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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 23 June 2024 (awful.systems)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Need to make a primal scream without gathering 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!

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.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

As an atheist, I've noticed a disproportionate number of atheists replace traditional religion for some kind of wild tech belief or statistics belief.

AI worship might be the most perfect of the examples of human hubris.

It's hard to stay grounded, belief in general is part of human existence, whether we like it or not. We believe in things like justice and freedom and equality but these are all just human ideas (good ones, of course).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The fear of death and the void is quite a problem for a lot of people. Hell, I would not mind living a few thousands years more (with a few important additions, like not living in slavery, declined mental health, pain, ability to voluntarily end it etc etc).

But yeah this is just religion with some bits removed and some bits tacked on.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

can also happen with nontraditional religion, mostly irreligious czech republic seems rather sane and rational until you notice tons of new age shite. it might be some kind of remnant rather a replacement

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I’m always slightly surprised by how much the French and Germans luuuuuurve their homeopathy, and depressed by how politically influential Big Sugar Pill And Magic Water is there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

do you have some writeup on this or something

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Nothing concrete, unfortunately. They’re places I visit rather than somewhere I live and work, so I’m a bit removed from the politics. Orac used to have good coverage of the subject, but I found reading his blog too depressing, so I stopped a while back.

Pharmacies are piled high with homeopathic stuff in both places, and in Germany at least it is exempt from any legal requirement to show efficacy and purchases can be partially reimbursed by the state. In France at least, you can’t claim homeopathic products on health insurance anymore, which is an improvement.