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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a biography of Turing doing that. It doesn't seem particularly relevant for an article about some documents.

If the method of death is going to be brought up, the context is relevant. I would agree with you if all they did was list the year of death. But once they say "poisoning", they leave entirely too many unanswered questions for readers.

I think that's probably poor writing rather than anything malicious, but perhaps you're (or parent comment is) right.

It looks like the hand of an editor to me. The writer wrote "Alan Turing, who died after consuming poison in an apparent suicide in 1954...". The editor told him "we do not editorialize or speculate in this newspaper, stick to the facts" and it got rewritten. Of course, it should just read "Alan Turing, who died in 1954...".

It's not a fact that he's the exemplar of a law forgiving everyone ever convicted for being gay in the UK?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing_law

That's 1) editorializing, since the act isn't officially called that, 2) not what I speculated the original copy said and 3) needlessly political.

And before you tell me "gay rights aren't a political issue, human rights go beyond politics": a new law being passed by politicians is literally as political a subject as it gets.

Huh. The way I remember it, the government first only forgave him, and then after a huge public debate decided to forgive everyone in similar circumstances.

But if you think that's editorial and political if mentioned at all, despite being endorsed by all sides of the parliament, I guess that's a valid opinion. It's certainly the case that many people claim that anything objected to by a single person is political. I usually find that the BBC is more clever than that.

It's weird to specifically note the poisoning angle without going into more depth - just stating "he died in 1954" would be one thing, but the author appeared to cherry pick a relatively minor note about his death for a quick synopsis over much more relevant points.

It was a bit odd that the reporter seemed to see nothing odd about Julia Turing claiming to be his daughter.

It's like saying "he was killed in 1954" about someone wrongfully executed by the government.

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