Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 8th February 2026
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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
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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.)
Tangentially on topic:
Just finished The Regicide Report by friend of the instance Charles Stross. Hell of a finish to the main series! I’ll ikely start a re-read of the whole series soon, and I’m hopeful that it’ll win all the awards.
Had a couple of shower thoughts afterward:
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In the previous novel, a bunch of American computer bois with brainworms concocted a plan to disassemble the moon and turn it into orbital datacenters, which is lol
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Ghislaine Maxwell is the Iris Carpenter of pedos.
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Keeping speculative fiction ahead of current events must be exhausting.
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Tangentially on topic:
Just finished The Regicide Report by friend of the instance Charles Stross. Hell of a finish to the main series! I’ll ikely start a re-read of the whole series soon, and I’m hopeful that it’ll win all the awards.
Had a couple of shower thoughts afterward:
-
In the previous novel, a bunch of American computer bois with brainworms concocted a plan to disassemble the moon and turn it into orbital datacenters, which is lol
-
Ghislaine Maxwell is the Iris Carpenter of pedos.
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Keeping speculative fiction ahead of current events must be exhausting.
@o7___o7 @techtakes That's why I'm fleeing screaming back to the arms of far-future space opera ATM.
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