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

Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

news.medill.northwestern.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 199 posts

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#51

Post by shagie »

Poppyfields filk version of it - Everyone's Free (to document their system) http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00281.html

> If I could offer you one tip for the future, documentation would be it. The long term benefits of a well documented system, with FAQs, RFCs, and man pages, have been proven time and again by systems administrators everywhere, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own miserable experience... I will dispense this advice now

> Enjoy and appreciate the well behaved and polite users. Oh, nevermind, by the time you figure out who the well behaved and polite users are, you'll have wasted all of your available time on the ones who are not. But believe me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of some users and recall in a way you can't grasp now, how much time and energy you wasted on those other whiners.

> ...

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#53

Post by CPLX »

lysergia wrote: post #40

Reminds me of ‘Fitter Happier’ by Radiohead. Some loose guide on how to succeed in life, although the Radiohead lyrics are more cynical. Here’s the lyrics: "Fitter Happier" Fitter, happier, more productive Comfortable (Not drinking too much) Regular exercise at the gym (Three days a week) Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries At ease Eating well (No more microwave dinners and saturated fats) A…

Noting that a typical middle class lifestyle is comparable to a pig being held in a cage for a meaningless life and eventual slaughter probably does in fact meet the full definition of cynical.

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#54

Post by glenngillen »

iso1631 wrote: post #44
Jordanpomeroy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you roam? What was the best place to be a digital nomad? How sustainable is that lifestyle?

While an EU citizen can at least roam in the EU fine, and a US citizen can roam the 50 states, seems that roaming outside of that would be exceedingly difficult and expensive to get appropiate visa (if they exist)

What makes you say that? Admittedly most of my backpacking-like travel days are long behind me, but border crossings typically aren't that difficult or expensive. EU is probably the hardest (almost certainly needed the visas before you arrived). Most of SE Asia and Africa you'd just hand over a few USD at the border, get a stamp, and keep moving.

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#55

Post by f38zf5vdt »

widdershins wrote: post #42
lysergia wrote: post #40

Reminds me of ‘Fitter Happier’ by Radiohead. Some loose guide on how to succeed in life, although the Radiohead lyrics are more cynical. Here’s the lyrics: "Fitter Happier" Fitter, happier, more productive Comfortable (Not drinking too much) Regular exercise at the gym (Three days a week) Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries At ease Eating well (No more microwave dinners and saturated fats) A…

Doesn't the final sentence suggest that the list is more than slightly cynical? To me it seems like Radiohead are sneering at this safe middle-road existence.

It is absolutely cynical. There's another song in the album about getting fed up with modern life and committing suicide (No Surprises).

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#56

Post by VyseofArcadia »

Interesting! I am the age when I should have come across this song, but I never did. Never saw the music video, never heard it on the radio, never heard anyone talk about it at school.

The advice is timeless, but I don't know that the song has aged particularly well. If you can call it that. It's less a song and more an essay read over a very 90s beat, and not 90s in a way that makes me nostalgic either.

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#57

Post by kristiandupont »

Jordanpomeroy wrote: post #30
kristiandupont wrote: post #8

The words "do something every day that scares you" had a tremendous impact on my life. After a bad breakup, I decided that those were important words and that I needed to make an effort to get out of my comfort zone. So I wrote down a long list of things that scared me, all from eating weird foods, talking to strangers to traveling to new places and starting companies, and I started deliberately doing them. That beca…

Where did you roam? What was the best place to be a digital nomad? How sustainable is that lifestyle?

I spent most of my time in Barcelona, but I was in NYC, London, Bangkok, Shenzhen and various small spots throughout Southeast Asia, mostly in Bali and Thailand. I never changed residency officially. I am Danish so I could certainly have saved a lot in taxes, but I just didn't bother.

These days there is a lot more infrastructure (like https://nomadlist.com/) which is great but I imagine also takes some of the excitement out of it. If you are able to work remotely, it's quite easy to make it work in cheap places, depending on your expectations. There is a certain type of loneliness associated with it in that you make lots of temporary connections. There were times where that got to me. On the other hand, I made many true friends that I still speak to frequently. Today I am happy to have an international network of people that always offer me a place to stay when I am in their region.

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#58

Post by presentation »

glenngillen wrote: post #54
iso1631 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While an EU citizen can at least roam in the EU fine, and a US citizen can roam the 50 states, seems that roaming outside of that would be exceedingly difficult and expensive to get appropiate visa (if they exist)

What makes you say that? Admittedly most of my backpacking-like travel days are long behind me, but border crossings typically aren't that difficult or expensive. EU is probably the hardest (almost certainly needed the visas before you arrived). Most of SE Asia and Africa you'd just hand over a few USD at the border, get a stamp, and keep moving.

Probably depends a lot on your citizenship. As an American it’s easy to get at least a 3-6 month visa basically anywhere except for embargo nations; many other countries that have visa holiday systems make 6 month stays pretty easy too. not so for my Indian friends for instance.

Re: Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

#60

Post by kcarter80 »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #56

Interesting! I am the age when I should have come across this song, but I never did. Never saw the music video, never heard it on the radio, never heard anyone talk about it at school. The advice is timeless, but I don't know that the song has aged particularly well. If you can call it that. It's less a song and more an essay read over a very 90s beat, and not 90s in a way that makes me nostalgic either.

I'm 41. I just asked 6 friends who are my contemporaries and each of them knew this song well. It was also, of course, extremely popular, as the link points out.

Can you introspect a bit about what may be unusual about you so that you were never exposed to this song?

Post reply on HN