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Edit: Deleting this comment. After being removed from the moderator's post it was replying to, it serves no purpose.

dang 2y ago
> The "culturewar fodder" in this article is so distractingly dumb and laughably factually wrong that I couldn't make it past the first few paragraphs. Whatever the author's point was supposed to be, they're going to have a tough time reaching any audience that hasn't already drunk the kool-aid. Ok. In that case there are 29 other threads on HN's front page to look at, and perhaps have curious conversation about. "Dumb", "laughably wrong", "couldn't make it past the first few", "whatever the point was supposed to be", "going to have a tough time reaching any", "drunk the koolaid", "I certainly wouldn't trust", and "completely indifferent to correctness" are all markers of the kind of conversation we're trying to avoid here.
- p_j_w 2y ago
  You seem really defensive of this article. People leave these sorts of comments on other articles on this site all the time with no comment from you or other HN admins. This one seems to have struck a nerve though. Why is that?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 2y ago
    Randomness I suppose? Snarky/dismissive/flamebait comments are pretty much always bad for HN. When you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...) In the case of the current article I was being proactive because it seemed to me interesting enough to deserve a frontpage discussion but also at obvious risk for turning into the usual nasty mush. That's why I did the pin-the-admonition-to-the-top thing.
christophilus 2y ago
Your comment made me go have a look. I must confess, the first few paragraphs seem fine to me. I’m with dang. It would be helpful if you explained what you find objectionable.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobolus 2y ago
  The author leads by claiming that San Francisco has made it "illegal not to compost your food scraps" (completely false) and condones people doing meth at playgrounds (also completely false, though it would be nice if SF police were more responsive and helpful), then he starts apologizing for rape and demanding that sex workers and anyone possessing a hypodermic needle be charged with crimes, because if they aren't it "verges on criminal negligence" (without any apparent consideration of why such failed laws were changed). After that preface he gets to his main point, a weird fantasy ramble of a cultural-ethnic-origin "explanation" of how this is supposed to have come about, something about Puritans representing state control and Scots-Irish representing individual freedom or something (while apparently ignoring the groups who actually settled in California). I gave up at that point. The author is apparently living in a weird Newsmax/Infowars (?) media bubble combined with occasional off-topic nonfiction books and doesn't seem capable of critically evaluating information before mashing it together and hyperbolically passing it to readers.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    > San Francisco forces people to compost their food scraps (completely false) In place since 2009, > The San Francisco Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance (No. 100-09) is a local municipal ordinance requiring all persons located in San Francisco to separate their recyclables, compostables and landfilled trash and to participate in recycling and composting programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Mandatory_Recycling_and_Composting_Ordinance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Mandatory_Recycl...
    - 2y ago
dang 2y ago
Since this discussion is growing distracting, I've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41958544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41958544. > dang, if it weren't for your top-level comment I would have just moved on without comment here. It wouldn't be hard to go point by point through the parts of the first few paragraphs of this article that are laughable, but it's really not worth the trouble. Instead people should just skip the whole thing and move along to the next topic, optionally flagging the topic Perhaps it's not worth your trouble to discuss the article substantively, and that's fine—but please don't post shallow dismissals, name-calling, or snark as an alternative. The site guidelines ask commenters to avoid all of those. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang 2y ago

> The "culturewar fodder" in this article is so distractingly dumb and laughably factually wrong that I couldn't make it past the first few paragraphs. Whatever the author's point was supposed to be, they're going to have a tough time reaching any audience that hasn't already drunk the kool-aid. Ok. In that case there are 29 other threads on HN's front page to look at, and perhaps have curious conversation about. "Dumb", "laughably wrong", "couldn't make it past the first few", "whatever the point was supposed to be", "going to have a tough time reaching any", "drunk the koolaid", "I certainly wouldn't trust", and "completely indifferent to correctness" are all markers of the kind of conversation we're trying to avoid here.

p_j_w 2y ago
You seem really defensive of this article. People leave these sorts of comments on other articles on this site all the time with no comment from you or other HN admins. This one seems to have struck a nerve though. Why is that?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 2y ago
  Randomness I suppose? Snarky/dismissive/flamebait comments are pretty much always bad for HN. When you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=likeliest%20explanation%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...) In the case of the current article I was being proactive because it seemed to me interesting enough to deserve a frontpage discussion but also at obvious risk for turning into the usual nasty mush. That's why I did the pin-the-admonition-to-the-top thing.

christophilus 2y ago

Your comment made me go have a look. I must confess, the first few paragraphs seem fine to me. I’m with dang. It would be helpful if you explained what you find objectionable.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jacobolus 2y ago
The author leads by claiming that San Francisco has made it "illegal not to compost your food scraps" (completely false) and condones people doing meth at playgrounds (also completely false, though it would be nice if SF police were more responsive and helpful), then he starts apologizing for rape and demanding that sex workers and anyone possessing a hypodermic needle be charged with crimes, because if they aren't it "verges on criminal negligence" (without any apparent consideration of why such failed laws were changed). After that preface he gets to his main point, a weird fantasy ramble of a cultural-ethnic-origin "explanation" of how this is supposed to have come about, something about Puritans representing state control and Scots-Irish representing individual freedom or something (while apparently ignoring the groups who actually settled in California). I gave up at that point. The author is apparently living in a weird Newsmax/Infowars (?) media bubble combined with occasional off-topic nonfiction books and doesn't seem capable of critically evaluating information before mashing it together and hyperbolically passing it to readers.
- fragmede 2y ago
  > San Francisco forces people to compost their food scraps (completely false) In place since 2009, > The San Francisco Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance (No. 100-09) is a local municipal ordinance requiring all persons located in San Francisco to separate their recyclables, compostables and landfilled trash and to participate in recycling and composting programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Mandatory_Recycling_and_Composting_Ordinance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Mandatory_Recycl...
  - 2y ago

dang 2y ago

Since this discussion is growing distracting, I've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41958544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41958544. > dang, if it weren't for your top-level comment I would have just moved on without comment here. It wouldn't be hard to go point by point through the parts of the first few paragraphs of this article that are laughable, but it's really not worth the trouble. Instead people should just skip the whole thing and move along to the next topic, optionally flagging the topic Perhaps it's not worth your trouble to discuss the article substantively, and that's fine—but please don't post shallow dismissals, name-calling, or snark as an alternative. The site guidelines ask commenters to avoid all of those. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html