alt Hacker NewsI am not arguing against the facts expressed in the piece. This is not an area in which I have any expertise.
However, I am a bit uncomfortable with the pithy language used. It's possible (likely, even), that the fired editors deserve the pithiness, but it's still a bit weird to read that kind of prose, in a scientific context.
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This is an investigative substack, not a piece of academic literature. God forbid the author home some (admittedly, strong) opinions and speaks negatively about fraudsters.
Well...the reactions were ... enlightening
I certainly apologize for hurting feelings. That was not my intent.
I've just learned (the hard way, of course, because how else do we learn?), that using this kind of terminology, even though we may be feeling quite pithy, gives ammo to those that wish to discount us.
This goes double, in my experience, for any context that prizes objectivity and articulate discussion.
I am amazed that every time evil is exposed there are people who have to jump in and wonder "Are we being a bit too mean to the evil though?"
Makes me wonder if these people are just evil themselves.
I thought the caption "looking normal" was possibly a bit unnecessary.
Then again, I also found it rather funny. I suspect this is because I am a bad person.
Maybe I'm just naive or dense, but I'm not seeing language I'd be concerned about in the article? Help me get calibrated, is there something in particular that bothers you? or just a general vibe?
I'm with you on this. There's a difference between exposing wrongdoing and being antagonistic.
Doing them both together increases the amplitude of the signal at the cost of reducing the integrity of the signal.
If you wonder why the world is informationally too loud and too noisy these days, it's because everyone who does this is turning up the volume to be louder than others who are also, in turn, turning up the volume for the same reasons.