this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
213 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

2034 readers
257 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 2 years ago
MODERATORS
dgerard@awful.systems
213
Only 3%* of US AI users are willing to pay a penny for it (pivot-to-ai.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
90 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

podcast version
video version

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 12 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Writing advisers have been condemning the English passive since the early 20th century. I provide an informal but comprehensive syntactic description of passive clauses in English, and then exhibit numerous published examples of incompetent criticism in which critics reveal that they cannot tell passives from actives. Some seem to confuse the grammatical concept with a rhetorical one involving inadequate attribution of agency or responsibility, but not all examples are thus explained. The specific stylistic charges leveled against the passive are entirely baseless.

http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 2 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

Wait what, TIL there was/is a crusade against... the passive fucking voice?

Some people just need to invent problems for their life to feel meaningful, don't they

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 3 points 4 hours ago

This article is wild already, on the first page there's this quote

‘Do not use the passive voice when such use makes a statement clumsy and wordy. . . Do not, by using the passive voice, leave the agent of the verb vaguely indicated, when the agent should be clearly identified.’ [Edwin Woolley, Handbook of Composition, 1907, p. 20]

Emphasis mine on... a clear usage of the passive! In active this would have to be "when you should clearly identify the agent" or something of the like, the fuck, how hard is it to not expose your whole ass like this mate

[–] cstross@wandering.shop 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

@V0ldek This is a hill I will die on: the passive voice ABSOLUTELY does not belong in a work of fiction. (Academic papers and reports are another matter entirely, but fiction: no.)

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (2 children)

Section Three of the Official Secrets Act (1916) is our principle weapon in the endless war against security leaks. It was passed during a wartime spy scare—a time of deep and extreme paranoia—and it's even more bizarre than most people think.

The Atrocity Archives, p. 13 of the Ace paperback edition

The glamour's still there, masking her physical shape, but what I'm seeing now is unfogged by implanted emotional bias.

The Jennifer Morgue, p. 92 of the Golden Gryphon hardcover

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 39 minutes ago (1 children)

It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.

It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the Sun.

When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit.

You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.

If you're killed in the Matrix, you die here?

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world?

I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 30 minutes ago (1 children)

I just found out, that a girl got killed here last week, and you knew it! You knew there was a shark out there!

Is it true that most people get attacked by sharks in three feet of water about ten feet from the beach?

The torso has been severed in mid-thorax; there are no major organs remaining... May I have a glass of water, please?

What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent.

I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up... bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 26 minutes ago (1 children)

"It was the job we were chosen for."

"Of course you'd say that, James Bond, her majesty's loyal terrier, defender of the so-called faith."

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 22 minutes ago (1 children)

The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it's a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 10 minutes ago (1 children)

I can see that my 50,000 a year has been well spent.

Donald, Donald... This park was not built to cater only for the super-rich.

This isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction.

Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together.

T-Rex doesn't want to be fed. He wants to hunt.

Unless they're continually supplied with lysine by us, they'll slip into a coma and die.

I was overwhelmed by the power of this place. But I made a mistake, too. I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now.

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

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

If I may say so, sir, I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to lightspeed!

Captain, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited.

We're going to get pulverized if we stay out here much longer.

"You said they'd be left at the city under my supervision!"

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 1 minute ago

Major Strasser has been shot... round up the usual suspects!

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

Doing the tour of other fiction books within arm's reach....

My name is Hermann Soergel. The curious reader may have chanced to leaf through my Shakespeare Chronology, which I once considered essential to a proper understanding of the text; it was translated into several languages, including Spanish.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Shakespeare's Memory" (translated by Andrew Hurley)

When her father had been executed, her aunts and uncles on both sides of the family had declined to speak out against his killers, and Nasim had been so angry that she'd cut herself off from everyone, even before she and her mother had fled.

Greg Egan, Zendegi (this, like the Jennifer Morgue example, was on the page to which I opened at random)

Now the mayor's cousin has been arrested for murder.

John Chernega, "Almond", in Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die

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

Older books, also within arm's reach, also opened at random...

Whatever was thought, whatever was said, I had my full reward in John's friendship. This friendship was the more precious for its tenderness being intentionally concealed, especially when we were not alone, by that gruffness which stems from what can be termed the dignity of the heart.

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

I was set apart by Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast, and hers only.

H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Perhaps the Mysteries' secrets could be learned, and their powers could be thwarted.

Bill Watterson and John Kascht, The Mysteries

The girl and her companion obediently fell silent then, realizing they had been heard through the microphones embedded in the walls of the dining room.

Lois Lowry, Son

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Only a few of them had been wounded; here and there you saw one stepping gingerly, leaning on a crutch or two canes, but so far on toward recovery that his face had color.

Dorothy Parker, "Soldiers Of The Republic"

Suppose they never get counted—what's the worst that can happen? If the number of imaginary sheep in this world remains a matter of guesswork, who is richer or poorer for it?

"The Little Hours"

In her twenties, after the deferred death of a hazy widowed mother, she had been employed as a model in a wholesale dress establishment—it was still the day of the big woman, and she was then prettily colored and high-breasted.

"Big Blonde"

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The crowd would have engulfed the platform and the open space as well if it had not been held back by the triple row of Sebastian soldiers on Pilate's left and the soldiers of the Ituraean auxiliary cohort on his right.

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor)

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 1 hour ago

The plodding pace she was forced to set—for the road was too narrow and winding to pass safely—allowed time for meditation.

Elizabeth Peters, Naked Once More

Outside the window the cry of gulls could faintly be distinguished as they swirled about aimlessly in the gloom.

Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

The device had been constructed by a master craftsman, and the riddle was this—that though he'd been told the box contained wonders, there simply seemed to be no way into it, no clue on any of its six black lacquered faces as to the whereabouts of the pressure points that would disengage one piece of this three-dimensional jigsaw from another.

Clive Barker, Hellbound Heart (second sentence of first paragraph)

Skimmed by the savage Seneca from the waters of Pennsylvania's great Oil Creek, mister.

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine

Only those with unshakable psych profiles were assigned to the outlying agronomy posts; the screening was almost as rigid as that for deep space.

Margaret Wander Bonanno, Strangers from the Sky

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came from from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (opening line)

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

My immediate gut reaction to a rule as general as this is that there's fat chance it's universally applicable, there will always be cases where active would be clunky.

Like I can't imagine an RPG protagonist exclaiming that "Someone trapped this chest!" instead of the 100% more natural "This chest was trapped!"

[–] cstross@wandering.shop 2 points 4 hours ago

@V0ldek That's an RPG protagonist protagging. Not prose fiction. (This thought brought to you b/c I've lately been reading a multivolume LitRPG epic that I had to bail on midway through book 3 because the author dropped into passive voice with extreme clunkiness at random, infrequent intervals, making for a jarring read.)

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 1 points 4 hours ago

@V0ldek

I think the crusade is mostly against media headlines and content that passive-voices police brutality and murder of Palestinians by the IDF.