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While Gladwell himself is notorious for lack of factual rigor (as a former math person, I especially wince at his "Igon value"), the New Yorker itself is famous for its rigorous fact-checking. In this age of fast-food quality writings littered with half-assed research or mere speculations, I appreciate the time and the effort that the New Yorker team puts into their craft.

At the same time, the New Yorker is indeed known for their over-the-top narratives. There's both pros and cons to this approach. For example, a great work of literary journalism like "In Cold Blood" and "Hiroshima" were first published on the New Yorker because of this editorial tendency. On the other hand, their long-form content makes their subjects less approachable to a large swath of English-reading (especially those who aren't native readers of the language) population.

I think our experiences may differ. Just looking through stories I've seen on the front page recently, there's the following:

* A slave in Scotland

* They knew it was round, damn it

* Two hundred terabyte proof is largest ever (granted, the 200 TB is not what's really interesting here)

* How the ArXiv decides what's science

* Visiting Chelsea Manning in prison

* Hiroshima (1946)

This seems like a healthy mix of topics, and they don't seem to have been deemed worthless.

I have noted a certain amount of hostility to philosophical topics, but I would venture a guess that there's been hostility to philosophy in general at all periods in history.

I expect to see a certain percentage of comments in an HN thread about how the topic is presented. Everybody's got to let off some steam sometimes. I made my initial comment because I was surprised at how many comments addressed only how the topic was presented rather than that and the actual content.