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Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for the advice. I just started following Marc Andreesen and Nassim Taleb also.

I checked them out but Marc Andreessen keeps retweeting to the effect that fake Syrian passports mean the attacks are intended to close Europe's borders. What? Buying fake Syrian passports is what many of the migrants have done to get priority benefits. It's very normal among migrants, ISIS-loving or not. It'd be like saying a Sinaloa Cartel murderer using someone else SSN is trying to shut down the US-Mexico border. ISIS has been very vocal about sending thousands of soldiers abroad to kill. They have said, too, that they hope to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash that improves their recruiting. But ISIS is a nation state and a religion—it needs to be able to claim victory no matter how Europe reacts, just as a politician can never cleanly apologize or admit fault.

He could be right. The part I don't get is, not why did the person have a Syrian passport (as you say, fakes are common), but why were they carrying it with them on a suicide mission?

I have no knowledge here, but it seems like even if you're going on a suicide mission, you might want a plan B. If there's some reason they decide to postpone, he might need the passport.

Perhaps he is just retweeting things he found interesting. You can find things interesting without necessarily supporting them.

A bigger risk of following Marc Andreessen is that he tweets, like, all the fucking time. Your feed stands a good chance of becoming swamped.

ISIS's overt strategy is to antagonize the west into over-reaction, because they want things so polarized that the bulk of Arabs have little choice but to align with them for survival. I don't know about these passports specifically, but it certainly is true that ISIS would benefit immensely from Europe and the west closing the borders to refuges.

The thing about Twitter is that you've got to be very selective in whom you follow because you can quickly get overwhelmed with the quantity of Tweets. Use Lists to separate subject matter. Another very good follow is Paul Graham (the founder of Hacker News and Y Comb.).

I wish PG would separate his political discussions to a different handle. It's jarring to be reading his amazing perspectives on the startup world and then see his political posts which I generally don't agree with. Makes me sad.

I, on the other hand, wish PG could be as effective on his political views as he is with startups.

Paul Graham is a great follow and his signal to noise ratio is much higher than pmarca. Also, Graham's tweets about his kids are adorable.

Sam Altman is a good follow too.

Personally I use Nuzzel to aggregate tweets of all those VCs so I can see what links people are sharing en masse. You miss the "zinger" tweets but you also don't have to comb through the noise of 500 tweets an hour. I actually have several Twitter accounts that I use specifically for Nuzzel: I have one for buzzing tech links, buzzing biology links, buzzing literary links, etc.

One thing I forgot to add earlier is that Nassim Taleb has a huge "attitude." I personally love the attitude. But his attitude is not for everybody. So, if you find it distasteful, you'd be better off unfollowing.

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