Curious if you found the article interesting anyway.

Lost interest after the first few paragraphs.

I wanted to read about tanks or life vests

I personally have no idea what this article is really talking about or what the significance of it is that would cause it to be up voted so highly. Baffled.

HN has high proportion of "tech" people. Tech people old enough to have lived through "birth of Internet" or into 80's hacker/phreaker culture will know of MAE West and MAE East. These people, upvoted for nostalgia and to express comradery with poster.

But why? What is the connection?

The post is about a person named Mae West. The wikipedia article linked is about a infrastructure exchange point with the same name

I’m talking about the original article. The person. Why?

I learned something from reading this article. Plus Mae West was a hacker of a sort: she interpreted censorship as damage and routed around it. Obviously not as much of a hacker as Hedy Lamarr, but still she led an interesting life.