Webshit Weekly
May 14, 2025
How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?
2025-05-08 | comments
Hackernews gathers around a paywalled op-ed to do what it does best: confidently misdefine basic political science terms while explaining, at length, why everything is already doomed and also fine, depending on which podcast they last absorbed. Half the thread is people role‑playing as 18th‑century constitutional scholars, despite their actual qualifications being “wrote a bash script once.” The other half blames pandemics, ethics, or the alignment of Mars. Not a single participant notices the obvious: democracy isn’t lost in one dramatic moment; it’s bled out slowly while everyone is too busy vibe‑arguing online and treating civic collapse like another fandom discourse for bored webshits.
Trump administration “looking at” suspending habeas corpus
2025-05-09 | comments
Hackernews is once again clutching its annotated constitutions like a security blanket, desperately quoting 18th‑century pamphlets as though Stephen Miller (business model: Uber for white‑noise dogwhistles) is going to be deterred by a Wikipedia link. The article reports the administration “looking at” suspending habeas corpus, as if the digital feudal lords currently running the country ever needed an excuse beyond “felt like it.” The usual constitutional scholars of Hackernews, whose legal training consists of arguing with token predictors about license clauses, spend hours miscorrecting each other about extraordinary writs while ICE is out on street corners demanding “papers, please.” But sure, let’s have another paragraph about quo warranto.
The thread turns into the standard American self‑own: people pretending to be shocked that a nation built on deportations, surveillance, and convenient exceptions for cruelty might… continue doing that. Others run the tired simulation: “What happens when the base finally notices they’re worse off?” Spoiler: nothing.
Hackernews ends on its favorite comforting lie: that everything will change once the consequences hit home. But the consequences have been hitting home for decades, and all anyone ever does is post about it from their ergonomic Herman Miller chairs, waiting for someone else to reboot the country.
Has anyone coined the term “fast tech” yet?
2025-05-10 | comments
Hackernews discovers that the mountain of disposable tech junk they’ve been worshipping for two decades might actually be trash, and immediately begins miscorrecting each other about planetary thermodynamics like they’re auditioning for TEDx: Landfill. Half the thread insists the Earth is a closed system, the other half insists it’s open, and all of them conveniently ignore the actual closed system: their own attention spans. Meanwhile, every webshit nods solemnly about “fast tech” while bragging about generating yet another three-hour-lifespan microtool with a token predictor that can’t remember what it hallucinated five minutes ago. The industry’s solution, as always, is: make more garbage, but this time with vibes.
Trump to accept luxury jet from Qatar to use as Air Force One – media report
2025-05-11 | comments
Another story proving that America has fully completed its transition from “representative democracy” to “late‑stage banana republic cosplay,” this time starring a former reality‑TV landlord accepting a flying palace from Qatar like some medieval duke being gifted a warhorse. The media dutifully pretends to be shocked that a man who treats laws as decorative suggestions might consider a $350 million airborne bribe perfectly normal. Hackernews, of course, miscorrects itself into a froth, arguing whether this counts as an “emolument” while conveniently ignoring that the entire political system is now pay‑to‑play, with the “play” part being national decline.
The commenters cycle through their predictable stages of grief: denial that this could happen, anger at the country, bargaining that maybe it’ll end up in the Trump Library (business model: Human Centipede for classified documents), depression about what comes next, and acceptance that the adults left the room decades ago. Someone invokes cognitive decline, as if the real problem were a malfunctioning brain and not a society that keeps elevating malfunctioning brains to power like they’re collectible NFTs.
Naturally, HNers reframe it all as a software bug: just patch the Constitution, clean the spyware off the jet, refactor democracy. You can practically hear them gearing up to build an “agentic” startup to solve emoluments with blockchain and vibe coding. Meanwhile, a petrostate just handed the U.S. President a personal skyscraper with wings, and the tech crowd is still asking whether this violates the terms of service for reality.
Tech oligarchs are gambling our future on a fantasy
2025-05-12 | comments
Another week, another article begging us to take the tech oligarchs seriously as they pitch their latest Mars-flavored doomsday fanfic. The same billionaires who can’t run a social network without turning it into a crypto‑bot terrarium now claim they’ll architect humanity’s cosmic future. Hackernews, naturally, gathers to miscorrect each other about “vision” and “adventure,” as though vibe‑coding a starship is one prompt away. The cult-like reverence for these digital feudal lords would be funny if it weren’t the guiding ideology of the great game. But sure, let’s gamble the actual planet on the strategic insights of men who think tunnels are a personality.
Why Moderna Merged Its Tech and HR Departments
2025-05-13 | comments
Moderna, a company that at least used to pretend its business was molecule‑related, has now decided the real innovation lies in welding HR and Tech into a single megaplex of bureaucratic despair. Because when your digital feudal lords can’t figure out what to do with a department that mostly exists to send mandatory trainings and threaten people who ask about raises, the obvious solution is to duct‑tape it to the people rebooting the VPN server. The press release hand‑waves something about AI, because no modern corporate farce is complete without invoking a token predictor to justify executive power hoarding. Hackernews spends several hours trying to rationalize any of this, as though “HR cosplaying as IT” were anything other than an omen of pure, workplace‑destroying entropy.
Klarna CEO says AI helped company shrink workforce by 40%
2025-05-14 | comments
Another digital feudal lord bragging that his automated plagiarism engine let him yeet nearly half his staff into the abyss. Klarna, the perpetual buy-now-regret-later kiosk, announces its grand achievement: replacing humans with token predictors that can barely distinguish a refund request from a ransom note. The CEO beams about “efficiency” while hand‑waving past the part where they quietly rehired humans because the clankers kept sending apology emails that read like stroke symptoms. Hackernews gathers to miscorrect each other about whether this is disruption or just the great game’s latest excuse to fire everyone before the next funding round evaporates.
UnitedHealth Group is under criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud
2025-05-14 | comments
Another healthcare leviathan caught allegedly siphoning Medicare like it’s a bottomless juice box. UnitedHealth, a company whose entire business model is “Uber for bureaucratic obstruction,” is now shocked — shocked! — to learn that turning basic medical care into a casino might attract criminal investigators. Hackernews, performing its usual ritual, alternates between insisting capitalism inherently optimizes all human experiences and admitting, oops, sometimes it just kills people for quarterly earnings. A few HNers fantasize about executives going to jail, which is adorable, like watching a toddler try to sue gravity. The rest settle into their usual posture: resigned awe at a system too corrupt to even parody.