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. This was a bit late - I was too busy goofing around on Discord)
@CinnasVerses it’s almost as if the people running ycombinator had some sort of vested interest in a particular framing of tech stories
People on Hacker News have been posting for years about how positive stories about YC companies will have (YC xxxx) next to their name, but never the negative ones
Maciej Ceglowski said that one reason he gave up on organizing SoCal tech workers was that they kept scheduling events in a Google meeting room using their Google calendar with “Re: Union organizing?” as the subject of the meeting.
It’s a power play. Engineers know that they’re valuable enough that they can organize openly; also, as in the case of Alphabet Workers Union, engineers can act in solidarity with contractors, temps, and interns. I’ve personally done things like directly emailing CEOs with reply-all, interrupting all-hands to correct upper management on the law, and other fun stuff. One does have to be sufficiently skilled and competent to invoke the Steve Martin principle: “be so good that they can’t ignore you.”
I wonder what would have happened if Ceglowski had kept focused on talks and on working with the few Bay Area tech workers who were serious about unionizing, regulation, and anti-capitalism. It seemed like after the response to his union drive was smaller and less enthusiastic than he had hoped, he pivoted to cybersecurity education and campaign fundraising.
One of his warnings was that the megacorps are building systems so a few opinionated tech workers can’t block things. Assuming that a few big names will always be able to hold back a multibilliondollar company through individual action so they don’t need all that frustrating organizing seems unwise (as we are seeing in the state of the market for computer touchers in the USA).
maciej cegłowski is also a self-serving arse, so i’d take anything he says with a large grain of salt.
His talks are great, but his time as a union organizer and campaign fundraiser left him so disillusioned that he headed in a reactionary direction (and neglected the business that lets him throw himself at random projects). He is a case study why getting on twitter is a very bad idea.
he’s also a self-important arse, which is kinda problematic when one tries to do organising. (one of the very important part is that doing the union work is not a social club, and you may need to work with and accommodate people whom you personally very much dislike.)
I have never met Ceglowski or talked to anyone involved in his movements. These days I am doing some local things rather than join in the endless smartphone arguments about “everyone should be an activist and organizer!” vs. “I tried that and the things that make me good at writing long essays about politics / viral social media posts make me bad at organizing to elect a city counselor.”
again, my point here is that cegłowski is an unreliable narrator; you should not build an opinion based on his anecdotes (or his transphobia).
@CinnasVerses the valley is rife with these “wisdom is your dump stat” folks. can invert a binary tree on a whiteboard but might accidentally drown themselves in a rain puddle
(Detaches whiteboard from wall, turns whiteboard upside-down)
Inverted, motherfuckers
famous last words, “we are currently clean on opsec”
@CinnasVerses @cap_ybarra 10x developers, ladies, gentlemen, and enbies. The best and brightest.
10x developers, 0.1x proletariat.
The stakhanov we have at home