The message overall doesn’t seem especially controversial. I am personally disappointed on what seems to be a de-emphasizing of healthful plant based sources of protein such as beans and legumes, although nuts do seem to be noted more prominently.
If the message is “eat plenty of protein and fiber” beans and legumes are a great food that has both.
This is fun to read, but from my personal perspective it all seems quite depressing. About half way through this list of stuff I start to think existentially: would I be happy if my life was constructed like the author’s? I like much of the same sort of stuff after all. But at some point I got bored with reading yet another cool random book or fiddling with an interpreter for a little toy language.
I wonder, does the author really find deep life satisfaction in all this? Presumably the answer is yes, but that doesn’t match my intuition which intrigues me somewhat. Is the satisfaction gained, at least in part, from the performance of making this sort of list and getting external approval from HN, conference audiences, etc? Is the production of this list and the stated desire to speak at conferences a statement that all the journaled activity is not enough, that it cannot be done privately? That if done privately, anonymously, it really is just not that great a way to live your life?
I am happy that I don’t live alone diving so deep into various hobbies that I ultimately start hitting the firmament underneath. What my life would look like had I not gotten married and had children is not so hard to imagine when I read these sorts of blogs, and I smugly think I am better off.
That’s a lot of words to pass judgment on someone you’ve never met and know nothing about. The strawman that you’ve created doesn’t resemble my life at all, but you go on feeling smug about being better than the construct in your head. Whatever helps you to sleep at night I guess…
Some people literally just can't let themselves believe others enjoying their own (different) lives at their own pace.
As if every alternative road has to be imagined as a less satisfying road to validate their own chosen path.
As if the diversity and multiplication of "search paths" through "reality space" is somehow sad or worse or less moral or less virtuous.
Which is absurd of course.
As for me, sometimes I take bad paths just for fun because I'm more curious than cautious.
"This is probably terrible, let's check it out."
And boy is it fun for those of use who like to explore the edges, and I like to imagine that all those taking more traveled paths are also enjoying themselves and the life they have!
That guy was denigrating somebody who did nothing more than share a list of stuff they thought was cool this year. He came at @fogus (the author) with, essentially, “I’d come across all that cool stuff too if I didn’t have my much better life of wife and kids, I bet he’s existentially unfulfilled.”
Reflective or not, it seems really personal and unfair to swing at a stranger like that. For all he knows, @fogus has the same number of partners and kids as he does, or is just as happy with whatever way their life is organized. I don’t think it’s fair to come at @fogus as “insecure” for reacting to derogatory assumptions.
Maybe everyone else here knows stuff I don’t about @fogus’ life, but I just read somebody being generous enough to share their internal thinking in public and, in exchange, getting shit on for no reason.
And as to gp—I agree the intention seems thoughtful and self-reflective; thank you for sharing those sentiments. I’m glad you’ve found happiness and fulfillment, and I think your point would stand just as strong without swinging at a stranger.
This could also be an investment in future happiness. Part of the point of journaling and documenting is to later revisit and unlocking memories one might have not accessed in some time. This is part of the reason Spotify Wrapped and similar "recaps" are enjoyable. People enjoy seeing what they were like. In many ways we are the product of things we do (whether that be consuming or creating) and exploring those things at a future date is to be in conversation with ourselves.
Things like this are also a way of expressing and sharing gratitude, which is a cathartic exercise to engage in periodically. Putting into words "these are things I enjoyed" is worthwhile, in my experience, and sharing it is a small extra step. Additionally, sharing it can be a gift to the future. I can't tell you how much I appreciate effort my parents took to document parts of my childhood (vacations, accomplishments, daily life, etc.) and I know other children feel the same. It's the kind of window to the past that is only open through efforts like this.
> Part of the point of journaling and documenting is to later revisit and unlocking memories one might have not accessed in some time. This is part of the reason Spotify Wrapped and similar "recaps" are enjoyable.
Wow. I hate that. I was doing diary when I was like 10 years old and when I was actually reading that after few weeks it was terrible. Pure cringe and whinings. With music it is not that visible but there are still few bands I cannot stand anymore, and I was litnening to them extensively few years back, like Neurosis.
I switch from journaling to writing poetry at night maybe 9 years ago. I'll go through phases where I write no poems and phases where I'll write 10-15 poems at night, I rarely revise and I rarely revisit. I've written probably 10k poems and they're all just in a log somewhere.
I personally think poetry is at its best as a medium for writing and feeling and not consuming or sharing. I think everyone should write poetry and only a small number should probably share it, I certainly don't like being surprised by a poetry reading.
Journaling and poetry is what our future selves stand on and not really for your future self to look back on, it's a meditation where you let your internal self flow out instead of getting stuck in loops or living an unexamined life, it helps give shape to the internal nebulous.
I personally prefer poetry over journaling, it's simultaneously terrible poetry and my best, highest utility writing.
Presumably, outside of accidental pregnancy, people who would be unhappy with children don't have them and people who would be happy with children do have them. It's not really that surprising if people who choose a particular life path tend to be happy with it.
What a bizarre comment. It’s not clear if you are upset about you not being able to dig deep into these subjects or what your deal is. The post is about things this guy thought were interesting this year. Why the hostility?
> I wonder, does the author really find deep life satisfaction in all this?
I have no way of knowing (unless they comment yes/no here). If they do, good for them! But also, I don't think that's the claim in the article, it's literally called The best things and stuff in 2025, not The essential meaning of my life in 2025.
I like when people explore deep interests and share them. Especially, someone who has been doing it for 15 years, consistently. A pre-AI window of humanity. This stuff is more important now, than it ever was.
Thank you for sharing with us how you are happy that you have a wife and kids.
The post is brilliant, interesting, and deeply performative. It can be all those things, and more. It feels like being shown a display case at your friend's private library ("Did you read them all?" "Oh, these are just for this week" — Umberto Eco used this reply when folks asked him about his 50k books). Obscure references, namedropping, the right doses of self-deprecation, the footnotes (gosh, the footnotes!)
Nobody writes like this just for themselves. It's for the show. It's their mansion of words and it's there to wow bystanders. Mind you, I'm not condemning, just merely stating why the post somewhat irks me. However, I respect the intellectual depth of the author; I might even have a beer with them (though it couldn't be a standard lager, I guess). The Internet would be a better place if it'd be full of content like this post.
Edit: I'm commenting on the post, not on the author. I don't know them. I'd love to.
Using "performative" as a pejorative is dismissive. I like to read and I like to write. These are my hobbies and as a result posts like this come out. I will not apologize for finding certain topics exciting and being excited by a desire to share my excitement with the world. You say that the "Internet would be a better place if it'd be full of content like this post." I agree, and so I share.
Apologies: "performative" was a poor word choice and I can no longer edit the comment. I didn't mean to suggest the enthusiasm isn't genuine. What I was trying to say (clumsily) is that the post is clearly crafted with care for how it lands, which isn't a bad thing.
It strikes me as a little disappointing the way commenters seem to think they know you, and seem to respond to your thoughtful work by picking at you personally.
From the root comment that speculates about your existential happiness (he chose a partner and kids instead, and is happier that way than whatever he assumes your life is like!), to the gp comment that passes judgment on your intentions in writing at all.
I’m not really sure what to make of that, but that kind of behavior is the reason I keep my writing to myself (and specific people I email directly) and never share it. I don’t have the patience to deal with the uninvited judgment, and I worry that I’d respond to the unjustified demands by internalizing them.
My life is richer as a result of you being able and willing to deal with all this, and sharing what stimulated you this year. If I didn’t like it, I’d go read something else and politely abstain from judgment. As it happens, I liked it very much, and I did not go read something else. Thank you.
Thank you for that, thank you for not letting various ancillary grumps dissuade you, and a healthy and stimulating and prosperous new year to you!
The comments are so often people just telling on themselves, it's really wild to see. I'm glad people still create in spite of this instead of letting misanthropic "tastemakers" get their way, the creators are literally increasing the amount of meaning in the world and that is valuable.
> AI on the other hand has the potential to put literally millions of individuals out of work. At a minimum, it is already augmenting the value of highly-skilled intellectual
This has been true since, say, 1955.
> This is the final capitalism cheat code. A worker who does not sleep or take time off.
That’s the hope that is driving the current AI Bubble. It has neither ever been true nor will be true with the current state of the art in AI. This realization is what is deflating the bubble.
The article is on Tom's Hardware. But the project is by The Serial Port on YouTube. Tons of great videos exploring networking, ISPs, and old systems on that channel.
The answer seems to be given indirectly: they offered him interview prep, fast tracked his early career stages, and paid him a ton of money. No deep philosophical torment, they offered the kid a really good job.
apparently the other option, as seen in the comments, is that the government bulldoze the houses on that same street to build a highly dense row of flophouses
like I said elsewhere, just move where you can afford. wherever that is, it's probably a few decades away from being some future generation's dream home
The other option would be more like, incumbent Palo Alto single family homeowners can sell their homes at a huge premium to developers who want to build multi-family homes there to satisfy the obvious demand for more housing.
I know I risk getting down voted to oblivion, but I truly do not understand this sentiment. There are plenty of places I cannot afford to live, so I live somewhere I can afford. Every time I hear about a "housing crisis" all I see are people demanding government mandated development in some fancy place (Manhattan! San Francisco!) that is out of touch price wise for almost every human being on Earth.
This idea that people are demanding Palo Alto or some other high end desirable community to build them a place to live makes no sense. I understand some community they can afford like Fresno or somewhere may be less desirable, i.e. fewer millionaires as your neighbors, but if that's what you can afford then that's where you go, right?
If someone wants to explain why a high end and highly sought after community needs to use the power of the government to force development for anybody at all please do let me know. Explain it like I am five. Also include in your answer why just living somewhere affordable is no longer an option, seeing as that is what seemingly everyone else so far in human history has done. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that Palo Alto itself was just some undesirable hayfields. Every place you don't want to live is just a few decades away from being someone else's coveted dream home.
I dislike people all bunching up into cities (we have plenty of free space), but consider that there are many jobs in places like SF, even low-paying ones, that the richer residents do want filled. You're not getting a barista to commute 2 hours because the only alternative is living with 6 roommates. It's not going to happen. So, do you still want your coffee?
Where? SF and Manhattan are surrounded by water on 3 sides. Seattle has water on 2 sides. Other areas: LA, Boston, Miami, Portland, Denver, Chicago, have similar geographic limitations.
If you were to flatten cities out (see Atlanta), jobs will still concentrate downtown. If jobs concentrate in one area, home prices in that area will also elevate (downtown, buckhead, etc).
> You're not getting a barista to commute 2 hours because the only alternative is living with 6 roommates
Personally, I wish I had 6 roommates. People aren't getting married in their 20s, so if they aren't living with their wife/husband, why shouldn't they want to live with friends?
> Where? SF and Manhattan are surrounded by water on 3 sides. Seattle has water on 2 sides. Other areas: LA, Boston, Miami, Portland, Denver, Chicago, have similar geographic limitations.
All those places you listed are the cities with high cost of living and many people. "Where" is outside those cities--somewhere else. America is mostly empty space, even excluding parks, national forests, etc.!
> Personally, I wish I had 6 roommates. People aren't getting married in their 20s, so if they aren't living with their wife/husband, why shouldn't they want to live with friends?
It's fine if you do, but I feel like most people do not, and I do not. Being friends and being roommates can often be two very different experiences.
Are you talking about how certain industries are each concentrated to a small number of locations? That's for good reason. Suppose you were a software engineer, and every five or ten years you had to move across the country for your next job, because almost every single company is in a different city? Suppose you were running a software company, and it took every hire four months to start work because of the move?
The unfortunate truth is that Palo Alto is in the epicenter of one of the biggest providers of jobs and income. As much as many would prefer to have that epicenter relocated to somewhere more deserving given how little the area cares to develop beyond a dreary suburban money vacuum, network effects prevents it
The government doesn't need to build any housing. They just need to stop preventing people from building housing. All of the obstacles to building housing come from the government. Take them away and the problem will solve itself.
I would like folks I hire, folks I work with, etc, to not be forced to live an hours commute by car in order to do business with me. I would like jobs and lives to be possible to be co-located. As part of that, I'd love to do things like demolish the single-family home on my property and pay, with my own money, to turn that into a let's say 6-to-8 unit apartment/condo building.
However, I cannot do that. Due to zoning, I can turn this house into at most 2 houses. Unfortunate. If I could secure the money and funding, I'd love to build more housing via the land I own.
Notice, I haven't mentioned the government at all other than to say I am being held back from building housing. That's what folks talk about.
This is not to say I don't support government operated social housing. But I'd love to START with just making dense housing legal.
> demanding Palo Alto or some other high end desirable community to build them a place to live
That's not what's happening. They're asking to be allowed to build. Y'know, like pay a developer to build them a house.
But no, I guess it's totally fair that the people who live there already just happened to be born at the right time and place to get to take advantage of living in a desirable area, and everyone else can just pound sand.
As a SF resident (haven't lived down near Palo Alto in years), the housing crisis is what's responsible for homelessness and for the high cost of everything (not just housing) here. If I could wave a magic wand and 50k new housing units appeared in desirable neighborhoods within the city limits, I'd do it in an instant. Life would be so much better not just for the people who want to live here, but for the people who already live here. (And yes, I say this as a SF homeowner who might stand to have a reduced home value.)
But NIMBYs love the whole "I got mine, fuck you" shtick, even if ultimately it's against their and their neighbors' own interests.
> in some fancy place (Manhattan! San Francisco!) that is out of touch price wise for almost every human being on Earth.
You're just talking in circles. The reason these places are out of touch price wise for so many people is because of the anti-housing policies in place in these cities.
> I seriously doubt anyone living in an RV has a plot of land in Palo Alto that they are forbidden to develop.
Sigh, I didn't mean that literally. Of course what I actually meant was: if housing policy allows for building more housing, with less friction, and less unnecessary cost, developers will naturally build more, and faster, because there's demand, and then people won't have to live in RVs, because there will be housing units available than they can afford.
> Is it just boiled down to the sentiment that you want to "stick to the rich!" by forcing the government to bulldoze their communities?
Wow, not what I said, and not what I think. If you're going to continue to take the most uncharitable interpretations of what I say, I don't really think there's much point in continuing to participate in this discussion.
There's plenty of land in all these places. No need to bulldoze anything. And not sure why you keep bringing up "the government". The government won't be doing anything except making it easier and more affordable to build housing.
You can easily see what the down stream effects of these housing issues are with how many ski towns have been struggling. Exceedingly high property value with low housing availability means it's incredibly hard to field workers for the shit you usually take for granted. The end result is that nobody can afford anything, people start leaving and existing property gets bought up for use as rentals or AirBnB and everything sucks.
>why a high end and highly sought after community needs to use the power of the government to force development for anybody at all please do let me know.
Why should they be able to use the power of government to force everyone to not develop please do let me know.
Palo Alto is filled with rambleshack little 60's starter homes. It's fucking preposterous they're a walking commute to the HQs of some of the largest employers in the region, some of the largest companies on the planet in history, and the houses near by are basically the same size and style of the ones in the Midwestern suburb I grew up in, but with less land and pissier neighbors! And because its lacking in density, every fucking road is a horrible shithole loud stroad, so don't even give me that bullshit "its so natural and pretty", it's an ugly strip mall. The land isn't expensive because it's nice, it's because of where it is, and the insane, overreaching rules that keep the built environment exactly the way it was 50 years ago, that makes it expensive.
The entire Bay has a natural growth boundary. If it hadn't been unnaturally ossified in amber, it'd be a wonderful, confederated metropolis of taller multi-unit, lots of 3+ flats, multi-use, even plenty of SFHs, and transit to link it all together. Instead, it's a ponzi scheme for the rich and the lucky who got there first, who are starving the state of voters for the 2030 census, the middle class schmucks clogging the roads in their car, and all the poor who can't afford to live there, but can't afford to leave, so they pitch a tent in a park to get out of the rain and get their face plastered on Fox News. It's short-sighted, selfish, and fucking stupid. Absolutely brain-dead land-use policy all around.
> Also include in your answer why just living somewhere affordable is no longer an option, seeing as that is what seemingly everyone else so far in human history has done. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that Palo Alto itself was just some undesirable hayfields. Every place you don't want to live is just a few decades away from being someone else's coveted dream home.
Until the '50s nowhere had zoning laws, that's the big difference. Not to mention all the other ways to make housing illegal by stealth, like building code and electrical code and plumbing code requirements that make it illegal to work on anything yourself. It is now functionally illegal to build anything in cities (occasionally a developer who pays a big enough brib^H^H campaign contribution to the mayor's reelec^H^H an unaffiliated PAC supporting candidates that align with their interests gets to build a couple of buildings); if you're willing to build in an empty hayfield then sure, you can build a handful of houses for people who don't need jobs until there are enough people living there that they vote to incorporate and make building illegal. It's now functionally impossible to obtain a house near where the jobs are unless you are a boomer who got one back when it wasn't illegal, or are descended from one, or otherwise have generational wealth.
The people who built when that was a small town growing into a bigger town have pulled the ladder up behind them; that's new, and happening everywhere, and unfair. Especially because the whole scam only works because existing homes are grandfathered in. If you made the existing homeowners play by the same rules they're imposing on everyone else, and tore down any house where the guy who did the wiring back in 1955 couldn't prove that they had the required 4 years of college or what have you, things would get sorted out pretty quick.
Your entire comment is basically an asinine way of talking around the fact that employers want people to go to work in places that they can't actually afford to live or must otherwise waste vast portions of their lives and pocketbooks commuting to work. Perhaps I'd be more sympathetic if employers were taxed on their employees' commute distance and time, or had to pay overtime rates for employees commutes, even for salaried workers, or something, but as it stands people don't "feel like they must live in Manhattan." Instead, they feel like they have to work for whatever company that's got good vibes, aligns with their career (because network effects are very real), and locates their office or coworking space in SF or Manhattan, and then don't want to spend all their salary on rent or commute 2 hours each way.
How dare the poors desire to live somewhere that commuting to their job isn't a multiple hour affair. They should know their place (which is far out of sight unless they're given the honor of preparing an overpriced coffee for their betters).
>Explain it like I am five. Also include in your answer why just living somewhere affordable is no longer an option
OK well, I was hoping to get something done this morning since I woke at 5, but I will provide an edge case.
Sometimes people are living in a high end community, but something bad happens to them, and when the bad thing happens to them the community has programs in place to help them. You might think that the community having programs in place to help them is good because that's what communities should do but it has a hidden bad side called lock-in, because getting the program to help you often takes a lot of time and effort and then when you have it you depend on it and you can't really leave.
But sometimes when bad things happen it means more bad things happen! The first bad thing causes other bad things to happen!
Like if you have a child born that needs a lot of special help and you start spending all your spare time helping them and going through all the work of getting the community to help which means undoubtedly months if not years of fighting for your child and getting stressed and then after a few years of that you can't handle your high paying job anymore you get fired.
So now you can't afford to be in the high end community!
If you move you have to move with the child that needs help, but moving is extra difficult because you have a child that needs help! Also maybe because you lost your job you don't really have the money to move anyway, because moving costs a lot of money! Maybe your best bet is to try to find some way to stay in the expensive community because that community is forced to help you because you have all the paperwork in place.
Also moving takes a lot of effort, you couldn't handle your fancy job anymore because of the stresses of having whatever problem you have (doesn't have to be a child with problems could be other things) and so you might not be able to handle all the stresses of moving, hell you might not even really be able to handle the stresses of searching for a new place to live far away.
But hey, there is a lady here with an RV. So you move into that for a small time until you can get a place in the community that provides help for your problem and devote your time to getting such a place, because that is actually the most sensible solution.
Now admittedly this is an edge case and whatever reasons these people have for wanting to build in Palo Alto, a place they obviously can't afford, those reasons might be different. I do get some feeling that people have a job in the area and need to be in that area to keep that job feeling for some of the characters described in the article.
Those people seem sort of rational (they're after all maintaining a place to live and not living on the street). But you're right they are doing something that on its face seems irrational. Your conclusion on seeing this irrationality seems to be that they are just stupid, much stupider than you.
My conclusion on seeing someone who is rational doing something that seems irrational is that there is something I don't know.
on edit: changed searching for a job to searching for a new place to live.
If the message is “eat plenty of protein and fiber” beans and legumes are a great food that has both.