Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Animal Is Tired

robinhobb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 439 posts

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#361

Post by InitialLastName »

astrange wrote: post #360
InitialLastName wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least Robert Jordan could write dialogue and inter-personal relationships that don't stink of middle school.

RJ thought of himself as a "Southern gentleman" and so he had critical levels of boomer gender politics in all his dialogue, essentially 1000 pages of "I hate my wife" jokes and braid tugging. Also, not sure how many people noticed but more than a few plot points and things like Compulsion weaves in his books are clearly just his sexual fetishes. But yes, there was a lot of depth and the women were always strong char…

I should note I'm not defending Robert Jordan's pseudo-neckbeard views on women, just his ability to write humans.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#362

Post by astrange »

BirdieNZ wrote: post #134
rubicon33 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried prozac. Unfortunately, it made my tiredness even worse almost immediately. Doctor said this would go away after I increased dosage, but I couldn't stick with it long enough to see this benefit. I've considered trying again but, it's a hard pill to swallow when the solution takes weeks to work, and in the meantime, you're suffering even more. If I had to be honest, I question whether I am scientifically "…

> My interests are strong, and fleeting. Life seems to reward people who can hold focus on boring tasks, for long periods of time, even decades. I was probably a better hunter than I am a programmer. Sounds like ADHD.

Programming can be good for ADHD though, since it has strong short feedback loops.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#363

Post by hoseja »

dgfitz wrote: post #325
selykg wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad you will never see the end of The King Killer Chronicles. It has been something like 10 years since the last book. Rothfuss is in the exact same situation as Martin for me. I won't buy any books of his until the series is complete. You may not like Sanderson's writing, but the man publishes books. He will get my money for anything he writes because I know I'm going to enjoy it (personally, I really enjoy his…

I absolutely inhaled the first two books by Rothfuss, couldn't put 'em down, this was last year. Then I read up on when the last book would come out, and saw it had been over 10 years between the 2nd book coming out and present day. Then I started reading about Patrick Rothfuss. I don't think I'll ever read the 3rd book if he ever does actually write it. Yes write, all indications are he hasn't written a page. I have…

The books are absolutely jam-packed with detail, foreshadowing, reference and masterful writing (have you noticed Felurian speaks in Iambic pentameter?). I think he has just written himself into a combinatorial explosion of a corner.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#364

Post by olyjohn »

piva00 wrote: post #238
tidenly wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right - I think we get a lot of in-built satisfaction and pleasure from being around or raising kids, specifically to offset just how annoying and difficult the task of raising them is.

I definitely have this built-in feeling quite broken. I left the door open to perhaps consider forming a family at some point since my first girlfriend, over the years it's only got more clear that I don't enjoy kids, at all. I don't take enjoyment from being around kids, playing with kids or any kind of interaction with them, it makes me feel broken but I simply can't. Not even with my niece, my sisters get a lot of…

You're not broken. People keep asking me why my girlfriend and I don't have kids... I don't understand that question to be honest. They all act like I should have some desire to raise a kid. I ask them, why they don't learn to weld or do woodworking (usually I ask them something they have never considered)? Sometimes there are just things that people do that I don't want to. There's not actually a reason for me to not have kids. I have nothing against it, I just don't ever sit here during the day and think "boy, my life would sure be better with a baby." If you do, that's fine, I'm not trying to rag on anybody. But just fuckin' leave me alone about it.

People should never have kids 'just because'. If you want to raise a family, you should do it deliberately and have a reason why you WANT to have kids. Otherwise you end up being a resentful asshole and treat your kids like garbage. I know it's the best thing in the world for a lot of people... but for a lot of people, let's be honest, it's not. Not wanting kids doesn't make you an asshole, it makes you human with different goals and desires from other people.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#365

Post by ssully »

SunlightEdge wrote: post #265
spamalot159 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brandon Sanderson is my go to recommendation for fantasy nowadays. Mistborn is a great place to start but The Way of Kings is the real meat and potatoes. He also links all these books together in the same universe and it's fun to notice the connections.

At the risk of being downvoted I don't find Brandon Sanderson a very good fantasy writer. For me, The way of kings started well (even if the characters were all pretty 2-D) in book one. Interesting plot with it mixing ww1/dune computer game themes in a fantasy setting. But by book 3 it was an incredible chore to get through and I stopped after about 10% in. I even got bored reading the plot summary of the third book.…

I was gifted a copy of Mistborn by Sanderson and I've been having trouble reading. The first handful of chapters dragged for me, so I put it down in favor or something else. I think you point about flat characters is what did it for me; I believe good characters can carry a mediocre story, but a story has to be really exceptional to carry a narrative with uninteresting characters.

I am hoping to give it another shot this summer, but I can't exactly say I am looking forward to it.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#366

Post by sp3000 »

Snoozus wrote: post #234
maxqin1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good food Everyone thinks they eat good food. Food is the number one physical measurable input into our bodies. So it boggles my mind that nutrition isn't the most studied subject, alongside maybe the study of living a fulfilling life. Changing my eating habits has changed my life for the better. It took kidney stones (not recommended) to get me here. But even my most obese and unhealthy friends like to proudly tel…

> Food is the number one physical measurable input into our bodies. This is the single reason why everyone focusses on food. It is not the biggest lever you have on your health / wellbeing. It is the easiest variable to measure and to play with. From the research it is quite clear that apart from gross errors what you eat does not really matter to any outcome. Quantity matters, but eating more can be compensated by e…

The food we eat has an immense impact on how we feel, and certainly has an impact on mental health issues such depression, attention, emotional regulation, etc. Every single thing you eat is the substrates from which all of your cells are made. The old paradigm looked at food as just units of energy, but that is not the new paradigm. What we eat, how we move, our sleep quality, how we manage stress - these things have enormous implications on pretty much every single health metric you can imagine.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-y...

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#367

Post by cosmie »

autarch wrote: post #33

Robin Hobb is one of my favorite authors. Her masterwork is a series of series (four trilogies and a quadrology) known as The Realm of the Elderlings. She published the first trilogy, which begins with Assassin's Apprentice, starting in 1995. I saw the books when they first came out and I assumed from the title and the cover that it would be a cheesy fantasy by the numbers, so I never bought it. But I kept hearing ab…

I concur with all of this!

The way she uses perception, perspective, and cognitive biases are, as you say, shatteringly powerful. Particularly with her stream-of-consciousness writing style, where you so naturally get sucked into the character's mental framework. The final trilogy in particular that brings it all together, but even within the individual trilogies she's constantly doing it.

I started reading her books back when I was still in school, and they had a fundamental impact on my life. It fundamentally altered the way I see things, and the career path I eventually took. I couldn't even articulate exactly how, until I stumbled upon the concept of systems thinking[1] a few years ago and realized that was what she had given me an awareness of. Which then led me to these[2][3], which pretty much describe how I had started seeing and approaching things after reading Robin Hobb's books.

Not sure if it would have been as impactful if I hadn't read them at such an impressionable age, but I'm forever grateful that I did. And for that, Robin Hobb will always reign supreme on my favorite author list.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory#Systems_thinkin...

[2] http://donellameadows.org/archives/dancing-with-systems/

[3] http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to...

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#368

Post by leafmeal »

lupire wrote: post #156
okareaman wrote: post #56

I did the best I could with my body except now that I am 63 I have one regret: I wish I had more sex when I was able. I mean, I had sex but I could have had a lot more. It's seems dumb now to deny this basic pleasure for "reasons"

Hey you missed out on some STD risk too.

It looks like you might be being downvoted, but this is super valid. Herpes and HPV are extremely common among those who are sexually active. It's virtually impossible to avoid either and have lots of sex with multiple partners.

But obviously one can have lots of sex with a single monogamous partner though without any new risk of STDs.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#369

Post by burnished »

astrange wrote: post #356
8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine once joked about hacker news that "if you mention any author, within three comments someone will recommend a Sanderson book." I appreciated the joke without taking it too literally. But here we are.

That happens on /r/books too. They're also obsessed with Stephen King, so I've just assumed Sanderson is also an airport novel writer.

I don't know what 'airport novel writer' means, but Sanderson comes up with some really inventive worlds and the magic in his fantasy setting has a high degree of internal consistency that really resonates with some people. His writing is also approachable in the sense that it isn't full of references to other books that are required reading in order to understand a passage. If you've got a working knowledge of the english language and maybe a dictionary you can approach the story on its own merits.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#370

Post by DougN7 »

rubicon33 wrote: post #118
DougN7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually sounds quite a bit like depression. Some inexpensive meds can make a huge difference. I know from experience.

I have tried prozac. Unfortunately, it made my tiredness even worse almost immediately. Doctor said this would go away after I increased dosage, but I couldn't stick with it long enough to see this benefit. I've considered trying again but, it's a hard pill to swallow when the solution takes weeks to work, and in the meantime, you're suffering even more. If I had to be honest, I question whether I am scientifically "…

I had to try three or four before one helped, so my advice is not to give up too soon. Welbutrin ended up being a solution for me.
Post reply on HN