Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 1st November 2026 - awful.systems
awful.systems
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. Happy Halloween, fellow sneerers!)

Welcome to November, and 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.)___

  • corbinEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    Emacs and GNU can’t stop failing to uphold the mission of Free Software. This mailing-list post has been going around and I think that it is a very good indicator of how head-up-ass the GNU project has become. Note that this email is not from RMS; the problem can’t be blamed on a particular BDFL. The following quote from the email is sufficient to completely end my interest in contributing to GNU ever again:

    The Free Software movement doesn’t pursue the goal of “liberty for all humanity”. If you think it does, you are gravely mistaken. Our goals are different, and are well described elsewhere.

    While the topic is about accepting chatbot contributions, it could also e.g. be about accepting contributions from members of Suckless or other fascist organizations; in the email, our brave GNU hero says that they’d accept contributions made with slave labor, too.

    • jaschopEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      Any other answer [than accepting code produced by slave labour] is a first step towards splitting our community along the many lines of political and ideological divides that have nothing to do with software freedoms.

      I’ve been reading Means and Ends recently, and this reminded me of syndicalist unions being hung up about political neutrality, because interacting with “politics” would interfere with their overarching mission. Believing your work is metapolitical seems to be a good trick to shut down that embarassing self-reflection part of your brain.

    • BlueMonday1984OPEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      The Free Software movement doesn’t pursue the goal of “liberty for all humanity”. If you think it does, you are gravely mistaken. Our goals are different, and are well described elsewhere.

      Never thought I’d see someone make a moral argument against Free Software, but here we are.