Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? 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.)
Off topic: I am looking for some advice. I enrolled in a PhD program several years ago. After years of verbal abuse, I left my advisor's lab. Shortly after, he tried to get me kicked out of the program by giving me a failing grade, then he tried to physically intimidate me in his office (moved across the room to get in my face and scream at me). I reported this to the campus police but they said nothing could be done because he didn't touch me or explicitly threaten violence. Later that day, he removed my name from work I had done for him, which is definitely plagiarism and a violation of the academic honesty policy.
I have an audio recording from that day of him screaming at me, as well as him basically admitting to retaliating by giving me a failing grade (I filed a grievance about this with the university and they changed my grade). I also recorded a long exchange that may not be incriminating but reinforces that he is an overbearing asshole.
I tried changing advisors but the options of available professors were limited (and the university decided that my abysmal $500 USD a week salary would get dropped to something like $300 a week), so I mastered out.
I was hoping to eventually finish my PhD elsewhere and I fear that I won't be able to (that no advisor would want to risk working with me) if I go public with this. At the same time, the thought of him continuing to teach there and not suffer any accountability is killing me. (In my grievance, I requested a public apology and he refused, telling the chair that he would instead be comfortable with a meeting moderated by the chair
absolutely farcical.)
Does anyone have advice? Would it be worth going public (e.g. reaching out to the local press or the student paper)? I suppose I could just email human resources with the information and see what happens. Experience in this precise situation is probably limited (although academia has a lot of abusers, so maybe not).
(A week ago I was confident I would go public sometime soon. Now I just feel apprehension.)
Everything depends on the details like what country, what field, and what university. Because this involves specific people, its also inherently unpredictable. I would say that in general, a field that will accept a second go at a PhD, but won't accept a well documented HR complaint against a supervisor, is not one worth working in.
It is computer science in the southern united states (though I am open to finishing my PhD in Europe, especially because cryptography is an area of interest). Sorry for not mentioning this in the original post.
Thank you, I think this is something I needed to hear (read).