yuan43

> I find this fascinating. The exact sequence of his writing process for the song [Eleanor Rigby] is probably irrecoverable now but I’d love to know precisely when he decided on the song’s theme of loneliness, death, and worship, and when the name ‘Eleanor Rigby’ bubbled up into his conscious mind [from a gravestone in a graveyard he and John used to walk through]. It’s almost as if his unconscious mind had been giving him prompts, first ‘Eleanor’, then ‘Rigby’ (hey, check that sign out!), like a stage magician guiding their mark towards a card while creating the illusion of a free choice.

It's not uncommon for writers to put things into their novels even they don't see. Readers and editors note what's there, and the writers can be surprised that it happened.

Sean Coyne talks about this several times on the Story Grid podcast, and it's on display in several of the episodes in which a writer's draft is examined.

Maybe the real story here is how the process of creating art taps into a part of the mind that it keeps hidden from itself, or at least doesn't expose without persuasion.

How did this article get the first word "How" through the HN filter? Why does this filter exist?

> I recently read mfiano's blog post about Common Lisp. He makes the point that the language attracts loners. ...

That article by mfiano focuses on reasons the author switched from Lisp to Julia. As for the "loners" part, mfiano says this:

> This hints at a very real problem with Common Lisp: it has a tendency to attract people that employ the 'NIH syndrome' and refuse to collaborate. There is a large overlap of software available, and there is a large selection of low-hanging fruit for new developers. This coupled with the fact that the language is small, relatively speaking, hurts the language immensely.

Contrast this with how djha (TFA) puts it:

> I feel like Lisp is custom built for high functioning, high quality, low-head-count teams. I kinda feel like most of my projects into this category.

So TFA is kind of taking liberties with mfiano's post. I might come down to whether or not you view NIH syndrome as a net positive or negative.

> If the United States adheres to these five rules, it can demonstrate to Russia that the costs and likelihood of losing are so high, the only winning move is not to play.

Depressing to see that this is the kind of crap former US military are putting out.

The situation is so far beyond these trite five rules as to be laughable if it weren't so deadly serious. This was the case even in Feb 2022. Everything the author claims the US should be doing is something Russia is doing.

There are no new insights here, just a strong undercurrent of US exceptionalism. Exactly the kind of garbage Russia is feeding to its people.

Nowhere does the author explain the consequences for Russia of leaving Ukraine. How can withdrawal be a winning move if the author doesn't even know what that move leads to?

> AUSTIN, Texas, & MENLO PARK, Calif. – September 30, 2022 – Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”), a leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses, and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp. (“Evergreen”), an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management L.P. (together with its affiliates, collectively, “Elliott”), today announced the successful completion of their previously announced transaction to acquire Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS) (“Citrix”) and combine it with TIBCO Software (“TIBCO”).

What role is Vista playing here? It's not clear why that company is necessary or even involved.

It sounds like Vista is the owner of both entities and plans to sell the combined unit at some point.

One of the listed reasons:

> Credit card companies are anti-porn. You’ve probably heard how Pornhub can’t accept credit cards anymore. Or seen the new rules from Mastercard. Whatever crypto-utopia might come in the coming decades, today if you are blocked from banks, credit card processing, and financial services, you’re blocked from the modern economy. The vast majority of Automattic’s revenue comes from people buying our services and auto-renewing on credit cards, including the ads-free browsing upgrade that Tumblr recently launched. If we lost the ability to process credit cards, it wouldn’t just threaten Tumblr, but also the 2,000+ people in 97 countries that work at Automattic across all our products.

There are different ways to be "blocked." You can be blocked because your website can't accept CC payments, or you can be blocked because you are, for example, sanctioned by the US. It's possible to be blocked in the former sense without being blocked in the latter. For example, you own a website that accepts Bitcoin payments and which does not link to your identity.

Like it or hate it, this is a use case. I bring this up because a favorite point of contention seems to be that Bitcoin has no use cases. Here's one.

If that sounds outlandish, consider how very far the Internet has come along the free speech axis, as many commenters on this thread have pointed out. Now consider how far there remains to go and what the future is likely to hold based on past trends.

Granted, one thing Bitcoin hasn't quite managed to do (yet?) is replicate automatic payments without trusted third parties.

> “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg said. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment.

The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company whose earnings potential is sinking and which offers no dividend be valued accordingly.

> ... Meta had more than 83,500 employees as of June 30, and added 5,700 new hires in the second quarter. ...

FWIW, 28 % annualized hiring growth for a company the size and age of Meta is not normal. It's a sign of mismanagement and especially loss of focus.