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Comment by ipsum2 | Hacker News Reader

This is a perfect illustration of how news and social media propagate false news while technically still being correct. The gender reveal party contributed to 8,600 acres on fire. However, >1 million acres were started by lightning[0], but get a lot less coverage unless you're in the affected areas. But the party gets more attention, because it's more interesting/easier to be outraged over that.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires#List...

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I'd be interested to see an analysis trying to track down the exact lightning bolt that started a fire. 100% of lightning bolts are now mapped by various open source websites to a precision of hundreds of yards. That, combined with lucky satellite shots a few hours afterwards should be enough to confirm the fire started in the same place as the lightning bolt.

Using that, it should be possible to identify what percentage of fires were in fact started by humans who were never identified (due to there being no lightning bolt within a few hours of the fire starting)

It's not hard to figure out that lightning is the the root cause for these fires. Lighting storms occurred only once this summer in California, and fires were noticed immediately the day after.

Unless there were a committed group of arsonists that wanted to use the lightning storm as a cover and worked to set fires on the same day that has a similar signature to lightning.

I don’t think it’s an outrage thing, but it’s an interesting anecdote on how some of the fires started. Lightning and campfires seem to be the usual cause, so something totally different is novel.

I find the fact that people should be outraged over this incident ancillary. Hopefully these people owe tens of millions in restitution, as often seems to be the case. But, if the fire had started because of escaped monkeys starting fires, I think it would be equally as reported on because of the novelty, but sans outrage.

The “it’s reported on because it outrages/divides people” speculation is just lazy.

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