Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting 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: 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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
Atlantic writer: “better dubble down on Twitter huhuhuhhuh”
Calls to disengage from X, now that Elon Musk has turned it into a white-supremacist haven, certainly have a moral appeal. But if this election showed how difficult it is to meaningfully “deplatform” speakers you disagree with, it also demonstrated the danger of ignoring the platforms where they speak. Unfortunately, the only way to change what’s happening in an echo chamber may be to add your own noise.
This is your periodic reminder that Steve Jobs’ widow owns that toilet-paper factory. And that they still pump out hot new singles from hitmakers like David Frum and, occasionally, my personal favorite, Eliot “GW Bush Did Nothing Wrong” Cohen.
Mass media try not to cozy up to fascists challenge: impossible!
My radicalisation just continues and deepens.
What deplatforming actually happened that this writer is referring to? “We didn’t deplatform anyone. Therefore deplatforming bad” ???
“we’ve tried nothing, and nothing is working!” this is going to be such a common refrain
God and thinking about it even a little bit:
Of course deplatforming works, you fuckface! Why did Elon buy twitter if not to secure a platform? It is surprising you managed to write anything at all, you stupid goblin.
what in the absolute fuck
“you shouldn’t do anything that works to resist fascism” is going to be the neoliberal siren call for 4+ years, isn’t it
Always has been.
It doesn’t even fit with the axioms of market logic! If the platform in question has terrible content moderation, primarily generates revenue from profoundly repulsive people, and was intentionally bought out to be used as the central propaganda organ for a destructive political movement… why wouldn’t you leave?! Dude just doesn’t want to admit he’s too lazy to redo his follows elsewhere
Unfortunately, the only way to change what’s happening in an echo chamber may be to add your own noise.
imagine writing something like this and considering yourself to be the adult in the room. just a big ol politics understander, writing and writing and none of it means a fucking thing. you get up every morning and somehow the dread doesn’t make you collapse back into bed.
Liberals: vote for us, we are diet fascism, we are the lesser evil! We reduce harm!
It’s been the siren call for the last 400 years.
Lawns are functional though, they aren’t just a status symbol.
I grew up with a mossy front yard, and I have clover and ferns in my current yards to compete with grasses; there are better options, my dude.
We’re anti-grass lawns now? Fuck yes. I knew this place had potential.
I’m no landscaper so don’t quiz me on the options, but grass is in the lowest tier option for things to fill outdoor space with.
lawns in addition to other things are fine, but also all the stuff self said applies pretty hard
we’re lucky in ZA that we’re pretty good with getting a lot of this stuff out, which I’m often pretty happy about, but that’s an incident of geography (and personal location)
I was going to call them friendless losers who never had company over to play cornhole, have a bonfire, or lounge around on a hot summer day getting doused by a sprinkler while drinking beers because they are repugnant socially awkward cave trolls who are bitter and jealous of people who use their picturesque lawns.
But I would never do that because that is neither civil nor polite.
dang hates this one weird trick you can use to be an asshole in spite of the orange site’s civility rules
also what is that list of activities? did ChatGPT generate this? grass is required to play beep boop normal human games like cornhole now? you’re “having a bonfire” on grass and not in something normal like a firepit that’s safer on rocks or concrete? you’re just laying down on the grass, where the dog shits, slowly getting drunk and incredibly itchy from the grass as a sprinkler douses you?
picturesque lawns
oh maybe that’s it, the only people I’ve ever met with picturesque lawns are wealthy and wealthy people ain’t fucking normal
Or you could just not water it, not fertilize it, not pesticide it and simply run the mower over it whenever the assorted vegetation (which will be mostly grass) exceeds a certain height.
It won’t look “nice neighborhood” nice but it’ll still be fine.
i love when my yard is a giant mud patch rimmed by yellow with an occasional glimmer of green when the crabgrass blooms
the orange site is absolutely populated by the type of shithead who’s proud to be on their HOA’s board
having a lawn is so easy first just hire a gardener to come every week, second live in a place where tap water’s inexpensive
motherfuckers
They can be, but they can also be a social and recreational space.
Your mum’s a social and recreational space, but I don’t see you going to bat for her despite being more useful
today’s a fucking trip and a half
in a mall I saw some Honor laptop[0] ads with “AI” pitch sauce slathered all over it
later walking between art galleries I saw a roadsign ad for a property sales company promising “more effective strategies using AI” (more effective strategies for… selling… houses…? I guess…? (x up for doubt))
and now I get this shit in my mailbox from someone who absolutely purchased a dataset with this address in it:
From: Ai Everything GLOBAL <newsletter@event.aieverythingglobal.com> Subject: Join the AI Elite—G42, TII, DIEZ, Dell & More![0] - I didn’t even know they were in ZA, but nope, 2-floor hanging banners and ads allllll over elevator doors and shit
Ah, copilot is so extremely popular that MS has decided to bundle it into O365 for
freea moderate “depends by region” price increaseI’m sure that’ll totally make people want it even more! hordes at the gate!
Personal rant: in my ongoing search for a replacement for ProtonMail after they pivoted to AI had me almost sign up with Tuta because, hey, they looked good and were on my radar originally anyway, when I found out that they do not offer any IMAP/SMTP access at all.
I mean, I get it, their whole thing is privacy and, yes, storing mail locally on my machine kinda undermines the idea of strong and impenetrable E2E encryption, but I should at least have the choice like I do with Proton Bridge. Because without SMTP Tuta is completely unusable for
git send-email. I mean, yes, technically I could copy-paste the output offormat-patchinto the web client but, first, I am lazy and don’t wanna do that, and second, from my experience it rarely works anyway because the clients do some encoding crap so thatgit amdoesn’t eat it without cleanup.Meh. I guess I have to keep looking.
huh, I just switched to Tuta and that’s a very good point — there isn’t even a command line mail client, much less an IMAP bridge. the official word from a couple years ago is “write it yourself but we don’t support automated email” which is several kinds of wrong
so far I’m not hating Tuta but it’s definitely much jankier than Proton. I’m kinda surprised I’ve heard good things about Tuta’a UI compared with Proton — it’s faster, but functionality so far varies from somewhat barebones to mildly broken
no regrets on the switch on my end so far though, but this might come to bite me at some point. I wonder if a dedicated transactional mail provider could alleviate some of the pain? I can DM you a recommendation for a good one if that seems like it’d be handy
Thanks, I thought about something like that as well, but figured it’d be more hassle in the long run. I like to keep my mail in one basket.
But honestly, I feel like there just isn’t a good solution anyway. Email comes from simpler times and any encryption is bolted on and either awkward to use or has some problems with functionality. Hell, even Proton’s bridge was a pain to get running properly with
send-emailbecause for some reason it insisted on reformatting outgoing mails. I honestly wonder if I should even bother at this point, because most of the stuff I use email for isn’t even private. It’s mostly corporate communication and mailing lists which are public anyway. All private communication goes over other channels (and some of which are arguably even worse than email, like Discord).Not saying that this is the conclusion everyone should come to and YMMV, but spending the last weeks combing through the email landscape this feels like the realization I’m starting to arrive at, because I want my email to just work.
that’s absolutely valid, and I’ve come to effectively the same conclusion: good encrypted email is effectively a different protocol (one which, as of now, is proton-to-proton and tuta-to-tuta only) and should be treated as one. daily unencrypted email is a legacy protocol that can effectively be handled client-side as a different account.
encrypted mail should be federated, possibly with something like activitypub (though I don’t have a good solution for attachments), but every time I float this I get a lot of very angry feedback about how I shouldn’t propose a new email standard without solving spam first, whatever solving spam means. some of the people giving feedback then float solutions that are basically warmed-over hashcash and then I stop listening.
the difference between modern webmail and what activitypub already does is very thin — a lot of it is intent, UI (email’s focused on long messages and potentially long threads), and features like attachments going from best-effort priority to crucial. there’s absolutely room in the world for better email — I just believe that internally, it’ll look closer to e2e ActivityPub with something like Soatok’s federated keyserver concept on top, rather than the shitty half baked shit we do now to make PGP work with email
“brb going to make an AI blockbuster called ‘Zennos Parhadox’ starring Dwynne Johnson and Rebeca Fernugson and then we’ll see who’s laughing.” – Dick Trauma, SA
what a terrible fate https://archive.ph/X2s3z
what do anthropic, aws, and palantir all have in common? except for being the fucking worst, of course
the dollar signs in their eyes seem to share a bit of a glow…
Wild that “We left OpenAI and founded out own company with alignment and safety”-Anthropic decides to get into bed with Palantir of all companies.
It’s almost as if their whole safety shtick is complete bullshit. Hmm.
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Buy a defense ai system with a cool GUI but that absolutely doesn’t fucking work
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PRESS RELEASES
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Leave the source code+model weights somewhere that your enemies will find it, preferably next to a big data pipe
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Watch them copy it and try to use it on the battlefield
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lol
Just have to avoid naming it something that would give the game away like WIM-PLOW or whatever
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Less election dreariness, Dr Michael Cook talking about the oasis minecraft ‘game’.
I swear to god post the map with lots of diagonal arrows one more time
?
lol, no, but this was good post
some inane fucking thing from bloomberg or NYT or someone’s Bad Visualisations Department. it’s at least 35 points of psychic damage
10 centibasilisk simtime units in old money
I hate how realistic the notion of enduring psychic damage as currency is, especially with the guy’s attitude towards crypto.
The Quantified Self
it’s really fucking dumb because trump got 2 million less votes than in 2020. really great map for learning the wrongest possible lesson from this election.
If we’re gonna do the arrows thing we should at least use a meaningful 2D plane for the vector. Let the X-axis represent the left/right shift but use the Y-axis to represent overall turnout in each district.
(e: damn lemmy for posting to the wrong chain)
ikr i’ve already seen it too
I have been having this feeling in a couple places too, heh
My hope is that either more progressive third party options become more viable OR the dems finally understand that being essentially republican is a bad strategy and actually become progressive. I know the reality is that the dems will learn nothing from this as they have clearly learned nothing from 2016.
I’ll bet quite a lot that they’ll learn the exact wrong thing from this and decide that they just weren’t republican enough.
Overton window, more like overton viewfinder. Point it wherever you like and the median voter will agree everything to its left is radical extremism.
Hope is a mistake 2028!!!
and for 2032:
The worst part about Trump being president is Trump being president for a year. The second worst part is Vance being president for the next three (after Trump dies of heart failure). The third worst part is the fact that I’ve been owned in a way I can’t even explain to my closest friends.
the bit i wonder about is: would president couchfucker block weapons exports to Ukraine
Most likely. Backing out of international obligations and supporting fellow authoritarians seem to be pretty consistent aspects of what passes for MAGA ideology.
i guess this depends on how much vested interest (monetary) he has in MIC
trump seems to treat nato as america’s weapons shop buyers club
The third worst part is the fact that I’ve been owned in a way I can’t even explain to my closest friends.
Oh god, this so much. Well, third worst for me personally, as a non-American white guy. I suppose Palestinians, Ukrainians, and marginalized groups in the US might have a few issues they’d rank higher.
What did sideburns ever to do that guy?
re: election results. unfortunately i’m not surprised or even disappointed by now. it makes me feel sad for my 2015 self and her naivete. she didn’t understand what a disgusting and evil culture she lived in
The American electorate has just covered itself with gasoline because eggs cost 2 dollars more. Come January they strike the match. gg. HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE NOVEMBER 5TH. My only consolation is that I’ll hopefully get to watch some of the Magas/non voters/vote-your-conscience peeps suffer before the end. But Ol musky and peter thiel will be in their gilded bunkers while the fires consume us all.
The level of fucked we are is too big for words
I wanted to say something darkly comedic about the AI bubble popping under the new regime, but my heart is too sick to make a joke
I think I’m more angry than anything. l hadn’t realized how tight my media bubble had gotten and was pretty sure this wasn’t realistic. I had gotten myself ready for another round of 2020 nonsense and denial, not this.
I don’t have too much coherent to say right now
fuck the fascists for what they’ve done and what they intend to do
fuck the neoliberals for doing their best to convince marginalized people that they shouldn’t defend themselves against a terrible fate
fuck the accelerationists for pumping shitheaded propaganda into the fediverse, for the victory lap they’re taking now, and for the general idea that their revolution is worth our deaths
shit’s about to get very hard and very weird and I can’t stress enough how important it is to be careful who you trust with your life
fuck the accelerationists for pumping shitheaded propaganda into the fediverse, for the victory lap they’re taking now, and for the general idea that their revolution is worth our deaths
So much this
what a surprise, the thread all the leftist shitposters on mastodon boosted about how you’re a class traitor if you don’t vote for the Green Party (who I don’t buy as socialist) or “any other socialist party” (fucking who??? am I supposed to write “socialism” on my ballot in crayon???) conveniently went missing
anyway post your favorite fuckhead accelerationist here, mastodon’s a shooting gallery tonight
i do love how the “anti-imperialist” protest vote against harris was a choice between like three or four putin apologists. the state of the US left is really fucked up and i don’t want to look at it ever again.
i bet the self-described antiimperialists going all for Southern Lebanon Parking Lot 2024 feel real smug right now
The bad guys have definitely learned a new sort of trick. Haven’t wrapped my head around it yet, but it is bad, innit?
Apologies for the screed:
Quick recap:
2016-2020: executive orders every day, non-elected positions being captured by conservatives, dems just hand-wringing and tweeting. but Dems get lucky with a pandemic and trump loses
2021-2024: weekend at biden’s.
Where was the election reform? The dismantling or reform of the electoral colleges? The extra seats on the SC? Bribing the public with stimulus packages to boost the economy?
Remember when we pushed Biden left? Remember when the dems preserved abortion rights, prevented the invasion of ukraine, and stopped bankrolling Israel’s genocide?
“exercise your democratic rights and voice by voting for our candidate that wasn’t democratically chosen as our candidate”. “vote blue and do not voice any critical thought”. “any vote that isn’t for the party that didn’t meaningfully reverse or prevent conservative actions is a vote for trump”.
In sum: the bad guys didn’t do anything new.
The closest we got to a trump loss was some republican spook who went to a trump rally with a gun because it was closer than the harris rally.
According to some reports the dems simply stayed home and he even lost votes compared to 2020
The thing that’s most baffling to me is how the difference in ground game had zero impact. We were pounding the pavement, doors got fuckin knocked. The GOP did less than zero, firing their entire staff responsible for in-person outreach and gave 100 million to PACs run by grifters who put it directly into their own pockets.
Unless we’ve missed a trick, retail politics as it has existed is dead.
Dem talking heads spending so much energy courting moderate conservative votes was an excellent way to demobilise their base. They really gave their all to lose an election that should have been a free win.
This wasn’t a free win, however. The reason Harris took over in the first place was because Biden’s performance in the debate was poor enough that the Democrats thought there was no longer any chance with him, and this was already with lowering approval ratings. Had he stayed, I bet Trump’s victory would have been even wider.
I mean, I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect liberals to show up against someone who’s sole policy proposals were mass deportations and political reprisals, and so I can understand the logic of focusing on the center (which in US politics means center-right).
But this being the democratic party, they also couldn’t commit to an actual narrative to make that play. Rather than “look at their ties to Big Tech!” or even sticking with “look how weird these people are!” they had to go hat-in-hand and stake themselves to divisive (to say nothing of abhorrent) policies because that’s the only connection they could try to make. I think we’re seeing a major problem with the whole “big tent” concept.
It was twitter. Elon Musk joins Trump’s team. What happens? Harris’ chances begin to drop.
Trump did lose support, but there was probably enough propaganda on Twitter to make enough people go “both sides” and just sit out the election.and of course, Twitter and Facebook style influence campaigns work just as well or even better elsewhere, in communities that haven’t hardened themselves against that type of bullshit
IDK, do you really think twitter still has that much cultural relevance? ugh
I’m sure it played a part, though.
anyway post your favorite fuckhead accelerationist here, mastodon’s a shooting gallery tonight
I’ve intentionally been avoiding feeds the last few days because I just do not have the headspace for it, but I quickly checked on shit now
and
fuck
Didn’t the Green Party woman also just go ‘I’m pro Israel’ the day for the election or so? Which I think is one of the reason she might have picked up a few moves (the idea she might be more pro gaza I mean).
I can’t stress enough how important it is to be careful who you trust with your life
strong agree
minor upside: it’s going to be a good time to make lists of people who suddenly feel comfortable to mask off
fucking fuck this sucks
minor upside: it’s going to be a good time to make lists of people who suddenly feel comfortable to mask off
correct. keep receipts.
Nashville, here. I hear ya.
I don’t know what else to say, I can’t explain any of this, but also please know that you’re not alone out there.
Слава Україні. The world has failed you.
Not surprised, still very disappointed, I feel sick.
Yeah this is fucked up. I feel so bad for everybody (esp the Americans, but this will hurt the world). Shit this prob means I should start looking into seriously helping out locally when all this explodes into more international shit. (Which imho is the best you can do anyway, do things locally, build a bit of a support network for your community).
(Note I’m not American, but I think this will end badly, just the fucker stepping out of the paris accord for example, and all the weird blowhard fascists this will make feel emboldened to do more politics locally).
E: I really hope the people who go ‘this is the same as in 2020, wait till all votes are counted’ are correct and not on hopeium.
Well, it’s more like 2000, really, in the sense that the courts are being used to restrict voting rights. There’s strong evidence of flagrant UOCAVA violations: thousands of absentee ballots which should affect the federal election have been challenged in swing states. Edit: Here is part 1 and part 2 from an attorney whose Pennsylvania UOCAVA ballot was challenged; he goes through the law and explains what he’s going to do.
i think they indeed are on hopium/copium
I fully expect they are, even as I also hope they’re not.
I can’t tell, US elections have imho always been extremely dumb. (But, in the past decades+ ours have not been much better).
both by electoral college and by popular vote trump has advantage, and worse than that house and senate are republican now
Yeah, turns out this is the bad place.
The history books are going to refer to this era as “The Stupid Years”.
Because all of this is very fucking stupid.
are you US-based? very sorry, take care
yes, i am. i’ve been plotting to get out for years but i’ve been too depressed since my partner died to make any progress tbh. i’ve no idea what to do
I would suggest Canada, but we’re set to get our own Trump in power in about a year or so. Too many people looking on the house on fire and thinking that pouring gasoline on it is the best solution.
ugh that sucks, I’m sorry
mozilla is having another wee purge on the foundation side
this shit reads exactly like corporate raider playbook
“Our mission at Mozilla is more high-stakes than ever,” wrote Syed in an email to staff, a copy of which was shared with TechCrunch. “We find ourselves in a relentless onslaught of change in the technology (and broader) world, and the idea of putting people before profit feels increasingly radical.”
“which is why we don’t”
Its times like these which make me happy I switched to Librewolf.
Is it based on Chromium?
No, it’s supposed to be “firefox with all the weird mozilla pitch decisions removed” but it seems they still struggle to catch some
last I saw that wasn’t really well-insulated from upstream’s bullshit
one of the recent things moz pulled ended up enabled in librewolf on basically the same day/timeline
Fuck it, off-the-cuff prediction: I expect resistance to Silicon Valley is gonna turn violent during Trump’s term.
MOD NOTE: we ask people not to post detailed discussions of how one might conduct terrorism on awful.systems
Ok but how detailed can we get then
Insufficiently!
i see you remain an optimist https://gizmodo.com/the-worst-people-in-the-world-are-making-a-ton-of-money-after-trumps-victory-2000521095
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