TechTakes

2692 readers

120 users here now

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

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

dgerard@awful.systems

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 13th September 2026 (awful.systems)

submitted 3 days ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

123 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

right? and even then you have to go slow with explanation, otherwise you just sound like a crank

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

It helped that the first person I explained this to at a conference was explicitly working on deconstructing models of the origin of complex life that imply that it's slow and unlikely that have been uncritically accepted in a lot of circles without actual evidence, and he was already confused about why following the chain of citations bottomed out at weird economist named Robin Hanson and why his naive model was ever taken seriously... oh MAN we had a fun evening.

Amusingly enough, something much like this has happened to me twice two years apart. The scientists deconstructing this stuff are always the most interesting people too.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 3 points 58 minutes ago (1 children)

"there is a global far right conspiracy that attempts to reinvent alchemy, colonize space and build a machine god, which they intend to use to enslave everyone else. it's informed by misreading of old scifi and racism, but it only took off after certain hp fanfic was written. currently it's commanded by a californian polycule with a drug problem, but also counts in their ranks white house officials, and possibly some from russian government"

unfortunately this does not make a great conversation starter. whaat? a cult took over an entire government of south korea? this could never happen here

[–] BioMan@awful.systems 2 points 45 minutes ago

You'd be surprised. The usual icebreaker is the topic of the deep-seated unstated assumptions that people have in their mind when the construct models of evolutionary history, the future of Earth's biosphere, and the place of biology in the universe. I am lucky enough to run in the circles with astrobiologists, evolutionary biologists interested in the evolution of complex life, and abiogenesis types, who tend to appreciate the deep importance of unstated assumptions. It is very easy to point out a set of unstated assumptions that have poisoned areas of science near them... which always points back to the god damned singulatarians because when you assume the future is Humanity's Grand Destiny Among The Stars OR BUST, it severely constrains your notions of what is possible in a universe that looks like ours and inevitably mutilates the study of the topics they/we run in.