Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th February 2026
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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. A lot of people didn’t survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account’s cake day, too, so that’s cool.)
that one in which the person behind/running @FirefoxWebDevs drops the mask so fast it looks like a magic trick: gallery link
thread by @self, toots by myself and others. the poster managed to keep their civility for quite a while until I dared
to highlight their lack of a reply outside of UK 5pm, at which point they immediately ramped up(and based on some screenshots I’ve been sent, he’s also been doing the classic tail-darvo moping elsewhere)
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Larry Garfield was ejected from Drupal nearly a decade ago without concrete accusations; at the time, I thought Dries was overreacting, likely because I was in technical disagreement with him, but now I’m more inclined to see Garfield as a misogynist who the community was correct to eject.
I did have a longpost on Lobsters responding to this rant, but here I just want to focus on one thing: Garfield has no solutions. His conclusion is that we should resent people who push or accept AI, and also that we might as well use coding agents:
As I learn how to work with AI coding agents, know that I will be thinking ill of [people who have already shrugged and said “it is what it is”] the entire time.
Garfield has no solutions
He readily admitted as much when I asked him on mastodon about how to approach the subject with friends and family who are using the “it is what it is” rationalization. Then mentioned cult deprogramming research as something he’s not as well versed in as he would like.
Make of that what you will/want
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that one in which the person behind/running @FirefoxWebDevs drops the mask so fast it looks like a magic trick: gallery link
thread by @self, toots by myself and others. the poster managed to keep their civility for quite a while until I dared
to highlight their lack of a reply outside of UK 5pm, at which point they immediately ramped up(and based on some screenshots I’ve been sent, he’s also been doing the classic tail-darvo moping elsewhere)
I’ll have you know we’re acting like someone who’s rude to “serving staff” right now, where serving staff is defined as a formerly chrome currently mozilla developer relations marketing guy with fucking flatlined vibes
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that one in which the person behind/running @FirefoxWebDevs drops the mask so fast it looks like a magic trick: gallery link
thread by @self, toots by myself and others. the poster managed to keep their civility for quite a while until I dared
to highlight their lack of a reply outside of UK 5pm, at which point they immediately ramped up(and based on some screenshots I’ve been sent, he’s also been doing the classic tail-darvo moping elsewhere)
for those who hadn’t seen before, FWD is an account that showed up on the fedi not too long ago (3~4mo?), and has been acting as a Mouthpiece (and semi consent manufacturing outlet)
across a number of “polls” (with forced answer paths) they’ve had their replies absolutely blasted, and across literally hundreds of replies they’ve dodged the point so hard they might have invented a new sports class
earlier today I attempted to (quite lightly) check with them if they understand why their responses aren’t all-liked. it didn’t take much of long for them to go off the rails
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I’ll have you know we’re acting like someone who’s rude to “serving staff” right now, where serving staff is defined as a formerly chrome currently mozilla developer relations marketing guy with fucking flatlined vibes
uhm @self can you show me where I wrote this? can you show me where I wrote these exact words? no? that’s so irrational of you.
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I’ll have you know we’re acting like someone who’s rude to “serving staff” right now, where serving staff is defined as a formerly chrome currently mozilla developer relations marketing guy with fucking flatlined vibes
listen here you little shit, we have a USER STUDY that proves that those who don’t even think of “serving staff” are the most virtuous humans. no you can’t see the data why would you even ask that
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that one in which the person behind/running @FirefoxWebDevs drops the mask so fast it looks like a magic trick: gallery link
thread by @self, toots by myself and others. the poster managed to keep their civility for quite a while until I dared
to highlight their lack of a reply outside of UK 5pm, at which point they immediately ramped up(and based on some screenshots I’ve been sent, he’s also been doing the classic tail-darvo moping elsewhere)
Thanks for lighting his ass on fire. o7
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Apparently he’s a Quaker, so maybe that’s how the euthanasia stance can pass muster. But Quakerism might also make even less sense with his views on race? I don’t know enough about the reality of Quakerism to say.
Also, looks like Harris also deliberately side-stepped the dinner bait but I don’t know how much of that was because of Chomsky’s presence. Epstein tried again a year later without the Chomsky attendee name-drop, but Harris might have just not replied.
At least there are no surprises with Dawkins, even his sleazy friend Brockman seemingly finds him tiring
Glib jibes aside, I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at many of the docs that aren’t just quasi-celeb emails, the few I did see were far too much for me. I’m horrified at nearly everyone from all ideological stances on a number of different levels I never considered. I can only hope the remaining victims someday are able to find some peace, and some kind of huge systemic reform can come from this. What a vile world we live in.
Apparently he’s a Quaker, so maybe that’s how the euthanasia stance can pass muster. But Quakerism might also make even less sense with his views on race? I don’t know enough about the reality of Quakerism to say.
Quakers have a history of being anti-racist, but views on stuff like abortion and euthansia cam vary a lot. Quakerism is big on both individual conscience but also social justice and activism. It’s an interesting denomination.
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Re datacenters in space:
Multiple hackernews insist that SpaceX must have discovered new physics that solves orbital heat management, because otherwise Musk and the stockholders are dumb.
Edit: may have gotten the ol URL switcharoo:
Current top comment is nice (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46862435
it is possible to put 500 to 1000 TW/year of AI satellites into deep space, meaningfully ascend the Kardashev scale and harness a non-trivial percentage of the Sun’s power
We currently make around 1 TW of photovoltaic cells per year, globally. The proposal here is to launch that much to space every 9 hours, complete with attached computers, continuously, from the moon.
edit: Also, this would capture a very trivial percentage of the Sun’s power. A few trillionths per year.
Multiple hackernews insist that SpaceX must have discovered new physics that solves orbital heat management, because otherwise Musk and the stockholders are dumb.
The leaps in logic are so idiotic “he managed to land a rocket up right, so maybe he can pull it off!” (as if Elon personally made that happen, or as if a engineering challenge and fundamental thermodynamic limits are equally solvable). This is despite multiple comments replying with back of the envelope calcs on energy generation and heat dissipation of the ISS and comparing it to what you would need for even a moderately sized data center. Or even the comments that are like “maybe there is a chance”, as if it is wiser to express uncertainty…
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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. A lot of people didn’t survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account’s cake day, too, so that’s cool.)
YCombinator will let founders accept payments in butts:
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YCombinator will let founders accept payments in butts:
“They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”
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YCombinator will let founders accept payments in butts:
pegged butts
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Navigation stuff is unfortunately (and embarrassingly) critical for me, otherwise I’d be in total agreement with you.
I’ve been deliberately learning to navigate without GPSes and tech devices, as a life skill (also on foot/public transport). I’m terrible at navigating, but I’m realising navigating is kinda like handwriting—in that it’s very easy to fall into the trap of saying “I’m terrible at this” as a kind of immutable personality trait, while in fact it’s perfectly expected that one is bad at a skill that one never uses, and turns out I can get better at it even with a little bit of deliberate practice. I suck at things but I can improve.
In the meantime when I use an electronic map to navigate, I still would rather stick a smartphone to the dashboard a car and use whatever navigation app I prefer, than have the screens and navigators built into the car.
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I’ve been deliberately learning to navigate without GPSes and tech devices, as a life skill (also on foot/public transport). I’m terrible at navigating, but I’m realising navigating is kinda like handwriting—in that it’s very easy to fall into the trap of saying “I’m terrible at this” as a kind of immutable personality trait, while in fact it’s perfectly expected that one is bad at a skill that one never uses, and turns out I can get better at it even with a little bit of deliberate practice. I suck at things but I can improve.
In the meantime when I use an electronic map to navigate, I still would rather stick a smartphone to the dashboard a car and use whatever navigation app I prefer, than have the screens and navigators built into the car.
OT but, though this is mostly about appreciating things in nature rather than navigating a city by car or on foot, this book has helped me a lot with not being anymore a person with a “bad sense of direction”, even when walking downtown: The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley . I really recommend it for people who hike, even occasionally.
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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. A lot of people didn’t survive January, but at least we did. This also ended up going up on my account’s cake day, too, so that’s cool.)
Today in excellent cold opens: “I didn’t talk to ChatGPT, I never have. Instead, I took a load of edibles and laid down in the driveway with the hose on. I produced nothing of value and wasted a ton of water, but at least I ate three protein bars so I’m so healthy.”
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OT but, though this is mostly about appreciating things in nature rather than navigating a city by car or on foot, this book has helped me a lot with not being anymore a person with a “bad sense of direction”, even when walking downtown: The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley . I really recommend it for people who hike, even occasionally.
I’ll check this out, thanks!!
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once again, the facade of the “whoops, bad company” falls to the ground the moment she needs her hands to fill the pompoms instead of hold up the venetian mask
::: spoiler transcript a quote tweet by @XiWellWisher, reads: “So what’s the deal with this ghastly woman again? She’s a sort of silicon valley Ghislaine Maxwell?”
the quoted tweet by aella reads: “There’s apparently a pro-billionaire protest in SF on the 7th. I might go to this to support! Anybody else going?” :::
also, real weird account name on that account, wonder if it’s a sock
robin hanson blocked me for referring to him as aella with tenure. i now think that he’s ghislaine maxwell with tenure
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YCombinator will let founders accept payments in butts:
Hmm, we already tried the thing where a bunch of startups have their cash on deposit with a couple of normal, FDIC-insured banks that had grossly mismatched duration in their capital structures. I wonder how this will play out
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Thanks for lighting his ass on fire. o7
and it wasn’t even my goal to do that! couple of replies across hours, trying to see if this guy is capable of … irunno, unassing their head(?) and engaging with the criticisms
then the subtlest thing set them off and shit went mask off so fast
but hey, at least this way we now just know and don’t have to guess. so much easier
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and it wasn’t even my goal to do that! couple of replies across hours, trying to see if this guy is capable of … irunno, unassing their head(?) and engaging with the criticisms
then the subtlest thing set them off and shit went mask off so fast
but hey, at least this way we now just know and don’t have to guess. so much easier
The vibes were wretched. Why do people to have to battle emotional abuse from a goddamned web browser?
but hey, at least this way we now just know and don’t have to guess. so much easier
+1, yeesh. Btw, if Dingus McGee there resides in the UK, might some of that shit might be legally actionable? I’d certainly have strong feelings about being defamed by the representative of a rather well-funded technology company lol
