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.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
Starting off this Stubsack with a solid essay I ran across: Donāt expect the tech platforms to help us this time.
A bit of an aside, but how did everyone decide to use the exact phrase ādecisive victoryā when congratulating president elect Trump? It keeps jumping out to me and I find it kind of weird. It has almost a militaristic tone.
Also it isnāt? 50.2% to 48.1% of votes is not decisive in any sensible meaning of the word?
If you account for the turnout (around 60%) it means 30% voted for Trump and 28.9% for Harris, so ānone of thoseā won decisively with 40%!
Losing every swing state and failing to even win the consolation trophy of the popular vote after even Hillary fucking Clinton managed that much is something Iād call getting your ass handed to you. The US election system is terrible, but itās the game they were playing and Trump won hands down.
Also, not that itās the point but I have to note that technically most election victories are decisive, in the sense that they resolve the winner with little to no ambiguity (which is usually the case, even when the margin is narrow). In that sense, the only way Trumpās victory is not decisive is if you contest the legitimacy of the whole election.
This is such pedantry that you might as well say āthe Merriam-Webster dictionary defines decisive asā¦ā
considering trump has spent the last four years pretending he won the previous election I actually do wonder if part of the subtext is āwe acknowledge you won for real realsies and we cannot talk shit about you as a fake presidentā
Yea I know, had to get that digression out of my system, especially since you said āin any sensible meaning of the wordā and all. Sorry, I didnāt mean to nuh-uh you on semantics, just point out something that tickled my pedantry sense.
Edit: I also brought it up because IMO ādecisiveā is a bit of an odd choice to describe election victory, unless referring to some grander context where the election marks a major historical turning point in national or international politics in favor of the winning side.
I see calling like Raeganās margin in 1984 ādecisiveā
Could be they are sharing a bit of a media bubble. In 2016 there was a bit of a (pre election) āhe will win in a landslideā thing due to Scottbert.
IMO, coordinated media strategy. you can send all the people you want to congratulate you a prebaked message or tweet or whatever, saves them the trouble of writing something themselves. That or copy paste
I think that particular talking point also serves an exculpatory purpose: āIf it was only a razor-thin victory I might understand being angry with me, but see itās a decisive victory. He has the mandate
of heavenof the people (this is a Trumpian victory! not a Democrat failure!) ! It would be wrong not to congratulate him!āafter this decisive victory, I guess I have no choice but to take this mask off, what a shameā¦
that+ losing the popular vote in 2016 must have really hurt that ego of his.
LLM Use cases:
@sailor_sega_saturn
Maybe itās one of those cliches like ābus plungeā
That they are posting this on substack, and how important that platform has become in the blogosphere is already a bit of a sign.