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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy April Foolā€™s in advance.)

  • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
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    2 days ago

    @dgerard @BlueMonday1984 Iā€™ve been following them for 35 yearsā€”hell, I hung out with Curtis Yarvin on usenet in the early 90s, visited him and fondled his lizard once in '93ā€”and the only way I can explain them is that theyā€™re larping a bad post-cyberpunk novel and arenā€™t entirely clear on the whole concept of ā€œfictionā€.

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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      1 day ago

      I also legitimately canā€™t tell the degree to which they donā€™t understand theyā€™re LARPing a dystopia versus how much they completely understand that and thatā€™s why itā€™s gonna be so awesome for them once they make fetch happen.

      • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
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        1 day ago

        @YourNetworkIsHaunted Itā€™s probably a mixture: some of them understand the relationship between beliefs and reality, a whole bunch of others are LARPing away (and weā€™d all be better off if they signed up to play EVE Online instead), there are probably some today who look at Yarvin and see a ladder to power and wealth, and everything in between.

        You canā€™t ascribe unity of understanding and intention to any group of n > 1 humans.

    • gerikson@awful.systems
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      2 days ago

      fondled his lizard

      Iā€™m choosing to interpret that in the most euphemistically way possible

      • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
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        2 days ago

        @gerikson I mean, I *literally* fondled his lizard: it was about two feet long, green, and quite bad-tempered. (He and his student house had a room full of iguanas and snakes and suchlike. And a kitchen fridge door full of designer phenylethylamine hallucinogens. Or at least test tubes with labels identifying them as such. It was an eye-opening experience ā€¦

        • blakestacey@awful.systems
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          2 days ago

          Sheesh. Everyone knows you keep the phenethylamines inside the fridge proper, not on the door, where the temperature is less stable. (Source: the Shulginsā€™ Kitchen Procedures I Have Known And Loved.)

          • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 day ago

            now youā€™ve got me thinking if storage in fridge is necessary at all, if these are salts. worst thing that can reasonably happen is that salt picks up some water from the air, on top of water condensing on sample when vial was opened while still cold. freebase would probably be air-sensitive, but for compounds that are known sensitive iā€™d put them under argon/nitrogen, tape vial shut (with normal electrical tape, not parafilm) and store in freezer instead. sigma lists storage temperature for MDMA analytical standard (weak solution of freebase in methanol) as -20C, but some of this might be legal cover with excess requirements for cases where youā€™d have to be absolutely sure that analytical standard didnā€™t decompose (like in evidence in drug cases)