Hacker News Reader

Have you ever seen a glacier before? In real life?

Yes, many.

In case it wasn't clear, my post was sarcasm. I realize that sarcasm plays badly in text forums and on HN in particular, but it's the best way to express how angry I am that the US government is so utterly deranged when it comes to science.

Poe's Law :-)

I think it's a sign of the times that it is not as obviously recognisable as sarcasm anymore :/

It was very obviously sarcasm. It only takes one clueless person to generate a thread of comments like this.

HN has always had people crazy/shitty enough to genuinely espouse beliefs similar to the one presented here. They rarely even get flagged or downvoted, so apparently it's not that offensive to the HN audience, which means you can only assume it to be within the community's overton window.

So no, you cannot assume these things are sarcasm unless you are perfectly willing to just mis-categorize all crazies as "just sarcastic".

Sorry, I'm seriously afraid I'll live long enough to see a generation of polar ice cap and glacier contrarians come up, like the flat earthers.

Yes. Quite a few. But I'm old enough that I've seen them go from quite large to almost gone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com