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. What a year, huh?)

still kinda low-key horrified at Xhitter’s attempt to meme regime change in Iran into existence

X Updates Its Iranian Flag Emoji Design

Earlier today, X (fka Twitter) updated its design for the 🇮🇷 Flag for Iran emoji within the official Twemoji GitHub. Proposing a historic design for the flag not previously used across emoji keyboards, this change would be the X's first emoji update since its 2024 revisions of the 🔫 Pistol emoji.

Emojipedia - The Latest Emoji News (blog.emojipedia.org)

Look, I fully support the right of the Iranian people to freely decide how to run their country. But assuming that protests that ultimately seem to have ended with over 30,000 dead protestors would succeed and that the flag of the new Iranian government would be the same as the one that was deposed in 1979 is pretty ghoulish.

Also pretty rich how a government (and its plutocrat backers) currently engaged in a campaign of domestic state terror have any standing to whine about other governments

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. What a year, huh?)

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. What a year, huh?)

still kinda low-key horrified at Xhitter’s attempt to meme regime change in Iran into existence

X Updates Its Iranian Flag Emoji Design

Earlier today, X (fka Twitter) updated its design for the 🇮🇷 Flag for Iran emoji within the official Twemoji GitHub. Proposing a historic design for the flag not previously used across emoji keyboards, this change would be the X's first emoji update since its 2024 revisions of the 🔫 Pistol emoji.

Emojipedia - The Latest Emoji News (blog.emojipedia.org)

Look, I fully support the right of the Iranian people to freely decide how to run their country. But assuming that protests that ultimately seem to have ended with over 30,000 dead protestors would succeed and that the flag of the new Iranian government would be the same as the one that was deposed in 1979 is pretty ghoulish.

the flag of the new Iranian government would be the same as the one that was deposed in 1979

No doubt there is very much real discontent in Iran, but as you note, the heavy involvement of Reza Pahlavi made me raise an eyebrow. Loudly currying favor with the current slate of corrupt/abusive/incompetent Anglosphere governments and media does not suggest judgment that would result in a government any more stable or democratic than the existing one.

And there is, of course, the question of what would become of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, especially when they saw and assisted in how Iraq played out after de-Ba’athification. The media is still willing to indulge just-so stories about easy imposition of a Western-friendly government, when multiple waves of bloody insurgency have stalled that everywhere it’s been tried. The near-total absence of news from Iraq in the mainstream American media for the last few years fascinates me.

still kinda low-key horrified at Xhitter’s attempt to meme regime change in Iran into existence

X Updates Its Iranian Flag Emoji Design

Earlier today, X (fka Twitter) updated its design for the 🇮🇷 Flag for Iran emoji within the official Twemoji GitHub. Proposing a historic design for the flag not previously used across emoji keyboards, this change would be the X's first emoji update since its 2024 revisions of the 🔫 Pistol emoji.

Emojipedia - The Latest Emoji News (blog.emojipedia.org)

Look, I fully support the right of the Iranian people to freely decide how to run their country. But assuming that protests that ultimately seem to have ended with over 30,000 dead protestors would succeed and that the flag of the new Iranian government would be the same as the one that was deposed in 1979 is pretty ghoulish.

Yeah it’s very quiet now that the media (and Musk) isn’t getting the story they hoped for.

Edit again, I really really wish it hadn’t come to this.

i don’t think that a washed out royal surrounded by iranian version of cubans from miami would be very consequential, however if you compare scale of political persecution between pahlavi and islamic republic eras, this makes savak look downright humanitarian, and i don’t think he would be able to make situation worse either. if my calculator and judgement of sources is correct, then 43k dead protesters mean that islamic republic in two days outdid past 100 years of political repression, twice.

also, islamic republic heavily exaggerated pahlavi’s brutality in their propaganda, especially early on. for example in constitution there’s mention of “60000 martyrs” but even their own revised estimates for 1979 casualties are over 20x lower

Yes, no doubt the Islamic Republic is run by bloody, murderous, dishonest bastards. My argument is that Western options for handling/imposing political will on the situation have always been limited, and are at a particularly low ebb at the moment. Change is coming to both places, but it sadly may not be change that results in greater stability.

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. What a year, huh?)

I have mixed feelings about this one: The Enclosure feedback loop (or how LLMs sabotage existing programming practices by privatizing a public good).

The author is right that stack overflow has basically shrivelled up and died, and that llm vendors are trying to replace it with private sources of data they’ll never freely share with the rest of us, but I don’t think that chatbot dev sessions are in any way “high quality data”. The number of occasions when a chatbot-user actually introduces genuinely useful and novel information will be low, and the ability of chatbot companies to even detect that circumstance will be lower still. It isn’t enclosing valuable commons, it is squirting sealant around all the doors so the automated fart-huffing system and its audience can’t get any fresh air.

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. What a year, huh?)

Clodswarms

I have mixed feelings about this one: The Enclosure feedback loop (or how LLMs sabotage existing programming practices by privatizing a public good).

The author is right that stack overflow has basically shrivelled up and died, and that llm vendors are trying to replace it with private sources of data they’ll never freely share with the rest of us, but I don’t think that chatbot dev sessions are in any way “high quality data”. The number of occasions when a chatbot-user actually introduces genuinely useful and novel information will be low, and the ability of chatbot companies to even detect that circumstance will be lower still. It isn’t enclosing valuable commons, it is squirting sealant around all the doors so the automated fart-huffing system and its audience can’t get any fresh air.

I also didn’t find the argument very persuasive.

The LLM companies aren’t paying anythnig for content. Why should they stop scraping now?

just to note that reportedly the palantir employees are for whatever reason going through a massive “hans, are we the baddies” moment, almost a whole year into the second trump administration.

as i wrote elsewhere, those people need to be subjected to actual social consequences of choosing to work with and for the u.s. concentration camp administration office.

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. What a year, huh?)

I have family working there, who told me during the holidays, “Current leadership makes me uncomfortable, but money is good”

Every impression I had of them completely shattered, cannot fathom that level out sell out exists in people I thought I knew.

As a bonus, their former partner was a former employee who became a whistleblower and has now gone full howard hughes