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Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

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Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#461

Post by biztos »

dolajide wrote: post #231

Thanks capturing this feeling about the early internet and hello from Nigeria. I am in the process of setting up my farm. Starting with 12 hectares with the plan to increase to 100 in the next 3 years. It’s totally different from tech but interesting. On the tech side, I am focused on leveling up my fundamental skills so, I finally summoned up the will to begin going through my Elements of computing systems book (on…

Do you come from a farming background?

And do you live at the farm?

I ask because I have a couple of tiny farms in my life, but can't live near the farms. Curious what other people are doing with "tech and farm" combinations.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#463

Post by jakobdabo »

Films from all around the world. For the past couple of years, I enjoy watching 3-4 films a week in average.

Much like literature and art, quality cinema gradually makes you a better person, and has a profound effect on acquiring good taste, and having a love affair with beauty - you see something, and you immediately know if it's special.

If you don't know where to start, open Wikipedia pages for past film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, etc.), and e.g. select randomly a decade, then a year, then a film from one of the winning positions. In time, you will develop your own taste and opinion about the filmmakers, and the actors, and the countries of origin, and the themes, and the genres, etc.

French, Italian, Swedish, Taiwanese, Japanese, American, or so many other places - there are great filmmakers nearly everywhere around the world, and you can enjoy it.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#464

Post by seibelj »

ripe wrote: post #312
seibelj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your world view. I give ~40% of my income to a decrepit government where I have no say how it’s spent. My city pays $25,000 USD per public school student and the results have not only been atrocious for decades but are declining year after year. Government jobs require college credentials… colleges whose accreditation are approved by the government, in some circular fashion of reciprocal approval. Our medi…

I see you are frustrated you can’t convince others that government is the root of all problems. Have you considered that you might be wrong? Serious problems require serious efforts to understand and solve. Calling people names like “statists”, you sound like a toddler following some ideological talking points. Use the Internet and library to expand your perspective. Grow up.

Statist is a term for someone who thinks the state can solve society’s problems. There is never a solution that doesn’t involve the government and never a situation where giving more taxes (and it’s always the rich who must pay - never the masses!) is the wrong answer.

In my view an increasing number of people are agreeing with me. You won’t see it in the mainstream media because they are also statists whose worldview is wrong and intolerant. You are witnessing them scream and cry and whine that democracy is failing, the climate is failing and the world is ending, basically the apocalypse is upon us and you need to be scared and afraid 24/7. Whereas the people I know don’t give a shit and don’t believe those lies. It’s like an alternate planet where hyper-online people actually think the world is ending and all the normal people stopped believing those lies.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#465

Post by esperent »

djmips wrote: post #382
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have worded this with kind concern but you chose to open by insulting me instead. I only moved here from the other side of the bay. I’ve lived in this area my whole life. Somehow all my friends in Oakland do just fine. If I get robbed, so be it, but I’m not going to hide in my car. I’ve been a cyclist my whole life and I would never ride without a helmet. This isn’t the Netherlands. My bike goes 30 MPH and…

Hey, they were trying to help. ;-) Clearly just a culture clash.

> culture clash

You'll probably experience less of these if you stop calling people "naive foreigners".

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#466

Post by plonk »

pdimitar wrote: post #447
plonk wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not move to a tech hub and start a challenging job? If you're technically good, I don't think your current lack of money would block you. You sound like you'd have a lot of motivation if you got out of your current local minimum. Making a big life change tends to do that.

I am really not sure. I am not looking for more responsibility and more pressure on my psyche right now. I am very capable and have proven it in numerous projects but I honestly need to dial down the responsibility... Not sure how one breaks this loop though.

Well I've been stuck like that a few times (still very young though), and changing cities/states/countries has always been the best way to get out of it.

There are probably IC positions that don't cause Amazon-style stress while being technically interesting. Just a thought.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#467

Post by seibelj »

bobnamob wrote: post #33
seibelj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your world view. I give ~40% of my income to a decrepit government where I have no say how it’s spent. My city pays $25,000 USD per public school student and the results have not only been atrocious for decades but are declining year after year. Government jobs require college credentials… colleges whose accreditation are approved by the government, in some circular fashion of reciprocal approval. Our medi…

How much have you travelled? From my experiences there are plenty of nations/states that make higher taxation work for the people.

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#468

Post by drakonka »

atchoo wrote: post #455
eslaught wrote: post #51

I spent my morning working on a science fiction novel. (I won't post more here, but you can find it through my profile if you're interested.) Are there any other writers in the house? On a completely unrelated topic, one of my earliest "internet" memories was wandering into open source communities and trying to figure out this CVS thing and connecting it to GNU Savannah so that I could download some code. Those were…

Ooh! This could be a glimmer of a passion for me. Can you recommend any beginner guides or tips to get started? I've dabbled but get tied in knots overthinking the phrasing of a single sentence. I'd love to just get into a flow state. I've tried some tools like Final Draft (yuck) and Scrivener (meh). However Fountain.io plugin for vscode felt fantastic. The restricted format of a screenplay was really helpful to me a…

Not OP, but as someone who also sometimes get stuck in my writing as well I thought I'd reply.

Personally I use Scrivener for drafting and Vellum for formatting, but the tools usually don't matter that much for what you are describing. They won't really help with overthinking and getting tied up in phrasing.

What helps me a lot when I sense myself getting into that getting-stuck phase where I just overthink everything is doing sprints. They're common in writing communities on Discord, but you can do them on your own as well. Just set a 15 minute timer (or whatever time works best) and write random flow-of-consciousness crap. I was surprised to find that usually the output isn't even as bad as I expect and is very usable (with some heavy editing). Also, remember that the first words you put down aren't really meant to be the final version of the thing you publish: they're just a rough sketch to be shaped later.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#469

Post by martopix »

jakobdabo wrote: post #463

Films from all around the world. For the past couple of years, I enjoy watching 3-4 films a week in average. Much like literature and art, quality cinema gradually makes you a better person, and has a profound effect on acquiring good taste, and having a love affair with beauty - you see something, and you immediately know if it's special. If you don't know where to start, open Wikipedia pages for past film festivals…

Many bad things can be said about contemporary society but one of the things I love the most about the 21st century is how we're starting to appreciate cultural things in a global sense. I also want to read more about postcolonial literature, history of all the parts of the world we didn't study in school, and so on. It's starting to get ridiculous how in school we study "history" just about Europe, and "literature" 90% of our language.

About cinema specifically, mainstream Hollywood cinema has become largely repetitive, big franchises, sequels, etc etc, feels culturally sterile to me. It's so refreshing to see that, say, Korean cinema is becoming so popular.

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