Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th March 2026

https://awful.systems/post/7536143

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th March 2026 - 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 so 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.)

Wew, Cory Doctorow sure is posting through it

pluralistic.net/2026/03/12/normal-technology/#bub…

Pluralistic: Three more AI psychoses (12 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

They’re not vibe-coding mission-critical AWS modules.

  • Yes they are
  • and

  • It’s worse than that, they’re vibe coding critical operating system components
  • Amazon holds engineering meeting following AI-related outages

    Ecommerce giant says there has been a ‘trend of incidents’ linked to ‘Gen-AI assisted changes’

    Financial Times

    It is nuts to deny the experiences these people are having. They’re not vibe-coding mission-critical AWS modules. They’re not generating tech debt at scale:

    pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#grace…

    They’re just adding another automation tool to a highly automated practice, and using it when it makes sense. Perhaps they won’t always choose wisely, but that’s normal too. There’s plenty of ways that pre-AI automation tools for software development led programmers astray. A skilled, centaur-configured programmer learns from experience which automation tools they should trust, and under which circumstances, and guides themselves accordingly.

    Whoa, the whole thing is indefensibly capital-W wrong, just an utterly weird rosy-colored-glass view of the current corporate experience.

    Pluralistic: Code is a liability (not an asset) (06 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

    A skilled, centaur-configured programmer

    This is like reading Yud mumbling about “Shoggoths”. It’s giving knight errant, organ-meat eater, Byronic hero, Haplogroup Rlb.

    Honor Levy is the latest from Dimes Square. Truly breathtaking text production. - awful.systems

    holy shit, it’s Ready Player One for race scientists [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/books/review/my-first-book-honor-levy.html] > He was giving knight errant, organ-meat eater, Byronic hero, Haplogroup Rlb. She was giving damsel in distress, pill-popper pixie dream girl, Haplogroup K. He was in his fall of Rome era. She was serving sixth and final mass extinction event realness. His face was a marble statue. Her face was an anime waifu. They scrolled into each other. If they could have, they would have blushed, pink pixels on a screen. Monkey covering eyes emoji. Anime nosebleed GIF. Henlo frend. hiii. Here’s The Cut puff piece on Levy [https://archive.is/SqSv5] which just mentions in passing her podcast with Curtis Yarvin. anyway, nice to know they’re still trying to make Dimes Square a thing

    Man, due to a weird alignment of the spheres I started reading those Honor Levy excerpts in the voice of Max Payne-style hardboiled narration and it fits weirdly well? Like a bargain version of the same sort of mid-budget semi-affectionate parody of existential angst that’s all tone and minimal substance.
    I am retrospectively disturbed by how well “I really came in a fluffer that time” slots into Dorothy Parker’s flow.
    I mean she was undoubtedly too much of a lefty for the Thiel set to ever admit her influence, but I feel like that’s the exact type of vibe she’s trying and mostly failing to evoke.