Want to wade into the spooky 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 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.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Happy Halloween, everyone!)
long hand of casey newton (by proxy) outputs a weird hit piece on ed zitron in wired https://archive.is/chsCw so far bluesky in shambles with no other effects
i have mixed feelings here. on the one hand, a lot of the article hinges on the suggestion that zitron is somehow concealing that he works with AI companies. i've listened to his podcast, i've read his articles, he is pretty up front about what his day job is and that he is a disappointed fanboy for tech. the dots are 1/1000th of an inch apart. it also devotes a remarkable amount of time to remarks from casey newton and the like, who have nothing to offer the world.
on the other hand, i do find it genuinely repulsive that he'll work with a company like DoNotPay. while it might be hackwork to suggest he's concealing it, I don't like the association whether he's open about it or not.
on the... third hand? when i've read his posts, i've found myself totally unable to evaluate his financial claims. the evidence always seems unimpeachable, i just do not know whether the conclusions he draws from that evidence make sense, so i never cite him. i think a more honest and interesting version of this article, one that went further than trying to insinuate he's an ignorant fraud, would involve collaborating with someone with a lot of financial expertise and examining how rigorous his work actually is. but wired apparently wasn't interested in trying to make that article happen
looks pretty good to me, I'd be delighted to produce this sort of work and he's doing loadbearing work on the numbers here - that the finance press is faintly catching up to a year later.
Its too bad that Patrick McKenzie sided with the promptfondlers because he was a useful ally calling "we need more reporting on cryptocurrency by journalists who can read a balance sheet and do arithmetic"