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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
This is an absolutely fascinating selection of people to have speaking at your event.
Whilst looking for an easily cutānāpasted list for alt-text purposes, I discover it is even worse than it looks, because there are folk like Gad Saad too who donāt get an entry on the poster for whatever reason. To steal someone elseās summary, ājust look at this fucking parade of grifters, scammers and out-and-out Russian assetsā.
I opened the site for it and browsed a bit, my first thought being something like āchrist, the worst of glamper festivalsā, shortly after followed by āgod this like is like if the worst of burning man fucked TEDā
then, bottom of the āmusic & performancesā page:
gnnnnnnngh
Burning man portrayed famously by Anna Gunn
Putting philosophy talks at a music festival is one of those ideas you come up with to try and sound smart, cool, and edgy, but as a high schooler who has never done drugs nor been to a live show before.
Anyway I went through the lineup summaries on the wikipedia page, two notes:
ānightmare blunt rorationā as people say. See the greyzone is also present.
as in the tankies? i donāt see blumenthal in there
Mate
ah okay, itās been a while since they were relevant
grayzone, the: low quality disinformation source constantly praising putin and assad while downplaying their warcrimes and amplifying conspiracy theories favourable to these two. not to be confused with greyzone, a wagner group associated telegram channel
Ah my bad, i always mess the spelling of gray/grey up.
weirder thing is that blumenthal (american) uses british spelling, and russians (where british english was taught more commonly when it was relevant for them? i think?) used american spelling
Iām glad that messing it up is at least common.
Search engines also must wonder why Iām so interested in couches and coaches because I know which word I mean, I donāt always know how it is spelled. There prob is a nice mnemonic involving Vance and Waltz I could think off that would help me with that problem however.
The only one Iāve met is Carlo Rovelli, at the APS March Meeting in 2019. We work in adjacent topics, but I donāt travel much. I know people who know him better, and I havenāt heard stories of him being horrible, for whatever thatās worth. He does come across as a bit of an eager self-promoter. I can easily imagine him accepting an invitation on the āa gigās a gigā principle.
I did read one of Carloās pop sci books back in the day, was a nice read. Iirc heās like one of the dudes all in on loop quantum gravity. Bet youād know more about this than I do š
āPhilosophy & Musicā are indeed two categories of things that share one letter between them.
Feel very happy to recognise only Corbyn and Penrose by name, no idea what any of them are doing there.
I mean, I know who Penrose was, but from the context I assume heās probably acutely suffering from Nobel Disease and I have zero idea what heās been up to outside of physics.
And isnāt Corbyn just a boring lefty UK politician? Does he have like a philosophy background or something?
Corbyn is unusual because he was an actual lefty politician, and there arenāt many of those, especially not after subsequent labour party purges. The weirder one is Rifkind, who was a politician alongside Thatcher, but sometimes disagreed with her soft and centrist views. Maybe heās a sort of grandfather figure for Tice, who is Farageās number two.
Weird mix of wingnuts. Probably all united by their transphobia, though.
Corbyn is, like, famously bad at recognising bad faith fascist signalling, so it doesnāt not make sense.
He is busy being 93 fucking years old, lol
They probably couldnāt get Bernie.
If Penrose followed his trajectory from 30 years ago, he is now a radical anti AGI person but because he thinks human minds work on quantum effects.
Cursed bizzaro bonaroo