honzzz

If I understand correctly, the parent is talking about the original author of the library, not the person who forked it.

> there's a massive personal value to having a library used by large numbers of people.

I have no experience with this - would you kindly explain that value? I am guessing that it has something to do with personal brand (my library is popular => I am good at this, hire me) - am I on the right track? Is there more?

(edited grammar)

Sure, but I was interested about that "soul-crushing" aspect.

Are you speaking from personal experience? Care to share some details?

I wish I could somehow steer attention from this guy and this topic to how great album it was.

What compelling evidence?

I would guess it is because there was no evolutionary pressure to have joints that can sustain 80 years if there are other parts of body that only sustain 18. Maybe I am missing something but I would expect that life expectancy of various parts of body of each specie converge because of that.

> I'd happily trade a 10x higher death rate (to a high of 0.014%, mostly among people who weren't far off from dying anyways) in exchange for everyone having 2 years of having a non-miserable life.

1. I think you underestimate how much of that misery comes from the pandemic itself and not from the reaction to the pandemic. I live in a country that went back and forth between relatively strict lockdowns and almost complete opening up. Yet even during the opening up phase people were afraid it would inevitably cause another wave, many would not go to pubs or clubs, businesses were not thriving...

2. I think you might overestimate the misery, which depends on personality, details of the restrictions in a given country etc. I am sure many suffered under the restrictions and I do not want to diminish that. However, I live in a country where I could go out running or cycling and nobody would prohibit me from visiting my family or going for a walk with a friend even during the strictest lockdowns (I am actually surprised by some experiences mentioned here, like not being able to see new babies born in the family - I make a resolution to examine more carefully what people mean when they talk about "lockdowns"). And I could work from home, which greatly improved my quality of life. And I am not alone in this - we are saying with my introverted colleagues that the pandemic would be great if it was not for the illness.

For me, basically all the stress comes from the fear that my parents of my grandmother could catch it or that I will catch it and have the bad luck of some long term problems. Virtually none of the stress comes from the restrictions. Again, I don't doubt that many do suffer, I just wanted to balance your view by a counter-view.

I don't think it is contradictory - that is the point of adaptation that you expose yourself to something that is not optimal and your body learns to handle it. Think of it as artificially changing the range of conditions needed for good sleep quality by training.

> in an increasingly zero-sum world

I don't understand this part - what do you mean by that? Why would the world be increasingly zero-sum?

> the indignity of being forced to prove I'm human

Indignity, that's it! I was never able to explain to myself the visceral hate I feel when I encounter captcha. I knew it could not be explained by the little work it requires, I knew there had to be more, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Indignity, and maybe the feeling of being used.

I have to admit, When I encounter captcha, I leave that page and never come back. I stopped using Pocket where I had hundreds of articles because of that. And when I encounter captcha on an especially bad day, I spend a few minutes clicking on incorrect images in an attempt to mess up their data.

> does not necessarily mean that mixedCase has problems with emotional intelligence

Don't you think they do, though? I mean... not even recognizing the dry humor and hyperbole with which this article was written and taking it literally?

Or maybe it is me having the stroke.

I believe that part of the problem might be that people have lost "traffic reflexes" and situational awareness during lockdowns. Anecdotal evidence: as a cyclist I now encounter a lot more people suddenly stepping from the sidewalk right in front of me without looking. It feels like every week has a years worth of hairy situations when compared to pre-covid era.

It seems incorrect to use US homicide rate as an argument when talking about being "as safe as any Western Country". US is an outlier in that regard [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

I think that the majority considers the system where a few billionaires can outvote everyone else to be the bad thing we are trying to avoid.

One anecdata point: I cannot easily suppress sneezing, at least not always. Delaying it for a second, for example when I am holding a cup of hot coffee and I want to put in on a table quickly before I sneeze, is sometimes possible, but I have to admit that sometimes I cannot even do that.

It happens in Europe too.

Does it really? I am from Europe and I have lived and worked in 3 EU countries, many of my friends have experience from other countries and I have never heard anyone mention this is. Obviously, my personal experience is limited. In what country do you live if I might ask?

Could you please explain to someone who is not from the US what is the justification behind this? It seems that it is not uncommon in the US that the employer has some rights to stuff you do in your free time - to me that seems as "reasonable" as "you sold me your house so your car is also mine now". What I do in my free time is none of my employer's business, why would they have any right to any of it?

I get your irritation about Freud.

I think it is still useful to read Freud, assuming you don't take it as gospel and consider when he wrote it and how little was known at the time. In my opinion, Freud was a brilliant man. The fact that some of his ideas are so obviously false today might serve as immunization against hubris, with which some of us do not realize that many of our ideas will seem absurd in a hundred years.

I have not read the book yet - would you please explain what about that priming section you did not like? Is it something specific that Kahneman says or the whole concept of priming? If it is the later, I would like to know what you critique, because I have always considered priming something obvious that I use to explain common life experiences without questioning it.

I just want to point out that quality of life is subjective and depends on what you value. For example I, subjectively, do not want some of the things you mention, like big home with pool... and my kitchen seems big enough to me. I consider NOT having to own a car a good thing (appreciating that our public transportation seems incomparably better than what I have seen in the US) and I value 5 weeks of paid vacation, health insurance for all, free college education... stuff like that. And how are our dishwashers and fridges different that the American ones?

Europe is different than US for many reasons. In some things it might be because we failed to achieve what Americans did. In other things it's just because we prefer it that way.

I was also surprised that you are worried about sports - that is one of the last things I would worry about.

I worry that our reward systems are being hijacked. We are more and more trained to seek short dopamine bursts.

The problem is that this is short term satisfaction that creates chronic boredom in the long run. Just notice how you feel after two hours of watching "funny" videos or whatever is your poison. Don't you feel like it's not funny anymore but you keep watching anyway just to escape the creeping sense of emptiness?

Lately, I keep thinking about what Erich Fromm said about people becoming robots, although he meant it in a different context: "But given man's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become 'Golems', they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life."

After reading the closing thoughts, it seems to me that the author equates addictiveness with "world-class" product that people "love". That type of thinking scares me - hey HN crowd, how prevalent would you estimate it is between creators?

And more broadly - how many of them even think about morality of what they are trying to build? How many still believe they are creating better world while intentionally trying to build addictiveness into their products, and how many just rationalize it by something like if I don't do it, someone else will, so I might as well do it (attitude I have noticed here surprisingly often)?

To provide one anecdotal data counterpoint: I decided to try cold showers a few years ago (not Wim Hof method, just showers) and although I generaly get ill very rarely, that year I cougt something three times. It obviously does not prove anything, might have been just bad luck, but after the third time I did not have the willpower to restart the cold showers routine again.

Maybe I was doing it wrong but I do not know how - I started with just showering my legs with lukewarm water and progressed to colder water and longer time gradually, very slowly. However, it never made me feel as good as some people here descibe. Sometimes I felt slightly refreshed during the summer but more often I just felt cold and stiff and I had strong desire to return to bed to warm up but I could not do that and I had to sit in my office cold and miserable for hours.

Maybe cold showers are not for everybody?

Are card numbers from privacy.com not recognizable as prepaid cards? Why I am asking - recently I was trying to use my Revolut card to register MS Azure account but it threw an error saying something about prepaid cards not allowed. I had to use the card I have from my bank. I am wondering whether it would be like that with cards from privacy.com as well.

What is perplexing about it? Genuine curiosity - where I live those views would probably be considered mundane mainstream.

Based on what he is wearing, he is a chimney sweeper.

Any chance you remember the name of the movie that is about dwarfs living in a weird totalitarian regime trying to get some magic potion and escape to our normal-sized world? I saw it as a child and I loved it but I only remember it vaguely.

I love The Visitors - it has a great mix of fun and playfulness combined with a touch of beautiful nostalgia, anyone who has ever traveled to some distant location and had the time of their life there can relate.

Also, when you mentioned Czechoslovak children movies, it reminded me of Karel Zeman. Some of those are poetic but surprisingly dark, like Krabat - The Sorcerer's Apprentice - https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/animation/krabat-the-sorce...

Awesome, I see some of my favorite movies there. Too bad that many times there is "The movie is not available" although the page for the movie lists very specific list of subtitles - is this some geo-blocking thing? For example this one... https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/comedy/the-cremator

EDIT: After going through many movies, it seems that the majority is not available, at least not to me.