Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Onion buys Infowars

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

911–920 of 1001 posts

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#911

Post by rswail »

soco wrote: post #44
arethuza wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Brexit taught me anything it was that the correct phrase is pesky unelected EU bureaucrats!

Now if we want to get into dirty details, no bureaucrat is ever elected. You elect the representatives, and they nominate in turn whoever bureaucrats they feel comfy to work with. Or is this in the UK different?

If you can, watch the (very) old TV series called "Yes Minister" from UK television (it's from the 70s/80s).

Sir Humphrey Appelby often explains to the Minister Jim Hacker how the Minister sets "policy" and it is the "humble public servants" that carry out that policy, having attended to the details that are required when dealing with the heavy business of government across departments, while leaving the Minister to concentrate on the "big picture", and doing his job, which is:

1. Defend the Ministry in Parliament

2. Make sure that the Ministry's budget is defended in Cabinet

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#912

Post by pmarreck »

jsheard wrote: post #80
tgv wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonderful news. I'm glad their CEO recognizes the great value of CEOs. My only worry is that this acquisition makes Global Tetraeder so large that it attracts the attention of those pesky EU bureaucrats, who will want to split it up into multiple imperfect solids.

They'd better think twice as long as Ted Kaczynski remains on The Onions editorial board[1], he also knows a few things about splitting things into multiple solids. [1] https://i.imgur.com/iNDpZt2.png

I will try to explain this guy to my son as a "basically a militant Amish guy"

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#915

Post by consteval »

TeeMassive wrote: post #807
consteval wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the intention of the suit was to personally harm Jones as retribution for the immeasurable harm he has caused them. They don't need money, I'm sure they have enough. They denied his money because that isn't the point - they want to mock him. And, I fully support them. They're in a unique position and frankly I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence. If I were Jones, I wo…

Their intention was to silence him. Literally what they said; which is illegal. > They don't need money, These are normal people, what are you talking about? > I'm very impressed at their restraint in choosing the legal system over violence. That's not impressive, that's what the vast majority of people do.

> Their intention was to silence him. Literally what they said; which is illegal.

No, defamation is illegal. Me suing you for lying and directly causing me financial harm is not illegal.

> These are normal people, what are you talking about?

They've gotten a lot of money on account of the fact their families were victims of a tragedy. I'm assuming they don't need more money because they literally turned down a few hundred thousand dollars from Jones.

Also, this "what are you talking about?" BS needs to stop. You know what I'm talking about, or at least you can assume. Don't pretend like what I'm saying is so outrageous and unbelievable. You can respond without being annoying, please and thank you.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#916

Post by yaksha »

Kye wrote: post #818
keepamovin wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been halted due a judge deciding it was a private sale masquerading as an auction: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857290045536780334

Is there a credible source on this?

https://apnews.com/article/onion-buys-infowars-alex-jones-64...

"Walter Cicack, an attorney for First United American Companies, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez that Murray changed the auction process only days before, deciding not to hold a round Wednesday where parties could outbid each other. Sealed bids were submitted last week, and the trustee chose only from those, Cicack said."

"“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” he said. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”

An exact date of next week’s hearing was not immediately set.

After the hearing, Jones said on his show that he thought the auction was unfairly rigged and expressed optimism that the judge would nullify the sale."

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#917

Post by KaiserPro »

randomdata wrote: post #861
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Musk's acquisition of Twitter, it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories. And Alex Jones' InfoWars and Elon Musk's Twitter are both likely to show you advertisements for supplements of dubious effectiveness and other generally scammy products. So yeah, Jones fits right in there.

> it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories. In what way? I still only see the very same industry-focused information that I first started using Twitter for. If anything, X has improved in pulling in information from more industry players than I was seeing before, so I consider it to be an even more compelling product now. But perhaps that same algorithm improvement…

If you use lists, then you probably won't notice that much. However if your looking at the "for you" page, shits just kept on getting more extreme. Just wildly off the deepend scams or abuse.

Before you could just filter out that stuff as it was fairly rare. but its just everywhere.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#918

Post by thinkingtoilet »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #625

In one sense this is funny, in another it's justice, but I think from a broader perspective this is just more of the same tit-for-tat nonsense that moves the needle in the wrong direction. My hypothesis is that the U.S. didn't become more divided because of moron sites like I.W. but rather because of our collective reaction to them. These groups are far easier to ignore when we stop trying to silence them.

If, god forbid, your child gets killed in a shooting, imagine getting harassed about it for years by misinformed assholes who say your child never existed. That is a level of cruelty that is unfathomable. Helping buy out the misinformation engine that was responsible is not even close to 'tit-for-tat' and I literally can't understand how anyone would think that. You aren't being 'wise' here by standing in the middle. You're defending some of the worst people in society.

Re: The Onion buys Infowars

#919

Post by asveikau »

rswail wrote: post #909
soco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if we want to get into dirty details, no bureaucrat is ever elected. You elect the representatives, and they nominate in turn whoever bureaucrats they feel comfy to work with. Or is this in the UK different?

In the UK (and other places like NZ/AU), public servants are permanent. They're not elected in any way. So they are employees of their departments and don't change when a minister changes. Ministers are almost always a member of Parliament and appointed by the Prime Minister, so they can change at any time. Usually a government will have some changes at the top of departments (the "Permanent Secretary") and high leve…

In the US we colloquially call that "career staff". The people at the top are usually political employees, but rank and file will typically stay from one administration to the next.

A big part of the "project 2025" idea was to reduce career employees and make everybody effectively a political appointee.

Post reply on HN