[bookaway]

Rightwing snowflakes are a thing, yeah. Bill Burr for one loves to roast them, as he did recently using the LA fires.

Elon threw that salute because his man-child ego took a massive beating with the H1B rightwing in-fighting, when the white nationalist wing of Maga started screaming bloody murder at him and Vivek. It's a bullied kid trying to get back in the good graces of the extreme wing of Trump's base. This virtue signaling to your friends and then declaring it to be sarcasm or comedy when called out by your foes goes back to WWII times. [0]

That being said, pg has been consistent on the woke stuff since back in the day. He wrote an essay called "What You Can't Say" over two decades ago, for god's sake. His timing on this essay was unfortunate. Although there's never a good time to publish stuff like this. He's also one of the lone "pro-Palestinian" VCs left out there, for what it's worth.

[0] https://archive.is/HAE9v

[1] https://paulgraham.com/say.html

[ryandrake]

"What You Can't Say" was silly back then, and is still silly now. Here's a guy with a huge online following, multiple channels for speaking his mind and getting his message out, yet complaining about a need to self-censor and that you can't say what you want. It reminds me of the "I Have Been Silenced" cartoon[1]. He also doesn't even list a specific example of something he wants to say but "can't." It's left up to our imagination.

1: https://i1.wp.com/leftycartoons.visionmule.com/wp-content/up...

[bookaway]

> He also doesn't even list a specific example of something he wants to say but "can't."

That's because he's making the general point that in every era there is always something "that can't be said" that then later becomes accepted in another era, and therefore people should strive to find truths that are as "era independent" as possible. He specifically mentions Galileo, pre-Civil War South, and Germany in the 1930s. I'm sure you can imagine a few things "that couldn't be said" in those environments or eras. The essay was written in 2004, when it wasn't unheard of of people were getting fired for their various takes on 9-11 and the wars on terror either, so I doubt it was hard for a reader to "imagine" some examples to understand the point.

[micromacrofoot]

And here he is... still saying whatever he wants unbridled.

The timing is only unfortunate if you think PG cares about anything beyond his stock portfolio.

If you don't think it was deliberate, I've got a new crypto coin you may be interested in buying.

[bookaway]

You said in your comment above that he's "out there ranting about wokeism like a lot of them now, he's losing the plot", as if his stance is a new thing. I was just pointing out that his stance is not new.

I'm not aware of the relationship between wokeism and his stock portfolio. He wrote the first essay when YC was not even around.