Top all-time · #1624
Jesse Singal
Personal blog · jessesingal.substack.compoliticsscience
Jesse Singal writes Singal-Minded, a personal blog at jessesingal.substack.com about politics and science. Since 2019, 44 different Hacker News readers have linked it 48 times, most often “I fought the PayPal and I won”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 30 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jesse Singal's Substack for commentary on gender medicine, free speech and online platforms, and especially his account of fighting PayPal's account freeze through arbitration.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called a great, excellent or interesting read; the PayPal account-freeze and forced arbitration post is recommended as useful.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 30 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A newsletter about science, social-justice-activism, why they sometimes fight, and how to help them get along better -- plus a good deal of other, more random stuff. Click to read Singal-Minded, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- I fought the PayPal and I won10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-11-04
- GLAAD Took False, Disproven Internet Scuttlebutt and Used It to Put Me on a List3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-03-22
- Researchers Found Puberty Blockers Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-06
- /p/platformers-reporting-on-substacks2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-12
What Hacker News says?
In the interest of fairness, here is Singal's response to that page: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/glaad-took-false-previous... For what it's worth, I'm 100% with Singal here.
Comment linking /p/glaad-took-false-previously-disproven
on “I fought the PayPal and I won”Submitted I fought the PayPal and I won as a story · 868 points
HN discussionBluesky is not better (see for instance [0]). I think no one has cracked how to properly run a microblogging website. [0] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/did-i-publish-the-private...
Comment linking /p/did-i-publish-the-private-medical
on “Linda Yaccarino is leaving X”Submitted Journalists Are Reporting Their Colleagues to HR for Political Opinions as a story · 78 points
HN discussionhttps://jessesingal.substack.com/p/i-fought-the-paypal-and-i...
Comment linking /p/i-fought-the-paypal-and-i-won
on “PayPal inactivity fee”Submitted Researchers Found Puberty Blockers Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health as a story · 57 points
HN discussionYou can read Singal's response to these criticisms here: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-sorta-quick-response-to... The criticisms of Singal's piece are pretty weak, and often resort to refuting things he never actually wrote. He explicitly notes that data is sparse - this is one of the most controversial research subjects - but it does indeed suggest a desistance rate of 50-60% absent medical intervention. Con…
Comment linking /p/a-sorta-quick-response-to-the-errors
on “Scientific American's departing editor and the politicization of science”Submitted GLAAD Took False, Disproven Internet Scuttlebutt and Used It to Put Me on a List as a story · 14 points
HN discussionNo, this sounds exactly like Twitter. On Twitter, self-appointed mobs of the morally righteous call for violence against children [0], farm lulz from the killings of police officers [1], dox strangers to get them fired over off-color jokes [2], and endlessly harass and threaten certain conservative journalists and activists [3]. Actual Twitter employees harassed right-wing reporter Andy Ngo [4] after a real-world mo…
Comment linking /p/its-insane-were-having-a-debate-over
on “Near, the emulator developer of bsnes, higan, and more, has died”Submitted Social-Justice Blowups Are Mostly About Intraelite Jockeying as a story · 12 points
HN discussionScience Based Medicine isn't exactly squeaky clean either: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/science-based-medicines-c... Now, someone post a takedown of Singal so we can keep the chain going ...
Comment linking /p/science-based-medicines-coverage
on “Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong”Submitted A chatbot coined a phrase I really like. Am I allowed to use it? as a story · 5 points
HN discussion“ What’s surprising, in light of all these quotes, is that the kids who took puberty blockers or hormones experienced no statistically significant mental health improvement during the study. The claim that they did improve, which was presented to the public in the study itself, in publicity materials, and on social media (repeatedly) by one of the authors, is false.” See https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/researcher…
Comment linking /p/researchers-found-puberty-blockers
on “Microplastics found in live human lung tissue”Submitted I Hate Journalism's Culture of Casual Calumny as a story · 4 points
HN discussionOriginal: YASSINE MESKHOUT DEC 5, 2023 posted to: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/my-clients-the-liars https://archive.md/c4SRO Other HN discussion of Yassine Meskhout's writing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33462658
Comment linking /p/my-clients-the-liars
on “My Clients, the Liars”Submitted In 2023, Let’s Rediscover Wrongness as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf Jesse Singal is your idea of a person who isn't "arguing in good faith" and who should be mocked, you're pretty far outside the mainstream. https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/on-cancel-culture-the-new... > pushing away people interested in actual debate or intelligent conversation. It's fascinating how "actual debate" and "intelligent conversation" mean, to you, avoiding words that you don't like. The most parsim…
Comment linking /p/on-cancel-culture-the-new-republic
on “Richard Stallman steps down as as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately”Submitted A critique of Tordoff et al. (2022)(puberty blockers and mental health) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'm not thinking of a specific book, but I am thinking of this kind of thing (but I haven't read this specific article in full): https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/ya-twitters-victims-and-c...
Comment linking /p/ya-twitters-victims-and-critics-speak
on “Irishman arrested in UK for 'causing anxiety' by retweeting meme”Submitted If the NEJM Doesn't Correct This Error, You Cannot Trust Anything It Publishes as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> Last time this topic came up, I tried so very very hard, to find credible sources about wtf this website or it's users did exactly, and couldn't (found some but it was very light). I mean it's there on Wikipedia sure, but if you keep digging it starts repeating and self-referencing other websites that are just as "not credible" or relying on "other websites" that I can't take them seriously on their claims. Paywal…
Comment linking /p/how-journalists-botched-their-coverage
on “Kiwifarms Dropped by Their ISP”Submitted Stoking the Moral Panic Against Innocent NYT Journalists as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnother perspective: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/if-you-cant-see-that-adam... > I know this didn’t happen. How do I know? I just know. The problem was, Rubenstein had contemporaneously told a number of people about the sandwich event, including Levine and Bari Weiss, and they started coming forward to say so.
Comment linking /p/if-you-cant-see-that-adam-rubenstein
on “I Was a Heretic at the New York Times”Submitted Journalism and media criticism both require skepticism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnother side of the story... https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/platformers-reporting-on-...
Comment linking /p/platformers-reporting-on-substacks
on “Why Platformer is leaving Substack”Submitted Journalists Are Exhibiting Too Much Credulousness Toward Jamie Reed’s Critics as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDammit, there was this post here on HN a while back how someone got their account back through the forced arbitration process. So if you care enough about that money, that would be an option. Hopefully someone can find it again, I'll keep looking some more. EDIT: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/i-fought-the-paypal-and-i...
Comment linking /p/i-fought-the-paypal-and-i-won
on “I created an eBay account and bought an item, today I got indefinitely suspended”Submitted Adam Grant vs. Coleman Hughes, Part 2 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI think the move to a community notes style feature is a positive. Fact checkers have shown themselves to be untrustworthy[1] [1] https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/why-would-i-possibly-trus...
Comment linking /p/why-would-i-possibly-trust-bill-adair?utm_source=publication-search
on “"Policy changes at Meta are deeply troubling" – Mastodon CEO”Submitted Everyone Should Know the Story of Lucia de Berk as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
