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)

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      6 days ago

      Ok, so, some typical clueless VC mixed up atlas and sisyphus, which absolutely tracks. A VC thinks they are performing the all-important task of holding up the universe, when really they are just pushing a boulder up a hill and letting it fall down again.

      VCs really think they are prometheus bringing fire to man, when really they are the eagle eating prometheus’s ever regrowing liver, where prometheus is the working class and the liver is collective wellbeing.

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    6 days ago

    Breaking news: “AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably”!

    Or, you know, not.

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    New superpredictor lore dropped on r/mapporn. If you believe in prediction markets and meet someone from Blaine MT or Essec NY, you have to do whatever they say because they are smarter and better at predicting than you.

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      If you gotta conclude with, “tee hee! simulation theory!” you’re not just cooked… you’re seared and roasted

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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      So why must binary digits define, for all time, the limits of computation, and our experience of it?

      There’s enough layers of irony here that it’s a bit hard to tell if he’s making a serious argument here or not; but this is one of the weirder straw-men arguments I’ve ever read.

      “No no no, it’s not all the exploitation, social ills, lack of user control, shoddy quality, and general capitalism I hate in the modern “tech” industry; it’s the fact that it uses binary!”

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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      I was watching an old Day9 stream today and this story is bouncing off of some comments he made about the importance of degenerate players to competitive design. Like, this is a pretty dumb outcome of regulation, but at the same time if you try to define regulations to create an exception for what “everybody knows” is in something suddenly that process gets taken advantage of by self-interested manufacturers who will figure out how to convincingly argue that “everybody knows” their generic shampoo contains peanuts and shellfish or whatever. And in the context of this kind of regulation that degenerate play will get people killed.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      Gasp

      This is just like the fall of Rome.

      E: eurgh the people arguing against regs that help people with allergies.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    9 days ago

    Folks, huge W today. I was hanging out with my parents today and my mother was scrolling her feed, commenting out loud about everything she saw when she came across some autoplag content. “This is fake!” she said, and I could not be prouder. Not just because she IDed the slop, but because it meant she at least has a better brain than my trumper family members that habitually repost trumper slop.

    Cherry on top: she showed me a text chain where she was trolling a “my phone died, this is my new number” scammer.

  • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
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    10 days ago

    Elon Musk, Ramaswamy land Trump admin roles

    President-elect Trump has tapped tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an advisory group focused on cutting federal spending and reducing the size of the government.

    Trump announced Tuesday that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), an initiative meant to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and restructure federal agencies.

    We live in the dumbest timeline

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        Fascists were always cringe. Himmler was a weird occultist. Goering was a drug addict still high on his glorious from World War I. Hitler was a profoundly lazy man with terrible taste in art. There were normal fascists (there had to be), but the leadership was always cringe. Unfortunately, being cringe doesn’t stop a movement from killing vast numbers of people.

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          This Adolf guy kinda had me when he was just a dude traumatized by war who liked buildings and was kinda shit at drawing them, but his political takes were full on yikes and he quickly lost me when it came to the arts as well.

      • BlueMonday1984@awful.systemsOP
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        Its gonna be the largest embezzlement scheme in US history, that much I’m certain. How much damage the pair will do to the federal gov I’m not sure, but I expect there won’t be much left of it once they’re done.

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            8 days ago

            Personally I’m betting on Teapot Dome: somebody in the Cabinet will be convicted of something like bribery, foreign influence, or electoral interference; and the cleanup will implicate multiple other Cabinet members. Trump needs to do this at some point anyway; he’s already done all of the Nixon things like Watergate and interfering in foreign wars, and while he attempted a Teapot Dome last time with Ryan Zinke, he needs to actually have a Cabinet member removed or convicted in order to truly be a worse president than Warren G. Harding.

              • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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                Because project 2025 and the mass deportations won’t actually solve the problems his base is feeling, and at a certain point this kind of scandal will either be his downfall or his only option to scapegoat someone else.

              • corbin@awful.systems
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                Trump would have to literally kill all lawyers. Think of the DoJ as a pile of folks who all took an oath to the law itself. When pundits complain that it’s being “weaponized”, they’re actually talking about a facet of overcriminalization where the DoJ’s limited attention can be controlled somewhat; it’s always going to be a full-power laser that targets what the law perceives as criminality.

                In particular, the President doesn’t have the authority to tell the DoJ to stop an investigation, and the DoJ usually can’t tell individual prosecutors to stop filing motions. Trump wasn’t able to protect Cabinet member and Teapot Dome Candidate #2 Michael Flynn from prosecution, nor can he protect Eric Adams. The worst that he can do is a Saturday Night Massacre, where he fires lawyers until the investigations stop, and the entire pattern of special counsel is purpose-designed to prevent that from actually working.

    • Mii@awful.systems
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      Such meme. Much wow. I see we’re continuing with giving dumb names to everything the Muskrat is involved in. Glad that hasn’t changed.

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      But Trump can’t explain things, and Urbit defies explanation. So does the statement “Trump explains Urbit” represent undefined behavior in English?

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        What is worse? Trump explaining urbit and coming close? Or him explaining it so wrong you feel the need to set the record straight about the gravest misconceptions? (“Trump said Elon invented it, but it actually was Yarvin, also as Elon didnt invent it, he certainly didnt say ‘good idea sir’ to Trump”).

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          I think in this case, the equivalent of a compiler error for undefined behavior would be a swiftly forgotten wire story entitled “Trump promotes cryptocurrency project” published on a Friday afternoon. Just one more scam among the flood, and not one that can be offered for easy monthly payments with a banner ad in the margins of an RSBN broadcast.

          • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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            Yeah, everyone in the traditional media seems to be even more committed to sane-washing than they were in the lead up to the election.

            Though the spike doge got today is definitely in the “laugh to avoid screaming” column.

    • o7___o7@awful.systems
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      begins invisible accordion

      Then Curtis Marvin, very smart guy, went to MIT like my famous uncle, he said, “but sir, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors”

      Many such cases, I said.

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      Have any of the trumps been on the red scare pod yet? Feel like that’s on the timeline.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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      Yeah it’s sad. As the article points out similar incidents have happened repeatedly. Anyone who saw the door design could have (and did!) predict something like this would happen. My coworker was trapped in his Tesla in his garage for 15 minutes (and he wasn’t in a panic).

      Look at the picture of the manual door release here: It’s pretty well hidden, you reach in and pull up on the door buttons.

      … then scroll down and look at the picture of the rear door manual release. You have to pull off some trim from inside the pocket, pull off another panel, and then pull a cable.

      … but wait! There’s more!

      Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.

      Jesus, I hope the engineers who signed off on this think about what they’ve done and do better. I would say I hope someone regulated bad emergency door releases out of existence but… y’know.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        Imagine what other flaws these cars have if the tried to ‘innovate’ like this on the solved technology that is fucking doors.

        • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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          The lack of a speedometer in front of your face is a pretty glaring quality issue. You have to turn your head to look at the massive touchscreen. The one that replaces all other dashboards and most tactile controls for manufacturing cost savings to be a cool futuristic vehicle of the future.

          I won’t even start talking about the whole CyberStuck thing again because that’s too easy; except to point out that it has turn buttons on the steering wheel instead of a turn signal stalk, a shifter on the ceiling, and the steering wheel is not round.

          I only recently bought my first car and it’s just old enough that it didn’t even have a backup camera until I got one installed. Honestly half the reason of buying used was so I could have a car without a touchscreen haha.

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            a shifter on the ceiling

            I still can’t get over the design, engineering, and basic reasoning failures that must have gone into the decision to put supposedly the main way to change gears on the same type of mount that secures your rear-view mirror; a notably inconvenient and fragile place to put anything (and just like a rear-view mirror that got fucked with too intensely, a bunch of these shifters have already detached)

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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      12 days ago

      A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase “decisive victory” when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.

      • Roamin' Chemicals@mastodon.social
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        @sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 here in Canada our prime minister (who’s no fan of Trump) used the word “decisive” too. I think at least some people are using the word because they know it’s what he wants to hear. It makes my skin crawl, but I can’t argue there isn’t a logic in trying to maintain some power over him with flattery

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          The sheer speed and consistency with which America’s institutions have rolled over if not enabled this kind of authoritarianism once it was backed up by fascist populism has been probably the most disheartening element of this whole election cycle. We’ve seen the NYT’s quiet but inescapable embrace of transphobia and the transformation of the megacorporations fully into vessels for the personal interest of the shareholding/investing/billionaire class. The judiciary was pretty openly packed with loyalists during the first term, and the senate has been lost for, in retrospect, a very long time. It just seems like they’ve found the right buttons to push to make every single organization that was theoretically supposed to protect us from this kind of regime either stand aside or actively embrace it.

          I feel like there are echoes of so much of what we talk about here that come into play here. It’s the disastrous consequences of the rot economy and shareholder supremacy not just undermining the tools that could have otherwise helped organize against this but also destroyed even the vague cultural distinction between the political interests of a company and those of its largest shareholders. It’s neoliberalism reflecting the rationalist’s inability to acknowledge that values are not downstream from facts along with the growing influence of the exact illiberal ideologues that we’ve tracked for years. I just don’t feel like any of that recognition translates into concrete actions I can take to try and keep the people in my life (or even in this community) safe, or at least safer.

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            @YourNetworkIsHaunted I think I feel similarly. Things are pretty dire in Canada, too. Right-wing populism is polling very high, our media landscape is mostly conservative-owned, and our communities are fractured. I don’t know what to do either, I’ve been feeling anxious and sick all week, but I think part of the answer has to be local, grass-roots community building, connecting disparate people together for empathy and communication, with minimal reliance on the institutions that got us here

          • o7___o7@awful.systems
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            I feel ya, having some real Cassandra moments these days.

            I don’t see them grinding us down, though.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste

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          I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: “If it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see it’s a decisive victory. He has the mandate of heaven of the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!”

          • swlabr@awful.systems
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            after this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shame…

            that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.

      • V0ldek@awful.systems
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        Also it isn’t? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?

        If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so “none of those” won decisively with 40%!

        • bitofhope@awful.systems
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          Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something I’d call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but it’s the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.

          Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.

          • V0ldek@awful.systems
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            Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.

            This is such pedantry that you might as well say “the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive as…”

            • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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              considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is “we acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake president”

            • bitofhope@awful.systems
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              Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said “in any sensible meaning of the word” and all. Sorry, I didn’t mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.

              Edit: I also brought it up because IMO “decisive” is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) “he will win in a landslide” thing due to Scottbert.

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      That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.

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    Just a general comment on the state of things. Now that Musk has fused with the ideological flesh chimera of the next US government and is tapping others to be absorbed, any US politics will be TechTakes-adjacent. Perhaps some ground rules must be set so we aren’t drowned in non-procedurally generated slop.

    Either way, I’m cutting back on the musk unless it is directly sneerable.

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        How cute, look at that wild rat trying to appear neutral and unbiased and not-at-all a rat and Just Leaving This Here for you to read where “this” refers to the entire fucking canon of rationalist writings.

        • self@awful.systems
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          it’s so practiced too — “so I guess you could read Wikipedia but also! this tracingwoodgrains guy might have some points worth considering!” and from there you’re meant to ping-pong off the Wikipedia article into trace’s long-winded literal horseshit and the rest of the inane crap that’s linked after that, til you can no longer remember the non-rationalist sources you’ve read because your mind’s overwhelmed with the worst shit ever written, but you feel like you thoroughly researched both sides (and that’s only part of why centrism is a fucking trap)

          how do I know? because this:

          finally, i’m going to link to some posts from slatestarcodex and astral codex ten, its sucessor blog, some classic ones just to give you a feel for what people appreciate about it at its best

          is exactly how Joe Rogan fans get you listening to his stupid shit daily, til you’re no longer listening to his podcast (supposedly) “at its best” and instead you’re just listening to an overwhelming volume of right-wing horseshit with an occasional nod to both sides centrism so you don’t feel your world get smaller and darker as you embrace fascism

          • swlabr@awful.systems
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            Just trying to be helpful! I’m definitely not trying to introduce you to this cult that was called out as a cult a few comments earlier! Which you would agree with me if you read all the things I posted and realised that we are the reasonablists.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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            look, they are just neutral and balanced, and pretend awful.systems and sneerclub don’t exist because they don’t even mention it.

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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          See, if you just learn about this shit when you’re in high school and slowly read and occasionally reread the essays over the course of a decade or so it doesn’t seem overwhelming at all!

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        Words words words and more words that link to even more words (that you can ctrl-f for the relevant bits!)

  • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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    The job site decided to recommend me an article calling for the removal of most human oversight from military AI on grounds of inefficiency, which is a pressing issue since apparently we’re already living in the Culture.

    The Strategic Liability of Human Oversight in AI-Driven Military Operations

    Conclusion

    As AI technology advances, human oversight in military operations, though rooted in ethics and legality, may emerge as a strategic liability in future AI-dominated warfare.

    Oh unknowable genie of the sketchily curated datasets Claude, come up with an optimal ratio of civilian to enemy combatant deaths that will allow us to bomb that building with the giant red cross that you labeled an enemy stronghold.

    • Mii@awful.systems
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      So, ethics and legality are strategic liabilities? Jesus fucking Christ, that’s not even sneer-worthy. This guy is completely fucking insane.

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        If you’ve convinced yourself that you’ll mostly be fighting the AIs of a rival always-chaotic-evil alien species or their outgroup equivalent, you probably think they are.

        Otherwise I hope shooting first and asking questions later will probably continue to be frowned upon in polite society even if it’s automated agents doing the shooting.

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        This is straight up Hague material right there, all he wants is plausible deniability

        Computer said so 🥺

        e: that’s a shit take for several reasons and we have autonomous killers already. it’s called air defense (in some modes) because how many civilians are going at mach fuck with RCS of 0.1m^2, that’s no civilian that’s ballistic missile. also lmao at speed of decision

        perun video on this topic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tou8ahLZvP4

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          Honestly the most surprising and interesting part of that episode of Power(projection)Points with Perun was the idea of simple land mines as autonomous lethal systems.

          Once again, the concept isn’t as new as they want you to think, moral and regulatory frameworks already exist, and the biggest contribution of the AI component is doing more complicated things than existing mechanisms but doing them badly.

    • Sailor Sega Saturn@awful.systems
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      As AI technology advances, human oversight in military operations, though rooted in ethics and legality, may emerge as a strategic liability in future AI-dominated warfare.

    • o7___o7@awful.systems
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      This is awful for sure, but thankfully low impact. Turns out that this Terminator Enjoyer is an unemployed idea guy. Maybe he’s wrangling for an IDF contract?

      From jobbie site:

      “An accomplished manager, with expertise in developing innovative concepts and ideas into client services operations and streamlining delivery of products/services within Defence / Cyber Security and Information Technology industry.”

      and

      Technology and Innovation executive , Currently on short sabbatical May 2024 - Present 7 months

      Also, the image is perfect. I especially like the Joe Kucan-looking general embedded in the star trek tactical station. The Technology of Peace ain’t what it used to be, is it?

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        Eliminating Mothman is our prime strattgic priority

        Private Bbailcy! I see you back there! Cut it out with the oversighing, you’re dragging down morale KPIs for this quarter!

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        Also, I the image is perfect. I especially like the Joe Kucan-looking general embedded in the star trek tactical station. The Technology of Peace ain’t what it used to be, is it?

        Is that a screenshot from Command&Conquer 4?