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dgerard@awful.systems

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 April 2024 (awful.systems)

submitted 8 months ago by dgerard@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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[–] earthquake@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

https://marshallbrain.com/youve-had-your-turn-the-case-for-euthanizing-everyone-at-age-65

The "How Stuff Works" guy ~~decides to be normal~~ argues that retirement should be eliminated and the elderly executed "because they're not productive". In a further fit of normalness, he endorses EO Wilson without qualification.

[–] mii@awful.systems 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Jesus Christ, this guy read A Modest Proposal and took it as fucking inspiration.

Why is it always eugenics and euthanasia with these chucklefucks? The idea of exterminating large amounts of humans seems to tickle something in some people’s brains.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Never heard of the dude, but despite writing a 6 part series entitled "Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – The greatest thought experiment of all time" has has not gotten the new party line from Dear Leader that the most pressing issue is the catastrophic lack of (white) babies rather than too many people.

OTOH porque no los dos? Force women in the "first world" to have kids, euthanize all the brown people.

edit people killed at or around 60 is a minor plot point in the pretty terrible Asimov novel Pebble in the Sky, where it is not seen as a Good Thing.

[–] earthquake@lemm.ee 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's bizarre to me that the articles starts out arguing that this is necessary for environmental reasons, then shifts to egalitarianism (spread wealth from the global north to the south), before landing on productivity. A complete scattershot argument whose only constant is a desire to euthanize the old, with only the EO Wilson connection for any clue as to why he came to this conclusion.

As for fiction, I think you could name probably quite a few stories that feature this kind of mandatory maximum lifespan, almost always as an obvious signpost that the government is cruel. (I am trying to remember one in particular, I think it was a short story called "Hop for Jubilee"? Ring any bells for anyone?)