Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 11th October 2026

8 days ago by BlueMonday1984 to c/techtakes

(The spooks shall soon be upon us.) 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.)

Want to wade into the sandy, 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. The spooks are well underway.)

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BlueMonday1984 9 points 3 days ago

Glyph's recently sneered his fellow programmers' enthusiastic acceptance of the slop machines - recommend checking it out.

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EFreethought 9 points 2 days ago

For a while it looked like devs would resist the slop, but now it looks like the slop is winning. It is pretty depressing. I am thinking about leaving tech altogether.

Now it seems like a lot of meetups are all about AI, and if the topic is not AI, someone brings it up: Can AI do this, did you use AI, etc, etc.

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rhamph 10 points 2 days ago

Years ago I thought, I like writing hobby software but I don’t think I would enjoy it as a career. And so, I do not work (at least directly) in software development.

If only I knew the armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot I was dodging there.

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blakestacey 8 points 2 days ago

I've been squeezed out of physics academia after years of ordinary career pressure and obstacles that aren't very interesting or pertinent to this thread. The fact that the insitutions and the community have no resistance to slop, that's why I'm not even trying to go back.

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JustTesting 5 points a day ago

@EFreethought @BlueMonday1984 not even just meetups, having dinner with programmer friends also mostly revolves around AI. Sure, some of it is talking negatively about it. But a few years ago we'd talk politics, hobbies, personal life etc. and now that's overshadowed by AI talk. It's just invading every space. Luckily still less so with my non-tech friends.

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BlueMonday1984 4 points 2 days ago

For a while it looked like devs would resist the slop, but now it looks like the slop is winning. It is pretty depressing. I am thinking about leaving tech altogether.

Honestly, can't blame you - with how utterly tech's surrendered to the slop machines, and how its actively sabotaged attempts to resist them, I'd be looking to leave as well.

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Evinceo 4 points 16 hours ago

For a while it looked like devs would resist the slop

I don't think I ever saw this. The only indication would have been a major dev org like the FSF, OSI, SFC or somebody hitting Microsoft with a really aggressive lawsuit over OpenAI. They would have had a slam dunk and it would have set the tone for the way the rest of the world reacted, I think.

Instead it was just 'wow cool toy.' That was when I realized the real politics of Foss wasn't just a couple of bad actors like Eric Raymond but a full on rot.

I am thinking about leaving tech altogether.

I wish I had a plan B, but I've devoted my life to being a software engineer and have no idea what else I could do .

It is pretty depressing.

Yeah. I've sort of resigned to my world being ruined and everything I ever worked on stolen and sold back to my bosses for the rest of my career.

I just wish there were some way to inflict some fraction of this pain on the people responsible, the people who go to work every day to ruin mine.

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dymaxion 2 points a day ago

@EFreethought
@BlueMonday1984 Someone should remind the powers that be that APFSDS is not an anti-personnel round. Possibly by letting them try it.

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