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.

Previous week

  • TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systemsEnglish
    17·
    7 days ago

    Ozy Brennan tries to explain why “rationalism” spawns so many cults.

    One of the reasons they give is “a dangerous sense of grandiosity”.

    the actual process of saving the world is not very glamorous. It involves filling out paperwork, making small tweaks to code, running A/B tests on Twitter posts.

    Yep, you heard it right. Shitposting and inconsequential code are the proper way to save the world.

    • Architeuthis@awful.systemsEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Overall more interesting than I expected. On the Leverage Research cult:

      Routine tasks, such as deciding whose turn it was to pick up the groceries, required working around other people’s beliefs in demons, magic, and other paranormal phenomena. Eventually these beliefs collided with preexisting social conflict, and Leverage broke apart into factions that fought with each other internally through occult rituals.

    • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
      14·
      6 days ago

      JFC

      Agency and taking ideas seriously aren’t bad. Rationalists came to correct views about the COVID-19 pandemic while many others were saying masks didn’t work and only hypochondriacs worried about covid; rationalists were some of the first people to warn about the threat of artificial intelligence.

      First off, anyone not entirely into MAGA/Qanon agreed that masks probably helped more than hurt. Saying rats were outliers is ludicrous.

      Second, rats don’t take real threats of GenAI seriously - infosphere pollution, surveillance, autopropaganda - they just care about the magical future Sky Robot.

        • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systemsEnglish
          8·
          6 days ago

          That’s how I remember it too. Also the context about conserving N95 masks always feels like it gets lost. Like, predictably so and I think there’s definitely room to criticize the CDC’s messaging and handling there, but the actual facts here aren’t as absurd as the current fight would imply. The argument was:

          1. With the small droplet size, most basic fabric masks offer very limited protection, if any.
          2. The masks that are effective, like N95 masks, are only available in very limited quantities.
          3. If everyone panic-buys N95 the way they did toilet paper it will mean that the people who are least able to avoid exposure i.e. doctors and medical frontliners are at best going to wildly overpay and at worst won’t be able to keep supplied.
          4. Therefore, most people shouldn’t worry about masking at this stage, and focus on other measures like social distancing and staying the fuck home.

          I think later research cast some doubt on point 1, but 2-4 are still pretty solid given the circumstances that we (collectively) found ourselves in.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
          5·
          6 days ago

          Meanwhile, the right-wing prepper types were breaking out the N95 masks they’d stockpiled for a pandemic

          This included Scott ssc btw. Who also claimed that stopping smoking helped against cov. Not that he had any proof (the medical science at the time even falsely (it came out later) claimed smoking helped agains covid). But only the CDC gets judged, not the ingroup.

          And other Scott blamed people who sneer for making covid worse. (While at sneerclub we were going, take this seriously and wear a mask).

          So annoying Rationalists are trying to spin this into a win for themselves. (They also were not early, their warnings matched the warnings of the WHO, looked into the timelines last time this was talked about).