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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 5th October 2025 - awful.systems (awful.systems)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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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[–] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (12 children)

Jeff "Coding Horror" Atwood is sneering — at us! On Mastodon:

bad news "AI bubble doomers". I've found the LLMs to be incredibly useful … Is it overhyped? FUCK Yes. … But this is NOTHING like the moronic Segway (I am still bitter about that crap), Cryptocurrency, … and the first dot-com bubble … If you find this uncomfortable, I'm sorry, but I know what I know, and I can cite several dozen very specific examples in the last 2-3 weeks where it saved me, or my team, quite a bit of time.

T. chatbot booster rhetoric. So what are those examples, buddy? Very specifically? He replies:

a friend confided he is unhoused, and it is difficult for him. I asked ChatGPT to summarize local resources to deal with this (how do you get ANY id without a valid address, etc, chicken/egg problem) and it did an outstanding, amazing job. I printed it out, marked it up, and gave it to him.

Um hello‽ Maybe Jeff doesn't have a spare room or room to sublet, but surely he can spare a couch or a mailbox? Let your friend use your mailing address. Store some of their stuff in your garage. To use the jargon of hackers, Jeff should be a better neighbor. This is a common issue for unhoused folks and they cannot climb back up the ladder into society without some help. Jeff's reinvented the Hulk tacos meme but they can't even eat it because printer paper tastes awful.

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    "Provide an overview of local homeless services" sounds like a standard task for a volunteer or a search engine, but yes "you can use my address for mail and store some things in my garage and I will email some contacts about setting you up with contract work" would be a better answer than just handing out secondhand information! Many "amazing things AI can do" are things the Internet + search engines could do ten years ago.

    I would also like to hear from the friend "was this actually helpful?"

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

    Friend: "I have a problem"

    Me, with a stack of google printouts: "My time to shine!".

    E: ow god, I thought the examples were multiple and the friend one was just a random one. No, it was the first example. 'I gave my friend a printout, which saved me time'. Also, as I assume the friend still is unhoused, and they didn't actually use the printout yet, he doesn't know if this actually helped. Atwood isn't a 'helping the unhoused' expert. He just assumed it was a good source. The story ends when he hands over the paper.

    Also very funny that he is also going 'you just need to know how to ask questions the right way, which I learned by building stackoverflow'. Yeah euh, that is not a path a lot of people can follow up in.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Soyweiser

    Its even worse when I read the whole thread, Atwood claims to have $140 million, and the best he can do for "a friend" who is homeless is handing out some printouts with a few sections highlighted? And he thinks this makes him look good because he promises to give away half his wealth one day?

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Like Clinton starting a go fund me for a coworker with cancer, the rich and their money are not voluntarily parted.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    This also shows problems with the "effective altruist" approach. Donating to the local theater or "to raise awareness of $badThing" might not be the best way of using funds, but when a friend needs help now, you have the resources to help them, and you say "no, that might not be as efficient as creating a giant charity to help strangers one day" something is wrong.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    so I got angry

    I really hope atwood’s unhoused friend got the actual infrastructural support you mentioned (a temporary mailing address and an introduction letter emailed to an employer is only slightly more effort than generating slop, jeff, please) but from direct experience with philanthropists like him, I’m fairly sure Jeff now considers the matter solved forever

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    The "unhoused friend" story is about as likely to be true as the proverbial Canadian girlfriend story. "You wouldn't know her."

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    jeff’s follow-up after the backlash clarifies: you wouldn’t know her because he donated right under the limit to incur a taxable event and didn’t establish a trust like a normal millionaire and also the LLM printout only came pointlessly after months of research and financially supporting the unhoused friend and also you’re no longer allowed to ask publicly about the person he brought up in public, take it to email

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago

    there's been something that's really been rubbed me the wrong way about jeff in the last few years. he was annoying before and had some insights but lately I've been using him as a sort of a jim crameresque tech-take-barometer.

    What really soured me was after he started picking fights with some python people a few years back because someone dared post that a web framework? (couldn't dig up the link) was a greater contribution to the world than S/O? His response was pretty horrid to the point where various python leaders were telling to stop being a massive dick because he was trying to be a bully with this "do you know who I am" attitude because he personally had not heard of the framework so it wasn't acshually at all that relevant compared to S/O.

    and now this combined with his stupid teehee I am giving away my wealth guise look how altruistic I am really is a bit eugh

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