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Comment by ithkuil | Hacker News Reader

A few minutes ago I picked up a dusty CD at random, after possibly multiple years of not listening to my CD collection. It was a REM album.

Then I open HN and I see this title. Serendipity

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Similar here, long time R.E.M. listener/collector who had just listened to some last week, then surprisingly heard Stand played quietly at a bar on the weekend (even misidentified it as Nirvana at first, it was really barely hearable, the kind of happy bar where people are louder than music, not the reverse) and now "Then I open HN and I see this title".

I do start to wonder if there's some sub-threshold attention wave going on.

You're one of the main characters. Make good choices, us NPCs are counting on you! :)

That's a "Coincidence". "Serendipity" refers to learning new unexpected knowledge while searching for some other knowledge. pushes glasses back up nose, makes nerd snort

If we’re going down that route, here’s an actual definition:

serendipity /ˌsɛrənˈdɪpɪti/ noun

- the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Seems like parent’s use is Ok.

TIL it comes from:

"1754: coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale in which the heroes ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’."

Btw thanks for picking nits. New things can be learned no matter what

In the modern sense. I'm a bit of a stickler. Kinda like how many feel about Morrisette's use of Irony.

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