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

I’ve had the same supper for 10 years

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 780 posts

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

#671

Post by watermelon59 »

nly wrote: post #400
Jtsummers wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My happiest period with relation to work was similar, laborious but satisfying because I got something done every day and didn't have to think about it after work. When you're writing software, it's hard to turn off the switch (I think especially if you find software development itself to be an interesting subject) when you leave the office. It's hard to not think about the design, the thing you'll do tomorrow, conti…

Working for a big software company (thousands of software engineers under one roof) will make that off switch work again. You'll leave the office and instantly not care or think about anything you do until you cross the threshold the next morning. This is the positive side (along with the salary) of being a tiny cog with no power to influence broader design decisions.

That’s hasn’t been my experience at all.

Worked at Microsoft and now I’m at one of the big AAA game companies (working on their online services side, not games directly) and both were/are very stressful. High expectations of commitment and personal investment in what I do.

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

#672

Post by ben_w »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #569
tirant wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It saddens me to read such nihilistic comments here. Specially based on such clichés. Under which metric is the planet complete ruined? and why do you think it's overpopulated? what's then the maximum number of people that should live on this planet according to you, and based on what? Under lots of metrics, today's planet is a much healthier and prosperous place to live for humankind than it was 100 or even 50 years…

> Under which metric is the planet complete ruined? Nature is being destroyed, we polluted our planet enough that it affected the climate. The air we breathe is filled with ultrafine particles. The water is full of microplastics. Sure, we are able to afford more things, and we have made advances in the medical field. Our expected lifespan has gone up, but are those last few decades worth it ? Spending your last years…

“Nature” is us, too. It’s constantly changing, but there’s as much of it as there ever was, because our nature is to build. Indeed, so are the ants whose ant hills that you criticise cities for resembling.

The improvements to duration of lifespan have also come with improvements to quality of life.

My father’s final year of life started with a cancer diagnosis, and while it was an extremely long way from “fun”, tech gave him mobility, and he’d only lived that long because of half a lifetime of treatment for disease-induced epilepsy.

My mother had a few years of Alzheimer’s — still essentially untreatable, and yet tech made it easy to keep her entertained, and GPS tracking made it easier for us to look after her without her getting lost due to a moment of intention on our parts.

Our good years involve less and easier work, in better conditions, than 1972, much better than 1921, and insanely better than 1871. When did we start mandatory schooling? When did we end actual slavery? Conscription? When was polio vaccination introduced, when was smallpox eliminated, when was anaesthetic easily available for childbirth? So yes, life is much better than it used to be.

Of course, I actually like living in Berlin, metro area population 61% of what you think the entire plant should have.

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

#673

Post by raffraffraff »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #507
raffraffraff wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who have children do indeed leave a lot more behind. Yet almost nobody can name their great great grandparents, know what they looked like, or in fact, know anything about them. Sure, "you're their legacy", but they never got to know you and vice versa.

I think this is a more recent phenomenon of the modern’s. One can look to other ancient societies that still exist in small pockets, and their storytelling is orders of magnitude better than ours. Especially when it involves passing down family history.

You also have to realise that only partial family history can ever be truly handed down, particularly when there are no official records. Look back 6 generations in your family and there are 64 direct ancestors (if you're lucky and there was no inbreeding). There's no way all of those names and personalities get preserved. I went looking for family history in parish records and thought that I found a goldmine. Turns out there are about 5 people with the same name in the relatively sparsely populated town that my great great great grandfather was born in. Maybe some were cousins. Maybe one of them was a first-born son who died in childhood, so the traditional first-born name was recycled. It sounds cold hearted, but that shit happened.

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

#674

Post by cm2012 »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #589
telesilla wrote: post #266

"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)…

A successful businessman on vacation was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The businessman complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman proudly replied, “Every morning, I go out in my boat for 30 minutes to fish. I’m the best fisherman in the…

The reason to accumulate wealth is for security. The fisherman's current income could disappear any day. He could be injured, the area could be overfished, a glut of foreign fish could reduce prices, etc.

This is just the story of the ant and the grasshopper in reverse.

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

#675

Post by dkersten »

monoideism wrote: post #665
dkersten wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a strong proponent for listening to your gut, but that’s very different from a bird landing on your home predicting death, especially when the correlation is weak (sometime later that year). It’s easy to attribute something to something else if there’s an indeterminate timeframe in between. Remember that people see what they want to see in noise too. Clouds often look like something tangible, that doesn’t mean it…

It doesn't have to be supernatural. We know, for example, that dogs can smell various diseases. Also, someone pointed out that as people age and become ill, they tend to do less outside the house, and shy animals will start to come out and stay closer. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Blanket ridicule of such phenomena is just as irrational as are many super…

Sure. But in this particular case, it sounds like there was a fairly longish period of time between seeing the "omen" and the supposed effect. Yes, the shy animals coming out was given as a reasonable explanation.

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

#676

Post by PapaSpaceDelta »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #617
jimnotgym wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m not sure about 1-5 but I was actually worried about his succession plan when I read about his stroke.

The fact that he went into hospital and came back out to a functioning farm suggests that he has a good relationship with his neighbouring farmers. My guess would be that he's planned for exactly what will happen to his livestock and farm when he passes.

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

#677

Post by robotmay »

forsakenkraken wrote: post #662
robotmay wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think it's less the mines themselves and more having guaranteed employment, and the camaraderie of working together in such a way. There aren't many professions that employ entire towns. You are right though, in that the attitude has changed - I think those who were alive at the time of the mine closures likely see it differently from those who have never known it. In that aspect it has changed since I first m…

That sounds about right. My wifes side is a mining family and several of the men died young, not from accidents, but from lung issues so that potentially colours it a bit. On the tech side of things, I do see a lot of people who want 'better' jobs and there's often a lot of frustration in start-up folks I know that the Senydd just want call center or manufacturing jobs.

Yeah it's a bit of a shame that there's not more investment into tech startups here. Bristol seems to attract much more of that scene. Swansea seems to have more than Cardiff, possibly because it's slightly further from Bristol. I think there's pretty good support for starting your own small business here, but there's a bit of a gap after that which I imagine restricts the opportunities somewhat.

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

#678

Post by michaelmrose »

thisCtx wrote: post #658
generalizations wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it seems possible, but the motivation for acting that way seems missing.

Same motive you have when smelling something rotten; embedded biological response.

Why would it have evolved a response to communicate to a predator species that one of the predators living in a dwelling is going to die in a fashion that would expose itself to a large chance of becoming prey.

Here is a far simpler explanation. Our brains are evolved to find patterns even when they aren't there. Look how weak the correlation is. His family simply discarded all the times the correlation failed to apply and remembered the one time the bird cried not on the day his grandfather died but merely that same year.

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

#679

Post by zwayhowder »

haihaibye wrote: post #557
zwayhowder wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also use different tools and methods size is relative. My favourite anecdote for visiting Welsh friends is to tell them about Anna Creek Station, a cattle farm in South Australia that is slightly larger than Wales.

I have no doubt Welsh land can support many more sheep per acre, but to make minimum wage (£17k) off 71 sheep you need to make £240 profit per sheep per year. At £100 per fat lamb, you still haven't made minimum wage even if all 71 have twins and you have zero costs. Maybe they sell some wool, too. In reality you have bills, sheep die, and you need to keep some lambs for breeding stock

Absolutely, and I suspect there are other things to consider as well, he certainly doesn't need minimum wage if he owns the land and lives on a diet that - based on my last trip to a Tesco in the north of England - would require significantly less than minimum wage to subsist on.

I'm not saying it's a life I want, but unlike an Australian or American farmer he doesn't need to drive for several hours to get to the nearest hospital/major shopping centre/his mate's farm. His sister's carers are paid for presumably by the UK version of the NDIS which ours was modeled on with all the good bits taken out because they were too expensive. Unlike an American farmer he won't spend the rest of his life paying for the ambulance and hospital stay from his stroke because it was covered by the public system.

It sounds to me like he is contributing to society as best he can, and as someone who has hiked through farms in the UK, and gazed at them from the train for hours on end, I think he has done more to improve the general condition of England than many other people can claim.

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

#680

Post by michaelmrose »

kebman wrote: 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.…

How many people died in that town in your lifetime where no bird perched on a roof. How many birds perched on roofs that nobody noticed where nobody died.
Post reply on HN