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Hey all, we need to go meta for a sec and talk about why this article doesn't belong here, and how culturally this is a step in the wrong direction for HN. Fir
by kochb 9y ago
Hey all, we need to go meta for a sec and talk about why this article doesn't belong here, and how culturally this is a step in the wrong direction for HN.
First off, this is blogspam, the original Popular Science article is a bit better. There's a reason blogspam is discouraged by the guidelines.
More importantly, this is a particularly pernicious blogspam because the selected photos (atlas, burning boat, water glass) mostly illustrate problems that have comparables right now. It excludes the smog and coal burning illustrated in Popular Science that do a better job at illustrating both pollution and the EPA's achievements.
These problems make this article a poor fit for Hacker News. I think we should be all sad to see such an intellectually empty article ranked this highly.
- noxToken 9y agoGlad to know that I'm not the only one that felt this way. 4 copied images and a few lines of text that add nothing to the discussion of the original article. I even refreshed the page, because I thought that I was missing something. In terms of text, the original article does not have much either, but at least you're treated to about 30 or so images. It actually gives the reader a glimpse of parts of the US pre-EPA.
- sutterbomb 9y agoI understand and agree with preferring the source article for the main discussion topic instead of the blog pointer. But I also strongly disagree with your categorization of this particular site/article as spam. Kottke.org has been running for over twenty years as an independent blog and a source of joy and happiness for its readers. Jason consistently points to amazing things all over the web and often adds insightful, poignant or funny commentary to boot.
- kochb 9y agoI hate to diss kottke also, but this specific article is the textbook definition of blogspam, and we shouldn’t excuse low quality in deference to ethos. I left out some of the other issues this has, like political advocacy over content.
- roenxi 9y agoAlso on the meta front, I don't actually see any discussion of the pictures themselves. For example, I can't figure out what the problem with the Atlas Chemical Company is by inspection - that looks a lot like industrial levels of water vapour. Only in the mine water example do I see what the issue is clearly. The discussion seems to have gone straight to related political issues and the broader environment. Interesting, but the article isn't being discussed.
- ABCLAW 9y agoThose stacks aren't popping out water vapour. Check the size of the stacks and the factory - there's no scrubbers or fractionation columns preprocessing the waste gasses. Paper mills are very polluting enterprises - the water you're seeing is a thin sheet with a mostly laminar flow. It is opaque. This is not normal. The level of waste solutes in the raw ejecta is absurdly high, and is comprised of decomposed organic material & high oxygen content which leads to algal blooms, bleaches, heavy metals, chelating agents, etc. I think the burning barge is pretty self explanatory.
- Someone 9y ago”I think the burning barge is pretty self explanatory.” Is it? The photo doesn’t tell whether that was something that happened regularly, and stuff like that happens today, too. https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/?category=incidents https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/?category=incidents taught me that the Maersk Honam (built in 2017; can hold over 15,000 TEU) caught fire on March 6 and was evacuated. Worse, that doesn’t seem to be that exceptionally. http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/news/europe/maersk-honam-joins-a-growing-list-of-horrific-containership-fires.html http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/news/europe/maersk-honam-jo... lists about one every year.