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 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.
yep. a couple of years ago I read We Will Call It Pala and it hit pretty fucking on the nose
a couple years later, with all the dipshittery iāve seen the clowns give airtime, and Iām kinda afraid? reticent? to read it again
never read this one before. neat story, even if it is not much more than The Lorax, but psychedelic-flavored.
unprompted personal review (spoilers)
it makes sense that the point-of-view character is insulated / isolated from the harm theyāre doing. my main gripe is that in doing so, the actual problems of the hypothetical psychedelic healthcare industry (manufactured addiction, orientalism and psychedelic colonization, inequality of access, in addition to all of the vile stuff the real healthcare industry already does) wind up left barely stated or only implied. i was waiting for the other shoe to drop; for Learie to, say, receive a letter from a family member of a patient who died on the bed due to being unattended to, a result of stretching too few staff too thin over too many patients, et cetera. something that would pop the bubble that she built around herself and tie the themes of the story together.
instead it feels like she built the bubble and stays in the bubble. sheās sad her cool business idea outgrew her, that the fifty million dollars she got as a severance package doesnāt fill the hole in her heart she got by helping people directly. which is neat and all, but, like. what about all the uninsured and poor Black people who never got to even try to see if psychedelics could help? what about the Native Americans who watched their spiritual medicine, for which they were (and still are) punished heavily for using, get used to make Learieās millions, for which they will never see a penny? what about your overworked staff, Learie!?
from a persuasive and political perspective, to me it seems the non-sequitur ending leaves the entire story up for ideological grabs. think it sounds like capitalism is bad? sure, go for it. think the problem is that we need to do capitalism, But Betterā¢? sure, go for it! hell, thatās basically the authorās own conclusion:
sorry, but a can of glow-in-the-dark paint over the same old exploitative business practices is not a solution. itās just more marketing. where is this even going?
a $3,000 value course for only $999! what a steal!! order now, seats are first-come first-serve!
It very much confirms my understanding that psychedelics are best taken as a community drug
yep to a lot of your points (Iāll try reply in more detail tomorrow, majority of brain context atm is going to fucking android bullshit)
as a bit more context, it was originally published on https://aurynproject.org/, which I think also says something about its origin/background. imo overly-narrow horizons in their optimism is a problem that plagues a lot of psychedelic-treatment evangelists (and I already view the argument favourably!); itās something Iāve often felt irked by but also havenāt really been able to engage with in much depth to try form any wide-consumption counterargument too, because headspace and a lot of other stuff too
The Auryn project has a sub-project called North Star, founded by a VC partner, and a Bain Capital veteran, among others.
The whole thing gives me the ick.