Is it just me or has HN as a whole become... more Christian lately? A lot more defensive comments here than I would've expected, and I've seen in other threads people actually openly recommending religion/Christianity specifically as something that solved their problems. What's the deal here? I would've thought this would be a relatively atheist/agnostic community, if not one that eschews discussion of religion entirely.
I don't know about HN in particular, but I do feel like religions have significantly boosted their online proselytizing in the last 5-10 years.
My suspicions:
* The normie barrier has continued to lower, so more traditional and progress-reluctant religious people are now connected to social media.
* Some sects may be intentionally targeting online communities, just like they target IRL communities for converts. Beliefs that don't require a devotion of forcing the belief itself upon others will naturally fade into the background. Beliefs that don't claim to solve your problems will also fade into the background.
* Social media algorithms prefer religious posts. Religious posts often invoke some sort of emotional response. Religions are some of the oldest memes after all.
All of this is just a gut feeling based on the religious material I've been exposed to on the web. I think it's fairly consistent with how religions have spread throughout history. Secularism is squashed unless you specifically fight for it, which itself may require a kind of religious fervor.
This is possibly the natural result of any human community growing large enough. There will be those who ask unanswerable questions, and there will be those who have the answers to those questions. Those who need order, and those who need to order.
Capital-A atheism is a dead fad. It was a few years of people loudly dunking on something that that was safe to dunk on. The overall culture found them grating and insufferable, even to other atheists. Over time we swung to the point where you see more discussions like these.
>What's the deal here?
Without making a jab at the bay area culture bubble, I dunno what to tell you.
I don't need religion to be bad, that was Capital-A atheism's thing. I just need it to leave me alone. And it does.
Some people are religious, and a lot of those who are would recommend it. When it comes to defending religion, as an atheist I still think bad takes are bad takes even if they're against the religion I left.
Are you proposing that now is a safer time to express oneself online than any other time? The idea that my online speech could make me the target of offline violence feels realer than ever now that AI can do the legwork of correlating my identities.
Engineering (as distinct from something like math or science) is more about applying, rather than discovering, knowledge. Some folks just treat the models and equations as mantras handed down by some all-knowing being (the professor). The equation shall be recited in the homework, at length in the project, one final time in the exam, and then we shall release it to the universe and free our minds of it.
Not sure, but the less technical a story, the more brigading and gaslighting you get in the comments it seems. It is a bit like when there is something about apple, the entire comment section is people complaining about the fanboys in the comments. Who are not there. I exaggerate a bit of course, but in general it is the same with any 'divisive' topics such as AI, crypto etc. Technical discussion is minimal.
Either it's bots, or we are all just tired and frustrated. I know I am and it doesn't help to stay civil..
Unrelated to the video, but I recommend the DeArrow extension for turning clickbaity titles like this one into something actually informative about the video's content.
DeArrow title for this one is "the game 'rollerdrome', and how take-two interactive laid off everybody that made it".
Hylics by Mason Lindroth is the only other thing I'd ever seen do the "physical art" thing in a videogame. I love it a lot, so now curious about the other games you've mentioned! Thanks for the recs.
With respect to Doug TenNapel’s contribution to the field, Armikrog is only of interest I think to die-hard nostalgia fans. Maybe one day it will be (or already has been?) remastered into an even better game, but when I played it on release it was more like a mise en place of a great meal than a great meal itself.
The Dream Machine is all out body horror excellence from an indie studio in the truest sense. The fact that they saw the project through to the end, in real time, over the course of several years and while communicating the whole time with their Kickstarter backers is just as impressive as the game itself. Pure brilliance.
I've found seltzer makes me sleepy or fatigued for some reason. Everyone I tell this to looks at me like I'm nuts but I swear it's real. I think it has something to do with the brain's expectation of calories and the subsequent lack.
I get sleepy if I have too many vitamins/minerals (eg: a whole PowerBar or entire Orgain drink), so maybe it's the minerals, perhaps Magnesium?
[Magnesium helps my wife sleep better, but she can only take it at night or it makes her sleepy. I take half in the morning, and I think it helps because we're likely not getting enough in our mineral-depleted foods.]
I can imagine that. If I drink a lot of diet soda, I get a bit wired but also tired in a weird way. It's like my body expects some sugar to fuel the caffeine's stimulation.
Avoid weed if you don't already. Might seem out of left field but a programmer friend of mine is absolutely convinced their memory is shot because of long covid and it's like, well, maybe, and the trauma of the pandemic certainly put a dent in everyone's cognitive ability, but also the dabs can't be helping.
When I was a kid, if I couldn't be on the computer for whatever reason I'd occupy myself with a pack of cards. I'd play solitaire (Klondike) over and over. I would vary the draw count and see how that affected the game. I'd sort the cards beforehand and see if that made it any easier or harder to win. I'd try to find the optimal order the cards would have to be in before dealing for the game to be won in the least number of steps. Ultimately I figured Solitaire was just a roundabout way of sorting a deck of cards and started messing with other sorting methods. I still, every time I see a pack of cards, feel that urge to just sort and sort and sort. It wasn't even "fun", I was just so desperate for mental stimulation.
Just link that article. I hate this story recycling thing some sites do.