Top all-time · #8515
Tony Ortega
Personal blog · tonyortega.orgculturewriting
Tony Ortega writes The Underground Bunker, a personal blog at tonyortega.org about culture and writing. Since 2013, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link these posts as sources on Scientology's history, its finances and legal cases, including a court appeal and a story on its Google ad grants. None judge the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world.
What Hacker News says?
When Apple's App store first came out consumers were sour about a decade of "crapp(s)" on Microsoft Windows. That is, you pretty much expected to download software and have it trash your machine on a regular basis. Things are better today, half of that is people realizing that it has to get better ("national security" today, but it's much bigger than national in scope) and the other half is people realizing it is po…
Comment linking /2021/04/12/scientology-answers-danny-masterson-accusers-at-california-supreme-court-and-its-ugly/
on “Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance”Submitted Google helps Scientology billionaire Bob Duggan hide a dark family secret (2015) as a story · 235 points
HN discussionIt's not an accident at all. I'm sure some sites are moving content around to make it likely you'll click on an ad. Other forms of click fraud are rife: This site has ads that cover the content https://tonyortega.org/ and when you try to close them you will frequently click on the ad instead of the tiny close button. Back in the day the Scientologists would have reported him for click fraud but today they are a shad…
Comment linking /
on “hiccupFX.js”Submitted Scientology says it's received $5.7M from Google in ad grants as a story · 39 points
HN discussionFrom the article: "After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in. "The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister…
Comment linking /2013/01/29/more-signs-of-scientologys-armageddon-as-the-media-takes-aim/
on “Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers”Submitted Scientology Is Terrible At Photoshop as a story · 25 points
HN discussionScientology has gone through phases. Up until the revelation of "Operation Snow White" [1] it was oriented towards recruiting large numbers of footsoldiers into "staff" roles and set prices that made their services accessible to a rather broad "public". Notably L. Ron Hubbard had written that it was immoral to ask for donations without giving something in return so it was all oriented around getting people to pay fo…
Comment linking /2021/12/23/insider-how-scientologys-ideal-org-scam-works-and-how-members-are-victimized-by-it/
on “A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams”Submitted A perplexing tale about Bob Duggan, the richest Scientologist in the world as a story · 12 points
HN discussionAsk how well this worked out for Scientology, who set out to do this with L. Ron Hubbard's works. Their efforts were essentially for naught as they used a now deprecated type of LaserDisc. ( https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-scientologys-secret-bun... https://tonyortega.org/2013/08/31/the-history-of-scientology... )
Comment linking /2013/08/31/the-history-of-scientologys-weird-vaults-the-bizarre-battlefield-earth-connection/
on “Totenpass is a permanent digital storage drive made of solid gold”Submitted Is American culture so hopeless that Scientology’s insanity is no longer notable as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe defendant in this appeals case is Joan Comparet-Cassani: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jul-23-me-6344-... She retired in 2012: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jul-23-me-6344-... Also, that document suggest that this former sheriff was a co-defendant in that appeals case: https://tonyortega.org/2017/04/30/as-former-los-angeles-sher...
Comment linking /2017/04/30/as-former-los-angeles-sheriff-lee-baca-awaits-sentencing-scientology-sticks-by-its-man/
on “Stun Belts in Court”Submitted New Scientology E-Meter: Now Infected with DRM as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe same website from which the thread-opening post comes has page about the reason L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology as a religious organization--to make money.[1] That page includes an interesting account of knowing Hubbard by science fiction author Harlan Ellison. [1] http://tonyortega.org/2013/02/16/scientology-mythbusting-wit...
Comment linking /2013/02/16/scientology-mythbusting-with-jon-atack-making-a-million/
on “Scientology says it's received $5.7M from Google in ad grants”You can't always choose not to look at them. This blog drives me up the wall with ads that cover the content, particularly on mobile devices https://tonyortega.org/ The buttons for closing the content are hard enough to hit on a touch screen that at least 50% of the time I am going to wind up clicking on the ad by accident. I don't want to reward that behavior so I don't attempt to close the ads. It's a certain sign…
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on “Ask HN: Why do adblockers still work?”Scientology: did some alien make a bet that he could get the daftest religion ever to take hold in 1950s America? "The Underground Bunker: Latest News" https://tonyortega.org/scientology/ "Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Remini:_Scientology_and_t...
Comment linking /scientology/
on “The Creeps of the Cosmos (2017)”As I see it there is nothing "rational" about rationalism at all, it is just something like Scientology or the Unification Church constructed for modern conditions. Back in the 1950s L. Ron Hubbard was interested in enslaving large numbers of people to take their money and labor. By the late 1970s he was starting to regret it because he was now responsible for these people (one reason why slavery quit being economic…
Comment linking /2021/12/23/insider-how-scientologys-ideal-org-scam-works-and-how-members-are-victimized-by-it/
on “Strong Evidence Is Common”
