Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 16th November 2025

a year ago by self to c/techtakes

Want to wade into the sandy 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.)

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sansruse 13 points a year ago

AI researcher and known epstein associate Joscha Bach comes up several times in the latest epstein email dump. And it's uh, not good. Greatest hits include: scientific racism, bigotry freestyling about the neoteny principle, climate fascism and managed decline of "undesirable groups" juxtaposed immediately with opining about the emotional influence of 5 visits to buchenwald. You know, just very cool stuff:

https://journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/document-view?collection=092314e384a58618&p=1&docid=67044a5f5536b5b8_092314e384a58618_0&dapvm=2

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blakestacey 13 points a year ago

I still say that the term "scientific racism" gives these fuckos too much credit. I've been saying "numberwang racism" instead.

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sansruse 4 points a year ago

true, usually i put that term in scare quotes to emphasize its fraudulence

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blakestacey 13 points a year ago

Also appearing is friend of the pod and OpenAI board member Larry Summers!

The emails have Summers reporting to Epstein about his attempts to date a Harvard economics student & to hit on her during a seminar she was giving.

https://bsky.app/...

To quote myself: Larry Summers was one of the few people I've ever met where a casual conversation made me want to take a shower immediately afterward. I crashed a Harvard social event when a friend was an undergrad there and I was a student at MIT, in order to get the free food, and he was there to do glad-handing in his role as university president. I had a sharp discomfort response at the lizard-brain level --- a deep part of me going on the alert, signaling "this man is not to be trusted" in the way one might sense that there is rotten meat nearby.

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BigMuffN69 5 points a year ago

I always thought he had some weird pro trumpy (“anti woke”) takes. Colour me shocked.

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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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

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