Why are so many articles being flagged on HN today? It seems quite excessive.
Politics often get flagged to death, and personally I can understand why. For myself the last thing I want to see on hacker news is politics, or at least current domestic US politics which has become such a miserable shit show. At its core HN should be for interesting things, and while politics is incredibly consequential, it’s also incredibly dull.
It's too bad. This is a beautiful essay defending the humanities which are attacked by bean-counters from both sides of the aisle (and perhaps in the valley, too). I enjoyed the historical remarks on Tocqueville, and the Hilbert-like optimism for an ever-improving state of knowledge and therefore human affairs. We must know---we will know!
Seems like sticking our heads in the sand to me... the fact that it's a shitshow should be alarming and we should all be discussing solutions, not trying to avoid discussion since it will "create controversy". That's how authoritarians win, by being the biggest most intimidating loudmouths in the room.
The issue is not a lack of discussion, but a surfeit. Every venue doesn’t need to cater to everything.