261–270 of 351 posts
The irony of praising print and rhetoricizing reading on a website that is nearly unreadable due to intrusive visual ads is kind of a sign that collapse is an era behind us.
The message is fair and valid, and seemingly true, but cripes, that's some thick reading unless you are literally a scholar. Dial it back. Talk about never use 5 words when an opaque and obscure reference will do.
The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological obliteration. When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiologi…
ps: now that I think about it, it started around the ajax era.. as soon as a webpage could change parts in the blink of an eye your perception of the web is altered IMO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the ultra wealthy have different priorities to what I would call important. The yachts, deregulation, tacit (or not) support for torture, illegal wars, pollution, private jets, ostentatious displays of conspicuous and pointless wealth, etc, leave that in no doubt. Were you trying to say that maybe all that destruction in the pursuit of insatiable greed could be 'good' somehow? Like Zorg's little speech [0] about…
> It's astounding how people can have all the facts and teachers in the world, while dodging genuine understanding of everything most important. You said they are dodging 'genuine understanding'. I am saying you aren't the final word on what 'genuine understanding of everything most important' is. In other words - you are using lots of words to say 'I want others to do more of the stuff I want them to do and less of…
And anyone who calls out vapid conspicuous consumption, or the greedy exploitation of the planet for personal gain, that's not obviously perverse to you; it's just one person's opinion and easily disregarded - because they're not the final word on genuine understanding?
Well, pick your prophet; pick your genius; they all say the same thing:
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."
- Jesus.
"By his craving for riches the foolish man slays himself, as if he were slaying others."
- Buddha
"The mutual rivalry for piling up of worldly things diverts you, until you visit the graves."
- The Qur'an
"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have."
- Socrates
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor."
- Seneca
"The more you have, the more you want. The more you have, the less you are."
- Tolstoy
"A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness."
- Einstein
"Wealth is like seawater: the more you drink, the thirstier you become."
- Schopenhauer
"A small terrace by the mountain stream, living at ease, free from the burdens of the world — this is better than the glory of an emperor."
- Zhuangzi
Etc, etc, etc.
Some people, really, truly, have a genuine understanding of this concept. And many, probably most incredibly wealthy people, with every possible opportunity, can't grasp it for the life of them. That's not really "my opinion"; it's the opinion of anyone worth listening to.
The article reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes 'Academia here I come' (Reddit reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/1300k80/ac...)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why presume that? "Gauze" makes sense.
I read the sentence a couple of times to try to figure out what the phrase “ephemeral gauze” was intended to convey but failed to make sense of it. So, I figured that “gaze” may have been the intended word, i.e., readers pay particular attention to text while they’re in the process of reading it (gaze) but that it’s quickly forgotten when they move on to the next unrelated thing they see on the Internet (ephemerality…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading a book is not really passive. Especially if it's a good book. You have to constantly imagine the layouts and the connections the book is trying to draw. For me, after years of Internet, getting back to books made me appreciate my younger self because books need active imagination and follow-through in the brain. I was able to do that effortlessly when I was a child. In fact, if you read all the HN comments th…
I don't use imagination when I read. The connections are instinctual, and the layouts are often irrelevant (which I can say because I've never attempted to consider them and don't ever find myself missing out on the story). I'd like to say I'm astounded when I hear other people visit other worlds when they read, but really that whole idea is so foreign to me, it might as well be a complete lie. I have no thread in wh…
The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological obliteration. When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiologi…
My 2 cents: 1- 'The Department of Education’s most recent survey, released in June, was sensational: it found that text comprehension skills of 13-year-olds had declined an average of four points since the Covid-affected school year of 2019-2020, and more alarmingly that the average drop was seven points compared with the 2012 figure. The results for the worst-performing students fell below the reading skill level re…
The COVID school closures and remote learning years will prove to be the biggest negative educational/developmental impact on a generation that we've seen in a long time.