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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

This is just a low quality ad for some guy's substack, and to like & follow him. It's too bad to see it ranking highly

I don't think this is low-quality. I think he did a good job with the illustrations and explaining it. I guess that's why people are liking it.

If someone publishes original content for free and in the end puts a link to their paid blog, I really don't mind it. I've seen far worse advertising.

Agreed Twitter and gen z are mostly non-technical.

It explains and illustrates a fact beautifully. You're not meant to be able to do the calculation yourself if you found yourself back in time

Like a lot of Twitter this days. Fact Threads or controversial opinions looking for engagement to sell something.

That's what rubs me the wrong way I think, there is something off about a post like that, it just feels like bad faith "content" rather than an actual helpful write up about something, and I feel like more of this is ruining the internet. It's the equivalent of a more sophisticated listicle.

Your criticism feels entirely non-substantive. Of course it's lacking depth as its target audience is not historians. Maybe your issue is with the overall trend of "pop journalism" that puts out short, easy to ingest but ultimately reductive content (I think of outlets like Vox on YouTube). I personally think as long as it's not outright lying about the subject, exposing it to more people is better than gatekeeping it for academia.

Plus I found the read fairly interesting.

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