4 ms·

I'm sorry, but I'm totally over this type of nonsense. "Expert says" just signals bullshit to me at this point. Clickbait. I'm exhausted at this point.

jacquesm 5y ago
Then maybe stop going to news sites? Give yourself a break and re-engage when you think you can deal with it again.
- marklubi 5y ago
  We've both been on this site for a long time. I've signed off from the typical news for quite some time at this point, but it keeps seeping in. This site used to be full of enthusiasm, but it's changed.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    It is what we make it. And yes, it has changed, this has been observed many times now in the last couple of months, but that's no reason why it can't change back.
    - marklubi 5y ago
      How do we get it back?
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Use your voting power, submit good articles, upvote good articles on the new page and message hn@ycombinator.com about behavior that crosses the guidelines. Also: the 'New' page has a 'more' link at the bottom, this really should be used more often, the new pages moves ever faster as more stuff gets submitted to HN so plenty of good items scroll off the new page before they catch enough upvotes to make it to the homepage, so you can have a disproportionally high impact by voting for something that is at 3 or 4 upvotes on page 2 or 3. (The 'new' page only gets a fraction of the traffic that the homepage gets.)
- akvadrako 5y ago
  No, he shouldn't "deal with it"; that's a waste of time. This is just garbage news; it should be avoided.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    There is a 'flag' button right at the top of the page, free for you to use. Other than that you are right, it is news about garbage, but that does not make it garbage news.
jdkjs 5y ago
- fsflover 5y ago
  Can you suggest better experts?
ArnoVW 5y ago
I feel your pain, but let me ask you: how should we manage this as a society? The fact that air pollution kills massively is not 'new'. Should we stop reporting on it? Should we continue, but use other headlines? Because the solution can't be "keep chugging along as if nothing were". I'm heading up infosec in our company, and it's a similar "inconvenient truth" type of situation. My approach so far is to appeal to "coherence". You can pretend that disk encryption isn't necessary, but only if we all agree that leaking data is not an existential threat. That's what this type of article does: put in context the number of Covid deaths, and ask "is that coherent?"
- mercy_dude 5y ago
  > how should we manage this as a society? If COVID crisis has been any indication, common gut feeling has proven right on many occasions such as mask, airborne, lab leak etc. It was very clear early on masks might help, until health experts chimed in with their poor messaging saying masks don’t work. The virus being aerosolized and spreading airborne was also quite clear given how common symptoms tended to be to flu, yet there was hyper focus on hand washing etc instead of cleaning air or ventilation. You don’t need to be an expert to understand air pollution is bad. Common sense and symptoms tell you it is. If anything this is an excuse for experts to collude with policy makers to pass on whatever the agendas they are working on. I share the mindset with OP that experts as they exist today in the form of soulless gatekeepers feeding their egos with peer reviews can’t be trusted.
  - flipbrad 5y ago
    Dismissing stuff because just you can attach a particular label to it - in this case "expert" - is intellectually and socially weak sauce. Why not instead engage with the claims and dispute them at face value, rather than resort to name calling? (Especially when the insult of choice here is "expert")
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    For the COVID stuff... the worst thing was the communication failures and outright lies all around. > It was very clear early on masks might help, until health experts chimed in with their poor messaging saying masks don’t work. The administrations (not just the 45th, we had this shit worldwide) suddenly realized that they had no stockpile of masks and other PPE, and instead of communicating to the people and admitting fault for about three decades of globalization gone bad, they just went ahead and claimed against better knowledge that masks were not needed - at best, some asked the population to leave masks to the hospitals and help themselves with woven-cloth selfmade masks. > The virus being aerosolized and spreading airborne was also quite clear given how common symptoms tended to be to flu, yet there was hyper focus on hand washing etc instead of cleaning air or ventilation. I would only classify this as a partial communication failure. All the hygienic measures introduced worldwide drastically brought down the numbers of virtually all infectious diseases, which meant that hospitals now had more capacity to deal with COVID cases. On the other side, while a lot of German public offices (most notably, parliaments) have air filtering systems installed, the rollout of these devices in schools is ... underwhelming (and that's putting it mildly), with courts denying lawsuits asking for their installation with the simple excuse "if ventilating by opening the windows every twenty minutes makes you cold, use better clothes" [1]. Given that ridiculousness, it is definitely legitimate to claim that there is a significant interest of the governments to save money at the expense of parts of the populations that don't have political representation. [1]: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/muenster-schueler-aus-buende-hat-laut-oberverwaltungsgericht-keinen-anspruch-auf-luftfilter-im-klassenzimmer-a-8c54a261-b793-4dd4-8b40-f68cb0340eb9 https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/muenster-schueler-au...
rightbyte 5y ago
The most BS about the article is that it does reference the report by name. You have to reverse engineer it by searching for the author ...
thawaya3113 5y ago
I’m not sure I understand what you’re exhausted about. That somebody with expertise in the field published a report?

jacquesm 5y ago

Then maybe stop going to news sites? Give yourself a break and re-engage when you think you can deal with it again.

marklubi 5y ago
We've both been on this site for a long time. I've signed off from the typical news for quite some time at this point, but it keeps seeping in. This site used to be full of enthusiasm, but it's changed.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It is what we make it. And yes, it has changed, this has been observed many times now in the last couple of months, but that's no reason why it can't change back.
  - marklubi 5y ago
    How do we get it back?
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Use your voting power, submit good articles, upvote good articles on the new page and message hn@ycombinator.com about behavior that crosses the guidelines. Also: the 'New' page has a 'more' link at the bottom, this really should be used more often, the new pages moves ever faster as more stuff gets submitted to HN so plenty of good items scroll off the new page before they catch enough upvotes to make it to the homepage, so you can have a disproportionally high impact by voting for something that is at 3 or 4 upvotes on page 2 or 3. (The 'new' page only gets a fraction of the traffic that the homepage gets.)
akvadrako 5y ago
No, he shouldn't "deal with it"; that's a waste of time. This is just garbage news; it should be avoided.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  There is a 'flag' button right at the top of the page, free for you to use. Other than that you are right, it is news about garbage, but that does not make it garbage news.

jdkjs 5y ago

fsflover 5y ago
Can you suggest better experts?

ArnoVW 5y ago

I feel your pain, but let me ask you: how should we manage this as a society? The fact that air pollution kills massively is not 'new'. Should we stop reporting on it? Should we continue, but use other headlines? Because the solution can't be "keep chugging along as if nothing were". I'm heading up infosec in our company, and it's a similar "inconvenient truth" type of situation. My approach so far is to appeal to "coherence". You can pretend that disk encryption isn't necessary, but only if we all agree that leaking data is not an existential threat. That's what this type of article does: put in context the number of Covid deaths, and ask "is that coherent?"

mercy_dude 5y ago
> how should we manage this as a society? If COVID crisis has been any indication, common gut feeling has proven right on many occasions such as mask, airborne, lab leak etc. It was very clear early on masks might help, until health experts chimed in with their poor messaging saying masks don’t work. The virus being aerosolized and spreading airborne was also quite clear given how common symptoms tended to be to flu, yet there was hyper focus on hand washing etc instead of cleaning air or ventilation. You don’t need to be an expert to understand air pollution is bad. Common sense and symptoms tell you it is. If anything this is an excuse for experts to collude with policy makers to pass on whatever the agendas they are working on. I share the mindset with OP that experts as they exist today in the form of soulless gatekeepers feeding their egos with peer reviews can’t be trusted.
- flipbrad 5y ago
  Dismissing stuff because just you can attach a particular label to it - in this case "expert" - is intellectually and socially weak sauce. Why not instead engage with the claims and dispute them at face value, rather than resort to name calling? (Especially when the insult of choice here is "expert")
- mschuster91 5y ago
  For the COVID stuff... the worst thing was the communication failures and outright lies all around. > It was very clear early on masks might help, until health experts chimed in with their poor messaging saying masks don’t work. The administrations (not just the 45th, we had this shit worldwide) suddenly realized that they had no stockpile of masks and other PPE, and instead of communicating to the people and admitting fault for about three decades of globalization gone bad, they just went ahead and claimed against better knowledge that masks were not needed - at best, some asked the population to leave masks to the hospitals and help themselves with woven-cloth selfmade masks. > The virus being aerosolized and spreading airborne was also quite clear given how common symptoms tended to be to flu, yet there was hyper focus on hand washing etc instead of cleaning air or ventilation. I would only classify this as a partial communication failure. All the hygienic measures introduced worldwide drastically brought down the numbers of virtually all infectious diseases, which meant that hospitals now had more capacity to deal with COVID cases. On the other side, while a lot of German public offices (most notably, parliaments) have air filtering systems installed, the rollout of these devices in schools is ... underwhelming (and that's putting it mildly), with courts denying lawsuits asking for their installation with the simple excuse "if ventilating by opening the windows every twenty minutes makes you cold, use better clothes" [1]. Given that ridiculousness, it is definitely legitimate to claim that there is a significant interest of the governments to save money at the expense of parts of the populations that don't have political representation. [1]: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/muenster-schueler-aus-buende-hat-laut-oberverwaltungsgericht-keinen-anspruch-auf-luftfilter-im-klassenzimmer-a-8c54a261-b793-4dd4-8b40-f68cb0340eb9 https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/muenster-schueler-au...

rightbyte 5y ago

The most BS about the article is that it does reference the report by name. You have to reverse engineer it by searching for the author ...

thawaya3113 5y ago

I’m not sure I understand what you’re exhausted about. That somebody with expertise in the field published a report?