I respectfully disagree. To me it is a good example of the style of the article reflecting its meaning. To me, the author says that this topic is a welcome relief in a world where every topic is conflictual and complicated. It is the only thing that currently makes the frontpage that is appeasing to the mind, because the mind can fully comprehend it. It is great because it is simple, and it is explained simply.

Your example is extremely convoluted and doesn't mean anything.

Once the article got into the fact it's not a political or ideological issue, I got the entire angle. It probably should have gotten to that point sooner, but I get the idea of the article. The boat is simply stuck. That's it. Nothing more. In an era of micro aggressions, politically charged everything and extreme sensitivities, this is the first world event in a long time that is just simple without being loaded... the boat is stuck. It's stupid how refreshing and novel that is.

I agree. I liked the article a lot from that point on, including (after that point) the first part of the article in retrospect. At first, though, it felt more like someone being silly for the sake of being silly, which can be also worthwhile but I'm glad I kept reading.

Edit: That article and the next most recent one (a short story, written by a different author)[1] were enough to make me subscribe.

1. https://stone-soup.ghost.io/archive/building-beyond-outside-...

Well, to be fair to a certain novel coronavirus, pandemics aren't inherently politically charged, it's just that people chose to make it that way in some countries.

That also isn't a new phenomenon which mostly says bad things about the people doing it from the antisemetic pogrum responses which in one notable case /poisened their own water supply/ to a more pedestrian anti mask league in tbe 1910s and related Black Death there were also some dim enough to think there was a choice of "skip measures for the economy".

Two kinds of choices - look for some scapegoat and manage to make things worse for themselves and far worse for their victims. The other is downright idiotic contrariness and the failure to understand that "normal" is not an option because epidemics alone cause others to stay away. It is like saying that you can ignore the blizzards and keep on making money growing tropical crops in open fields without wasting money on greenhouses that are redundant most of the year. The choice is between bad or worse because "trying to benefit from the status quo by when conditions won't return under the circumstances".

The writing is literary in style rather than the usual web standard marketing style. It is rather well done largely because it is only trying to be what it is.

I can understand why this is confusing to people.

It kinda reads like the thing explainer, a book by the person who draws stick people and thinking machines, which only uses the ten hundred most common words.

Wouldn't be the first time: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/16/21371049/gpt3-hacker-news...

HN thread where only like 4 comments recognised it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23893817

This was a great exchange:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23894742

To be fair, those 4 may well be all the people who actually read the article.

I love it.

lukev 8 months ago [–]

> This is either something written by GPT-3, or the human equivalent. Zero substantive content, pure regurgitation.

--

jackkinsella 8 months ago [–]

> Maybe you're new here, but your comment punches below the belt and isn't acceptable in a community like this.

> If you disagree, be civil and give reasons rather than throw insults.

It sure does seem written by GPT3, but at the same time, it makes a remarkable amount of sense!

Yours is AI simulacrum that makes no coherent point, unlike the original.

It's getting tougher and tougher for me to NOT believe that sites like, say, Popsugar won't be completely algorithmically generated in the very near future. I'm sure people are already trying this in limited capacity.

AFAIK most sports reporting are already automated.. "$TEAM won $GAME at $VENUE!". Maybe with extra logic like "if winning point scored at less than 5 minute before the end, change the heading to "$TEAM clinches victory against $OPPONENT in the last minutes of the game!".

I remember some famous star telling an interesting anecdote on a TV show I was watching live (so not on-demand). I googled to see if there's more to the anecdote online, but as soon as the TV show ended, I got hundreds of results about the anecdote from all the pop culture websites, but they were all referencing her telling of the anecdote from 15 minutes before.

Ah, Internet Content Farms... there was probably a time where people only put high quality content on the Internet. Nowadays content creators ask for comments on their YouTube video to get it "trending" in the hopes of making more money, contributing even more junk.

It started off weirdly algorithmic but ended very human.