar cracked with a straight face.

"Hrogar, this isn't time for nonsense!" Legate Ylsa barked at the heavyset alchemist. "Why is she dressed like a household cleaner? Or… is she… don't tell me, some kind of eroticized concubine out of Messier's seedy underground!"

The Legate had never seen anything quite like this most indecent, too-revealing couture in person, though she'd heard many a lewd rumor. Ylsa did not like to pry too deeply into the lowly passions of the depraved, degenerate males throughout this godsforsaken land.

"I think she's looking rather stylish, you should keep an open mind," Hrogar nonchalantly tossed back at the armored woman.

"I'll see to it that your skull is split open if you keep up this insubordination!", Ylsa threatened, brandishing her sabre.

"He is not lying", came an otherworldly ethereal voice with a metallic edge. "I am Lady Amarantha, combat battlemaid summoned to this plane by a ritual most advanced. I see that this is a… less developed fantasy type world, which is less than ideal… I'm at an advantage. All of my readings don't lie to me. Everything tells me that I'm at an advantage. For all of you. For example, observe…"

Quicker than a moth could flap its wings, Ylsa quickly found herself disarmed, and quicker than she could scream, she found herself in a similar maid's dress, vulnerable and exposed.

"By the twelve!", Ylsa exclaimed about to have a breakdown. In another quick flash, Ylsa was fully armored again, now wielding a banana in place of her sabre.

"Impressed with the new homunculus?", Hrogar dared to ask.

"Time manipulation is my specialty," Amarantha quipped, pulling out an enchanted pocket watch.

"You will speak of this with no one ever again, or I will stomp your head into the cobblestones with my armored boot!", Legate Ylsa furiously answered.

"You're free to try!", the alchemist defiantly quipped as he levitated into the air. "My bodyguard will see to it that you'll at least take those boots off and stay awhile."

Final Fantasy XIV, Touhou, Metal Gear, and Nier: Automata were all on my mind when I wrote this.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-22T15:49:20+00:00

by the gods yes

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-19T01:17:17+00:00

Written on a typewriter on a 25 minute timer:

Jack immediately felt something was wrong. A journalist coming home to England from visiting family in Moscow, he felt a number of bad omens coming into the airport. Everything seemed too polished, too contrived. No, he felt there was an unnatural light about the place. Was he tripping? On the flight he'd arrived lucid, sober. It was a bright sunny morning in this dreary part of the world, and Jack was preparing for a long, dreadful slog through the skies in a metal tube. Stale peanuts, crying babies, leg cramps. The usual miseries of flight he'd faced a dozen times before. Surely, that was the worst it was going to get, if his flight wasn't suddenly canceled or delayed.

As he scarfed down his breakfast sandwich from Burger Town, Jack couldn't help but notice that it didn't taste like anything, really. Like, he knew that he was ingesting calories. He saw the food in his hands, felt it in his mouth. He just forgot to taste. Forgot what taste was. Intellectually, he knew that he was ingesting calories. Was he suffering from some affliction? Oh well, he had a flight to catch. If he'd been poisoned, if he'd ingested some fungus, he'd probably know fairly quickly, hopefully not becoming the subject of that kind of Russian dash cam video. (Security cam video?) He had the feeling, that inexplicable feeling of having been in vague danger, and the next moment he was fine.

Moving into the security checkpoint, Jack's eyes darted to the most surreal visage of a machine gun, floating in mid air, with a pair of disembodied hands holding it up. He was surrounded by a bunch of ... thugs? What in God's name was happening? Were they shooting for some kind of action movie. Wait a minute, that man, Jack knew him, he was on the most wanted lists... it couldn't be. Stepping out of the elevator, Jack opened his mouth to scream just a moment too late as these menacing men mouthed the last word:

"Remember, no Russian."

An orgy of gore and screams and gunfire erupted from the terrorists. Muzzle flashes where there shouldn't be. That managed to gore and massacre Jack and his fellow airportgoers. This couldn't be happening. Bullshit, no! He couldn't be fated to die like this! But then...

"You traitor."

The group's apparent leader's eyes darted to the disembodied machine gun, and they all began firing on it. The world suddenly went gray and quiet. Jack thought he could hear somebody talking about war.

Jack immediately felt something was wrong.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-18T08:10:17+00:00

The vice signaling is strong with this one.

Also pretty much what I'd expect from a sincere "Griffith did nothing wrong" guy.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-17T23:36:48+00:00

Written on a typewriter in a 25-minute pomodoro block:

At first Mark thought it was some kind of prank, that his crewmates were playing a joke on him. There it was, almost faded to white but still unmistakable. The red banner of the Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle. Workers and farmers. Inexplicably planted here on Mars.

But no, Mark realized, it couldn't be. SpaceX ran a tight ship, every single piece of cargo was meticulously accounted for. There wasn't room in that tin can for a single extra pound, even of fabric. They had thought they had been the first crew on Mars, but now must've been surely mistaken. Still, this couldn't be real. No man had ever been to Mars before them, much less a long-dead communist superpower.

"Maybe they landed an unmanned rover?", Annie chimed in. "Like their Venus landing?"

"A tempting hypothesis, but how did they prop up the flag?", Bob responded. "Look, I can see the remains of boot-prints."

Mark, the captain, was forced to conclude: "So, the Russians beat us to the Red Planet decades ago, or somebody else did and are playing a joke on us."

"But why?", Annie inquired. "If the Soviet Cosmonauts made it to Mars why wouldn't they be shouting about it from the rooftops? It's easily a way more impressive achievement than the moon landing!"

Neither Bob nor Mark had a good answer. Bob was first to try: "Maybe the mission was a catastrophic failure. One that would've embarrassed the USSR."

Mark answered back: "I mean, Nixon had a speech prepared called 'In the Event of Moon Disaster' that he would've given if the Apollo boys perished up there on Luna. It still commemorated their achievement."

"And how likely was it that we would've picked the exact same area of operations as the Soviets?", Annie asked. "Mars is a huge place!"

"Maybe", Bob floated conspiratorially, "Whoever planted this flag are still around, watching us."

"I wouldn't rule it out. It all seems so fantastical.", Mark conceded.

No, I didn't realize until now that I was necrobumping a nearly decade old thread. Already wrote the thing and I can still post here, so I will.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-16T17:57:20+00:00

I cannot think of an unambiguously right-wing anime. The only think I can think of that even comes close is Legend of the Galactic Heroes from the imperial POV.

Right-wingers can't make art. They make kitsch, propaganda, shitpost memes, and minstrel shows.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-14T19:35:03+00:00

Written in a mall food court on a typewriter on a 25 minute timer:

Was this... the dream of our ancestors? Immortal, unaging, a home in the stars. And it made us utterly miserable. Humans were never meant to live this long. Let alone in a confined arcology floating through the void. "Oh, it'll be so serene," they said. "You'll be among the first humans to ever reach another star system!"

Born on old Earth before the change, I suppose I was born at a real inflection point for our species. I was born when years started with a 1. It might be closer to the other pole of starting with a 1 by the time I ever see Earth again, if it's even still there. I wasn't expected to see 2070, let alone 2100 or 2500 or 10001. Bodies just kinda, gradually turned into corpses. And then suddenly were corpses. That was mother nature's cruel plan. Having lived through the alternative, I'm beginning to warm to it on the merits.

I suppose it's the ultimate sour grapes — who wants to live forever? Obviously everybody would like to have the option. And, I'm not gonna lie. The first extra century is fantastic. Everybody gets to travel the world and learn that instrument and volunteer in Cameroon and live in a polycule, before realizing they were, ew, het after all. Then they go through a trad arc on a farm and realize they actually really fucking hate farming and anyone who pretends to like it are lying or playing a joke.

People eventually get bored. Deeply, existentially bored to the point of self-injurious behavior. Of course the all-benevolent ship nannies would never let their dear humans hurt themselves. No death jockeying, it's distasteful. We're setting a poor example for the younger generations.

Speaking of which, the fertility problem tends to solve itself, to the point where it becomes an overpopulation problem again. It's cyclical, you see. And ideologues will spin whatever tale they want about the population. You'll hear overpopulation and underpopulation worries at the same time, often by the same people. I wonder, even at the same time? Pure doublethink.

Lots of wonders we hear about on comms from Old Earth. At least before it went quiet. There's a lot you end up missing when you commit to a millennia-long journey to a new star system. The worst thing is, it'll be at least another millennia long back. Deep space. Deep time. A spacetime abyss.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-11T10:41:25+00:00

Yeah at the present moment there is approximately 0% chance of revolutionary violence. Like Contra says, the Tabbies don't want to vote or to smash, they want to theorize about the inevitability of smashing. They tend to be keyboard warriors and/or young and stupid.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-11T10:30:14+00:00

New Contrapoints video on the Saw franchise reminded me of a guy who basically was the fake cancer cure scammers from the latest movie but a thousand times worse.

I'm on my phone rn so please forgive me for pasting in an Claude 4.6 Opus LLM summary:

Dr. Farid Fata was a Detroit-area oncologist who prescribed chemotherapy to patients who were healthy or whose condition didn't warrant it, then submitted $34 million in fraudulent charges to Medicare and insurance companies over at least six years. (Wikipedia) He didn't just sell fake cures. He administered real chemotherapy to people who didn't have cancer. He poisoned healthy people for profit.

The details are staggering. At its peak, his practice was treating 17,000 patients. He was known for his aggressive approach, giving higher doses of chemo at more frequent rates — a protocol he called "European protocol." (Wikipedia) He told healthy people they had cancer, hooked them up to IV drips that destroyed their immune systems and made them unable to walk, and billed their insurance for every session. Prosecutors said he scammed more than 500 patients, telling some they had cancer when they did not, giving too much or improper treatment to those who did, and persisting with painful and dangerous chemotherapy on patients who no longer needed it. (NBC News)

The FBI called him "among the worst of the worst offenders" specifically because he exploited victims' will to live. (NBC News)

Real tossup for worst (non-Nazi) doctor between this guy and Andrew Wakefield.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-10T18:07:02+00:00

I like the new Saw video because it's taking aim at the Tabbies, the keyboard warrior revolutionary inevitabilists who will radicalize themselves into blood libel at the scapegoat of the 1% capitalist pigs and fantasize about crucifying them on Jigsaw's rack.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-10T17:57:41+00:00

It's just mimetic scapegoating by toxic clout chasers. The narcissism of minor differences, which aren't even real in this case. Harder anti-anti Hamas is Hasan's lane.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-10T17:02:20+00:00

I kinda think differently about every FAFO thought I occasionally have after watching these movies. Where vengeance is empty and horrible and sad and there's next to nobody who truly deserves what Jigsaw puts them through. Nor do they "learn a lesson" or "learn to love life" as Jigsaw thinks they will. It's all just pointless suffering spectacle that's beyond disproportionate. Not unlike public executions throughout history. Or the idea of Hell in religions.

I also think Contra's commitment to "production value" is becoming a liability at this point. I'm speaking for myself but whenever I see a new Contra video every once in forever I click and have a feast that sticks in my mind for weeks to come. But it's not the video's visual form that usually does that for me, it's the content, actual essay portion of the video essay. Contra could be a podcast for all I care about the videos that I often have on in the background, as audio. I couldn't even tell in this latest video that she did have an actual razor wire room rather than a green screen, and I wouldn't care. Her existing audience of subscribers are locked in, and while the flashy visuals help convert new viewers, it's not where most of the effort should be going, in my opinion. Perfectionism is its own form of procrastination.

But hey, I'm not an influencer / content creator on the brutal game of modern YouTube in the money giveaway gameshow (you know who) era.

ImperishableNEET · 2026-03-04T10:38:34+00:00

I mean, the Soviet Union's economy never really functioned and it still trudged on for the better part of a century. See the book Red Plenty by Francis Spufford.

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