Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? 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 youā€™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 cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. If youā€™re wondering why this went up late, I was doing other shit)

(EDIT: Changed ā€œ29th Februaryā€ to ā€œ1st Marchā€ - its not a leap year)

  • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
    17Ā·
    9 days ago

    Jack Dorseyā€™s really figured out how to name his companies. He didnā€™t like the name of Square, so he changed it to Block. He also spent $68M of Blockā€™s money on a massive all-hands party. Now, after Bitcoinā€™s crash, he has to lay off 4k employees from Block. Donā€™t worry, somebody on HN was at the party and can explain everything:

    Describing it as a ā€œpartyā€ feels misleading. It was a company-wide offsite for an essentially fully remote organization. Was it necessary? Probably not. But I found the in-person time valuable, especially with teammates Iā€™d never met face to face.

    Elsewhere in-thread, somebody does the maths:

    The three-day festival in downtown Oakland featured performances by Jay-Z, Anderson .Paak, T-Pain, and Soulja Boy, and brought 8,000 employees from around the globe.

    Oh, well, there you go. 8k employees each buying $4k of hotel and travel, that adds up. Huh, why does that ā€œJ. Z.ā€ fellow sound familiar? Maybe it was in one of those WP articles I keep linking?

    On March 2, 2021, Square reached an agreement to acquire majority ownership in Tidal. Square paid $297 million in cash and stock for Tidal, with Jay-Z joining the companyā€™s board of directors. Jay-Z, as well as other artists who currently own stock in Tidal, will remain stakeholders. On December 1, 2021, Square announced that it would change its company name to Block, Inc. on December 10. The change was announced shortly after Dorsey resigned as CEO of Twitter.

    Ah, I see. It wasnā€™t a party, it was a presentation from the board of directors.

    • fiat_lux@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14Ā·
      9 days ago

      TIL block is square. I was wondering how there was a huge tech company Iā€™d never heard of until recently.

      • jaschop@awful.systemsEnglish
        8Ā·
        9 days ago

        I hadnā€™t heard of square either. Are they the guys doing squarespace? No idea.

        EDIT: Okay, I did hear of CashApp, and it goes without saying that you need an entire lock-in ecosystem and a crypto-gimmick around a fintech product these days.