Want to wade into the sandy 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.)
Jeff “Coding Horror” Atwood is sneering — at us! On Mastodon:
T. chatbot booster rhetoric. So what are those examples, buddy? Very specifically? He replies:
Um hello‽ Maybe Jeff doesn’t have a spare room or room to sublet, but surely he can spare a couch or a mailbox? Let your friend use your mailing address. Store some of their stuff in your garage. To use the jargon of hackers, Jeff should be a better neighbor. This is a common issue for unhoused folks and they cannot climb back up the ladder into society without some help. Jeff’s reinvented the Hulk tacos meme but they can’t even eat it because printer paper tastes awful.
The “unhoused friend” story is about as likely to be true as the proverbial Canadian girlfriend story. “You wouldn’t know her.”
there’s been something that’s really been rubbed me the wrong way about jeff in the last few years. he was annoying before and had some insights but lately I’ve been using him as a sort of a jim crameresque tech-take-barometer.
What really soured me was after he started picking fights with some python people a few years back because someone dared post that a web framework? (couldn’t dig up the link) was a greater contribution to the world than S/O? His response was pretty horrid to the point where various python leaders were telling to stop being a massive dick because he was trying to be a bully with this “do you know who I am” attitude because he personally had not heard of the framework so it wasn’t acshually at all that relevant compared to S/O.
and now this combined with his stupid teehee I am giving away my wealth guise look how altruistic I am really is a bit eugh
so I got angry
I really hope atwood’s unhoused friend got the actual infrastructural support you mentioned (a temporary mailing address and an introduction letter emailed to an employer is only slightly more effort than generating slop, jeff, please) but from direct experience with philanthropists like him, I’m fairly sure Jeff now considers the matter solved forever
Thanks for this.
A bit odd to start out throwing shade at the Segway considering that the concept has been somewhat redeemed with e-bikes and e-scooters.
“Provide an overview of local homeless services” sounds like a standard task for a volunteer or a search engine, but yes “you can use my address for mail and store some things in my garage and I will email some contacts about setting you up with contract work” would be a better answer than just handing out secondhand information! Many “amazing things AI can do” are things the Internet + search engines could do ten years ago.
I would also like to hear from the friend “was this actually helpful?”
Friend: “I have a problem”
Me, with a stack of google printouts: “My time to shine!”.
E: ow god, I thought the examples were multiple and the friend one was just a random one. No, it was the first example. ‘I gave my friend a printout, which saved me time’. Also, as I assume the friend still is unhoused, and they didn’t actually use the printout yet, he doesn’t know if this actually helped. Atwood isn’t a ‘helping the unhoused’ expert. He just assumed it was a good source. The story ends when he hands over the paper.
Also very funny that he is also going ‘you just need to know how to ask questions the right way, which I learned by building stackoverflow’. Yeah euh, that is not a path a lot of people can follow up in.
Its even worse when I read the whole thread, Atwood claims to have $140 million, and the best he can do for “a friend” who is homeless is handing out some printouts with a few sections highlighted? And he thinks this makes him look good because he promises to give away half his wealth one day?
Like Clinton starting a go fund me for a coworker with cancer, the rich and their money are not voluntarily parted.