@jsit @tchambers Hi Jay! These are official publisher accounts on Flipboard, so the content is all directly curated by the publisher, which makes them a bit different than those "bird.makeup" mirror accounts.
Publishers use a combination of RSS feeds and manual "flipping" to add content to their topical Magazines.
You can follow the publisher's complete account or just the Magazine feed you're interested in (we always use the example of ESPN, where you might be interested in tennis but not golf, for example, so you can just follow one type of content using a Flipboard Magazine).
Comments and boosts can be seen by publishers logged into the app and we are also working on federated people on Flipboard being able to reply to federated comments, so stay tuned for more on that!
We also have our totally-humanly-curated, not-an-RSS-in-sight accounts here, which are @NewsDesk, @TechDesk, @ScienceDesk, @CultureDesk and @ArtPhotosDesk. Follow those for handpicked stories, polls, and human interactions!