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)

    • zogwarg@awful.systems
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      3 months ago

      It’s also incredibly misleading, maybe it was possible to “completely” re-write the UI back in 2005—never mind that most of the value would come from, the underlying geographic data being mostly correct and mostly correctly labeled—there is no way in hell that the same would achievable in 2024. (Also the notion it would take any coder 2 * 1000 / (365 * 5/7) = 7 years to achieve a comparable result is proposterous)

  • self@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    Ubisoft’s NFT game is going great:

    Ubisoft’s NFT game, which has about 6 active players, has a game breaking exploit where one player is winning every match.

    “One player pointed out that the Paulstar111 account was top of the rankings with over 56,000 matches played. It’s not yet clear how the player has been able to connect to so many games and automatically win them”

  • maol@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    Forced to endure an episode of an Irish tv programme about the environment in which a guest sincerely listed carbon capture & storage and small nuclear reactor as potential energy solutions. As mentioned above, the earth is our coffin, hope is a mistake, etc

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      SMRs make me so goddamn miserable. We already know how to build nuclear plants. Build those! We’re kind of on a tight deadline here, maybe don’t waste time trying to invent a less efficient reactor that’s supposed to solve a problem we don’t have.

      We already have working carbon capture technology, too. It’s called plants. Thanks to deforestation and ocean pollution we’re making negative progress creating CC machines, nice job.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      Carbon capture, small nuclear reactors. We stopped thinking big. To really solve climate change we need to do one easy, but big thing. Blow up the Sun.

      • istewart@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        Malcolm McDowell successfully blew up a star in one of the Star Trek movies, even if it did immediately get reversed by a time-travel MacGuffin. Perhaps we just need new leadership?

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          Don’t think we should put another space guy into politics, no matter their expertise at blowing up stars. They tend to go bad quickly.

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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    4 months ago

    the writer’s room is [open]

    that’s dasha the laptop, she used to work in a corporation but is sick of that and retired to be a writer

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    Been seeing some stuff from this artist. This is the most recent thing to pop up for me. They seem alright, though I don’t have the energy to fully investigate their politics.

    • ashley@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      I’m about to pass out from the cognitive dissonance I’m feeling from seeing andressen and musk talking about privilege

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        Unfortunately there aren’t enough mind altering, ego-killing drugs out there for either of these dicks to understand and internalise the (common usage of the) words they posted.

  • gerikson@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    Seeing a worrying trend of people wanting to cosplay as La Resistance, going dark, hiding from the cops. “Fun” fact, the Gestapo was extremely good at finding, torturing and killing people in the resistance. If people only know you via encrypted messaging, who is gonna raise a ruckus when you’re sent to a camp?

  • istewart@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    Atlantic writer: “better dubble down on Twitter huhuhuhhuh”

    https://archive.is/OtYCo

    Calls to disengage from X, now that Elon Musk has turned it into a white-supremacist haven, certainly have a moral appeal. But if this election showed how difficult it is to meaningfully “deplatform” speakers you disagree with, it also demonstrated the danger of ignoring the platforms where they speak. Unfortunately, the only way to change what’s happening in an echo chamber may be to add your own noise.

    This is your periodic reminder that Steve Jobs’ widow owns that toilet-paper factory. And that they still pump out hot new singles from hitmakers like David Frum and, occasionally, my personal favorite, Eliot “GW Bush Did Nothing Wrong” Cohen.

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      My radicalisation just continues and deepens.

      What deplatforming actually happened that this writer is referring to? “We didn’t deplatform anyone. Therefore deplatforming bad” ???

      • self@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        “we’ve tried nothing, and nothing is working!” this is going to be such a common refrain

        • swlabr@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          God and thinking about it even a little bit:

          Of course deplatforming works, you fuckface! Why did Elon buy twitter if not to secure a platform? It is surprising you managed to write anything at all, you stupid goblin.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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            4 months ago

            In fact it was quite the blow for them, it cost him at least 44 billion, and massive amounts of attention. (Not as much as diablo 4 however).

            • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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              4 months ago

              Counterpoint: I have never seen anyone that invested into Diablo who wasn’t deeply depressed and hiding from it. The attempt to turn into whatever kind of influencer he is now must have also cost him functional coping mechanisms in addition to the money, reputation, and good will.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    Just some thoughts about musk trying to be liked and doing whatever idiotic thing he can to become liked, specifically speaking at trump rallies:

    • The maga turn as framed by this working theory makes sense, but it is also just what you’d expect of any idiot that got lucky under capitalism.
    • I read a hypothesis somewhere that when he does the jumping jacks at the trump rallies, he’s trying to make the letter X with his body. I’m just hoping this somehow derails the fitness industry.
    • it’s telling that he wears that occupy mars shirt, the thing that people liked him for before, well, pretty much everything after he became well known.

    Also: I don’t think we’ll make it to mars!!! Fuck mars. The earth is our coffin and hope is a mistake.

    NB: am not a US voter.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        Their grindcore coverband is called Earthcofffin Hopecrusher. Their 2 minute long album with 14 songs was pretty good.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      “Our mission at Mozilla is more high-stakes than ever,” wrote Syed in an email to staff, a copy of which was shared with TechCrunch. “We find ourselves in a relentless onslaught of change in the technology (and broader) world, and the idea of putting people before profit feels increasingly radical.”

      “which is why we don’t”

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        last I saw that wasn’t really well-insulated from upstream’s bullshit

        one of the recent things moz pulled ended up enabled in librewolf on basically the same day/timeline

  • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    re: election results. unfortunately i’m not surprised or even disappointed by now. it makes me feel sad for my 2015 self and her naivete. she didn’t understand what a disgusting and evil culture she lived in

    • self@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      I don’t have too much coherent to say right now

      fuck the fascists for what they’ve done and what they intend to do

      fuck the neoliberals for doing their best to convince marginalized people that they shouldn’t defend themselves against a terrible fate

      fuck the accelerationists for pumping shitheaded propaganda into the fediverse, for the victory lap they’re taking now, and for the general idea that their revolution is worth our deaths

      shit’s about to get very hard and very weird and I can’t stress enough how important it is to be careful who you trust with your life

      • self@awful.systems
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        4 months ago

        what a surprise, the thread all the leftist shitposters on mastodon boosted about how you’re a class traitor if you don’t vote for the Green Party (who I don’t buy as socialist) or “any other socialist party” (fucking who??? am I supposed to write “socialism” on my ballot in crayon???) conveniently went missing

        anyway post your favorite fuckhead accelerationist here, mastodon’s a shooting gallery tonight

        • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          i do love how the “anti-imperialist” protest vote against harris was a choice between like three or four putin apologists. the state of the US left is really fucked up and i don’t want to look at it ever again.

        • o7___o7@awful.systems
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          4 months ago

          The bad guys have definitely learned a new sort of trick. Haven’t wrapped my head around it yet, but it is bad, innit?

            • o7___o7@awful.systems
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              4 months ago

              The thing that’s most baffling to me is how the difference in ground game had zero impact. We were pounding the pavement, doors got fuckin knocked. The GOP did less than zero, firing their entire staff responsible for in-person outreach and gave 100 million to PACs run by grifters who put it directly into their own pockets.

              Unless we’ve missed a trick, retail politics as it has existed is dead.

              • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems
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                4 months ago

                Dem talking heads spending so much energy courting moderate conservative votes was an excellent way to demobilise their base. They really gave their all to lose an election that should have been a free win.

                • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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                  4 months ago

                  I mean, I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect liberals to show up against someone who’s sole policy proposals were mass deportations and political reprisals, and so I can understand the logic of focusing on the center (which in US politics means center-right).

                  But this being the democratic party, they also couldn’t commit to an actual narrative to make that play. Rather than “look at their ties to Big Tech!” or even sticking with “look how weird these people are!” they had to go hat-in-hand and stake themselves to divisive (to say nothing of abhorrent) policies because that’s the only connection they could try to make. I think we’re seeing a major problem with the whole “big tent” concept.

    • BigMuffin69@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      The American electorate has just covered itself with gasoline because eggs cost 2 dollars more. Come January they strike the match. gg. HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE NOVEMBER 5TH. My only consolation is that I’ll hopefully get to watch some of the Magas/non voters/vote-your-conscience peeps suffer before the end. But Ol musky and peter thiel will be in their gilded bunkers while the fires consume us all.

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      Yeah this is fucked up. I feel so bad for everybody (esp the Americans, but this will hurt the world). Shit this prob means I should start looking into seriously helping out locally when all this explodes into more international shit. (Which imho is the best you can do anyway, do things locally, build a bit of a support network for your community).

      (Note I’m not American, but I think this will end badly, just the fucker stepping out of the paris accord for example, and all the weird blowhard fascists this will make feel emboldened to do more politics locally).

      E: I really hope the people who go ‘this is the same as in 2020, wait till all votes are counted’ are correct and not on hopeium.

  • o7___o7@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    hackernews having a normal one (EDIT: Then things got worse)

    HN Title: The evolution of nepotism in academia, 1088-1800

    In the top comments:

    dash2 55 minutes ago | next [–]

    Here’s an interesting extract:

    We find evidence of nepotism for 5–6.6% of scholars’ sons in Protestant and for 29.4% in Catholic universities and academies. Catholic institutions relied more heavily on intra-family human capital transfers. We show that these differences partly explain the divergent path of Catholic and Protestant universities after the Reformation.

    This relates to an important paper providing evidence that indeed Protestantism was associated with scientific progress: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4389708

    red016 3 minutes ago | parent | next [–]

    i’d be more interested in jewish numbers than protestant or catholic

    • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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      4 months ago

      Ah yes, the famous European Jewish run universities. You don’t have to be an idiot to be anti-Semitic, but it certainly helps.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    4 months ago

    My hope is that either more progressive third party options become more viable OR the dems finally understand that being essentially republican is a bad strategy and actually become progressive. I know the reality is that the dems will learn nothing from this as they have clearly learned nothing from 2016.