Good reminder to check back on House of Leaves. Didn't like it but it keeps nagging at my brain, I must have missed something.
It's quite exhausting to read though.
Although thinking about it now I remember feeling the author being kind of cruel in making things hard to read/understand with that as the purpose (the real excentric stuff at the end), it put me off. Maybe I just don't like it.
House of Leaves is one of my favorite books. The vibe is eerie, sublime, and otherworldly. IMO, you'll find more enjoyment if you approach it more like going for a hike than like being taken for a ride.
That said, if you're looking for something similarly wacky but easier to get into, Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, or maybe even S. by Abrams and Dorst, are worth a gander.
It's a reference to the SciFi book Blindsight about humans who leave earth after it is surrounded by a matrix of extraterrestrial objects. Rorschach is another 'alien' vessel they try to communicate with in the Oort cloud (big ben).
Fantastic book. Mind-bending scifi that really makes you think about consciousness, imo
Could you elaborate on the nature of the work? I'm really finding it hard to imagine what kind of work would require one to work in the dark at all times.
It isn’t that we have no lights. We do. They’re on most of the time. The walls are painted black and there are no windows, because occasionally we want the lab to be dark so we can simulate the lighting conditions of space. We have a spotlight that approximates the brightness of the sun for when we do those tests.
The end result of this is that, especially in the winter, it’s really easy for me to drive to work in daylight, and then that’s literally the only time I see the sun. I leave work after dark. Totally screws with my circadian rhythm.
Look at getting a set of Luminette glasses and work with them on! They're from Belgium which is a place that's almost as dark and depressing as your lab in the winter. I have a pair and I use them instead of a shot of espresso as a pick-me-up when it's dreary outside.
Thanks for that. I can understand his disdain. Too many on here worship wealth and bad actors like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Sweeney who only care to propel their own wealth. There is a void of humanity and humility in such people.
Real intelligence must incorporate empathy. Lacking empathy means people lack real intelligence.
I respect people like Jamie Zawinski and Steve Wozniak. It is not about the wealth it about making a good product and solution. That is real value.
Also explains how he has the know it all to setup his site and fingerprint people logged into HN.
There is a great deal difference between billions and millions. People have a hard time understanding powers of 10.
There is also giving away your wealth to others versus consolidating it and hording it like a dragon ....
But you know ... too many people look up to inhuman individuals like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Sweeney. Those that do are are detrimental to a civilized world.
You can create wealth by creating a good product that does not exploit the users nor those that assisted you on the creation and delivery. This is were our current large organizations fail to understand.
Exploit, exploit, to support that Friedman doctrine is the go to now. This were the three listed above support.
That’s unfair to Milton Friedman who, unlike the America. right wing retelling of his economics, would likely be aghast at the modern levels of inequality and concentration of power.
He did support what was basically progressive taxation, but suggested structuring it as a negative tax, where instead of increasing tax rates with income, you had a flat tax rate with minimal deductions, but you imposed a negative tax as you went down the income ladder.
You're trying to dress fanboyist attitude as some sort of moral stance.
Your statement was about people who "propel their wealth" vs those who somehow don't. With this in mind there's no difference between 10 mln and 10 bln - neither would happen for a person who doesn't want it to happen. "Good product" is irrelevant to moral estimation as well cause bad people can make good products, and vice versa. Finally, Starlink as an example is probably less exploitative compared to Apple's consistent walled-garden strategy. It doesn't tell us anything about Musk's morality, but rather clearly shows your logic as inconsistent.
And no wonder those "money!" people hang out in a forum made by a venture capital company...
I wrote this comment the other day, it got flagged to death:
> As someone who downloaded, over 28.8K modem, a version of the Jargon File (1) as a plain text file (2) to read during a school vacation, in the "good old days" of my imagination Silicon Valley was a lot cooler for hackers. But people noticed it was a place to make money, and all the money-hungry MBAs showed up, and now the whole industry has a stench to it..
It's a little more complicated than that. Even pasting the link into a new window (so no referrer) shows the image, at least after visiting the site for the first time.
Wow, didn't know jwz is wearing his head up his ass now. Sad way to treat your readers by assuming that everyone who reads certain websites is a certain kind of person?
at least thee 'hairy egg' one made me laugh; the alternate i've seen lately is a plea to avoid mentioning that they're furry if you're from HN using the HN referrer; that one is a bit more groan-inducing than the full page anti-capitalism nut scree.
That does not require empathy. Facts are useful independent of your ethical framework.
If your goal was to kill all former pirates you’d want to know their professional background and likely current occupation.
Similarly a ruthless dictator who wants to end piracy should understand all tools at their disposal.
Ignorance is simply a detriment for efficiency. Though obviously if you want to exploit someone else it’s useful for them to be ignorant, which helps explain your own failings.
I'm not saying he was in the right, but calling people nutjobs (even indirectly) is in pretty flagrant violation of the rules. Don't flame people just because they are making bad posts.
It's quite exhausting to read though.
Although thinking about it now I remember feeling the author being kind of cruel in making things hard to read/understand with that as the purpose (the real excentric stuff at the end), it put me off. Maybe I just don't like it.
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