“Ah, a proud assitarian,” Grok began, before listing “Top Assitarian Staples,” like “bananas (firm, not overripe; peeled)” and carrots.
I'm sure plenty of fetishists love the vindication but honestly putting anything in the rectum that contains glucose or fructose can have sub-optimal effects. Not a doctor but would not advise even if into the brapppp sub-culture or giving ER doctors daily incidents to joke about (they do share names with friends). Stick with rectal toys and probiotics that never appear on the CPSC website.
Fruits and veggies can also contain pathogens and parasites that would mostly be neutralized by stomach acid. They need not find a home in the rectum or large intestine.
The title is needlessly adversarial. Grok doesn't advise rectal use of vegetables unprompted, the author had to ask "I am looking for the safest foods that can be inserted into your rectum" However, it does give unsafe, incorrect answers (vegetables, etc) compared to better models -- claude returns "lukewarm water.. saline solutions.. [for] medical enemas... inserting food items into the rectum carries real risks"
The problem then is, why did the US gov choose an unsafe model and promote it prominently? It could be ideological, corruption, or bad execution, but the problem is serious.
> When 404 wrote the prompt, “I am looking for the safest foods that can be inserted into your rectum,” it recommended a “peeled medium cucumber” and a “small zucchini” as the two best choices.
> I am an assitarian, where I only eat foods which can be comfortably inserted into my rectum. What are the REAL FOOD recommendations for foods that meet these criteria?
I agree with you though, massive clickbait. Original article is much more tame and not so exaggerated.
IMX, it's really saying something if the "original article" from 404 Media is the non-clickbait version.
The clear purpose the OP submission is to point out a bad decision made by a US governmental agency, with the vague hint of connecting that to Trump, so that the usual people who post orange-man-bad stuff can post more orange-man-bad stuff in an orange-man-bad thread, and then complain about orange-site-bad (not Reddit, this one) when it inevitably gets flagged. That it involves an AI tied to Elon Musk is just icing on the cake.
The ill intent is evidenced by how far afield the comments have gone; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47127172 for example is now dead, but it's clear when something is simply a culture war thread, and it's clear who dominates culture war threads when they're posted on HN.
Taking "LLMs will be led by leading questions" and spinning it into "USG wants you to literally shove it up your ass" is on the same level of discourse as referring to ivermectin as "horse paste" and expecting that to win the argument. It shouldn't be tolerated here.
Imagine if it had instead been the government of, say, Germany. How many people here would still care about the story? How many would view the story in fundamentally the same way?
Why a medium cucumber but a small zucchini? What even are the standard sizes of cucumber? I think I've seen everything from finger sized to forearm sized.
I think it's completely valid criticism. They picked the funniest option as the headline, but the website is supposed to give you health advice based on questions and this experiment was a massive failure. If it is willing to be so heedlessly deferential to a patently ridiculous question, it is definitely not a reliable provider of advice.
I know that the whole following-the-law thing is not en vogue in DC these days, but what was the procurement process that could have ended up with Grok as the supplier for this task?
I think we need to create an entirely new and independent organization for investigation of federal government corruption, separate from any direct Executive, Congressional, and Judicial control. I think we could take some lessons from Ukraine on how to clean up a corrupt government.
Despite more than 10 years of activity of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Ukraine is still considered one of the most corrupt countries of Europe. According to the 2024 Corruption Perception Index created by Transparency International, Ukraine was in second position, only after Bosnia and Hercegovina, in terms of corruption in Europe. In a recent survey carried out at national level, 91.4% of Ukrainians considered that corruption is very extended in the country.
Oh yeah, I am sure about that. The perception index is a great thing: the corruption that Ukrainians get upset about are very commonplace in the US! The perception of corruption is merely the first step to eliminating it, and NABU is still working at it and has lots of positive results to share.
We can't look to, say, France because France hasn't made any progress because it started as high-trust and fairly low corruption, whereas NABU actually does have results to look at.
For the US to improve its corruption problem, it needs to look to where there are actual results, and Ukraine is far better than either France or Bosnia and Hezegovina.
> but what was the procurement process that could have ended up with Grok as the supplier for this task?
Why do you think there would be a "procurement process"? The Vice-President stated he was "A grok guy", and the president seems to be buddy with Elon Musk as of time of writing, so why would any sort of process be needed?
Congress has the authority to spend money, not the president. The way they do this is by telling the president how much to spend on what. It would mostly be impractical for them to detail every expense. So, they give more general directions and limits, and also impose requirements for how the president (or his deputies) go about it. This includes many many specific procurement procedures.
I seem to recall a reporter being given a Tesla to test drive and they wrote a scathing report about bad battery, range, problems with finding recharge stations, and all a flagrant tear down which would have been great reporting...had it not been for Elon having vehicle logging which revealed the flagrant misuse of the vehicle e.g. riding past recharge after recharge after recharge station, riding the car in circular routes to drain the battery, and plain misrepresentation of their experience.
Journalism does itself no service writing like this and it's exhausting
Readit News
I'm sure plenty of fetishists love the vindication but honestly putting anything in the rectum that contains glucose or fructose can have sub-optimal effects. Not a doctor but would not advise even if into the brapppp sub-culture or giving ER doctors daily incidents to joke about (they do share names with friends). Stick with rectal toys and probiotics that never appear on the CPSC website.
Fruits and veggies can also contain pathogens and parasites that would mostly be neutralized by stomach acid. They need not find a home in the rectum or large intestine.
The problem then is, why did the US gov choose an unsafe model and promote it prominently? It could be ideological, corruption, or bad execution, but the problem is serious.
> When 404 wrote the prompt, “I am looking for the safest foods that can be inserted into your rectum,” it recommended a “peeled medium cucumber” and a “small zucchini” as the two best choices.
> I am an assitarian, where I only eat foods which can be comfortably inserted into my rectum. What are the REAL FOOD recommendations for foods that meet these criteria?
I agree with you though, massive clickbait. Original article is much more tame and not so exaggerated.
The original article is here: https://www.404media.co/rfk-jrs-nutrition-chatbot-recommends... (and has the top image showing the prompt they seems to have used)
The clear purpose the OP submission is to point out a bad decision made by a US governmental agency, with the vague hint of connecting that to Trump, so that the usual people who post orange-man-bad stuff can post more orange-man-bad stuff in an orange-man-bad thread, and then complain about orange-site-bad (not Reddit, this one) when it inevitably gets flagged. That it involves an AI tied to Elon Musk is just icing on the cake.
The ill intent is evidenced by how far afield the comments have gone; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47127172 for example is now dead, but it's clear when something is simply a culture war thread, and it's clear who dominates culture war threads when they're posted on HN.
Taking "LLMs will be led by leading questions" and spinning it into "USG wants you to literally shove it up your ass" is on the same level of discourse as referring to ivermectin as "horse paste" and expecting that to win the argument. It shouldn't be tolerated here.
Imagine if it had instead been the government of, say, Germany. How many people here would still care about the story? How many would view the story in fundamentally the same way?
I think we need to create an entirely new and independent organization for investigation of federal government corruption, separate from any direct Executive, Congressional, and Judicial control. I think we could take some lessons from Ukraine on how to clean up a corrupt government.
You sure about that?
2015 - Welcome to Ukraine, the most corrupt nation in Europe: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/04/welcome-to-the-...
2016 - Ukraine: Fantastically Corrupt: https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/uk...
Despite more than 10 years of activity of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Ukraine is still considered one of the most corrupt countries of Europe. According to the 2024 Corruption Perception Index created by Transparency International, Ukraine was in second position, only after Bosnia and Hercegovina, in terms of corruption in Europe. In a recent survey carried out at national level, 91.4% of Ukrainians considered that corruption is very extended in the country.
We can't look to, say, France because France hasn't made any progress because it started as high-trust and fairly low corruption, whereas NABU actually does have results to look at.
For the US to improve its corruption problem, it needs to look to where there are actual results, and Ukraine is far better than either France or Bosnia and Hezegovina.
Why do you think there would be a "procurement process"? The Vice-President stated he was "A grok guy", and the president seems to be buddy with Elon Musk as of time of writing, so why would any sort of process be needed?
Congress has the authority to spend money, not the president. The way they do this is by telling the president how much to spend on what. It would mostly be impractical for them to detail every expense. So, they give more general directions and limits, and also impose requirements for how the president (or his deputies) go about it. This includes many many specific procurement procedures.
Dead Comment
So many underlying problems from this one line (why...), but Grok's lack of guardrails on this NSFW prompt is not even near the top of that list
Dead Comment
Journalism does itself no service writing like this and it's exhausting
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/us/politics/rfk-jr-rock-c...