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Comment by cpcurro | Hacker News Reader

Disclosure: I helped organize this event at Cooper Union in NYC.

For those interested, Jeff Atwood (Stack Overflow/Discourse/Coding Horror) and Alexander Vindman (former NSC official) will be discussing the future of the American Dream. They'll explore how we might bridge our current divisiveness, which I'd say has been accelerated by technology.

The conversation happens in Cooper Union's historic Great Hall, where Lincoln delivered his "Right Makes Might" speech in 1860. They'll address what core values unify Americans today, how to rebuild a collective sense of purpose, and approaches to economic mobility in an era of inequality.

It's a free event on March 20th, but registration on EventBrite is required for in-person attendance (first-come-first-served).

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Is Jeff Atwood among the group of people who can speak with insight on how to "bridge our current divisiveness"? The whole reason he's a public figure is from his blog posts that include a bunch of deliberately placed attitude and bombast of the sort that turns a lot of people away but is selected for anyway because it gets just as many (or more) followers, and attention is only additive.

I suggest you look at closely at DHH for an example of what you're really talking about.

I'm genuinely baffled about how to even respond to this.

That's your reply? That there's an even worse person who isn't in the slot?

"The whole reason he's a public figure is from his blog posts that include a bunch of deliberately placed attitude and bombast of the sort that turns a lot of people away but is selected for anyway because it gets just as many (or more) followers, and attention is only additive."

This is not a defensible statement *based on my writing*. Give it a shot, if you think you can pull it off. I'd like to see some real citations here rather than broad, unsupported generalizations.

Now try *that same statement against DHH's writing* -- what you said is exactly correct.

> This is not a defensible statement based on my writing.

The writing is all there is; the entire basis for the remarks is the obnoxiously cocky posts confidently published to the Coding Horror blog. (Or, I dunno, maybe things changed and that's no longer the case; I started ignoring everything published there 10+ years ago.)

> Now try that same statement against DHH's writing

Try as you might, you're not going to convince me to give enough of a shit about going off and familiarizing myself with whatever you're referring to all for the sole purpose of being able to figure out who is the biggest blowhard.

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