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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
begins invisible accordion
Then Curtis Marvin, very smart guy, went to MIT like my famous uncle, he said, “but sir, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors”
Many such cases, I said.
But Trump can’t explain things, and Urbit defies explanation. So does the statement “Trump explains Urbit” represent undefined behavior in English?
What is worse? Trump explaining urbit and coming close? Or him explaining it so wrong you feel the need to set the record straight about the gravest misconceptions? (“Trump said Elon invented it, but it actually was Yarvin, also as Elon didnt invent it, he certainly didnt say ‘good idea sir’ to Trump”).
I think in this case, the equivalent of a compiler error for undefined behavior would be a swiftly forgotten wire story entitled “Trump promotes cryptocurrency project” published on a Friday afternoon. Just one more scam among the flood, and not one that can be offered for easy monthly payments with a banner ad in the margins of an RSBN broadcast.
More election shit, unfortunately. This time it’s hot tea from SRD:
funnily enough I had posted in that thread and some neolib guy enthusiastically recommended tracingwoodgrains on David Gerard (?!) in my replies
How cute, look at that wild rat trying to appear neutral and unbiased and not-at-all a rat and Just Leaving This Here for you to read where “this” refers to the entire fucking canon of rationalist writings.
it’s so practiced too — “so I guess you could read Wikipedia but also! this tracingwoodgrains guy might have some points worth considering!” and from there you’re meant to ping-pong off the Wikipedia article into trace’s long-winded literal horseshit and the rest of the inane crap that’s linked after that, til you can no longer remember the non-rationalist sources you’ve read because your mind’s overwhelmed with the worst shit ever written, but you feel like you thoroughly researched both sides (and that’s only part of why centrism is a fucking trap)
how do I know? because this:
finally, i’m going to link to some posts from slatestarcodex and astral codex ten, its sucessor blog, some classic ones just to give you a feel for what people appreciate about it at its best
is exactly how Joe Rogan fans get you listening to his stupid shit daily, til you’re no longer listening to his podcast (supposedly) “at its best” and instead you’re just listening to an overwhelming volume of right-wing horseshit with an occasional nod to both sides centrism so you don’t feel your world get smaller and darker as you embrace fascism
Starting off this Stubsack with a solid essay I ran across: Don’t expect the tech platforms to help us this time.
A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase “decisive victory” when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.
IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste
I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: “If it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see it’s a decisive victory. He has the mandate of heaven of the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!”
@sailor_sega_saturn @BlueMonday1984 here in Canada our prime minister (who’s no fan of Trump) used the word “decisive” too. I think at least some people are using the word because they know it’s what he wants to hear. It makes my skin crawl, but I can’t argue there isn’t a logic in trying to maintain some power over him with flattery
The sheer speed and consistency with which America’s institutions have rolled over if not enabled this kind of authoritarianism once it was backed up by fascist populism has been probably the most disheartening element of this whole election cycle. We’ve seen the NYT’s quiet but inescapable embrace of transphobia and the transformation of the megacorporations fully into vessels for the personal interest of the shareholding/investing/billionaire class. The judiciary was pretty openly packed with loyalists during the first term, and the senate has been lost for, in retrospect, a very long time. It just seems like they’ve found the right buttons to push to make every single organization that was theoretically supposed to protect us from this kind of regime either stand aside or actively embrace it.
I feel like there are echoes of so much of what we talk about here that come into play here. It’s the disastrous consequences of the rot economy and shareholder supremacy not just undermining the tools that could have otherwise helped organize against this but also destroyed even the vague cultural distinction between the political interests of a company and those of its largest shareholders. It’s neoliberalism reflecting the rationalist’s inability to acknowledge that values are not downstream from facts along with the growing influence of the exact illiberal ideologues that we’ve tracked for years. I just don’t feel like any of that recognition translates into concrete actions I can take to try and keep the people in my life (or even in this community) safe, or at least safer.
Maybe it’s one of those cliches like “bus plunge”
Also it isn’t? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?
If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so “none of those” won decisively with 40%!
Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something I’d call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but it’s the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.
Also, not that it’s the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trump’s victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
I’m imagining no fewer than three fictional versions of Eris/Discord laughing at this orange-site fool:
Meanwhile I cannot turn my living room LED lights on or off because I control them through discord.