spondylosaurus

A common enough mistake :) Re. your other comment though, I'm not sure the NYer has ever cared about worrying what conservatives will think about their contributors, at least not in my lifetime. I just read a lovely new Zadie Smith essay yesterday where she talked about her commitment to socialist ideals!

Which is ironic compared to the NYT, because I think the New Yorker tends to slip under the conservative media's radar, whereas the NYT has conspicuously attempted to appeal to conservatives but in doing so has only alienated some more liberal readers while still catching a whole lot of conservative ire.

Given the cartoons and references to fact-checking, I assume this is about the New Yorker (and not the NYT as another commenter suggested), but I'm a bit surprised because the New Yorker has been one of the most vocal outlets speaking out about the plight of Palestinians, even prior to the current assault on Gaza. Which obviously doesn't preclude the possibility that this guy's coworkers were weird and shitty to him, but like, the NYer has not been shy about discussing civilians casualties in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank, or featuring guest pieces from Palestinian authors.

Chotiner alone has done at least a few dozen interviews in the past few years where he's made his opposition to the war in Gaza very clear, and (famously) made its supporters look very stupid and callous by letting them trip over their own words. But... Chotiner himself is a white guy (or at least I assume?), so there is that. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes. Could very well be some ugly office politics that this author is right to be upset about, even if I'm skeptical about his commentary on the effects of those politics on the NYer's reporting.

Another head-scratcher from the link you shared:

> ...the progressive default that change==good, never honoring tradition or asking why it often prevails.

As a progressive this "default" is certainly news to me...

Learning to relax your pelvic floor is helpful too. You should be opening the door, not pushing things through it :)

Many chronic conditions are also "chronic" now but just two or three generations ago were either a swift or slow and painful death sentence. We see more adults with <insert major health problem here> because now they actually survive into adulthood and can reasonably participate in society rather than being confined to their homes (or to a home).

Case studies suggest otherwise, at least for most people.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/05/10/to-see-and-not...

I have to ask... why the extra lettuce? At In-N-Out I sometimes ask for less lettuce because I feel like it's unnecessary filler compared to the other ingredients, lol. Maybe they've just been giving my unused lettuce to you...

Does it actually? (Genuine question.) The article doesn't get into specifics about how the block is implemented, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some non-trivial way around it.

Or, conversely, I'm unsure if other decentralized platforms would be unable to implement a similar block.

> Also it has a high opinion of Bryan Ferry. Deeply untrustworthy.

Whoa, whoa, are we talking Bryan Ferry as an artist, or Bryan Ferry as a guy? Because I love me some Roxy Music but have heard that Bryan is kind of a dick.

I thought it was interesting/telling (but maybe not surprising) that the AI-generated stories scored the highest according to reader rankings, yet pinged to me as immediately flat and generic. But I really liked the idiosyncrasies of a few of the human-authored entries!

It's "discrimination" when it helps people the admin doesn't like, but it's mandatory to actually discriminate against people the admin doesn't like.

I dunno. I can understand OP's point, but in an era where bullshit runs rampant at every level of society, it's hard for me to agree that "We need to hear these guys out" is either a priority or a generally good idea.

Sure, but TFA makes clear that any benefit to workers from tax-free tips is laughable compared to the numbers of times the restaurant lobby has fucked them over, by repeatedly killing attempts to keep wages low. It's not even throwing workers scraps, it's more like throwing them crumbs.

I scoured their website to look for any clues about how it might (allegedly) work and got a fat lot of nothing.

> Rest constantly monitors room air quality, using a proprietary algorithm to pinpoint any tobacco, marijuana, or nicotine presence.

So a smoke detector with an "algorithm" attached. Uh huh. How does that algorithm work?

> By analyzing various factors and patterns[...]

Some cutting edge shit here!

And as for accuracy, they don't even pretend to make promises about "99.99% success rates" or anything. This is the most detailed they get:

> Q: Is it accurate?

> A: Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested for accuracy in real-world scenarios, backed by years of development, and tens of thousands of hours of rigorous testing and validation.

This output reads like a knockoff SCP entry to me... which is unsurprising because I'm sure there were plenty of SCP entries in its training data.

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/

If you're unfamiliar, here's a classic one:

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-076

There's a particular Instagram ad my wife always sees for a graphic tee with a design that we both love, but the vendor selling it is (according to Reddit reviews) garbage. The infuriating thing is that no one else seems to sell a shirt with that particular design!

Cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectic behavioral therapy, EMDR, acceptance and commitment therapy, family systems therapy, biofeedback, exposure and response prevention, couples therapy...?

Plus, 24/7 access isn't necessarily the best for patients. Crisis hotlines exist for good reason, but for most other issues it can become a crutch if patients are able to seek constant reassurance vs building skills of resiliency, learning to push through discomfort, etc. Ideally patients are "let loose" between sessions and return to the provider with updates on how they fared on their own.

> it really is only an option for the elite, which is fine if you're counselling people from similar backgrounds, but not when you're dealing with people from lower socioeconomic classes with experiences that weren't even on your radar

A bizarre qualm. Why would a therapist need to be from the same socioeconomic class as their client? They aren't giving clients life advice. They're giving clients specific services that that training prepared them to provide.

I had the same thought about crypto/NFTs... Before AI exploded it seemed like that was the "big topic" on HN for a long time. But there may have been less Show HNs for crypto since it has fewer applications.

They do talk to conservatives a lot though. Many recent episodes interviewed Trump voters and sent reporters to Republican rallies to hear those "good points" from the source...

Considering another of today's rulings came down in favor of religious opt-outs for kids in public schools, and that that case came out specifically because parents didn't want their kids exposed to books with LGBTQ characters in them, then yeah—I'd say we're scarily close to redefining an entire class of people's existence as obscene.

(Never mind the fact that other recent anti-LGBTQ rulings and policies have heavily implied as much, but I don't think they've been quite so explicit. Yet.)

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/27/nx-s1-5430355/scotus-opt-out-...

Some stuff would definitely either slip through the cracks OR tarnish the reputation of legitimate users. What happens when someone's device gets compromised by a botnet that silently clicks ads in the background or turns that device into part of a DDoS army?

With something like that it's tough, though, because they sold those as an _exfoliating wash_ product, but if you take away the beads it's not exfoliating anymore. So you'd either have to rebrand it to remove any mentions of exfoliation (at which point it becomes a totally different product) or rework the ingredients list to include a "chemical" exfoliant rather than the "physical" exfoliant (but that also drastically alters the product, especially since some people avoid chemical exfoliants).

Not defending microbeads—those products were truly shit, both for your skin and for the environment—I just want to illustrate that it might not be so straightforward.

To back that up:

> The most common synthetic food dyes in the U.S. — including Blue 1, Blue 2, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6 — are all approved for use in Europe. They use different names for them there, which may account for some of the confusion.

https://archive.ph/2025.06.18-205957/https://www.thecut.com/...

To expand on "great public health successes": folic acid supplementation is particularly important if you're pregnant, because it significantly reduces the odds of having a baby with neural tube defects like spina bifida (which is one of the milder NTDs, frankly). But it's also important even if you're not pregnant because B vitamin deficiencies will wreck your health.

This also reminded me of a great post from a few years ago about why salt is fortified with iodine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38782954

Not sure why you're greyed out, because you're correct that those were literally exfoliant face washes. (No real loss in phasing them out because there are much better ways to exfoliate than rubbing your face with little pellets, but it wasn't some meaningless design choice.)

I'm a little biased, but as a tech writer who doesn't think they'll be made obsolete by swaggerless LLMs any time soon I strongly agree. If you've written enough docs and sufficiently internalized all the stylistic best practices, putting words in order is the easy part; I could do that in my sleep. But technical writing is like 20% writing and 80% research, fact-checking, QA, diplomacy, and searching for (metaphorical) unexploded ordinances that could blow up in users' faces if you don't direct them down the right path.

I would guess some of the vibes you mention come down to actual writing style, which I have plenty of opinions on (some of them controversial among my fellow writers!), but I think there's another subtler aspect of reading something that really anticipates your needs as a user and feeling like you're in good hands. It's something I don't always nail, but I always notice when I read docs that do.

People also call it "the curse of knowledge," and yeah, being able to empathize with the non-expert is both an ongoing effort and a learned skill.

A lot of my job as a tech writer is basically acting as a shock absorber for user frustration in that regard, because when I need info from devs it's a constant struggle to get them to explain what they built—they often give descriptions that don't make sense unless you're already familiar with whatever they're talking about, which sort of defeats the purpose of a description. So I have to do all the teeth-pulling up front, and eventually get the necessary info, and then present that info in a way that actually makes sense to users.

I see in your review that you also mention Docs for Developers, which gets a +1 from me as a documentarian :)

https://docsfordevelopers.com/

Although truthfully I'm not picky. If you're a developer and make any conscious attempt to hone your writing skills, I will love you forever and prioritize your Jira tickets accordingly.