>anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
That casts a wide net, and something that a segment of HN would find intellectually gratifying and produce good conversation shouldn't be avoided just because traditional media happened to stumble on it too. I try to keep in mind the "probably" modifier, and that other people may be gratified by different content. Generally speaking I only flag clickbait or things that are divisively partisan and probably won't produce any actual conversation.
Then on things like politics... Well, just consider this headline currently on the front page: "Crypto, the Left & Technofeudalism"
Crypto is a massive bit of emerging technology, but it is virtually impossible to separate it from some of the politics and social values involvde. It's pretty much baked to the motivations behind many proponents as well as the people directly working on the tech.
The moderation in HN is good, but the success of the site in a increasing problem. As the audience widens, the Guidelines are less respected. Nowadays, I almost never follow a link posted in HN, and rarely glance at the comments. For the past weeks, I hid one third to one half of the frontpage posts, because I thought they are off-topic. Quoting the Guidelines:
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I expect to find on HN what most non-hacker sites would not include.