Considering what russia is doing and how propaganda works, it’s not so interesting why there are so many Chekhov and Dostoevsky on a forum for "hackers". It's interesting that there is so little about ballet here :)

ХН: первый в космосе; последний в балете ))

"HN is the first in space but last at the ballet"

Insane.

Is it possible that Chekhov and Dostoevsky were just really good writers? That maybe we liked them long before Putin started Putin-ing?

But no, everyone else apart from you is an easily led sheep and Putin or whoever else is the shepherd.

How many really good writers not from colonialist regimes are there? How often do they make to the front page of HN?

writers not from colonialist regimes don't make it to HN because most of us never heard of them at school, which focuses on western writers. are you aware that most wealthy countries are or have been colonialist regimes? this includes much of Europe, North America, Japan and China.

Exactly.

P.S. Also Russia, which is not really Europe.

Russia is (or at least was, during Grand Duchy of Moscow times) a part of Eastern Europe.

Now, its eastern\southern\northen parts\colonies - are not (except for the north and south -west of course)

Writers of old usually came from aristocracy. So, few.

The argument is not that everyone who likes old russian writers is a shill. It's that people bringing them up at current time can't read a room at least, give in to their own imperialist tendencies probably and it only goes worse from there.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529215.

This is misguided neutrality, I think. At some point even HN would need to pick a side.

And you never see Sulu!

And why Lex Fridman talks a lot about Dostoyevsky. Is he a Russian sleeper agent? No doubt Russia tries to promote it's culture everywhere. Openly or secretly(Youtube) or forcebly/violently. But same applies to China. Change my opinion but the "Three Body problem" success was 100% due to CPP secretly pushing it. Not to mention Dr.Zhivago and CIA campaign... Now that I think about it, maybe Dostoyevsky is pushed by CIA to create an image of Russian people as gloomy and dark.

Fridman is a hypocrite who never found the courage to unequivocally condemn Russia's aggression. All he could utter was some bullshit about "love", "peace", "meaning of life" and so on. I am saying that as a Russian, by the way. I'm still happy to see Chekhov on the front pages - after the fall of Putin's regime we will need to rebuild our relationship with the world, and our literature still remains a lifeline.

But that's his persona. He never really goes full on, always tries to maintain neutrality. In his interview with that rapper who was saying vile things he just kept talking about love.

Exactly, and maintaining neutrality in the face of absolute evil is immoral. Such neutrality justifies an equivalence between the aggressor and the victim and provides the evil with an advantage, because, suddenly, instead of punishment it will have to be dealt with in a civilised manner.

At the start of the big war Fridman went on podcasts as an expert on the conflict and all he did was re-translate russian talking points. He's way worse than hypocrite.

To be fair, he's not alone, a good half of IDW - group supposedly too intelligent and principled for mainstream media - turned out to be neither intelligent, nor principled, when those qualities got tested by real world events instead of social network drama.

Tbh, I never understood the whole hype about IDW. Sam Harris is the only one worth respecting there, whereas Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro are both absolutely disgusting.

I found most of them did have at least one interesting take or a perspective. Listening to people able to talk on serious topic for hours going deep into nuance was refreshing. And then there was Eric Weinstein, who could do that on seemingly endless array of topics and would casually drop gold after gold, before he got stuck on his DISC thing. But after "Ukraine is being brutalized. It is also corrupt." he is dead to me, of course.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

There is nothing nationalistic in my comment above.

I see your point, but I'm using the word loosely to refer to internet flamewars about nations. One could also mention the site guideline about ideological battle. Either way, this kind of flamewar comment isn't what we're looking for here, not least because it tends to evoke worse than others (although it didn't do so in this particular case).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Does he do it on the HN forum?

His audience are HN users. HN users are influenced by his and the guest's ideas and then promote them on HN.

Please don't do this here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34529215.