Live data from Hacker News

I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

theguardian.com

521–530 of 780 posts

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#521
post #477
post #399

Ah, the simple life... My grandfather would take me along and we'd go to the neighbour to fetch eggs. He had a plastic bucket that he put them in with some old newspapers scraps in the bottom. I heard that before the war they didn't even need money. He'd simply bring a bucket of milk, and he'd get a bucket of eggs in return. But it was of course a lot simpler to bring money. It was far cheaper than in the store too.…

That was a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing it.

Both your story and the article seem quite controversial, and I'm not entirely sure why. For your story, I've noticed there us a certain sort of atheist that becomes offended of even a ghost story is told with too much sincerity. It reminds me of conservative Christians denouncing harry Potter for supporting witchcraft. So that might be it. But there is also the urban vs rural thing. People can't seem to accept that some people like living differently than they choose to.

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#522
post #162
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like starvation rations…

I agree the food itself is pretty bleak. But this resonates with me because I have a fond memory of a rushed meal after a surf with my father. We were on a camping trip so all we had in the car was two small cans of tuna and some multigrain bread. After getting out of the water and feeling completely exhausted, there was something satisfying about slapping the contents of the can onto a slice of bread and biting into…

Hunger is the best ingredient.

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#523
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one must imagine Sisyphus happy

Some people do enjoy grass mowing.

Taking an hour once/week over the summer to do the yard is actually very relaxing. Put a podcast on or music and shut out the world for awhile. When done, it's a great physical reward of a completed job.

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#524
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? This is an old belief told from one generation to another. And in the instance of my family, it certainly turned out to be true. Later that summer, during an especially hot and bright night (it's midnight sun where I come from because it's above the Arctic Circle) I saw that grouse on the tractor road further down the fields of the farm. It silhouetted in the midnight sun. It surprised me to see it st…

Humans are also great at seeing patterns in noise and we like to attribute various things to things we see. So its also likely that you remember these coincidences because of your loved ones deaths and don't remember the many other times these animals were around because nothing happened to make them memorable. Also, "later that year" is a very long period of time for something to happen.

I like the word describing this tendency:

apophenia : the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)

I learned the word on account of http://apophenia.info which is open source software used for the book "Modeling With Data" by Ben Klemens. His "21st Century C" is more commonly encountered.

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s. He’s a 72 year old Batchelor who’s once stepped foot outside a Welsh valley. If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don’t choose it.

> If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don’t choose it. Why not? By definition it would leave you happy, what does it matter?

You seem to make of happiness some sort of end goal of life. It is not, and should not be.

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#526
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons that this is quite beautiful is that it portrays the ideal of having just enough, living simply, and being grateful. There is something also stoic about the character described. I imagine the farmer you're telling us about doesn't want attention, material possessions, or any kind of excess at all. This person is happy to build something slowly over time, in small increments. They're happy with what…

This man exemplifies the saying A rich man is not he who has a lot, but he who needs little.

I don't know this guy, but I know the area a bit and it is not so different to where I live about 70 miles away...

>A rich man...who needs little

This guy is rich in several ways. A farm in Wales is still a pretty valuable asset, especially in a valley rather than on a hill. Owning a farm gives you a lot of financial independence, which can take a lot of stress away!

It was a lovely article, but...An old country man told me that the three rarest things were

1) a dead donkey 2) a red headed parson 3) a contented farmer

Here are the tests I would apply before I would agree he had reached some zen state of contentedness

1) how would he feel if a parcel of land came up for sale next to his. Would he itch to buy it. Most farmers would move heaven and earth.

2) How would he feel about me walking through his fields to share what he has got?

3) Is his stocking rate excessive?

4) If someone told him that by managing his flock differently he could damage the ground less and improve water quality in the river, would he take that advice?

5) If there was an awkward corner of his land next to my house that was not useful to him, but it was perfect for me, would he sell it to me at a fair price?

6) Why is there no succession plan. When he dies his sister will move into a home and the farm will be liquidated, the flock of sheep sold, the land broken up, the house sold off...because he didn't let anyone else in.

I'm afraid I have met enough like him to remain cynical.

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#527
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s. He’s a 72 year old Batchelor who’s once stepped foot outside a Welsh valley. If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don’t choose it.

*I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words app…

Oh man, this is great. Thanks for sharing. Here's Bryan Cranston's reading of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#529

"This valley is cut in the shape of my heart". I've known farmers like him, bachelors who are mild mannered and love their lives and the extended family that comes with living an entire life in one valley. He maybe goes to Sunday service for socialization and the local pub to watch the game, and as long as his sheep are healthy and the sky does what it promises (because he knows the day before always if it will rain)…

Ah, legacy. It always makes me happy to listen to Carl Sagan's words on his text "The Pale Blue Dot":

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

Re: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to this realization in university - I love software, I love writing programs and solving problems, but I really don't love office work or the idea of sitting at a desk all day. I dropped out of a software engineering program to work on a factory floor, a decision I haven't regret once in five years (even if my parents would consider me a failure). The hours are good, the wage is good, benefits are good, I get…

Good to read this. I'm a software developer working on my own projects, and to still have some income in the first years I decided to work as a garbage man. It's so wonderful. Meeting different kinds of people all the time, doing physical work (more flirting with women during my workday haha), and when I get home I'm physically tired but mentally prepared to write another software module. Perfect fit, this mix of men…

> Indeed, for the outside world I'm also a deadbeat (although they never say out loud).

I don't know what the slang term "deadbeat" means in your culture, but in mine, it would not be applied to someone because they worked as a garbage man.

Post reply on HN