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.
New article from the New York Times reporting on an influx of compsci graduates struggling to find jobs (ostensibly caused by AI automation). Found a real money shot about a quarter of the way through:
You want my take, I expect this article’s gonna blow a major hole in STEM’s public image - being a path to a high-paying job was one of STEM’s major selling points (especially compared to the “useless” art/humanities degrees), and this new article not only undermines that selling point, but argues for flipping it on its head.
Well, what’s next, and how much work is it? I didn’t want to be a computing professional. I trained as a jazz pianist. At some point we ought to focus on the real problem: not STEM, not humanities, but business schools and MBA programs.
@BlueMonday1984
Except biology isn’t being hit as badly and that’s also STEM. I wouldn’t be surprised if other life sciences have also done better, at least until Trump started fucking with the grant system.
It’s specifically computer-touchers who are in the toilet.
It’ll be interesting to see if that holds up, with all the cuts to research funding taking place.
Quick update: I’ve checked the response on Bluesky, and it seems the general response is of schadenfreude at STEM’s expense. From the replies, I’ve found:
Humanities graduates directly mocking STEM (Fig. 1,Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5)
Mockery of the long-running “learn to code” mantra (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4 Fig. 5, Fig. 6)
Claims that STEM automated themselves out of a job by creating AI (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3)
Plus one user mocking STEM in general as “[choosing] fascism and “billions must die”” out of greed, and another approving of others’ dunks on STEM over past degree-related grievances.
You want my take on this dunkfest, this suggests STEM’s been hit with a double-whammy here - not only has STEM lost the status their “high-paying” reputation gave them, but that reputation (plus a lotta built-up grievances from mockery of the humanities) has crippled STEM’s ability to garner sympathy for their current predicament.
As an aging dev, we kind of do deserve some of this flak lol. Funny thing is, I went into SD because my first STEM degree made me as unemployable as a humanities major (a B.S. in physics is good for not much).
I hate the fact that now someone might look at me and surmise that I do something related to blockchain or AI, I feel almost like I need a sticker, like those “I bought it before we knew Elon was crazy” they put on Teslas
“I learnt to code before this stupid bubble”
stolen from cohost but i appreciate the succinctness of “capitalism make computer bad”
The whole joining of the fascist side by a lot of the higher ups of the tech world, combined with the long-standing debate bro both sides free speech libertarianism (but mostly for neonazis, payment services do go after sex work and lgbt content) also did not help the rep of STEM, even if those decisions are made by STEM curious people and not actually STEM people. billionaires want you to know they could have done physics - Angela Collier
you say STEM, but you seem to mean almost exclusively computer touchers, already mentioned biologists or variety of engineers won’t likely have these problems (i’m not gonna be excessively smug about this because my field will destroy you physically while still being STEM and not particularly glorious)
also it’s not a complete jobocalypse, there’s still 93% employed fresh CS grads, they might have comparatively shittier jobs, but it’s not a disaster (unless picture is actually much bleaker in that that unemployment is, say, concentrated in last 2 years of graduates, but still even in this case it’s maybe 10%, 12% tops for the worst affected). unless you mean their unlimited libertarian flavoured greed coming through it, then yeah, it’s pretty funny
even then, there’s gonna be a funny rebound when these all genai companies implode, partially maybe not in top earner countries, but places like eastern europe or india will fill that openai-sized crater pretty handily, if that mythical outsourcing to ai happened in the first place, that is
On one hand, this is another case of capitalism working as intended. You have the ruling class dangling the carrot of the promise of social mobility via job. Just gotta turn the crank of the orphan grinder for 4 years or so, until there’s enough orphan paste to grease the next grinding machine. But it’s ok, because your experience in crank will let you climb the ladder to the next, higher paying, higher prestige crank of the machine. Then one day, they decide to turn on the motor.
On the other hand? There is no other hand, they chopped it off because you didn’t turn the crank fast enough when you had the chance.
To extend that analogy a bit, the dunkfest I noted suggests that a portion of the public views STEM as perfectly okay with the orphan grinder’s existence at best, and proud of having orphan blood on their hands at worst.
As for the motorised orphan grinder you mention, it looks to me like the public viewed its construction as STEM voting for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party (with predictable consequences).