Maybe it's because "Alien Civilization" to me automatically means both civilizations are probably advanced enough to understand spin-up and spin-down--the fact that we use a right-handed coordinate system by convention, but in a left-handed system spin-up is spin-down and spin-down is spin-up--so any contact with such a civilization would have us both shrugging our shoulders and going "Huh, yeah. Opposites."
I searched for some list of available things and couldn't find it. Edit: ah, so \works\ works. And bold? -strikethrough-? I need a place to look this stuff up! well, you can't escape asterisks that I see. #* /*
But pg defends himself in the (HN thread)[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2947462] rather well, I think: a small positive step is still a visible change.