For anyone who can connect the dots and has not read the full essay, I strongly recommend it. It’s not too long and every section is to the point.
It's very long. I even remember commenting on how long it is:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149611
every section is to the point
Is it? It wasn't my impression
For one, a strong society is one that allows both the subject and its critique to live without fear.
Beside: There exist far deeper dissections of society, even darker, containing more uncomfortable truth, and not grounded in ressentiments at all.
But this isn’t the pretty boy from Boston, this is a well educated erudite who saw things others did not wish to confront.
My friend Thomas sees things others don't wish to confront, too. He was just removed from his university physics professorship for, among other things, seeing the 5G waves that are killing us all, the obvious falsity of the moon landings, the hollow core of the Earth, and the ways in which Jewish people are controlling society. He sleeps in his basement, away from his wife, with a wire connecting him to a power outlet. I forget the logic behind that.
Kaczynski slept in a tiny shack. He had a hole cut in the floor to use as a toilet. He is probably the only person in ADX Florence to have been given a drastic lifestyle upgrade upon incarceration. It's funny how people are so driven to mascotize him.
When something horrible happens to Thomas (I worry about this a lot), I wonder what the message board people will say about the forbidden truths he managed to confront in his writings.
Likely this is an attempt at what is known as "grounding" or "earthing", with the goal of reducing inflammation.
There is some intriguing research in this area, here is an informative article from Journal of Inflammation Research:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/pdf/jir... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/
Figure 4 shows a grounded sleep system similar to your friend's.
> Abstract: Multi-disciplinary research has revealed that electrically conductive contact of the human body with the surface of the Earth (grounding or earthing) produces intriguing effects on physiology and health. Such effects relate to inflammation, immune responses, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The purpose of this report is two-fold: to 1) inform researchers about what appears to be a new perspective to the study of inflammation, and 2) alert researchers that the length of time and degree (resistance to ground) of grounding of experimental animals is an important but usually overlooked factor that can influence outcomes of studies of inflammation, wound healing, and tumorigenesis. Specifically, grounding an organism produces measurable differences in the concentrations of white blood cells, cytokines, and other molecules involved in the inflammatory response. We present several hypotheses to explain observed effects, based on current research results and our understanding of the electronic aspects of cell and tissue physiology, cell biology, biophysics, and biochemistry.
I have friends like this as well and I can all too well relate to your worries.
If you don't want to use HN as intended, or learn to, it's hardly a surprise if we've been banning your accounts. That's what banning is for. Other HN users have no problem staying within the site guidelines, so I assume this is mostly a choice.
Why not use the site as intended, not get banned, and contribute to making it better? That's in your interest, our interest, and the community interest. Seems like a no-brainer to me.