JasonFruit

I'm with you on paragraphs one and three — there is a minimum government below which, if it didn't exist, it would arise spontaneously. Paragraph two, well, I'd like to see this country where a reasonably undistorted private sector provides healthcare. Certainly no such thing exists in the United States, where every subsector of the healthcare and insurance industries is regulated beyond any sort of fair competition.

> The problem with this view is that government is the way that we - as a society - make collective decisions about the rules and norms under which we want to live, as well as the way we build programs to serve the public good and achieve things that we want to achieve together.

There's nothing in what you wrote there that can't be and isn't done in the private spheres. Making "collective decisions about the rules and norms under which we want to live"? That's part of any culture, and often happens by social processes in which government is irrelevant. And charitable organizations — or "programs to serve the public good" — have a long and successful history of outdoing government at actually helping people in need. Finally, business and social organizations "achieve things that we want to achieve together" in a way that doesn't involve government coercion.

You suggest we can "s/government/civilization/g", but I'd say you have it backwards, if you value people working together willingly to accomplish great things for each other.

Why should we care whether Foone's mad at HN? Posting to a medium you don't own and expecting to be able to control who responds and how never really works out. If you want control over who sees your content and how they can respond, you have to use a medium you control, and I don't see why Foone is special in that regard.

It didn't read like a Twitter 37/355 thread, but it didn't sound a bit old-fashioned to me — unless reasonably formal English is hopelessly out-of-date now.

This is a really nice example: toy enough that it's easy to understand and you don't get bogged down explaining the problem, but meaty enough that it shows some of the things you have to think about in real-world projects. I hope lots of people see this.

I have a mental hangup about literate programming that is like how I feel about practicing hard musical passages with a metronome: it works so well at getting me over the hump into competence that I fear overusing it and wearing out the mental effect. Do magic spells get used up over time?

> I think this is normal for most people who ever write something in markdown

I recognize that I am not normal and this doesn't contradict your assumption, but I use Emacs' fill command to hard-wrap long lines at ~80 characters when I'm writing Markdown. In fact, it's so habitual for me that it causes me problems when writing Gemtext. I keep meaning to disable filling in gemini-mode.

For the same reason they shouldn't have firearms. People shouldn't let their kids be unsupervised with even a very useful item where the risk is high and they haven't yet developed the self-control to use it wisely. Eventually you have to let go, but that transition time is critical.

The fact that international confusion over billions doesn't arise more often points out how bad people are at thinking about large numbers. We mostly don't notice the difference between a billion and a trillion.

I'd go with, "Someone I don't know came into this room and took everything," or even, "Someone came into this room. I don't know them, but they took everything." I'm not against a neuter pronoun where it's justified, but there was no need for "themselves" here, and it was worse than several alternatives.

Honestly, while I might say such a sentence, I wouldn't allow myself to write it.

I believe if we're honest, we've all done stupid things we should have avoided. I remember a group of about 3000 emails that went out to insurance agents saying that policy #123456789 for Someone Funky was going to be cancelled by underwriting. I also remember very quickly figuring out how to automate Outlook's email recall feature.

We've all made big dumb mistakes. Recover and learn.

I don't recall it being that difficult to achieve. Probably the difference is in early teaching and expectations: if you learn to read music as an aid to remembering pieces that are perfected over a long time, sight-reading would be slow to develop, but if you learn it as a way to be able to play new music frequently, it will come more quickly. Probably like the difference between learning a foreign language by studying grammar and working translation exercises as opposed to on-the-fly immersion — you develop different strengths.

Hy is a false promise. It looks like a lisp; depending on your idea of a Platonic lisp, it may be a lisp --- but it preserves Python semantics, including its odd scoping rules, and it doesn't feel like writing actual lisp. Scheme or Common Lisp simply feel more coherent, having semantics that make sense with the language.

Moleskine is expensive for what it is: high price, name with reputation, medium-quality paper and binding. If you're happy with the quality, you can get the same for less money by going with whatever store-brand equivalent you can find, in my opinion.

I think it's possible to get so excited about the tool you're using that you forget its purpose. I have to watch that myself --- and I believe the writer here is teetering on that edge. I try to hold myself to a) having a separate notebook for each purpose for which I'm using one, b) having it marked appropriately for its use, and c) having it be handsome. (I fear I've displayed my failure to restrain myself.)

This has been talked about for decades, and it's always the same story: expose your child to music, or have them learn to play an instrument, because it'll make them smarter![0] Why can't we for once say that if you expose your child to music, and give them an opportunity to learn an instrument, they'll be more able to enjoy and understand music, and have a skill that can give them joy through their entire life? Not everything has to be about intelligence and success; some things can just be about pleasure and joy.

[0] I know I'm somewhat mischaracterizing this article, but that's what the mainstream press makes of it.

I started the "obstreperously" thing in this thread, so I guess I'm honor-bound to explain. You've exactly pegged what I meant to communicate: loud, obnoxious, over-the-top obvious, like ostentatious, but no chance of being taken as non-annoying.

The parent post even says, "I'm at the point in my life," which doesn't sound like they're saying it's for everyone.

Further, are you sure that "entertains me when I'm bored" represents a benefit? I think boredom serves a useful purpose, and quelling it with empty activity might defeat that purpose.

The point is that some people want it despite its obvious flaws, and now they have it.

I'm more bothered when "Luddite" is used as a slur against people who refuse certain technologies in a principled way. That is, when it's used in a historically-knowledgeable way, but still deployed as an insult.

This particular kind of novelty is kind of appealing to people who want to be conspicuously, obstreperously Luddite, while still carrying a mobile phone. I admit I kind of want one of these novel bits of tech just to show off how Luddite I am.

I love the quotes from Khrushchev, who was clearly not naive. A kitchen race to match the space race!

That's why I chose the sitting in a meadow comparison: it's an experience you could also choose to interpret as musical even though it is not organized sound. An aside: I think an awareness of and exposure to the sounds of nature is beneficial to a composer, even if I don't think it's intrinsically musical.

I could have worded that better: to make its point about sounds and, if you please, music, it depends on nonmusical cultural expectations that surround musical performance. Its adherence to the outward trappings of musical performance in the 20th century prompt the audience to perceive what occurs during it as part of a "performance". Apart from that, there's nothing more musical about it than sitting alone in a meadow — which I think was essentially Cage's point.

That I find myself using the word "point" so often here emphasizes, to me, that Cage was engaging in philosophy rather than musical composition.

I agree with everything you wrote there.

Wrong? I don't see it as a moral issue. I see it as an abandonment of music, but not a moral wrong.

I think there's a value distinction to be drawn between boundary explorations that expand the art form and those that simply depart from any definition of it separate from the other arts. That leaves a broad scope for innovation: the composers of the ars subtilior, Carlo Gesualdo, Hector Berlioz, Debussy and Satie, Harry Partch, Antheil and Edgard Varese, and the progression of serialism from Schoenberg through Webern to Boulez — all of them explored and expanded the boundaries of music, but you can still experience their works as music, even if some have argued that it's bad music. It all can be, and has been, accepted as music.

But some of Cage's works (of those which he presented as musical) depart from musical material and musical experience to play with the nonmusical culture that surrounds music and musicians, or, abandoning that, the idea of performance itself. Obviously 4'33", with its formalities of opening and closing a piano, is an example of the former, but his lesser-known 0'00" runs simply, "In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action." In that case, the performer is as justified in a disciplined soiling of their pants as any musical act. I refuse to countenance such wanking. (Cage was by no means alone in this, but he's probably the most famous.)

I'm glad to see that even academic composers seem to have retreated from this dissolution.

I believe we're agreeing, except in our value judgments. You say:

> Exploring the boundaries of what constitutes music or art is interesting to me.

Interesting, yes, as a concept, and perhaps even as a cultural event, but we certainly agree that it's a different kind of experience than a musical performance.

> Wouldn't it be interesting to visit a place where you know that people hundreds of years ago have listened not only to the same piece of music but to the same performance as you are experiencing right now. That listenership spans centuries?

I honestly have no interest in visiting such a place to hear a note, or even the change from one note to another. And recognize that what interests you in such a visit is not musical interest, but conceptual interest.

Does anyone love this as music, rather than as an idea? Of composers, there are two schools: those who try to express something interesting musically, and those who produce interesting concepts. Some of Cage's work, especially, takes the second approach to extremes, where it cannot even be experienced as music. I don't think any of that sort of music will survive long, because the concept is no longer clever after it loses its novelty.

I'm not sure the difference is as obvious as you imply. Care to elaborate?

Why ought we to ban the others? That you're okay banning certain activities is no justification for stopping those who want to do them.