Top all-time · #2667
Michael Shellenberger
Personal blog · public.substack.compoliticsscience
Michael Shellenberger writes Public, a personal blog at public.substack.com about politics and science. Since 2023, 29 different Hacker News readers have linked it 39 times, most often “Exposed: America's Censorship-Industrial Complex”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Michael Shellenberger's Public newsletter posts as sources on COVID lab-leak reporting, Twitter Files-style moderation stories, and energy and climate policy.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
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Most-linked posts?
- Exposed: America's Censorship-Industrial Complex3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-03-09
- First People Sickened by Covid Were Chinese Scientists at WIV,Say US Gov Sources3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-06-13
- Elite Crackdown on Free Speech Worldwide Intensifies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-24
- US and UK Military Contractors Created Plan for Global Censorship in 20182 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-28
- Solar Panels Are Three Times More Carbon-Intensive Than IPCC Claims2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-26
What Hacker News says?
Australia is the last country I would trust with the ability to view private communications between citizens, given they are trying hard to normalize censorship of online content. They recently ordered Twitter to take down video of a stabbing, and required Twitter to do so even outside of Australia. Musk and Twitter are fighting the order, and correctly refusing to censor speech outside of Australian jurisdiction. M…
Comment linking /p/cia-recruit-is-pursuing-global-internet
on “Australia's spies, cops want accountable encryption- a.k.a. access to backdoors”Submitted US and UK Military Contractors Created Plan for Global Censorship in 2018 as a story · 31 points
HN discussionThese are what I'm remembering re: Germany and reduced wind. This was during winter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28521533 https://public.substack.com/p/german-emissions-from-electric... We do have transmission, but it is lossy and expensive, and the places it is cheaper to transmit from are geographically adjacent and are going to have similar solar and wind conditions. If you're talking about Texas' gas pl…
Comment linking /p/german-emissions-from-electricity-674
on “NRC Certifies First U.S. Small Modular Reactor Design”Submitted New Docs Reveal US DHS Conspiracy to Violate First Amendment as a story · 24 points
HN discussionIt may not be enough in the future. The problem is every little incremental change like “giving in” to block content by region ends up welcoming the next incremental step in that direction. Other countries and regions may now apply the same pressure on Pixiv. Some might call this the slippery slope fallacy but it’s exactly how most political battles play out. In terms of geographies - one thing I read about recently…
Comment linking /p/cia-recruit-is-pursuing-global-internet
on “Pixiv Blocks Adult Content, but Only for US and UK Users”Submitted Elite Crackdown on Free Speech Worldwide Intensifies as a story · 11 points
HN discussion> An electric car powered by coal is still cleaner overall than one powered by gasoline I'm sceptical that we know enough about the energy and resource mix in use across our global supply chains to be anywhere near that confident. Look up Enrico Mariutti and his thoughts on the photovoltaic lifecycle figures ( mentioned in "China's dirty fuel advanage" - https://public.substack.com/p/solar-panels-more-carbon-inten..…
Comment linking /p/solar-panels-more-carbon-intensive
on “BHP says battery electric cheaper than hydrogen as it dumps diesel”Submitted Supreme Court to Hear Landmark Missouri vs. Biden Censorship Case as a story · 8 points
HN discussionhttps://youtu.be/N8Nf56srwcA Includes Musk saying "Old Twitter was basically an arm of the government... It was a State publication." more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12695205/elon-musk-... Amazing how hard it is to get a search engine to find these things, innit. Most of the coverage gets published on substack: https://public.substack.com/p/ctil-files-1-us-and-uk-militar...
Comment linking /p/ctil-files-1-us-and-uk-military-contractors
on “The X Files: Leaked documents reveal X staff stripped of moderation power”Submitted Crackdown on Free Speech Worldwide Intensifies as a story · 5 points
HN discussionOK, but lets start with the astroturfed Republican funded fakes: https://public.substack.com/p/momentum-grows-to-save-the-nor... https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1154867064/solar-power-misinf...
Comment linking /p/momentum-grows-to-save-the-north
on “Schwarzenegger: Environmentalists are delaying green energy revolution”Submitted Brazil Should Terrify You as a story · 4 points
HN discussion2023-06-15-01-22 Also consistent with: https://public.substack.com/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid...
Comment linking /p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19
on “What went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted”Submitted Gov't Hiding Docs That Incriminate IC for Illegal Spying, Election Interference as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI'm surprised that someone as interested in this as you has not followed up to try and see whether Taibbi's worrying thesis has any merit. He, and Shellenberger and the other writers at "Public" are slowly revealing the outlines of something disturbing. Namely that social media companies take the direction of state surveillance and espionage actors -- including those of foreign (Israeli and Ukrainian secret services…
Comment linking /p/attack-of-the-censorship-karens
on “Nobody Knows What's Happening Online Anymore”Submitted First People Sickened by Covid Were Chinese Scientists at WIV,Say US Gov Sources as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFailing that it is probably worth listening-to/reading Matt Taibbi: https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/the-censorship-industria... https://public.substack.com/p/censorship-leaders-accuse-us-o...
Comment linking /p/censorship-leaders-accuse-us-of-antisemitism
on “Nobody Knows What's Happening Online Anymore”Submitted Why This One Simple Chart Will End Wokeism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBut there was no new evidence at that time. What there was though, was discussions on how a lab origin's negative impact on research and future funding! You can read more about some of their conversions before and after the paper was published here: https://public.substack.com/p/top-scientists-misled-congress...
Comment linking /p/top-scientists-misled-congress-about?utm_source=post-email-title
on “STEM professionals ask Nature to retract COVID-19 lab leak paper”Submitted White House and Dark Money NGO Hype Hate Crisis to Demand Censorship as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOriginally reported here: https://public.substack.com/p/top-scientists-misled-congress...
Comment linking /p/top-scientists-misled-congress-about
on “STEM professionals ask Nature to retract COVID-19 lab leak paper”Submitted First People Sickened by Covid-19 Were Chinese Scientists at Wuhan Institute as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe report seems to exclusively focus on how the nuclear lobby works, and how allegedly all support for nuclear is either ideological or astroturfed. How this "undermines the EU's energy future" (I suppose closing the German nuclear fleet aided EU's energy future?) is not explained beyond a one-sentence reference: When, in 2019, the Rutte III government commissioned studies that concluded that nuclear energy would m…
Comment linking /p/anti-nuke-greens-menace-europe
on “How the European nuclear lobby undermines the EU’s energy future [pdf]”Submitted US Has 12 or More Alien Spacecraft, Say Military and Intelligence Contractors as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOn the other hand, it is extremely difficult for an outside observer, looking at the results of the New Approach, to judge whether it is not scaling well because of a lack of funding or because it fundamentally does not scale well. It can also be challenging for the people involved to realize that their approach isn't working (cf. "sunk cost fallacy", "it is difficult to get a man to understand a point when his sala…
Comment linking /p/three-times-more-homeless-die-under?s=r
on “Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs”Submitted Now They're Trying Censor Your Text Messages as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> the very small number of teens that do go on puberty blockers or have surgery do so after informed conversations with doctors and therapists. Those 'informed conversations' with 'doctors and therapists' which the 'very small number of teens' have are neither informed nor based on anything resembling proven efficacy of the proposed treatment regimes. The recent leak of the WPATH files [1] reveals that its members k…
Comment linking /p/the-wpath-files
on a deleted threadSubmitted America's Censorship-Industrial Complex as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Exposed: America's Censorship-Industrial Complex as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dozens of Government UFO Whistleblowers Have Given Testimony to Congress as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
