Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 28th December 2025 - awful.systems
awful.systems
Want to wade into the snowy 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. Merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, and happy holidays in general!)

Want to wade into the snowy 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.

(Last substack for 2025 - may 2026 bring better tidings. Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • 🔏 Matthias Wiesmann@mastodon.social
    3·
    7 months ago

    @cstross @mirrorwitch it feel like the semi-conductor race is a bit like the race to make the fastest passenger train in the 30s, makes sense in a consumer economy. Once you have a large conflict it does not matter, are the chips in the drones in Ukraine that advanced?

        • sansruseEnglish
          10·
          7 months ago

          i doubt it. It boils down to the question of whether you and the other commenters will rethink this collection of assumptions. I think this entire thread is a bit hysterical and treats the CPC as an irrational entity similar to putin, which doesn’t seem to be the case. In my amateur IR perspective, a chinese invasion of taiwan is not imminent because:

          • China is not basing a dramatic geopolitical strategy shift on the asset prices of american AI stocks
          • China’s domestic economic situation is paramount; the chinese government’s legitimacy depends on continuing to improve the economic situation of the average person. They will not jeopardize this to gamble on a war with the USA
          • The US is currently in a downward spiral due to over-financialization of the economy leading to domestic unrest, state capture by mega-cap firms, and the resulting manufacturing weakness. This trend doesn’t seem likely to reverse any time soon, and the longer it goes on, the easier it will be to reunify peacefully with Taiwan. If after further american imperial decline, this still seems impossible, they project to have an easier time invading Taiwan at some point in the future.
          • China has an opportunity to grow its sphere of influence by stepping into the gap that the US is leaving in the maintenance of international institutions. China cannot do so if it starts a war.
          • China does not yet have energy independence, they need time to further develop in this area, especially with regard to solar power. They have the ability to mitigate this weakness if they wait.
    • fullsquareEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      from cursory look it seems like drone electronics are shaped like laptop or phone parts except actual smart things: motor driver needs some power mosfets and driver for them (like power supply), camera, radio (like wifi), accelerometer, some controller to manage it all which doesn’t need to be very powerful, lithium battery, and one extra thing: magnets for motors

      javelin atgm was developed in 90s, new versions use newer chips, but you can make extremely capable weapons with 90s technology. hell, first heat-seeking missile didn’t even use transistors. if you can make smart cards you can probably make guided missiles