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perchard | 5 months ago | on: Ohno Type School: A (2020)

I wouldn’t expect nuanced takes on typography from HN. As a long time user the comments are entirely expected - and actually skew more positive than I would have guessed. Respectfully.

perchard | 2 years ago | on: Can electricity pylons be beautiful?

“Ian pointed out that whereas our culture openly invites us to be aware of birds and historic churches, it places no comparable emphasis on pylons, despite the fact that that they often rival, for ingenuity and beauty, many of the more established objects of our curiosity. He cited as an example Loch Awe in Scotland, a famously picturesque and romantic tourist destination dominated by the ruins of the fourteenth-century Kilchurn Castle, whose grounds are nevertheless crossed by a run of 400-kilowatt pylons linking the hydroelectric power station at Ben Cruachan with the Glasgow suburbs. On postcards of the loch and its castle, however, the electricity lines are almost invariably airbrushed out, so that the scenery pretends to a fictitious innocence, the bare hills and unsullied lake being symptomatic of what Ian (having grown increasingly garrulous under the influence of brandy) condemned as the garden-gnome mentality of sentimental Luddites.”

— The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work: t/c (Vintage International) by Alain De Botton https://a.co/1CjMq1u

perchard | 2 years ago | on: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

there is a theory along these lines. something like: the defense against the unconscious is so strong in autism that the person becomes rigid and shut off. the defense against the unconscious is so weak in schizophrenia that the person is overwhelmed with phenomena. but both have something to do with intense unconscious objects.

perchard | 5 years ago | on: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)

Just my interpretation (of the Pascal quote), beginning with the full quote.

> When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.[139][#201908302349]

This quote is often summarized roughly as: "all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." (i.e. the title of this post). Taken out of context, this would seem to suggest (to me) a belief that if we could simply meditate and avoid external distractions (a commission in the army, conversation, games, Pascal suggests), we might find happiness.

However, a reading of the full passage reveals that "on further consideration" he thinks the reason for this is that if we were to sit with our thoughts, the "natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition" would drive us to despair.

He thinks that someone who truly understands the human condition would do everything they could to avoid sitting alone with their thoughts ("there is nothing they leave undone in seeking turmoil") . We seek diversion because if we didn't have any distraction, we would end up dwelling on the miserable human condition (selfish, pre-occupied with self-gratification, sensitive to the opinion of others, judgmental, etc. - basically, 'sinful').

In the end, he suggests that we should look for happiness externally, in God, which he then talks about a lot.

[#201908302349]: Blaise Pascal (1958): _Pascal's Pensées_, New York: E.P. Dutton.

perchard | 5 years ago | on: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

this is awesome! i see the 'zettelkasten link fixer' in the markdown format importer ("Fixes [[UID]] links to full [[UID File Name]].") - any plans/thoughts on just supporting [[UID]]? this seems less brittle to me in that you won't break all of your backlinks if you change the (non-ID) part of the filename.
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