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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 9 June 2024 (awful.systems)

submitted 5 months ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

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.

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 5 months ago (5 children)

yep. a couple of years ago I read We Will Call It Pala and it hit pretty fucking on the nose

a couple years later, with all the dipshittery i've seen the clowns give airtime, and I'm kinda afraid? reticent? to read it again

[–] ebu@awful.systems 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

never read this one before. neat story, even if it is not much more than The Lorax, but psychedelic-flavored.

unprompted personal review (spoilers)

it makes sense that the point-of-view character is insulated / isolated from the harm they're doing. my main gripe is that in doing so, the actual problems of the hypothetical psychedelic healthcare industry (manufactured addiction, orientalism and psychedelic colonization, inequality of access, in addition to all of the vile stuff the real healthcare industry already does) wind up left barely stated or only implied. i was waiting for the other shoe to drop; for Learie to, say, receive a letter from a family member of a patient who died on the bed due to being unattended to, a result of stretching too few staff too thin over too many patients, et cetera. something that would pop the bubble that she built around herself and tie the themes of the story together.

instead it feels like she built the bubble and stays in the bubble. she's sad her cool business idea outgrew her, that the fifty million dollars she got as a severance package doesn't fill the hole in her heart she got by helping people directly. which is neat and all, but, like. what about all the uninsured and poor Black people who never got to even try to see if psychedelics could help? what about the Native Americans who watched their spiritual medicine, for which they were (and still are) punished heavily for using, get used to make Learie's millions, for which they will never see a penny? what about your overworked staff, Learie!?

from a persuasive and political perspective, to me it seems the non-sequitur ending leaves the entire story up for ideological grabs. think it sounds like capitalism is bad? sure, go for it. think the problem is that we need to do capitalism, But Better™? sure, go for it! hell, that's basically the author's own conclusion:

But what we really need are psychedelic models for business - business that defines new standards for integrity, equity and ethics; business reimagined with a technicolor glow.

sorry, but a can of glow-in-the-dark paint over the same old exploitative business practices is not a solution. it's just more marketing. where is this even going?

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a $3,000 value course for only $999! what a steal!! order now, seats are first-come first-serve!

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

yep to a lot of your points (I'll try reply in more detail tomorrow, majority of brain context atm is going to fucking android bullshit)

as a bit more context, it was originally published on https://aurynproject.org/, which I think also says something about its origin/background. imo overly-narrow horizons in their optimism is a problem that plagues a lot of psychedelic-treatment evangelists (and I already view the argument favourably!); it's something I've often felt irked by but also haven't really been able to engage with in much depth to try form any wide-consumption counterargument too, because headspace and a lot of other stuff too

[–] jonhendry@awful.systems 2 points 1 month ago

The Auryn project has a sub-project called North Star, founded by a VC partner, and a Bain Capital veteran, among others.

The whole thing gives me the ick.

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