In terms of actual content: um, The Economist. I don't think Hacker News is a particularly more valuable bellwhether of 'valuable content' for non startup/tech

In terms of actual content: um, The Economist. I don't think Hacker News is a particularly more valuable bellwhether of 'valuable content' for non startup/tech-related stuff than the publishers themselves (I'd say NYT, The New Yorker, and The Economist have a much better signal-to-noise for general things.) In terms of 'deep discourse': honestly, the level of discourse in HN comments on things that are outside the traditional purview of the site is not particularly deep. I've found that if you want deep discourse about a topic X, you should seek out areas where there are many people very knowledgable about X.