this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 6th September 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 5 days ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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 so 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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[–] schnoopy@awful.systems 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It has been ages since I've read them but anathem is definitely his best work. I did really enjoy zodiac, snowcrash, and the cryptonomicon when I read them ~15 years ago though.

His books are always a bit libertarian (usa meaning, derogatory) although snowcrash is a very funny send up of what that might actually look like if adopted wholeheartedly so idk how much they can be said to endorse it wholeheartedly.

Some of it reminds me of the incoherence of Pratchett's politics. A sort of "Just let smart people with good values do what they want and things will be ok" without establishing how you determine who that applies to or really sitting with how fragile that is.