Skip Navigation
TechTakes @awful.systems David Gerard @awful.systems

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9th February 2025

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

174

You're viewing a single thread.

174 comments

  • one of the most annoying things about writing for a US audience is they're fucking illiterate and alluding to books confuses them

    wanna grab editors by the throat and go "JUST WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU PEOPLE EVEN DOING IN HIGH SCHOOL"

    actual example from today: "who the hell is Fagin never heard of him"

    • Some highlights from my high school AP (Advanced Placement) English class:

      1. teacher insisting that you can't split an infinitive in English, but can't explain why this bullshit rule was made up in the first place
        • also something about "up with which I will not put" because god forbid you know what you're talking about
      2. some inappropriate discussions about abortion
      3. we watched the 1931 frankenstein movie after "reading" shelley's novel, but didn't relate it to the book in any way1
      4. we read some shitty short story, which turned into a shitty movie, and then the teacher kept relating back to the film when discussing the themes of the book
      5. at some point they were like "choose your own novel to read and analyze" and we didn't really do analysis, and the novel selection was
        • dan brown's shitty novels about the dude who deciphers symbols or whatever (it was the one with anti-matter)
        • one of ayn rand's pieces of shit
        • i don't remember what else, but there were definitely no classics
      6. we had to write college entry essays for the teacher to "critique." i wrote mine about how math fucking rules. the teacher decided it was too technical (despite there being no actual math in it), so they gave it to their partner (an engineer) to read --- I doubt this was legal --- and came back to tell me how well-written it was2

      my high school education was probably considered decent. don't even get me started on "whole language learning" and "new math" and the insipid pseudoscience plaguing our certification programs while our populace treats our teachers like shit

      1: Also, this movie was nearly a century old when we watched it and my class got mad at me for spoiling it.
      2: it wasn't written well

      • don’t even get me started on “whole language learning” and “new math”

        I don't know what "whole language learning" is, and I'm way too young to have experience it, but wasn't the curriculum before "new math" like arithmetic and nothing else? In other words, not math at all?

        I didn't read much into it but from what I did it seems like they started teaching children actual math like algebra and logic and parents got frustrated because they were too stupid to help with homework anymore. Brings into my mind the whole "math was cool before they involved letters" thing that makes me want to throw a book at someone.

        • New response from scratch because I manically edited the shit out of my old one. Sorry for linking the wikipedia page there --- you were clearly referring to the same thing I was and I didn't take the appropriate time to understand your reply. I apologize.

          The backlash I am familiar with is that students would learn how to identify the place value of something ("the 3 in 220134₅ has value 3 * 5¹") but not be able to do actual arithmetic (3 * 5 = ?). Basically "why are my kids learning this abstract stuff about numerals or set theory when they can't even remember their times tables?" That is my primary issue with it --- it is not good pedagogy. Abstraction should come after a student has learned the foundational material. They aren't professional mathematicians, and treating them as such (beginning with abstract definitions, as we do) is bad pedagogy.

          I am sure there was some pushback in the form of "this is too hard", but I don't know how much of that kind of pushback occurred. I also would not necessarily blame it on the intelligence of parents. I can imagine a sort of shellshock when your 10 year old comes home with abstract mathematics that you never learned or only learned in high school or at the undergraduate level. And I can similarly understand the outrage when you expect your child to learn foundational skills in school, only for those to be skipped in favor of a high-minded appeal to "real understanding" (in my experience, this is a theme in US education --- don't memorize basic arithmetic because you can just consult your calculator; don't memorize facts because you can just look them up).

          I do not know what the curriculum was before new math, but I would be very surprised if they exclusively taught arithmetic in all of K-12 before the 1950s. I haven't confirmed this, though.

          I do think it is good pedagogy to pepper in motivations for abstract concepts early. Have a student evaluate 1723 * 16 via the standard algorithm and separately have them perform

          1000 * 16
          700 * 16
          20 * 16
          3 * 16
          now add em up and think about why you get the same answer

          tl;dr I think it was more "why are my kids learning this shit before they learn to multiply" than "I have no idea how to help my kid with their homework." Anecdotally, the latter is not something I have experienced (when I taught K-12), even when the material was abstract and something the parents couldn't help with.

      • dan brown’s shitty novels about the dude who deciphers symbols or whatever (it was the one with anti-matter)

        Ah yes, litrtuere

    • Fagin, of course, the cocreator of Steely Dan… right?

    • So cards on the table here, I've never actually read Oliver Twist. But even neo-google is able to point me at enough useful details to get enough of a gist to follow it.

      And that's assuming you don't pick it up from Wishbone, the animated talking dogs version , or the muppets parody that I'm sure exists somewhere.

      • The Dickens parody in Ulysses* was enough for me to ensure I will never, ever read him lol. Though really his work is the sort of stuff that's fairly easy to absorb via cultural osmosis. So many Christmas Carol cartoons!

        *

        Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant!

      • I didn't read it because I don't think there's much emphasis on it in school outside of the anglosphere, but the 2005 movie was a classic, must've watched it a dozen times. Now that I recall who the director was, though, I kinda understand why you don't talk much about it anymore...

      • @YourNetworkIsHaunted

        I never read it but somehow absorbed bits from the ambient culture. Might have watched a version at some point.

        Age may be part of it. I'm 53. Perhaps Oliver Twist stuff was more visible in US culture in the 70s and 80s than it was later.

    • The bleakest lol. Your editor said that?

    • Reading books in US high school was an exercise in frustration. There weren't many books assigned, and not a lot of them vibed with me. Most of my classmates did the minimum reading they could get away with (and this was before cellphones were everywhere).

      Also I once read through the entirety of the Lord of the Flies before the first quiz on it and so got a quiz answer wrong because I got mixed up due to remembering stuff that happened later in the book which I'm still bitter about.

      • Our AP English teacher marked down everyone in our class for failing to identify a quote that wasn't in the translation of L'Etranger that we all read. She refused to give our points back even after I brought a copy of the French original and showed that the translation in our edition was correct when hers was not.

    • Imagine being afraid of allusions to classic literature in your own native language.

      It's fine to miss a reference. I do it all the time and make my friends do the same. Not getting a reference is not a punishment to you, it's a bonus to those who do get it.

      • It also takes literally 1.5s to search and find out what it was

      • that's what got me: this guy was pissed off someone referenced Fagin at all, the crime of making the bozo feel uncomfortable at missing something by not reading

174 comments