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 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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)
Hmm, any sort of vision for generating public support for development of a technology has to have either ideological backing or a profit incentive. I don’t say this to mean that the future must be profitable, rather, I say this to mean that you don’t get the space race if western powers aren’t afraid of communism appearing as a viable alternative to capitalism, on both ideological and commercial fronts.
Unfortunately, a vision of that kind is necessarily technofascist. Rather than look for a tech-forward vision of the future, we need deprogram ourselves and unlearn the unspoken narratives that prop up capitalism and liberal democracy as the only viable forms of society. We need to dismantle the systems and structures that require the complex political buy-in for projects that are clearly good for society at large.
Uh, I guess I’ve kind of gone completely orthogonal to your point of discussion. I’m kind of saying the collapse of the US is inevitable.
what? space race was thinly disguised ICBM development program
ah, am conflating the cold war and the space race. Though, why the nations wanted to develop ICBMs is entirely relevant.
No actually, I think what you have to say is in line with my broader point. As the top source of global consumer demand, America is primarily held together by its supply chains at this point. To be crude about it, the best reasons to be an American in the 21st century are the swag and the cheap gas. When the MAGA and Fox News crowd are pointing fingers and ranting about Marxism, they're actively trying to obscure materialism and keep people from thinking about material conditions. Having a material program, that at least has elements that can be built from the bottom up, is at least as crucial as having an electoral program. I know the Four Thieves people got rightfully shredded here a few weeks back, and that kind of technical pushback on amateur dreams is necessary, so it's a tough needle to thread. But for instance, consider Gavin Newsom's plan to have California operate its own insulin production, within existing systems and regulations: https://calmatters.org/health/2025/01/insulin-production-gavin-newsom/ This is a Newsom policy I actually think is a fantastic idea, and a big credit to him if it happens! But it's bogged down in the production-line validation stage, because we already know how to synthesize insulin and that it's effective. And the production may not even be in California when it happens! There's plenty of room for improvement here.
Space and centralized, rent-seeking "AI" are not material programs that improve conditions for the broader population. The original space program was successful because a more tightly controlled media environment gave the opportunity to use it to cover for the missile development that was the enduring practical outcome. Positive consumer outcomes from all that have always felt, to me, like something that was bolted onto the history later. We wouldn't have Tang and transistors if not for Apollo! Well, one is kind of shitty and useless, the other is so overwhelmingly advantageous that it surely would have happened anyway.
And to your last point, I somewhat sadly feel like a lot of doomer shit I was reading ~15 years ago actually prepared me to at least be unsurprised about the situation we're in. A lot of those writers (James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer for instance) have either softly capitulated, or else happily slotted themselves into the middle of the red-brown alliance. I think that's a big part of why we're at where we're at: a lot of people who were actually willing to consider the idea of American collapse were perfectly fine with letting it happen.
For the US to avoid collapse, the Democrats would have to sweep the board in multiple successive elections and be more unified and committed to deep reform than they ever have been.
I will pause for the laughter to fade.
In completely related news I'm strongly considering getting my affairs in order and moving ~~anywhere in the entire world besides the united states~~ somewhere in Europe; as it's apparently no longer safe for trans people ~~or C++ developers*~~ in the US. So if anyone has any advice (or job leads) please do share.
* This is a memory safety joke
Sorry but Rust knowledge is now a hard requirement for visas so you better hit the book
from what I’ve been told, a digital nomad visa and EU citizenship by descent are a couple of routes worth looking into. I have frustratingly little detail on the expectations around the visa though, and citizenship by descent laws vary by country.
Estonia has an immigration thing for tech workers I believe!
might be relevant https://lemmy.world/post/21995141
Snark answer: for the US to avoid collapse, the democrats will have to do literally anything, so yeah collapse is inevitable.
Optimistic answer: a third, actually leftist, anti-liberal party suddenly gains popularity and power and reforms the US entirely.
Realistic answer: trump and the republicans will fully construct a fascist chokehold over the US probably by the end of this year at the earliest. Anyone who has any hope in non-violent action is deluding themselves.
A necessary precondition for the Democrats to do anything is Democrats regaining the Senate, which pretty much requires winning a Senate seat in North Carolina, where the state supreme court is taking the attitude that no Democratic win is legitimate. So, yeah: There's basically no institutional way for this country to come back from where it has gone.
On another somewhat orthogonal point, I suspect AI has likely soured the public on any kinda tech-forward vision for the foreseeable future.
Both directly and indirectly, the AI slop-nami has caused a lot of bad shit for the general public - from plagiarism to misinformation, from shit-tier AI art to screwing human artists, the public has come to view AI as an active blight on society, and use of AI as a virtual "Kick Me" sign.
I've been struggling with what the appropriate level of engagement for all the tech shit is.
I can stick to making fun of the AI crap and whatever else the tech people shit out because it's tangible for me, and I can more or less be an effective gatekeeper for my community, but the problems go beyond just a bunch of rich tech weirdos floating bad ideas, it's what they're trying to paper over. The fact that they're incompetent at it is very funny, but I've been laughing with gritted teeth for too long.
I just want it all to stop.