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This is all personal attack and booing your outgroup.
Even if your uncharitable reading of @netstack and his "affiliation and interests" (as @theory only slightly less obnoxiously put it) was correct, people are allowed to post about "vibes" and impressions and opinions they have about what's going on in politics. Indeed, that makes up a large share of the posts here. If you think his reading is off, or what he perceives is because he's biased and in a bubble, you can say that. You cannot say "Shut up and go away, we don't want your kind or your opinions here."
So we can't post links to well thought out articles without wasting time regurgitating parts of it in our own words or adding pointless takes, but we can just randomly showerthought now?
You cannot post bare links. If you feel it is a waste of your time to be asked to tell people why you are posting something and why you think it's worth discussing, then this is not the place to post those links.
You can post things that you think are relevant and interesting. It is possible someone else will think it is a "random showerthought," but they will be expected to respond to you with civility.
I mean, my mom and dad like Harris is pretty short shrift for a post.
I think it was a great top level post. Plus it’s retroactively validated by the amount of discussion it kicked off.
We are always told “discussion doesn’t validate whether a top level post is good or not.” What makes you think it is great? It reminds me of Tom Friedman talking about his cab driver.
Yes, that's a valid point to bring up. A bare link that occasions a fascinating reply doesn't itself become a good post - but I would nonetheless be thankful in retrospect that that bare link was posted, if the reply it solicited was good enough.
It's an earnest and straightforward anecdote about an interesting and relevant topic.
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