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.

Last week’s thread

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

    • self@awful.systems
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      2 months ago

      Sometimes you read an article and you think “this article doesn’t want me to do X, but all its arguments against X are utterly terrible. If that’s the best they could find, X is probably alright.”

      that thread is an unholy combination of two of my least favorite types of guys: techbros willfully misunderstanding research they disagree with, and homeopaths

      • self@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        this article doesn’t want me to drink a shitload of colloidal silver, but all its arguments against drinking colloidal silver (it doesn’t do anything for your health, it might turn you blue, it tastes like ass) are utterly terrible. If that’s the best they could find, drinking a shitload of colloidal silver is probably alright.

      • maol@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        What a terrible argument. Anything that involves messing around with your teeth needs to have good reasons to do it, rather than just good arguments against doing it.

      • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        I’d think ‘we don’t know the side effects, it prob doesn’t work, and they are trying to sidestep the FDA’ would be good arguments against it. Esp after in the US Thalidomide (yes very much a dead horse), (mostly) wasn’t a problem because the FDA stopped it.

        Anyway, it seems like the full scale FDA project stranded due to not enough volunteers, so I suggest the HN people mad about this help out. Hey, it might turn out to actually work.

    • Mike@awful.systems
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      2 months ago

      From the comments: “Putting my conspiracy theory hat on, the dental hygiene industry in the US is for-profit, like the pharmaceutical, and would rather sell you a treatment than a cure.”

      Have these people ever BEEN to the dentist? While I know that certain dental procedures (tooth straightening in kids, whitening, etc) are way overused in the US no dentist worth their salt will allow a check-up to go by without a stern lecture on preventing future trouble. And if they don’t do that then the hygienist most certainly will…

      • gerikson@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        Here in Sweden the hygienist is definitely the Bad Cop in this scenario. I got sternly talked to by someone fresh out of school, so I don’t doubt there’s a retired Master Sergeant on the staff of the college they go to…

    • o7___o7@awful.systems
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      2 months ago

      Absolutely unhinged. Are these people from the As-Seen-On-TV dimension where it’s common for folks burn their house down every time they try to fry an egg?