Looks like a majority of it’s all politics and LLMs. I think we’re all as a collective tired of both and want something ‘interesting’ for once to post.
I'll defend the political stories though. For me, all the other places out there that vend politics are truly awful. While a political post lingers briefly on the HN front page, I find I actually learn something from the comments. If there are shit-posts in the discussion, they are quickly "dead". More often though there are (seemingly) reasoned debates about the issues in the comments.
I appreciate (what I am embarrassed to call) a more intellectual discussion on politics than I have been able to find anywhere else. (Embarrassed because I'm walking a fine line trying not to appear to cast the discussions as "elitist". Or maybe I am an elitist, who knows.)
Thiel, Musk, et. al., support, for example, Curtis Yarvin, who believes that democracy is a failed experiment and should be replaced with an all-powerful "CEO"
These guys all benefit when the No-Politics Purity Brigade drives by and flag-kills every article pointing out their wrongdoing as "political." By flagging this stuff, they're actually making HN more political: They are defending billionaires, their agendas, and their status-quo politics.
I get that people want to make the place 'non-political', but a lot of us in the US live in major metropolitan areas and are very directly impacted by all of the shit going on.
... time passes ...
"What do you mean the people that I didn't vote for are sending me to war to die?!, I'm not political, why am I involved in this" --Modern day Russia.
I happen to agree with you: my preference is one in which dogmatic and performative adherence to a specific ideology is discouraged but that doesn't make me non-political, especially if I happen to live in a society where (for example) religious fundamentalism is the main cultural artifact.
At a deeper level, assertions that we should "remain apolitical" are, in the end, simply assertions that the status quo is "sufficient" or even good and that people who have some difference of opinion about how human affairs are managed are "bothersome" for bringing it up. Sometimes this is motivated by a misapprehension or genuine (if incorrect, in my opinion) belief that the status quo reflects some obviously "correct" view of things and thus questioning it is pointless, bothersome, or even dangerous.
I think political differences should (for the most part) be tolerated, resolved through discussion and democratic processes, and that a healthy society is one in which people are (to the extent possible given other goals) allowed to live as they please, but I do not think of this as a non-political goal. I mean, just look around, plenty of people want to take that sort of society away from you.
Open to suggestions from anyone.
It's no longer even the case that reason helps. Wonkery has got run over by mass emotion.
But you wouldn't know from reading HN that X, the tech company, has become a shitshow, as all discussions about this are "political" and flagged by users.
* Active political discussion communities
* That haven’t swung dramatically to some extreme and eventually worn down the local “opposition” party
I’ve got boards I go to for politics but the ratio is so lopsided, and the one or two remaining posters that disagree with the consensus seem to be more or less sticking around out of contrarianism (which unfortunately decreases the quality of their posts).
I think if HN let too many political threads stick around, that would destroy the whatever quality the discussion has.
Also the site moderators have plainly said that moderating these controversial political threads is a strain on them. You may be enjoying yourself but someone else is paying a hefty price.
Thanks, @dang! keep up the good work.