this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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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.

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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 so 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. If you're wondering why this went up late, I was doing other shit)

(EDIT: Changed "29th February" to "1st March" - its not a leap year)

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[–] corbin@awful.systems 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Jack Dorsey's really figured out how to name his companies. He didn't like the name of Square, so he changed it to Block. He also spent $68M of Block's money on a massive all-hands party. Now, after Bitcoin's crash, he has to lay off 4k employees from Block. Don't worry, somebody on HN was at the party and can explain everything:

Describing it as a “party” 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 I’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 "J. Z." 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 company'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 wasn't a party, it was a presentation from the board of directors.

[–] fiat_lux@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago

Yeah, they rebranded when they did the harebrained pivot to focus on cryptocurrencies.

[–] jaschop@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I hadn'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.