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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9 March 2025 (awful.systems)
submitted 2 months ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

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[-] cornflake@awful.systems 14 points 2 months ago

Ezra Klein is the biggest mark on earth. His newest podcast description starts with:

Artificial general intelligence — an A.I. system that can beat humans at almost any cognitive task — is arriving in just a couple of years. That’s what people tell me — people who work in A.I. labs, researchers who follow their work, former White House officials. A lot of these people have been calling me over the last couple of months trying to convey the urgency. This is coming during President Trump’s term, they tell me. We’re not ready.

Oh, that's what the researchers tell you? Cool cool, no need to hedge any further than that, they're experts after all.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 2 months ago

Has Klezra Ein ever used the term “useful idiot”?

[-] aninjury2all@awful.systems 4 points 2 months ago

Reminds me of this gem from Ezra a few years back about the politics of fear (buddy, you bought into the politics of fear with your support for the Iraq War)

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I listened to ezra klein's podcast sometimes before he moved to the NYT, thought it was occasionally interesting. . every time I've listened to an episode since he moved it's been some of the most credulous shit I've ever heard

like, there was one episode where he interviewed a woman whose shtick was spending the whole time talking in what I can loosely call subtext about how she fucked an octopus. she'd go on about how they were 'tasting each other' and their 'fluids were mingling' and such and he'd just be like wow what a fascinating encounter with an alien intelligence. this went on for an hour and at no point did he seem to have a clue what was going on

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago

the wat.jpeg

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

ok I looked up the transcript and these were the most spicy bits, which in my memory had come to dominate the whole episode And what did I have to offer the octopuses who I knew? Well, they’re as curious about me as I was about them. And we loved exploring each other. And sure, I loved handing them fish, and watching them pass the fish from sucker to sucker to sucker, enjoying the taste because, of course, they taste with their skin, and it’s most profoundly concentrated in the suckers. It’s like watching somebody lick a delicious ice cream cone, as they pass the fish from the tip of the smallest suckers all the way down the arm to the mouth, which is located basically in the armpits — and swallow the fish. I enjoyed that, and they enjoyed that. But sometimes, they didn’t even want a fish. Sometimes, they just wanted to play with me. They wanted to taste me. They wanted to touch me. I loved watching them change colorand shape.

I loved seeing the excitement on the octopuses' skin. They see you and you watch the eye swivel in its socket and lock into yours. The very first time I met my very first octopus, this happened. And it was absolutely striking to be recognized like that. And I saw - this was Athena, the first octopus I ever met and I saw her come out of her lair where she'd been hiding. She turned bright red with excitement. Ooh, something interesting is happening. And then I saw her white suckers come boiling up out of the water. And they were clearly reaching for me. So I plunged my hands and arms right into the water. And soon, I was covered with dozens of these soft, white, questing suckers that were tasting me and feeling me at the same time. And while I couldn't taste her– and certainly, if it had been a person tasting me so early in our relationship, it would have been alarming but since it was an octopus, I was absolutely thrilled that we were having an actual interaction.

EDIT: her shtick does not seem to have been confined to this interview

daily mail book review headline: "the woman who fell in love with an octopus"

Their eyes met across a crowded aquarium. She was slim, spry and young for her age. The object of her affections was brooding, powerful and long- limbed- very long-limbed.A classic tale of girl-meets-octopus. You cannot help but romanticise Sy Montgomery's The Soul Of An Octopus. It isn't a straightforward natural history book so much as a swooning account of falling in love with tentacles.

Montgomery's account of the mating of the Seattle octopuses is worthy of the steamiest romance novel: 'He races into her arms. She flips upside down, giving him her vulnerable, creamy white underside. They embrace mouth-to-mouth, thousands of glistening, exquisitely sensitive suckers tasting, pulling, sucking on each other. Both of them flush with excitement.' Some of this palpitating language creeps into Montgomery's description of her own encounters with the octopuses. Athena's arms, for example, are 'constantly questing, coiling, reaching, unfurling' and Montgomery leaves the tank covered in "hickeys'.When she meets Karma, Montgomery is 'almost overwhelmed with the desire to kiss one of her suckers, while Karma's 'pupils are dilated, like those of a person newly in love'.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 6 points 2 months ago

another day volunteering at the octopus museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the octopus. buddy,

[-] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 4 points 2 months ago

@blakestacey @sc_griffith my "No I did not fuck the octopus" t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by the shirt

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 3 points 2 months ago

buddy,

the answer is yes

this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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