• 0 Posts
  • 8 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
Cake day: August 26th, 2024
  • istewart@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systems•More like ‘Peter Thiel IS the Antichrist’English
    10·
    1 day ago

    Essay proclaiming broad stagnation is now well over a decade old, Thiel stands by that thesis, but hey, Thiel himself definitely isn’t part of the problem! Invest in blockchain-powered AI gene editing today!

    I keep telling people that Thiel isn’t some kind of boogeyman end-boss hiding behind Musk, because he’s clearly just as loaded and incompetent as Musk, he only takes more care to keep it out of the public eye… but every time he pops his head up for some garbage like this, I am forced to reconsider that latter conclusion.

  • istewart@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th June 2025English
    8·
    2 days ago

    Probably worth a thread in its own right. I find the “contempt” framing to be particularly powerful. Contempt as illustrated herein is the necessary shadow of the relentlessly positivist “you can do/be anything!” cultural messaging that accompanied the rise of the current tech industry. (I’m tempted to use Neil Postman’s term “technopoly,” but I feel the need to reread his book at least once more before appropriating it wholesale into these discussions.) The positivism is the seed that drives people to take an aggressively technical approach to reality, and contempt is one possible response to reality imposing constraints through technical limitations. Not necessarily one that I have ever chosen myself, but I see now that much of what we discuss here comes from people who have.

    Overall I think this essay is going to be a bedrock reference for a lot of people going forward.

  • istewart@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th June 2025English
    0·
    16 days ago

    I think the common ground is a fear of loss of authority to which they feel entitled. They learned the “old” ways of SysV RC, X11, etc. etc. and that is their domain of expertise, in which they fear being surpassed or obsoleted. From there, it’s easy to combine that fear with the fears stoked by adjacent white/male supremacist identity politics and queerphobia, plus the resentment already present from stupid baby slapfights like vi vs emacs or systemd vs everything else, and generate a new asshole identity in which they feel temporarily secure. Fear of loss of status drives all of this.