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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

One can make an argument that this belongs in technology, but as I'm using the same roads as these cars, it feels like a wider concern.

Austin suddenly has a shedload of Waymos driving about, as of a month or two ago -- to the point that I can bus it to HEB and have two consecutive Waymos beside us at a red light.

It's a trip to watch a car drive past with zero people inside.

No one here -- at least in the circles I run in (which excludes techbros) -- likes that Tesla is running a beta with wildly obvious safety issues on roads our tax dollars pay for.

"Well, we couldn't nail autonomous driving for over a decade, so let's set about making what we do have into a taxi service" may please shareholders, but it's our lives they're putting at risk.

And there's a strong whiff of "demand has fallen off a cliff, so we have to do something with all these cars."

/soapbox

These days, Austin, Texas feels like ground zero for autonomous cars. Although California was the early test bed for autonomous driving tech, the much more permissive regulatory environment in the Lone Star State, plus lots of wide, straight roads and mostly good weather, ticked enough boxes to see companies like Waymo and Zoox set up shop there. And earlier this summer, Tesla added itself to the list. Except things haven't exactly gone well.

According to Tesla's crash reports, spotted by Brad Templeton over at Forbes, the automaker experienced not one but three crashes, all apparently on its first day of testing on July 1. And as we learned from Tesla CEO Elon Musk later in July during the (not-great) quarterly earnings call, by that time, Tesla had logged a mere 7,000 miles in testing.

By contrast, Waymo's crash rate is more than two orders of magnitude lower, with 60 crashes logged over 50 million miles of driving. (Waymo has now logged more than 96 million miles.)

Two of the three Tesla crashes involved another car rear-ending the Model Y, and at least one of these crashes was almost certainly not the Tesla's fault. But the third crash saw a Model Y—with the required safety operator on board—collide with a stationary object at low speed, resulting in a minor injury. Templeton also notes that there was a fourth crash that occurred in a parking lot and therefore wasn't reported. Sadly, most of the details in the crash reports have been redacted by Tesla.

Quelle surprise.

Well, at least it's a systemic issue and not just me. I've been saying awhile now that experience is toxic and the jobs posted aren't real. How can one send out a thousand applications and get a single interview?

It's a terrible time to be midcareer.

When Philip Kowalski lost his job earlier this year as a USAID contractor working on aid to Ukraine due to Doge cuts, he was confident in his credentials: a master’s degree from the University of London and years of hands-on experience managing American foreign aid contracts that he thought would help him land on his feet.

Instead, he found himself adrift in what he calls “a massive pool of unemployed people who are highly qualified all competing for the same tiny pool of available jobs”.

“I’ve put out maybe 400 job applications in the last five months,” Kowalski said. “I’ve only gotten a handful of interviews. I think I’ve interviewed with six different places. It’s a really bleak situation.”

Kowalski, 36, is far from alone. From the tech-centric coasts to the US deep south, job seekers describe a market where even advanced degrees, decades of experience and thousands of applications often yield little more than silence or, often, scam calls.

This was already the case in 2020, but no one was covering it because "unemployment's so low, it's a you problem." Upskill. Go to networking events. Spend a shitton of money and go into debt so you're even more desperate for entry-level work despite decades of experience.

Meanwhile, rent goes up 15% a year, and you're making half what you did when you moved in, after a grueling, monthslong job search that forces you to put rent on a credit card.

As Carlin said: "It's bullshit, and it's bad for you."

After following this insult to shitshows for the worse part of the afternoon (copypasta from The Guardian's live coverage brought tumbleweeds to the Discord server), we finally have a final story.

I want to be abundantly clear that we all have our opinions about Kirk and the circumstances surrounding his death. That is not what this thread is about; it's about the ... whatever that was. Ostensibly a memorial, it was obviously more political event than anything else.

But if you're playing Nazi bingo, get your card out.

Tens of thousands gathered in Arizona on Sunday for a public memorial to honor Charlie Kirk, the rightwing youth organizer who was fatally shot during an event at a Utah college.

Donald Trump gave the last of more than two dozen speeches, following emotional remarks from Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, and eulogies from the vice-president, JD Vance, four cabinet members and other senior White House officials, a reflection of the murdered activist’s deep imprint on the president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.

Trump’s remarks were an awkward mix of eulogy and campaign speech, during which he frequently veered away from reading somber remarks about Kirk’s life and violent death to make offhand comments and jokes.

At one point, Trump mentioned that, shortly before he died, Kirk told a staff member he was not afraid of students who disagreed with him in the crowd at Utah Valley University. “I’m not here to fight them – I want them to know them and love them,” Trump quoted Kirk as saying. “In that private moment on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was.”

“He did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them, ”Trump said, before breaking from his prepared remarks to add: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

Dude. You're the keynote speaker at a memorial (already an odd concept) ... you can't keep your remarks short and focused on the deceased?

I know you need to be in front of a camera, but you have cameras back at the White House. And on Air Force One.

ETA: Shame this didn't make it into the final cut from the live feed:

Several attendees were leaving the stadium while Trump continued his remarks in honor of Charlie Kirk – part remembrance, part grievance.

This happened just past 4pm local time (7pm ET), meaning some guests have spent more than 12 hours waiting for the speech. The president’s tribute started about an hour behind schedule.

Christofascists just like "fuck this, I'm out."

Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma introduced legislation this week that would require every public university in the state to construct “a Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza”, with a statue of the assassinated Republican activist and a sign calling him a “modern civil rights leader”, or pay monthly fines.

The proposed legislation comes as conservatives pay tribute to the murdered activist and podcaster, whose life will be commemorated by the president at a service in Arizona on Sunday, by comparing him to martyred political and spiritual leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr and Saint Paul.

The Oklahoma bill, sponsored by state senators Shane Jett and Dana Prieto, specifies that the memorial site must be in “a prominent area” on the main campus of every institution of higher education in the state system, and must include “a statue of Charlie Kirk sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him” or one of Kirk and his wife holding their children. Designs for the statue must be approved by the legislature.

I have no words.