> We knew the government pushed UFO nonsense to obscure development programs.
One of the most frustrating things about UFO propaganda is that it's caused a severe lack of understanding in physics AND astronomy. There absolutely is intelligent life out there, but the chance of any lifeforms figuring out the practically zero option solutions to the problems of interstellar travel might as well be... well, zero. e.g., If we ever crack nuclear fusion and somehow through future magic manage to make that small enough to fit on a ship for energy, a ship traveling fast enough through space for the long, long, long journey to reach another star system colliding with a small rock would produce enough energy via collision to blow up the ship. That's only the tip top of the iceberg for interstellar travel problems.
> this site disappears a 1500 comment thread about the Marines
That thread spent over 12 hours on the front page and we actively intervened multiple times to keep it on the front page that long by overriding flags and flamewar penalties. We also spent hours in the thread managing the flamewars.
A lot of bullshit stereotypes get bandied around about HN, and the biggest one lately as that it – whether people mean the moderators or sections of the community or some other mysterious forces – "bury" or "hide" or "disappear" stories that are inconvenient to some political or commercial interests. Or that the community cares more about trivialities that serious issues.
It's false and it doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. The political stories people keep claiming have been buried have in fact been on the front page and the active page for huge amounts of time. Whereas this story you're calling out here was only on the front page for 3 hours.
More generally, of the political interests people keep claiming are influencing HN: none of them care about HN. We just don't matter to people with political agendas.
Explaining this when people make false claims isn't being overly defensive, it's correcting the record, or offering balancing context. If we don't do that, unaware observers see the lack of a response from us and assume it must be true (which happened in the replies to your comment).
Incidentally, the mature and honest way to approach this is to not let your emotionality cloud your comprehension and assign the conflicts in your head to the statements I have made. Instead, you explain the phenomenon to a sufficient detail such that the misperceptions you are afraid of other users making can be addressed.
Assigning your fears to me, in conflict with the words I have used, is at best disingenuous.
You guys are supposed to be impressive leaders of society into the Brave New World.
> Meanwhile this site disappears a 1500 comment thread about the Marines being used to crush incredibly peaceful resistance to the unconstitutional regime's White Supremacy. US citizens are being violently kidnapped, and for what?
That topic is not intellectually interesting. I don’t really come here for politics, and I’d like to believe that neither do most HN readers.
The funny thing is that this likely isn't even people like dang intentionally yanking that post. The design of how community self-moderation works and the makeup of the site's demographic makes it easy for this to happen without any clear ill intent.
"No politics", I insist, as I push the final commits for the orphan grinding machine.
It wasn't hidden from /active or anywhere else. It was on the front page for twelve hours after multiple interventions from us to keep it there. It was on the second page for many hours after that, and is still ranked in the top 150 stories and is getting new comments, three days after it was posted, which is unusual.
Edit:
This claim that we somehow hid that story from /active is one of the weirder I've experienced, which is saying a lot, but, for the record, here are the Wayback Machine links showing it near the top of /active for over 24 hours.
