
Hackathon Accidentally Picks Perfect Metaphor for Its Own Awfulness - angersock
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/07/hackathon-accidentally-picks-perfect-metaphor-for-its-own-awfulness/
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minimaxir
This is solely a link to [http://valleywag.gawker.com/hackathon-accidentally-
picks-per...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/hackathon-accidentally-picks-
perfect-metaphor-for-its-o-1605503368) , which is from a banned domain on HN.
(the article itself has good points)

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IgorPartola
Why is Gawker banned here? Are other properties of theirs banned as well, such
as Gizmodo? I've tried in the past to submit a couple of Gizmodo articles with
no success. I know that they are generally not written in a way that would be
welcome here, but every once in a while they have some great original writing
that I think is interesting.

~~~
minimaxir
gawker.com is banned because it's gossipy, which means that the subdomain
valleywag.gawker.com is also banned.

I _believe_ Gizmodo and other Gawker properties are not banned. (there was a
Gizmodo submission 7 minutes ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8043765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8043765))

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scintill76
Reminds me of Moxie Marlinspike's "The Money Machine":
[http://thoughtcrime.org/stories/money-
machine/](http://thoughtcrime.org/stories/money-machine/)

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lockes5hadow
Loved that post.

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im3w1l
As a European there seems to me that there is an anti-meritocracy trend in
America right now. Could anyone explain if and why this is so?

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ctdonath
As an American, I am equally puzzled.

We've had decades of sociopolitical groups pushing "social equality &
justice", grossly summarized as eliminating any reason one person should have
something while another should not. Much of it is valid (overcoming abject
discrimination based on race, disability, gender, etc) but as those problems
are solved, smaller issues are magnified into the same intensity & rhetoric,
asymptotically approaching a demand for absolute equality in all things. As
such, this manifests as a "war on meritocracy", whereby nobody should have
"more" than anyone else for any reason whatsoever. I'd theorize that it's a
combination of good intentions gone wrong, leaders having to "continue the
fight" lest they work themselves out of a job thru success, ad-driven culture
taught to want everything for nothing, frustration of efforts not reaping
tacitly promised rewards, and straight-up greed.

Odd, as it wasn't long ago that hard work was the dominant ethos. Now it's an
awful lot of "get mine" by making up excuses to take someone else's.

[downvotes commence]

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JoeAltmaier
I'm an American too; I don't see this happening. Straw Man.

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ctdonath
A very large fraction of my paycheck is confiscated & "redistributed". It's
happening.

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wonderzombie
Most likely it would've been a larger fraction at almost any point in the last
60 years.

Whether you like it or not, you derive innumerable tangible benefits from
living in American society, in no small part because generations before you
paid for it. You're probably white, male, hetero, relatively young, and
relatively healthy, and none of the advantages which accrued to you because of
that are due to your life choices. Arguably, you have the sense of entitlement
exactly backwards.

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baddox
I'm pretty sure that's not an accident.

