I agree that his terse reaction left itself open to interpreting it in bad faith. That said, maybe Mr. Hickam is someone who isn't inclined to declare his authority in a normal situation. As he said in his blog post, he has no power over hiring or firing and so even saying "your language here is inappropriate" may feel out of bounds for him.

In the end, I think the least that can be expected of anyone who chooses to attack a stranger is that they take the 5 seconds required to click that person's profile and skim their bio, and even Google it if that person uses their real name. To me, Naomi H's major screwup is not necessarily her profanity, but what appeared to be a total lack of discretion. If you have time to tell someone to fuck off, you have time to look up there info; there's no excuse in this age of Google and high-speed internet to do otherwise.

I don't disagree at all about the language used - really childish and shows a lack of discretion.

I do stand by my feelings on people saying one word and expecting anything besides annoyance or being ignored. Why should I take the energy to research a person if they can't be bothered to type something more clear.

You shouldn't be expected to acknowledge any stranger on the Internet. But if you have time to say something angry and rude at them, then you have time to do literally the few seconds it takes to do due diligence.

We don't know for sure why exactly NASA fired her, but it's understandable if they did it out of political fear, like a Goldman Sachs manager firing an intern for shitting on a member of the board of directors. But it's possible the intern was fired not out of fear, but concern that if she could be such an asshole to a legend at NASA who was not being explicitly rude, then imagine how less empathetic she might be toward someone with far less privilege and institutional standing.

Again, imagine if it were an intern at Goldman Sachs, or some other institution that's considered as elite in its industry as NASA is in science and engineering.

That's a little like saying Linus Torvalds is required to identify himself to people wanting to submit things to his project. No, he has a reasonable expectation that they know who he is. It was stupid precisely because Hickam is extremely prominent and not at all hard to identify.

You are basically saying its okay to cuss someone out because you didn't realize they were important and basically your boss. I fundamentally disagree. Her behavior is terrible, no matter who the guy is. It's just that much worse that she is also proving how clueless she is in so very many ways on top of showing her butt generally.