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Show HN: Not Depressing News

notdepressing.com

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Re: Show HN: Not Depressing News

#81

Post by SkyMarshal »

ramigb wrote: post #54

Putting "not" to negate a negative isn't always a great idea. "Not Depressing" still has the word depressing, versus "uplifting",pleasant or even hopeful these words will always be much better.

It’s kind of annoying that this is the top comment. “Not + [Negative Term]” has a distinctly different logical meaning than “[Positve Term]”. It means “everything except [Negative Term], while [Positive Term] means [Only Positive Term] unless otherwise qualified.

The default hypothesis should be that OP deliberately intended the more inclusive “Not + [Negative]”, not that that this was an accidental misnomer.

Re: Show HN: Not Depressing News

#84

Post by animal531 »

OskarS wrote: post #59
ramigb wrote: post #54

Putting "not" to negate a negative isn't always a great idea. "Not Depressing" still has the word depressing, versus "uplifting",pleasant or even hopeful these words will always be much better.

It's a perfectly valid rhetorical device. It's called "litotes", and it often conveys a distinct meaning compared to "collapsing" the negatives into a single positive. It's been used liberally by figures such as Homer, Jonathan Swift, Robert Frost, Fredrick Douglass and Shakespeare (as well as pretty much every great writer throughout history). For instance, saying "it's not without issues" usually means something di…

You're not wrong, but I think the OP was rather looking at the psychology of the words, rather than their implication.

Re: Show HN: Not Depressing News

#86

Post by vntok »

ahje wrote: post #48
armatav wrote: post #2

Hey HN, I'm looking for some feedback on NDN, it's a little MVP that will eventually give you only the not-depressing news from all over the web - it's seeing quite a bit of retention, and I'd like to know what you think! I'd like to turn it into a product, but it's pretty hard to see where to go.

The idea seems nice, but: > You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.

Here you go: https://www.enable-javascript.com/

Re: Show HN: Not Depressing News

#87

Post by ryanmercer »

"not derpessing"

1st yeah ok

2nd 'Remote Canadian town has been in isolation for a year'

3rd 'a bunch of people have diabetes and alzheimers'

4th 'some dude was unemployed and in a closet'

5th 'some dog lost a leg'

6th 'dude burns LGBTQ books'

7th 'A Christian was sentenced to death'

Yeah man... I'm not seeing this 'not depressin'g part.

Re: Show HN: Not Depressing News

#88

Post by wodow »

Aeolun wrote: post #82

There is indeed ‘not’ depressing news on the page. In fact, there isn’t any news at all. Is this a practical joke? Or is the website broken?

In the latest Firefox, the console informs me

> The resource at “https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/new.json?sort=new?” was blocked because content blocking is enabled.

This is due to Firefox's built-in content blocking / tracking protection [1], not a plugin.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection

Re: Show HN: Not Depressing News

#89

Post by shsll »

Aeolun wrote: post #82

There is indeed ‘not’ depressing news on the page. In fact, there isn’t any news at all. Is this a practical joke? Or is the website broken?

Got the website to load headlines after I disabled 'content blocking' in latest Firefox.

Re: Show HN: Not Depressing News

#90

Post by OskarS »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #72
OskarS wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a perfectly valid rhetorical device. It's called "litotes", and it often conveys a distinct meaning compared to "collapsing" the negatives into a single positive. It's been used liberally by figures such as Homer, Jonathan Swift, Robert Frost, Fredrick Douglass and Shakespeare (as well as pretty much every great writer throughout history). For instance, saying "it's not without issues" usually means something di…

> For instance, saying "it's not without issues" usually means something different from "it has issues". Interesting that you go on to say that "it's not without issues" is milder than "it has issues". To me it's the opposite, like a short form of "Is it without issues? No way!" I guess it depends on context and, particularly, how much sarcasm can be detected in the tone of voice (if said out loud). > In this particu…

Yeah, the change of meaning is often very subtle, and people can sometimes disagree on the direction of the change.

Usually though, the device is used to express a kind of understatement. Compare these statements:

He's not bad looking

He's good looking

Which one would you say is stronger? I think most people would say that the affirmative "He's good looking" is stronger than the first version. Another example:

It's not without flaws

It's flawed

If you say "not without flaws", you're usually saying something like "it's good despite its flaws", so that version understates the case compared to the other one.

Again, though: my point was mostly that the meanings are distinct and that language is not mathematics. You can't just replace two minus signs with a positive one and expect the to get the same thing on the other side. Nor should you follow any simple "rule" like that blindly.

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