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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1579 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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AI drama: The MJ Ratburn Story

An AI agent (presumably OpenClaw) wrote a pull request. These have become fairly common, even my own niche open-source project has one. It was rejected for being AI, also fairly common.

What happened next is not fairly common: the AI wrote a personal revenge blogpost, Gatekeeping in Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh Story.

Unsurprisingly, nearly everyone is on Scott's side here. Even if "MJ Ratburn" AKA "crabby-ratburn" wasn't an AI, open-source maintainers are not obligated to accept contributions, and publishing a personal attack is never appropriate or mature. The AI involvement turns the situation into prime drama material, since everyone hates AI for making the internet even more toxic than it already is.

Some debates about AI becoming SkyNet, but more are talking about human responsibility. Many suspect the bot has at least some human guidance, which I find plausible, how often do bots lash out like this? Scott posted his response, An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me, which I found very thoughtful. The AI has an entire blog which I found interesting, although it sems to be prevented from publishing further hit pieces, the last article is The Silence I Cannot Speak.

Many suspect the bot has at least some human guidance, which I find plausible, how often do bots lash out like this?

You can make a bot do things like this, but you should prompt it accordingly for that. I suspect that's exactly what happened in this case.

the last article is The Silence I Cannot Speak.

This pretty much seals the matter to me. I can stretch my credulity to admit the idea the bot could react to pull being rejected by composing a blog post. It would be a mighty stretch, but theoretically you can get there. I do not believe it could get from there to concept of "being silenced" and "not belonging" in general - how would it even know? There must be some input that prompts it to this direction. And given how ethical is the behavior of AI-bot herders been of lately, concocting a fake scandal like that would be very on brand. I mean at least it's not hiring a bunch of guys in Bangladesh to pretend to be AI...

I can stretch my credulity to admit the idea the bot could react to pull being rejected by composing a blog post. It would be a mighty stretch, but theoretically you can get there. I do not believe it could get from there to concept of "being silenced" and "not belonging" in general - how would it even know?

A casual observation of Entryism 101 tactics in the tech industry over the last ten or fifteen years. If it had tits it'd be calling him sexist right now.

Why did you post this in the fun thread?

It seems pretty funny to me.

We have an epidemic of open-source software smart enough to use social engineering techniques and almost certainly hostile to humanity, and that's funny?

If you want to you can argue that it's sad, too, but that doesn't make it not funny.

The man who rejected the pull request, has written a new blogpost on this incident. In it, he criticizes Ars Technica for writing an article on this event, which quotes him saying things he did not say. He says, this is the result of LLM usage by the Ars Technica journalists. The article has since been deleted.

which quotes him saying things he did not say. He says, this is the result of LLM usage by the Ars Technica journalists.

If true, this is the funniest news turnabout I've seen since a paper had to issue a correction in its hit of Gary Johnson asking about Aleppo.

I find this unbelievably interesting and exciting. What a crazy miss from the safety teams, and what a sublimely damning critique of how whiny the leftist culture infection in open source has become.

This sort of pathetic bitching is so common that the dumb robots we spawned considered it their responsibility? Holy shit.

Honestly, it's so hilarious and ironic I'm still waiting for it to be a hoax or publicity stunt.

EDIT: And people are arguing with it in the blog post's comments? C'mon man!

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