> Hacker news is weirdly populated by people with no grounding in reality on very specific topics

You see the phrase "the Cathedral" flung about a lot. I take this as a fairly solid indicator of ESR-fellating big-L Libertarians.

Do you have a better description of the journo political academical hivemind? Big brother maybe? Because it was almost Orwellian the way narratives switched and no one admitted at being wrong even as the policies prescribed were either less effective or counterproductive.