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Life, Learning & Writing

The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 8,940 posts.

Any year
8824

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the…

8825

The Missing Missing Reasons

Members of estranged parents’ forums often say their children never gave them any reason for the estrangement, then turn around and reveal that their children did tell them why. But the reasons their children give—the infamous missing reasons—are missing.

8827

Raw Thought: Aaron Swartz's Weblog

As we’ve discussed, in Batman Begins 1960s-style full employment and antipoverty programs lead to skyrocketing crime while in The Dark Knight Rises 1980s-style tough-on-crime policies and neoliberal economics lead to a revolt of the economic underclass. The films are mirror images, one about the failure of liberal…

8828

As I remember London

As soon as I was old enough to travel on my own, London was where I wanted to go. Compared to Copenhagen at the time, there was something so majestic about Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, and even the Tube around the turn of the millenium. Not just because their capital is twice as old as ours, but because it endured twice…

8829

Cordless Dog: Stay

If you're fastidious about keeping your windows tidy, Stay is for you. Stay ensures that your windows are where you want them, even as you connect and disconnect displays.

8830

1,000 True Fans

This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. I recently rewrote it to convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details. This revisited essay appears in Tim … Continue reading →

8831

This Be The Verse

But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.

8833

TMI About me

Recently, I've become aware of a whisper campaign going around the Drupal world, discussing details about my personal life. I do not know where it started or who all has been part of it. However, it's become apparent that it's not going to settle down, and has now had a major, direct impact on me and my professional…

8836

Book Review: The Hungry Brain

[Content note: food, dieting, obesity] I. The Hungry Brain gives off a bit of a Malcolm Gladwell vibe, with its cutesy name and pop-neuroscience style. But don’t be fooled. Stephan Guyenet is…

8840

Better Genderless Pronouns in English

Writing or speaking English, we always face a conundrum when we need a pronoun to refer to a person without specifying gender. Previously we needed a way to cover both male and female; nowadays some people state that they don't want to be considered either of those, and I believe in respecting their wishes.

8841

Schizophrenia: No Smoking Gun

[Note: despite how some people are spinning this, tobacco is still really really bad and you should not smoke it] I. Schizophrenics smoke. A lot. Depending on the study, about 60-80% of schizophren…

8843

Knuth: Recent News

Leading banks and investment funds have been foundering, because of bad debts and lack of trust; and other, less well-known kinds of fiscal chaos are also on the horizon. For example, due to an unfixable security flaw in the way funds are now transferred electronically, worldwide, it is no longer safe to write…

8844

Gell-Mann Amnesia

Michael Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann Amnesia effect to describe forgetting how unreliable a source is in one area when you trust it in another area.

8847

The Elephant in the Bath-House

Mary Eberstadt’s Weekly Standard article The Elephant in the Sacristy shines a strong light on facts that will discomfit many of the politically correct. I don’t completely agree with her analysis; as Amy Welborn argues , Ms. Eberstadt is too quick to dismiss the role of the doctrine of celibacy in creating an…

8848

Survivorship Bias

The Misconception: You should focus on the successful if you wish to become successful. The Truth: When failure becomes invisible, the difference between failure and success may also become invisib…

8849

Hou tu pranownse Inglish

There have been almost as many proposals for spelling reform as there are rewrites of Esperanto. (Tellingly, there has been precisely one success in each category-- Noah Webster and Ido-- and neither caught on universally.) Most of these proposals spend their energy fixing what isn't broken . For instance, they search…