THIS IS WATER! by David Foster Wallace

What people said

cnick · 2023-03 · Strong recommendation

In macro photography, taking an extreme closeup of something like an insect necessarily has a very, very thin depth of field due to its high magnification. To get the entire insect in focus, you use a technique called focus stacking where the focus changes by tiny fractions of a millimeter on each exposure. You can literally take 100 to 200 of pictures for one subject. If I do 10 of these in a day, I've reached one percent of OPs forever photo volume. [LINK] Time lapse photography is taking a photo every X seconds/minutes/days. If you want the video to look smooth, you need 24-30 shots per second, so a 30 second video has 720 exposures. So again, failed three time lapse attempts and I'm at 1% of OPs forever exposure count. There's an awful lot of judgment in your comment, and the issue certainly seems like a lack of understanding on your part, rather than OP's "psychological issue" or "lying." I'll refrain from my own judgements, and suggest you watch David Foster Wallace's "This is Water," and when you're done, please watch it again. [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

latexr · 2024-07 · Recommendation

Respectfully, if you see the comment as critique, that’s on you. It could just as easily be described as “unsolicited advice” or “unsolicited tips”. The communicator does have responsibility on how their message comes across, thought not all of it. It’s on the receiver to also make an effort to understand what was meant and not take unnecessary offence. The comment reads pretty much neutral, apart from a post scriptum which is explicitly about the author’s preference. It’s up to you to inject the writer’s feelings as either “this code sucks, here’s how you do it” or “congratulations on making something cool, here are a few suggestions”. My experience is that life is much better if you take the latter approach. Default to empathy. Consider listening to “This is Water” from David From Wallace. [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

hacknewslogin · 2023-02 · Recommendation

Ok but what if the result of contemplating this is overwhelming existential dread? This comment kind of reduces life to a give and take philosophy. One where everything you do is to accomplish a task. I'm not sure that has anything to do with Buddhism. It's my understanding that part of Buddhism is the removal of the self, and appreciating the moment. I agree that focusing on the end result can detract from appreciating being in the moment, but this sounds sounds more like self-deception. I prefer the Japanese concept that, and I'm paraphrasing here, "every action has a purpose." Putting value on the actions themselves adds an appreciation for the moment you are in, and the process you are doing. It then becomes a sign of respect for you to do everything in your life to the best of your ability. There's a whole philosophy about this, but the name of it escapes me. A few things I've found that are related: "The was of the peaceful warrior" - Book This is water - [VIDEO] Sorry if this is a little rambly, I have ADHD and my adderoll is doing its thing.

Read the original HN comment ↗