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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
In lesser corruption news, California Governor Gavin Newsom has been caught distributing burner phones to California-based CEOs. These are people that likely already have Newsomās personal and business numbers, so itās not hard to imagine that these phones are likely to facilitate extralegal conversations beyond the existing
briberylegitimate business lobbying before the Legislature. With this play, Newsomās putting a lot of faith into his sexting game.Gavin Newsom has also allegedly been worked behind the scenes to kill pro-transgender legislation; and on his podcast heās been talking to people like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and teasing anti-trans talking points.
I guess this all makes sense if heās going to go for a presidential bid: try to appeal to the fascists (it wonāt work and also to heck with him) while also laying groundwork for the sort of funding a presidential bid needs.
If I was a Californian CEO and received a burner phone Iād text back āThanks for the e-waste :<ā but maybe thatās why Iām not a CEO.
When this all was revealed his popularity also tanked apparently. Center/left now dislikes him, the right doesnāt trust him. So another point for the ādonāt move right on human rights you dummiesā brigade.
Tbh, weird. If I were a hyper-capitalist, CA-based CEO, I would take the burner phone as an insult. Iād see it as a lack of faith in the capture of the US. Who needs plausible deniability when you just own the fucking country?
itās weird and lowkey insulting imo. letās assume that for some bizarre reason tech ceo needs a burner phone to call governor newsom: do you think i canāt get that myself, old man? iād assume itās bugged or worse
Man, Iām getting tired of these remakes.
the phones seem to serve no practical purpose. they already have his number and I donāt think you can conclude much from call logs. so suppose they are symbolic. what he would be communicating is that heās so fully pliant that he is willing to do things there is no possible excuse for, and not even for real benefit, just to suck up to them. the opposite of plausible deniability
Even worse, he got caught handing them out. And even with all that, Iād expect a tech CEO to just go āwhy not use signal?ā or āwhat threat profile do you think we have?ā (sorry I keep coming back to this, it is just so fucking weird, like āeverything I know I learned from television showsā kind of stuff)
Brings to mind the sopranos scene of the two dudes trying to shake down a starbucks or starbucks analogue for protection money
Governor Saul Goodsom.