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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

I’m old fashioned. I judge articles not on whether they are published by “an odd Christian sect”, but how accurate and well-sourced they are. But hey, I’m a Boomer.

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Zero sources provided. There's a link that looks like it should go to the twitter post, but is a list of Newsweek stories about twitter. And the posts are apparently now private. So what did you judge this article on?

I judge this particular article as poorly sourced for the same reason you do. I do not judge the article for the religion of the publisher. I never read Newsweek. I thought it was long gone. But now that I know it’s there, I shall continue to judge its merits based on what they publish, not what the supposed political beliefs of the owner or staff happen to be.

Really? You seemed pretty willing to defend a Christian (cult?) publisher by completely ignoring the faults of the article to attack criticism based on their religion. Knowing if a publisher has a clear incentive can help determine how accurate and well-sourced their claim is.

You seem to be hallucinating. I cannot find anything I said defending the publisher. Perhaps you were responding to another post.

I have upvoted both of your posts that seem to be responding to me, because I much prefer a downvote and discourse to being down voted without comment.

Your position was "I judge things by how accurate and well sourced the claim was, and this claim of dodgy ownership is irrelevant." I can't see it as anything but a defense based on religious/political affiliation.

Also, the important posts would be on Parler or Gab.

You can do that. I'm just pointing out that people have a conception of what Newsweek is that doesn't match what it currently is. It's worth knowing about.

You are also bothering to mention the religion of the owner, adding the (in this context) pejorative adjective "odd" and possibly more.

I mean, they are Christians and they are odd. Should he not be allowed to say this?

Absolutely allowed.

It does however feel weird in the same way that "odd female something", "odd muslim something", "odd socialist something", "odd atheist something".

Leaving out details that are not relevant is IMO smart because it helps the reader to avoid prematurely making up their mind because of irrelevant details.

So my take is tptacek should be allowed to write it and we should be allowed to point it out.

And one more thing: my respect for tptacek has been growing even if we clash from time to time in various settings.

For the record, I am also a Christian, and I suppose to an outsider Catholicism probably looks very odd indeed, what with the feet and the noses and the gall bladders in the jars in the cathedrals and whatnot. But David Jang's "The Community" is odd in a different way --- in a more "Reunification Church" kind of way. Maybe mentally replace "odd" with "idiosyncratic" or "noteworthy". It was late when I wrote that, and I was a bit into my cups.

The word I was originally going to use was the one articles about the new "Newsweek" use: "cult". But that didn't seem quite right either.

How do you know what people are thinking?

The magic of conversation

This seems unnecessarily antagonistic.

What’s a better way to ask?

This is known as 'sealioning'.

tptacek may have a conception of what people are thinking which doesn't match what they currently think.

Pretty sure "old fashioned" people still judge the claims of people and organisations based on their past history.

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