What happens when your career becomes your whole identity - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2019/12/what-happens-when-your-career-becomes-your-whole-identity <comment><USER4> In my experience extreme workaholism can often be a way to avoid or defer major life decisions that someone doesn't want to make or even consciously recognize. High status careers are often structured, full of positive feedback loops, and well compensated, all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date, even (perhaps especially) in highly rational or analytical thinkers. Eventually the debt comes due but sometimes not until many decades later.

<comment><USER5> To play devil's advocate, what is to come of deliberating on existential meaning at great length?

Do you think you'll find an answer, rationally speaking (that is, using the tools of reason and logic)? Notably, Godel's incompleteness theorems suggest these tools may be insufficient. More specifically, if you try to rationally "justify" what you ought to be doing, you will always be able to - legitimately! - impugn its logical foundation.

This suggests that consciously reasoning about what someone's fundamental purpose is may not be the best way to go about things. Rather, just as how we make most decisions, an intuitive and heuristical approach may be better. In other words, "do what feels right."

What feels right may materialize as a family, as charity, as building a business, or even building a career. My point is that all of these can be challenged as "deferring existential questions" \- again legitimately - because they cannot be justified rationally. (All of these, equally, can be criticized in hindsight as being "wrong": wrong marriage decision, wrong way to raise children, wrong work-life balance, wrong charitable/activist cause.)

As a result, I don't think the criticism that a career - even an all-consuming one (as a family may be) - is somehow less justified. This is not to invite pure relativism: some things do seem to be more meaningful than others.

But! It is precisely that this "seems to be" is intuitive, and not rational, which constitutes the foundation of our belief. And so if a career-focus seems "intuitive", then I think it's meaningful enough.

\---

EDIT: One other thing to note is that people who are fairly content with their lives don't often ponder _why_ their life is meaningful. They've specified a priori assumptions for what makes it meaningful (e.g. charitable giving, helping others), or intuitively feel what is meaningful (e.g. family, friends, happiness), and that is that. It's precisely the people who end up endlessly questioning these assumptions - facing the meaning of their life head on - that seem to be most depressed. This is because it's an intellectual deadend - it cannot be deduced rationally. One way, then, to answer this existential question is to simply defer: don't question, do what feels right, and avoid what doesn't.

<comment><USER4> Ignorance may be bliss, but only if you can remain ignorant until the absolute end. I see evidence of a paradox whereby the most powerful analytical minds are able to most effectively construct defensive counter arguments to their own inherent existential needs, allowing them to defer these needs until a criticality is reached and existential crisis manifests as a state of limbic terror which is impossible to ignore. The crisis is ultimately inevitable, and thus the ignorance only temporary, because they are in fact smart enough to realize deep down that something essential is out of balance. A polish psychiatrist named Dabrowski labeled some of these experiences 'positive disintegration' and wrote prolifically about their role in psychosocial development.

<comment><USER6> After nearly 500 hours of meditating in relative isolation, i promise you, the collector collects.

Something inside us, wild and free, wants to be happy, and we stand in its way.

<comment><USER7> > the collector collects

Can you expand on this?

<comment><USER6> —— Short answer ——

I experienced some things in meditation, consistent with Buddhist cannon.

I encountered a "judge" mechanism, that manifested as an emotion. It "knew everything" (makes sense, it was basically me pointing the finger at me) and it wasnt interested in talking things out. It wants to be happy, and it blames me for its unhappiness. It was a terrifying feeling, very painful.

I believe non-meditators experience this during death, and that "wild part" of us comes back to have one last conversation, and a settling of debts.

——— Long answer ———

Ive spent some time doing vipassana, exploring my inner world -

I also read a lot of carl jung, and come from a family of non religious mental health practitioners. So i dont consider myself clueless, or particularly naive or impressionable.

After that intro ... i experienced some deeply disturbing things: bodily convulsions and pains, which subsided after some time too, and were experienced on an emotional level (meditation shuts/slows down thinking mechanisms, to stop generating mind chatter) -

when the silence increases inside our head, mind chatter disappears but something else takes its place .. emotions, deep intense emotions start to rise - its during those moments of deep mind silence that some pretty bad feelings start to arise inside me, of something deeply unhappy about how im living my life, because it wants to be happy, and i am in this body, is its tool. it wasn't just angry, it was full of grief, and so scared to the point of terror.

Again, it wasn't a discussion, i got the feeling it a prt lf me that wasnt interested in talking things out (it knows everything about me already, its me) it was a deep emotion of intense meaning, and terror and loneliness.

I didn't give my feelings significance before, im also still an atheist - <USER2> i now think/believe that being human has a truth we are blind to, and some of these truths are experienced at death, so if you lived a life against your "conscience" - if you ask me, id say it will hold you responsible for its happiness. (I havnt experienced the other part where its happy about what i do, in a way it was a corrective self-bitchslap. Life is still ongoing - <USER3> its not all terrible, yet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Analogous to "putting all eggs in a single basket", the risks are very high.

You end up becoming hyper sensitive at work, start taking everything personal -well, it is your identity or ego at stake. Leads be becoming very closed, guarded and aggressive. Everyday becomes a fight for survival.

I personally went through this phase for a long time. Looking back, some of my managers exploited this by reinforcing. They knew if they compare me with anyone, I would up the competition and perform even better. This did not cost them money since I had invested myself, my identity and ego 100%. Overall, resulted in a highly competitive team but extremely stressful and caustic!

After changing teams, I decided to take a step back and make a fresh start. I now work for the love of my work and do not let it represent who/what I am. It is my identity at work. Back home or with friends, I have a different identity. Having multiple things to fallback has made me more resilient and lot more positive.

<comment><USER9> I wonder if it is an age thing. Paraphrasing but there is a quote along the lines of the difference between experienced people/managers and inexperienced people is they know which battles to fight. Sadly this is a right of passage, you need to fight the wrong battles first before you realise this. I am in my forties now and so much better at selecting which battles to fight.

<comment><USER10> You're absolutely right. Around this age if not a bit earlier people have seen/experienced enough to see things more clearly. I wonder if this is the reason most SV companies prefer fresher meat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We have a saying back home that goes, "umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" which literally translates to a person is a person because of other people. So in effect in Africa we care more about people than our jobs. Trouble is when your job is managing national electricity company it isn't a good approach because we tend to put our relationships above our jobs. Result is patchy electricity supply. It is one (just one not the main reason) of the reasons we are behind when it comes to development. Development as in clean running water, functional clinics.

I sort of straddle both worlds. In software development you need to get it right. At home people are more important. As an example just today in-laws visiting where supposed to go to see touristy sights at 11 in the morning. They eventually left at 3pm because we all had loads to catch up on. People first :-).

<comment><USER11> Do you mind sharing from what country you come from and what language that is in please?

I just spent three years driving around Africa, and I usually say "People treat people like people" to describe everything that is amazing about the people there. It sounds awkward, but it's the best way I have to describe what you're talking about. I'd love to quote your saying, if you don't mind!

<comment><USER12> South Africa. And I guess Xhosa/Zulu. The electricity provider mentioned is Eskom. It's complicated.

<comment><USER9> Yes it is South Africa. Born in Zim to descendents of Mzilikazi who left South Africa during Shaka Zulu's reign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was just rereading this Last Psychiatrist article that this really reminds me of: [https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.htm...](https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html) (Like with all of TLP it meanders a lot and will probably piss you off. It's also highly entertaining!)

This is the important bit:

> One of our time's great sociological questions is why we filled downtime > back up with work, and the reason is it's better than alcoholism. At some > point during the Truman Administration home life became more stressful than > work life, where stressful is defined either as hysterical drama or > rheumatismy boredom, and by Reagan II the home was no longer a respite from > modern society's incessant demands to produce or at the very least a place > to get a nap. ...

> Part of the reason work and home keep mixing despite our professed desires > is that that's how Americans were taught to see an aspirational adult life. > In every TV show and movie after Leave It To Beaver the gimmick has always > been that the protagonist's job and personal life overlap-- doctors in love, > CIA agents defending their family, late nights at the office trading zingers > or abuse stories. While we no longer think we want the overlap, the shows > reinforced the false psychology that a person is something, all the time and > everywhere, and the backdrop world "sees" it, accepts it. This applies just > as much to negative depictions of work/life overlap, e.g. the obsessed cop > whose wife is now divorcing him because of the job: the point isn't that the > overlap is "good", that's not the aspiration; the point is that the > structure of these depictions represents the fundamental narcissistic > fantasy: a fixed and clear identity-- a character-- seen by a potential > audience. This is why home is not relaxing: _we are working to not let it be > all that we are_. [emphasis mine]

<comment><USER14> That was a great read. I think structures mentioned therein like the medium is the message, the form of the argument vs consequences are excellent examples of cognitive or linguistic framing, ripe for hacking

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My pursuit of financial independence consequently led to my career becoming my identity. I've optimized for raising my income and savings to reduce "time to FI", that by the time I get there -- about 4 years, give or take -- that I've become the thing I explicitly set out to remove from my life. It's not that I don't like working, but I wish to do so on my own terms. Maybe that means short-term contracts a few months out of the year, and having that reduced income cover my living expenses, supplemented with investments. I've done the numbers many times, but I've spent little time considering what I'll do with all that extra time.

<comment><USER16> > I've optimized for raising my income

I've had a lot of behaviors that would save money. One day I realized that the time I spent saving money was much less productive than time spent making money. I.e. by spending more time making money I had more free time.

<comment><USER17> Depending on the behavior, you can get some fun out of it. I enjoy snooping around the house looking for leaks & thin spots in the insulation.

<comment><USER16> If you enjoy doing it, that's another thing entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a thinly veiled advertisement for the author's psychological services - the company they _had_ to start to solve this problem.

It is hard to get anywhere in this world without working your ass off. It is a sign of extreme privilege to even have the freedom to complain about it.

<comment><USER19> Well put. The specific case was not compelling and I wonder whether it is even real. A son of highly achieving attorneys learns that corporate law is stressful? Do tell.

I was reminded of Tom Lehrer's quip about the fictional inventor of the gallbladder, "He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age."[1]

[1][http://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehrer/evening.html](http://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehrer/evening.html)

<comment><USER20> A specialist in diseases for the rich might have to come out of retirement to treat himself.

<comment><USER19> But, could he afford it? See this from The Flintstones: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGkPzDxd09I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGkPzDxd09I)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bad article, in part because of the incomplete title. It should be called "What happens when your career becomes your whole identity, when you don't like your job and think it's a waste of time". If this latter part is not true, there is much less of a problem, but for some reason current mainstream American culture wants to extrapolate all the way to "work should be compartmentalized and minimized".

The problem is, work is where a lot of people find meaning in life. For those people, more work means more meaning, and you're hurting them by telling them otherwise, especially if they are too young to know better than what you are telling them. And you're also preventing young people from becoming outliers ... what would be the cost to our society, and to the individuals personally, if Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, or whoever had been told to cut down on the amount of time they spend thinking about physics stuff, they need to achieve good work/life balance.

A lot of people in China are working pretty hard. If you want your country to get whomped by China economically and geopolitically, spread the idea that it's bad to work hard.

Americans in the past, back when America was able to coordinate to do ambitious things, worked pretty hard. So if you want to have a country that is unable to recreate glories of the past, spread the idea that it's bad to work hard.

All this only happens if you have an idea of work as a draining thing, a net negative on the individual doing the work. But I am happier because of the work that I have done. I am a better person than I was before.

Nobody goes to the kung fu school and says "hey it's bad to exercise this much, you shouldn't kick so high or punch so fast, just make sure not to train that much, okay?" But for some reason we have decided it's okay to give people this advice in other realms. You know what, I never felt as good physically as I did when I was in serious kung fu training. (Never looked as good either).

If you are in a job that actually _is_ damaging if you do it too much for too long, then by all means, minimize that -- but you know what, in today's world, there are always proximal things you can do that are not damaging that will improve your job or your ability to do your job over time.

But advice like this does not make the distinction between jobs that are damaging and jobs that aren't. We're losing the idea that the latter thing exists, and I think that is very bad for the overall development of our society.

<comment><USER22> > what would be the cost to our society, and to the individuals personally, if > Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, or whoever had been told to cut down on the amount > of time they spend thinking about physics stuff, they need to achieve good > work/life balance.

I think Einstein's balancing of work (at the Patent Office) / life (his academic hobby in Physics) served him well.

> Nobody goes to the kung fu school and says "hey it's bad to exercise this > much, you shouldn't kick so high or punch so fast, just make sure not to > train that much, okay?"

Overtraining is absolutely a thing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining)

> in today's world, there are always proximal things you can do that are not > damaging that will improve your job or your ability to do your job over > time.

There's always an opportunity cost, even if those proximal things don't directly cause damage. For your impassioned knowledge worker, this might be not getting enough sleep, or not practicing your more general interpersonal skills, or not having enough downtime to let your subconcious mull over work problems from new angles. Working hard is great... to a point. Doing _nothing but_ working hard can have some serious side effects, including to your productivity, that one should be cognizant of. Yes, even if you seem to enjoy your job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For many years my career was my entire identity: I really, really wanted to be a designer. I thought it was the coolest thing EVER.

Then my son was born and I couldn't quite make this designer career/life that I wanted. I also realized I wasn't AMAZING at it, but I was GOOD at it. I couldn't quite get over that threshold. So therefore, not being at the top of my game and trying to feed my family became a problem.

I gave it up and became a programmer, which I don't attach myself too as much these days. I tell people I'm a parent first, board gamer second, programmer third. Whereas before, I was a designer-everything.

Life is always changing-- change with it.

</comment><comment><USER24> My mother was very much like this. When she retired, she found it quite hard to re-adjust. Fortunately she has a few hobbies to fall back on.

Personally, I find it quite a hard balance to get right. On the one hand, tying your identity whole-heartedly to your profession seems dangerous. On the other, being entirely apathetic about it seems like a waste of a life (that is, one spent mostly _at work_ ). I try to hang somewhere in the middle, but it's something I try to stay on top of.

<comment><USER25> Love your job and you'll never work a day in your life. Live your job and you won't have any love left to give.

<comment><USER26> The problem I have with this is that love is a complicated thing. I love playing soccer, but without the social validation of my friends who also play it I would absolutely never practice. Similarly for most careers, even highly lovable ones.

<comment><USER27> same for jamming blues/jazz.

social communication without using words. amazing social cohesion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> " The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?"

[http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html)

If you aren't honest with yourself about why you got into a profession it may wear against your psyche and burn you out. The lawyer knew chasing status would require a sacrifice of happiness, time, and relationships but didn't want to admit it.

<comment><USER29> I think there's a bias against (corporate) lawyers here. The ones I know would definitely do something very close to their day job.

Also, it makes it seem like there's an endless supply of waiter jobs lined up for the the taking.

But this has been debated at length on HN [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/find- you...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/find-your-passion- is-terrible-advice/564932/?single_page=true) and [https://www.theminimalists.com/cal/](https://www.theminimalists.com/cal/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love my job. My work is interesting. My peers are delightful. I've had great jobs and a great career.

My job is not my whole identity. It is 0% of my identity. It's just a job. If I had FU money I'd peace out tomorrow and work on hobby projects in my spare time.

These days I feel like I'm the oddball. I don't associate my job or hobby with my identity. I couldn't tell you my "identity" if I tried. I'm a soup of likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, and more. I don't really understand why people try to put their identity in a tight box with a neat label.

<comment><USER31> Completely agree with this. It's one reason why I like being a teacher (and one reason why it'd be hard to leave, even if it's for a job that has a _much_ higher chance of allowing me to make FU money). I have several months off (well, not _off_ as I do have to do stuff, but I can work from home mostly), of the course of the year, to pursue hobbies and basically anything I want to, even if it's just being super lazy. I really enjoy that, and it makes for a much better work-life balance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've seen a few "20 year" or "30 year" managers. I can't help but wonder how their methods might have varied if they had been exposed to even _one_ other organization's way of doing things. Also, do they subconsciously value "company-loyal" employees over others with equivalent or superior experience?

Generally I feel that varied experiences matter more, even if you get unlucky and spend a handful of years in a less-stellar team.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've often seen it with military personnel who fail in their transition from their military to post-military lives.

Some people invest so much of themselves into just a singular self-identity they are permanently anchored to it unless/until a forcing function compels an existential change.

I believe competing interests for time such as passions/hobbies and side hustles provide bridges from one employment career to another.

However, the mirror to workaholism is having too many passions/hobbies and side hustles outside of work leading to distraction and dilution.

Broad, deep, and substantial focus on singular topics/areas is important, for a time.

People want their lives to have meaning, often measured thru impactful and measurable work.

But not at the expense of losing one's option to seek balance and joy.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what the money equivalent is of the term "first world problems". Millions of Americans spend sixty hours a week at work and still worry about whether they need to give up their health insurance this year so they can afford to replace their fifteen year old car because they'll lose their job if it breaks down and makes them late again.

<comment><USER35> I read this as "we should be content with being well-paid wage slaves because there are lots of underpaid wage slaves". Having to give our best 40+ hours every week to simply exist is soul-crushing and society-weakening. If you "need" to have a job, you are more like those struggling millions of Americans than you are like the moneyed elite, even if you aren't stressed about money on a day-to-day basis. You still aren't free.

<comment><USER34> Happiness scales with income until about the $200,000 mark where it levels off. If you're making six digits you have more in common with Jeff Bezos than you do with someone making minimum wage.

<comment><USER36> I don't think that's true in the Bay Area or New York. Having a house instead of renting in either area, for example, has an appreciable boost in happiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Here's a common sentiment amongst those with too much time on their hands:

"When I am on my deathbed, I don't want to look back on my life with regret."

The deathbed part of your life isn't even that long. Probably a week or something. And probably you'll spend much of it being distracted by morphine and excruciating pain, leaving no room for feeling sad about how shit your life was. Maybe you should just tell future-you to suck it up and let you play your xbox in peace.

<comment><USER38> > The deathbed part of your life isn't even that long. Probably a week or > something.

Assuming you're in a developed country, you've either been very lucky or haven't yet had many friends or family on their death bed. It typically lasts several weeks to several months. If you have a family member who is dying of Alzheimer's (I have), it can last years.

One week would be very fortunate indeed.

That said, I do kind of agree with your sentiment. Even if it's months, your death bed is still typically a relatively small part of your life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I recently started therapy because I relate to this. I'm a definitely a workaholic and I enjoy coding as an artform.

I found myself using work as an escape mechanism for my mother's suicide, and it has taken me 11 years to realize that was a mistake and I should focus less on career and more on being a caring social person.

I have a really nice job and I'm thankful for what it has given me, but it is clear that I have to walk away and work on being happy rather than productive.

</comment><comment><USER37> >As a psychologist, I specialize in mental health challenges associated with high-pressure careers. People like Dan show up in my office every day — so often, in fact, I had to build a company, Azimuth Psychological, to focus on serving their needs.

Native advertising.

</comment><comment><USER40> The 21st century should provide a new model for "lifestyle" and career choices as longevity hits its stride and more studies are published.

Between self, relationships, health, career and hobbies, you can only reasonably pick 2 or 3 for prime year successes (except for a lucky/talented/free-rided few) and causes many to spread themselves too thin keeping up with tradition to enjoy success on any them by their golden years.

Its hard to tell if its caveman logic or the females biological clock that dictates rushing into everything at an early age, but career burnout, high divorce rates and health/mental issues at an early age sacrifice too much for the meager returns.

We'll have to compare notes at a later time, but digital natives may hit critical mass this decade (or next) and kick much of the analog work ethics, career timelines and family syncronization theories to the curb in favor of delayed milestones (career and otherwise) as we inch closer to 100 year life- spans with proper planning.

</comment><comment><USER41> I always feel a bit sad when I see people who are younger than me and much more successful with their career.

But on the other hand I don't work much (<20h/week) so it's probably okay.

<comment><USER42> People tell me that I didn't "live up to my full potential". I say, "I know. That would have been exhausting."

<comment><USER41> Good point.

It's a bit sad about the missed opportunities, but my privat life is awesome, so it's okay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> _déformation professionnelle_ [https://wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnelle](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnelle)

</comment><comment><USER44> Furthermore I fundamentally believe that individuals in this state have their social and political opinions shaped by their enmeshed, single professional identity.

I believe professionals such as this are far more likely to only have opions which avoid controversy or are on the side of a social current consistent with those in their industry or customers at large.

Their personal choices become indistinguishable from that of a well thought out PR team.

In particular I suggest this phenom is right at the root of a lot of localist vs globalist antagonism. Most professionals would probably err on the side of economic liberalism in the more general sense because it makes sense for their enmeshed professional identity.

But the personal identity which is obfuscated may have much more connection with the community,uch more likely to know and empathize with those affected. Or maybe even just at odds with the professional identity for whatever reason.

When I left my very corporate job it took me months to realise how free I was to have basically any opinion that I wanted and didn't realize how much I must have been orienting my thoughts into a direction that would be acceptable to my peers. (or what I thought would be acceptable).

I'm very supportive of the fact there is research on this.

</comment><comment><USER45> I feel like many workplaces push you to do this, regardless of the prospects. I've worked dead-end admin positions where I was expected to give inordinate amount of myself - my time, my energy, my focus - to work that was, as per the dead end-edness, not going to lead to positive renumeration vis á vis the investment. There was no awareness of where the job, the business, the industry really was, a predictable but unfortunate result of the decision- makers being either people in one of the few positions or people gunning (with realistic prospects of achieving) one. Just a sort of blind adherence to corporate dogma. Meanwhile, the HN et al. line is, "Those are only transitory jobs, it's okay that they don't pay a living wage or treat you with any dignity, you're supposed to move on from them." Not within the organization, apparently. So we're to betray the people who gave us the opportunity which we're supposed to be so appreciative of? Doesn't that go directly against that corporate dogma we're around every day?

The unspoken and contradictory of etiquette of the American workplace is frustrating and demoralizing.

</comment><comment><USER46> Certain high achievers in their career use their career as a cover for general failings in other parts of their life. I've seen it a few times and it ends badly when it all finally catches up to them, often too late in life to do much about it. Some people are very happy to have their career be their whole identity, but most don't think that way and define "success" as success across multiple areas of their life.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's better than your whole identity and existence constituting clinical depression, video games and _no_ career—let alone work history.

<comment><USER48> Different outcome, but similar cause. The high-pressure system of achievement is a cause for both high-profile burnout and hikikomori [0] [1].

[0] [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/young- people-j...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/young-people-japan- hikikomori-anxiety-a7329396.html) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> That drum major instinct is a real fucker if you don't see it for what it is and point it in the right direction. [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king- papers/documents/dru...](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king- papers/documents/drum-major-instinct-sermon-delivered-ebenezer-baptist-church)

</comment><comment><USER50> I disagree that "enmeshment" is always bad. What we do, especially when we are fortunate enough to choose and enjoy our careers, are fundamental to who we are and the narrative that work is solely there to provide income is not always true.

We spend the majority of our time, effort, and thought around our work. To say that none of this should touch on our identity would be doing a disservice to the majority of our time spent living.

It is true, that some people are not "enmeshed", but are consumed with work, but what about the people that do find happiness and fulfillment in their "high-powered" job? Dan's failure to recognize his own needs are not a reflection of "enmeshment" being bad, but a reminder that if you do not pay attention to your own wants and desires you will be unhappy, regardless of how successful you are. That if you do need the job and hate it, to make sure you're making the right trade-offs to have a happy life - see the recommendations in the article for how.

</comment><comment><USER51> This anti-work ethic you see crop up once in a while is delusion. Success comes from perseverance, not idleness or detachment.

A few days ago, there was an article from some CEO claiming that you don't need to work hard to succeed. Today, we have an article from HBR cautioning about becoming too invested in one's work. This sentiment is dangerous. It's harmful to teach young people to be cynical, indifferent, and lazy, because the vast majority of progress really is made by the passionate and dedicated genius, not the detached crank-turner that HBR writers want impressionable young people to become.

Have a few people succeed without trying? Sure. They were stupid and lucky. Are you one of these people? Almost certainly not. Look at the history of science and innovation: the truth that emerges is that breakthroughs come not from relaxation, but from a combination of passion and hard work.

<comment><USER52> It may be an effect of the economic bubble we're in. It's an ethos that doesn't survive a crash :)

<comment><USER53> Or maybe people are working harder each year for decreasing post-inflation- adjusted wages and decreasing benefits, wages are not keeping up with costs in many industries and places, they are stressed out and asking why they put themselves through this.

Or perhaps, a scenario that will be familiar to many in tech and I know I have personally witnessed, that some corporate cultures are so completely full of narcissism, and they sweep people up until they think this sort of beast is normal, having a toll on mental health.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The problem is that we're often expected to make our career our identity. If you don't, then you get passed over for a promotion/hire while the workaholic gets a promotion.

This problem is especially acute in the U.S. where one of the first questions people ask each other when they meet is "what do you do"

</comment><comment><USER55> What happens? Your marriage suffers (if you have one). Your children suffer (if you have any). And you suffer.

And it's not just work. If your side project becomes your whole identity, the same is true.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is a framework for thinking about resilience [https://www.theresiliencedoughnut.com.au/](https://www.theresiliencedoughnut.com.au/).

In a nutshell if you build all your esteem from work, you only get 1/2 of the 7 factors i.e. Skill, Money. But you need at least 3 and ideally more to whether life's shocks. If you lose your job/career you might be left with zero. But if you also invest in say friends and community, losing your job is less of a blow.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've had four careers, and each one became pretty much my whole identity. For some years, anyway. But eventually, I found myself becoming interested in something else. And eventually, that something else became a career. After a period of chaos, anyway.

And now my privacy/anonymity hobby has basically become a career. Except that I mostly don't get paid. Which isn't an issue.

</comment><comment><USER58> The Art of Manliness podcast had a great episode about this: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-547-achievin...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-547-achieving- success-through-the-pursuit-of-fulfillment)

Made me think harder about the specific things I enjoy about programming.

The book Dark Horse expands on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER59> Everyone who defines themselves by their job should move to LA for a few years. In LA everyone is an actor just working a different job until they make it.

</comment><comment><USER60> I know many farmers.

</comment><comment><USER61> Think only problematic insomuch as your career doesn't equal your higher calling, i.e. your career is status driven or following the herd.

<comment><USER62> The problem is most careers don't really qualify as "higher callings".

Originally "higher calling" meant a much more important (e.g. scientific, humanitarian, patriotic, artistic, priesthood, etc.) not some person working up a management career in some BS enterprise selling BS through marketing...

So while a doctor might have his "higher calling" as career, I doubt that can be the case for the millions of corporate drones...

<comment><USER63> You might be surprised to find that many doctors fall into the very description in this article. Higher calling is a social construct and the reality is being a physician is a _lot_ of hours, a lot of BS, and a lot of patients who need self help more than your help. Its in most ways just like any other job, if you don't find some satisfaction in the actual work, you are going to be miserable. Many are.

<comment><USER62> > _the reality is being a physician is a _lot_ of hours, a lot of BS, and a > lot of patients who need self help more than your help_

Sure. In the end though, you help people and occasionally save lives, you don't market and sell sugared soda water, nor are you a middleman in the paper market, or someone that devises new schemes to part people from their money via convincing ads, or tap away at some Dilbert style cube job.

So it's more appropriate to be a higher calling (and has historically been seen as such by many doctors) than some cube job.

Higher calling jobs still have drudgery and boring parts (plus useless bureaucracy to fight).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> work as identity burnout as lifestyle - erza klien had a good podcast about this llast year.

</comment><comment><USER65> It beats changing diapers.

</comment><comment><USER66> You can love your job but it will never love you back.

</comment><comment><USER67> If you're the kind of person is always troubled by something (most people are), directing that unsettled nagging feeling into your work is the best thing you can do.</comment>


Everything's Not O.K - <AUTHOR> https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/nick-boynton-everythings-not-ok <comment><USER2> My hero of the day.

Full disclaimer: Not only am I not a fan of NHL Hockey, I'm just generally not a team sports fan at all.</comment>


Show HN: A smarthome dashboard concept using zircle-ui - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zircleUI/smarthome-tutorial <comment><USER2> I love zoomable UIs - something about these niche UI controls is just really cool. It's like a movie or game UI feature. Does anyone know of any collections of unusual/exotic UI controls? I always like to take inspiration from unique ways developers enable their users to browse and update their apps intuitively even if the data or structures you're working with are odd.

<comment><USER3> Feels very intuitive, the trick is to still be readable from a distance while the UI is not being used.

The elephant in the room is npm/Node on IoT devices (security, performance, and due to performance: cost of hardware).

<comment><USER4> Not at all. Raspberry Pi-like hardware can run Node perfectly fine. A startup I used to work at had hardware specs comparable to a Pi, but was running multiple user apps in separate processes, weighing in at over 20MiB of memory each before you even had the user code running. This ran fine up until 20 user apps or so, since the device had 512MiB of RAM on board.

Ontopic: this is some very cool UI work! It is very hard to unite the desire of loads of cool features (it is a smart home after all!) with a simple and intuitive user interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> @tinchox5, you should show the demo, which I found it, quite impressive [https://codesandbox.io/embed/23wlzq4l1r?hidenavigation=1&vie...](https://codesandbox.io/embed/23wlzq4l1r?hidenavigation=1&view=preview) edit: typo

<comment><USER6> That's pretty dang neato. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This concept offers a different approach to the home-automation UIs. It is not a real working app, but the result of a tutorial to learn how to use zircle- ui, which is the library used in this example ([https://github.com/zircleUI/zircleUI](https://github.com/zircleUI/zircleUI)).

I think that anyone with some experience working with home-assistant and/or openHAB UIs, may use this dashboard as a starting point to create a real app.

<comment><USER7> It does some funky things in Firefox on Android, fwiw. Touching any buttons tries to "select" them like selecting text to copy/paste, then when the animation is done playing, you're stuck with the Copy/Paste popup menu still open.

I love the design though. I'm trying to pick how I want to put my DIY home automation system together right now, and this is going straight to the top of the list for the UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback! Could you inform this issue on [https://github.com/zircleUI/smarthome- tutorial](https://github.com/zircleUI/smarthome-tutorial)? It would be great if you can provide some screenshot as well :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very great concept. Will play around with it. Demo wise: I find it a little difficult to navigate back, especially from mobile devices. How a back UI could be optimally added to zoom based interfaces? (Something other than arrow keys)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! As default you can go back by touching outside the main view, but it could be great to add touch gestures like swipe left for example.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking, why not a round red plain old back button reading BACK?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that could be added as well :) But at this point I think that may be better that the developer creates a custom back button. If it is enabled by zircle the button's position could be overlaped by another custom z-spot. Having said that, I think there is room for further optimizations regarding zircle-ui. I truly appreciated your views!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now this is a great UI. Thank you for showing this.

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy So, this totally reminds me of the gabocorp.com Flash website UI/UX from like 1998ish.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great UI!

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome job Juan!</comment>


Conservative Pie; Republicans Introduce Legislation Redefining Pi as Exactly 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-squires/republicans-introduce-leg_b_837828.html?ref=fb&src=sp

<comment><USER2> Please note that this is parody.

</comment><comment><USER3> Old, lame joke; this is why nobody will make real money writing for HuffPo.

There was an attempt to legislate the squaring of circles in Indiana 113 years ago, which still provides lessons for today: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill></comment>


Who Did This? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/bio <comment><USER2> Love this. Etymonline is one of my favorite websites, and often my first- choice dictionary (even though its word corpus is smaller than other dictionaries), because IME understanding the roots and origins of a word help me remember and use it better. It's the one dictionary I _enjoy_ looking up.

Just in case someone hasn't seen it before... ;-) If you're an etymonline fan, I would venture that you might find interesting "You're probably using the wrong dictionary" by James Somers: [http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary](http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary)

<comment><USER3> I can't upvote this enough, that dictionary link is so wonderful. I've had the 1913 Webster's dictionary on my Mac for years thanks to that blog post and it's so useful for helping to find just the right word.

<comment><AUTHOR> Webster-1913 is also included in the default dict/dictd English-langauge dictionary on Debian, Ubuntu, etc.

[https://packages.debian.org/buster/dict- gcide](https://packages.debian.org/buster/dict-gcide)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I loved this bio. In particular, it reinforced the value of blogs and websites that are independent of closed systems like Medium, Facebook, etc. This site exists as a passion and gift to the world. With the Internet Archive it is much harder for this to disappear compared to serving the same content on Facebook.

It was a joy to read the bio of the creator and to learn of the interests, background and desires that led the the dictionary. Adding to my list of favorite sites.

</comment><comment><USER5> A handful of sentences that really stood out to me:

> Ask me why I did it and I'll give you a solid answer. And tomorrow I'll give > you a different one. They're all correct. I tease myself along through the > drudgery with a combination of guilt and vanity. If I did this right, I can > say at the end of life I bundled up my worst qualities -- obsessiveness, > impudence, narcissism -- and made something vaguely useful with them.

> It is useless to try to hide these things. Any site done by one person is > going to be in some deal eccentric and reflect the ego and cultural > limitations of the creator. It is liable to the sort of blunders only an > individual can make; because if you had had another mind riding shotgun with > you you wouldn't have gotten so far lost or missed that turn. A dictionary > written by one person hangs the maker's mind naked in public, exposed in all > its intellectual flab and moles.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been several times disappointed by the lack of references in this dictionary. For example, it claims the meaning of some words shifted around a particular time without linking to data that proves so.

</comment><comment><USER7> Quick tip: On DuckDuckGo, you can search on etymonline with !ety (or !etym).

<comment><USER8> You can also add search shortcuts to pretty much any browser now. I just did it in Firefox, it's as simple as this:

Go to etymonline.com and right-click in the search box itself.

Hit "Add a keyword for this search". In the dialog that pops up, I put "ety" as the keyword.

That's it. Now when I open a new tab, I can just type

ety pathos

And there we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was lucky to have a class on linguistics when I was in school. It was there where I learned the concept of etymology and realized how interesting the origin of words is.

I am constantly amazed at how relevant it is every day. I am a currently an enterprise architect, and every day, the "naming things is hard problem" is front and center.

Understanding how the use of words developed historically, say, even within a single organization/culture, and how to research that is an amazing skill and really helpful. That is in addition to understanding how to use tools like etymonline or other famous etymological dictionaries to find out the origins of even old words, that we have been using for thousands of years.

You'd be surprised by the insight, and even sometimes inspiration you find when you see the origins of words. Things are not always as they sound/seem.

Thinking practically, consider the implications of these skills for data modeling/data dictionaries, business glossaries, naming variables, etc. Really valuable and interesting!

</comment><comment><USER10> I love this site; I refer to it constantly. Thank you for creating and tending to it so lovingly.

</comment><comment><USER11> etymonline is a perpetual delight.

The maintainer answers emails fast, too: i asked him to provide a RSS feed for blog posts 6 weeks ago and it was live 90 minutes later!

<comment><USER12> Just nitpicking - it's _her_ (at least according to the linked page, second last paragraph).

<comment><USER13> > When I played World of Warcraft I found I generally chose a rogue. Human. > Female.

Doesn't say anything about the author's actual sex, gender or preferred pronouns in real life. Only the character they like to play in a video game.

In the footer though, it does say:

> © 2001-2020 Douglas Harper

Make of that what you will.

<comment><USER14> If the author played a female orc, would edjrage have assumed the author was an orc? :-)

<comment><USER8> On the internet, no-one knows you're a human...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always seem to end up on etymonline.com at least once per day. Another good site is Omniglot.com.

<comment><USER8> At the extreme other end of the function-vs-fun scale, I find myself on OneLook.com for wildcard searches in the way that most modern search engines don't seem to grok anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a great resource for HN: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=etymonline&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><AUTHOR> This brings a grin:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22082281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22082281)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This website is responsible for my SAT vocabulary. I could never memorize word lists, but I could remember words if I looked it up on etymonline.

Some of the interesting words I still remember:

Maverick

Confluence

Applause

Inculcate

Assiduous

Ever since then it's been a pleasure guessing at word roots of many new words I face.

<comment><USER18> FYI: that word list would be considered pretty basic by pre-Internet high school students.

Having said that, I've read some WW2-era high school math textbooks that had college-level chapters on polynomials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> On this subject, what are some other good website about pages?</comment>


YouTube Censored My Interview with Posie Parker - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2019/11/22/youtube-censored-my-interview-with-posie-parker/ <comment><USER2> The real issue is a group of people have decided it is better to shut down speech, rather than listen to speech they don't like. They justify this by saying free speech is only a government thing. The companies have caved into this group, and listened to their demands. People and companies should be striving to keep speech free, not looking for ways to shut it down, or limit the avenues. Whatever happened to "I may not like our what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it."

</comment><comment><USER3> The part where a big social media outcry got their put reinstated sounds so much like the stories we see on HN about developers who get their accounts suspended and resort to Twitter to get their issues resolved.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." \- John Gilmore

This turned out to be more wishful thinking and less law of nature. Net traffic now seems to readily route itself into walled gardens crowded with gnomes demanding ever stricter speech controls.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The libertarian argument that YouTube is owned by a private company which is entitled to police content as it wishes is no longer sustainable. We live in a digital world in which a handful of big tech companies have seized control of the public square. As I have argued before, we need a First Amendment for the Internet."

So let me get this straight.

Conservatives no longer support property rights, believe access to broadcast media should be a government enforced entitlement, and support something like a fairness doctrine.

Liberals meanwhile believe certain ideas and forms of expression should be censored, call opponents of this "free speech extremists," and are fine with three or four corporations shaping public discourse.

Do I have this right?

It really does seem as if everyone on all sides lost their minds starting roughly 2012-2014. I could compile quite a long list of examples and not just around this issue.

My hypothesis for a cause is the algorithmic timeline and its kin. We shifted around that time from mostly neutral media for online discussion to the automatic moderation of discussion to drive engagement with the medium itself.

What drives engagement? Negativity, cartoonishly extreme positions, outrage, hate, fear, trolling, etc. Over time everyone has been driven toward... well... those opinions and styles of discourse that most effectively drive engagement.

<comment><USER6> It's become largely reactionary. Each side is acting in response to the other, and it's becoming a large feedback loop.

<comment><USER5> I call it the CRASER: CRaziness Amplification through Stimulation of Engagement with Reactivity.

Hey, a straw man left battling a straw man right to an audience of edgelord trolls drives engagement and therefore platform ad dollars.

People need to grasp the concept of being manipulated not to think a specific thing but at the "meta" behavioral and cognitive style level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Andy Ngo was recently suspended by Twitter for making what seemed a fair comment, too.</comment>


China's Communist Party and Its American Media Enablers - <AUTHOR> https://intpolicydigest.org/2020/05/26/china-s-communist-party-and-its-american-media-enablers/ <comment><USER2> Is there a bot that can look up news organizations for us and report basic facts, like

Long name: International Policy Digest

ISSN: 2332-9416

Founder: John Lyman

Founded in: 2011

Crunchbase: not found

Wikipedia: not found

</comment><comment><USER3> I've not seen such blanket downvoting in a comments section in a while. Is this a genuinely unpopular topic, are the comments unpopular, or is there brigading going on?

<comment><USER4> I suspect a lot of commenters and voters in this thread are from mainland China.

It's astonishing to hear Chinese citizens' opinion of their government, even those who have emigrated elsewhere. The look of shock and disbelief when you relate commonly known events of the last 10 years is sad and underscores the power of propaganda.

<comment><USER5> The fact that so many Chinese people's opinions of their country differ so markedly from what you would expect, based on what you read in Western media, should at least lead to you reevaluate your own views. What you're saying is that Chinese people who have lived in the West, who have seen Western coverage of China, nevertheless are much more sympathetic to their government than you would expect. Doesn't that pique your interest?

I'm not going to paint a rosy picture of China, but the view you get in most Western media is extremely heavily distorted, and almost completely out-of- touch with what is actually going on in China, what most people in China care about, and so on.

<comment><USER4> > the view you get in most Western media is extremely heavily distorted

I actually avoid mainstream Western media for news on China, as it frequently bends the truth in their favor, or fails to cover significant human rights abuses.

The news I get (that matters to me) is more from groups with boots on the ground in mainland China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article has a very strong "throw enough sh__ and see how much of it sticks" tone to it. Mark Zuckerberg asking Xi for a baby name or American entertainment producers trying to play friendly with the Chinese market isn't really 'enabling the communist party' in any meaningful sense of the word. And Chinese media replaying some CNN clip isn't really evidence of anything either given that you can take everything out of context.

The one thing from the article I'd agree with is bad is Bloomberg interferring with the journalists reporting at his own company. There should be a strict line between Bloombergs other business interests and the editorial at the newspaper.

Otherwise I think there's a lot of confusion in the article between the conflation of the private market changing products to be popular in China, which is fine and simply reflects their status as a consumer, and actual propaganda efforts.

<comment><USER7> > American entertainment producers trying to play friendly with the Chinese > market isn't really 'enabling the communist party' in any meaningful sense > of the word

I think this is where a lot of people would disagree. Once companies give in to demands of censorship or anything that goes against our Western values, you're basically letting China know that they can get away with it. And to me, that's directly enabling their behaviour.

On the other side, if you don't give in to their demands, you're essentially missing out on a huge market, so most companies pick money over morals.

There's a difference between changing products to be popular in China, and censoring words to be allowed to operate in China. Sadly for a lot of companies, one cannot go without the other.

<comment><USER8> As a capitalist in a third world country, it seems like in principle a bit of competition ought to be good for both the 2nd and 1st largest economies. Remember the Avis "we try harder" campaign?

<comment><USER9> Except this isn't commercial competition - it's a competition in values and the role of the state in people's lives. It's Enlightenment values vs thinly disguised fascism. It's a competition, alright - just be careful which side you're fighting for.

<comment><USER8> Thankfully there are almost two hundred sides from which to choose. Il faut de tout pour faire un monde. Nie mój cyrk, nie moje malpy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now I know why Jin Yang is this adorable and Dinesh Chugtai is Pakistani.

<comment><USER10> Why the downvotes? If Dinesh Chugtai was Indian, how would the Chinese audience take it? By the name he sounds Indian. It's a business decision but it is what it is! I just started watching the show and love it btw.

<comment><USER3> If we assume the character was modified to fit the actor who was chosen for the role, then why change him from Pakistani to Indian? Dinesh's actor, Kumail Nanjiani, even made a popular (and good) movie related to Pakistani culture in contemporary times: The Big Sick.

It's a bit of a stretch to think that the show creators chose Kumail because he was Pakistani rather than Indian. He's a talented comedian and, at the time, unknown. The showrunners were smart to pick him up.

<comment><USER10> Btw the character itself is possibly that of Aditya Agarwal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aditya_Agarwal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aditya_Agarwal)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The premise of this article is that the US is the victim of Chinese incompetency. The opening sentence more or less tries to state that as a fact. Basically, the authors are parroting Trump here.

The reality is that Wuhan has been open for business again for two months or so after China dealt swiftly and efficiently with the pandemic while the US was still in denial about having a crisis while at the same time experiencing the crippling effects on the economy. If you want to use the word incompetence in relation to this pandemic, there's no need to look beyond Washington.

This article is the Republican narrative that this thing that happened on their watch isn't their fault at all because evil foreigners tricked them. It's a blatant deflection of any form of responsibility.

Like most of the world, the US was getting all the signals that bad shit was going down late last year, early confirmations that it was going to be really bad in January, and the rest is just plain incompetent governance, opportunistic posturing by populist morons, wishful thinking, and a generally unprecedented level of ineptness throughout layers of government that Republicans have had no small part in helping to deconstruct in the last decades. If you want to point fingers, use a mirror.

<comment><USER12> Yes unfortunately Americans have rights and our federal government doesn't have authority to micro-manage our life like a Sim game. So sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> you guys don't live in China, you know nothing about China, I don't know where did you get these information about China. But you can say what you think, that's your freedom.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's so exhausting having to live through this ridiculous propaganda war. Everyone seems to suck here, but there's so much finger pointing. The people on the US side of the isle seem to be especially frantic now that it's abundantly clear they dropped the ball about 100,000 times (underestimate) and trashed their economy in the process.

Can we stop pointing fingers and just take a break ffs? Everything China does the US does, sometimes with variations in degree but most often just with a different label (occasionally with different timelines, but it's hard to take seriously the idea that US 70 years ago should just be off the hook while we roast China).

<comment><USER15> I feel like I'm in the Twilight zone seeing these kinds of equivalencies made online. "China does organ harvesting and brutally supresses the entire populace's rights and did Tiananman Square and arrests and interrogates you for criticizing the police but we had internment camps in WW2 so look in a mirror and stop talking about China" ..no, I'm not going to "stop roasting" China just because my country, like every country, has an imperfect past. At best that's a defense mechanism to feel smug about being silent on crimes against humanity.

Criticize the American covid response all you want but spreading this false equivalence that sounds deep unless you think about it is outright dangerous and a shameful disservice to the citizens of Hong Kong and everyone else impacted by the Chinese government.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, there's lots of bad on both sides.

Here in the US we have crimes like Driving While Black. There was just a high profile execution the other day that made headlines, but most fly under the radar.

We also just killed 100,000 people, minimum, through deliberate incompetence, so there's that. Technically it's the past, but in practical terms it's the present. I'll remind you that Tiananmen Square was quite a while ago.

Rights are relative, people in China don't have them, people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they're the right color or have enough money. In broad strokes it's better in the US, for now.

I personally like to count the foreign deaths and foreign intervention when evaluating countries-the US really likes interfering with our neighbors, and kills lots of people in the Middle East - 200,000+ innocent civilians. But they're foreign, so they're not really people, right? [https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties- us-w...](https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-war-on- terror/) I won't even begin with the non-lethal interventions, or more subtle interventions like giving arms to authoritarian regimes and/or terrorists.

But I guess China spies, so that's really bad. It would be terrible if they stole the NSA's idea and interfered with network equipment. They do like stealing IP. [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an- nsa...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade- factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/)

The US does a disservice to the world by not being better in the present. We can't hold China accountable when we don't hold ourselves accountable.

<comment><USER15> > people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they're the right > color or have enough money

Complete hyperbole. Squint as hard as you can but the poorest minority in America is still better off than almost anyone in China. Yes we have a racial profiling problem but on the whole we have our rights much more than "kind of sometimes."

Yeah, we have an incompetent administration this time around. At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate.

Last part is a total non sequitur and would make as much sense flipped around.

<comment><USER16> _> At least we have real elections with more than one real candidate._

For some definition of "real elections" \- the voting suppression techniques employed in the US are study material in politics courses in other democracies.

* gerrymandering

* not allowing for remote votes by letter

* having votes on days that are not free for working people - this is interesting because many other democracies used that to discourage working class people to vote, e.g. Germany in the late 19th century. But most countries now mandate that votes have to fall on either sundays or national holidays.

* (Edit:) Felony disenfranchisement - this in combination with the war on drugs is a very effective way to strip voting rights from minorities, e.g. this isn't even visible in voting turnout comparisons between countries.

And the techniques work: The US has one of the lowest voting participation rates of all OECD countries.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When Will Covid-19 End - <AUTHOR> https://ddi.sutd.edu.sg/when-will-covid-19-end <comment><USER2> I've been very cautious when approaching the question of when will covid end. There is too much we don't know about covid namely if and for how long recovered persons are immune.

This website does not seem to be doing the same. I would much prefer the website to be more conservative. It should be named "When could covid-19 end" and the assumptions of it's method should be easy clearer to visitor. (on the same page)

I know to a lot of us it's obvious that this is modeling with many assumptions but when it's presented like fact a lot of people won't look any further into it and take it as fact.

<comment><USER3> [https://covid19-scenarios.org/](https://covid19-scenarios.org/) is much better site.

You can alter the assumptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The prediction is complete BS, because they use SIR model without mitigation. Reproductive number is temporarily close to 1 in most countries used. Without mitigation it's something like 2-3.

They use wrong model.</comment>


Haskell-style monad do-notation for Ruby... using code rewriting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aanand/do_notation/ <comment><USER2> Good grief, that's evil. I like it, but there's not a _chance_ I'd ever actually use it...

<comment><AUTHOR> I used this on a production project:

<https://github.com/raganwald/rewrite_rails>

Of course, one of its design goals was that we be able to walk away from it, so it compiled to plain Ruby files much as Coffeescript compiles to Javascript.</comment></comment>


Verilog 6502 (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.aholme.co.uk/6502/Main.htm <comment><USER2> _Internal busses are precharged to $FF during Φ2 and then connected to one of the ALU input latches in the immediately following Φ1, during which the nodes are floating. This forces $FF onto the ALU input by swamping it with charge from physically larger nodes. A register (X, Y, SP or PCH) is routed to the other ALU input and decremented by adding $FF (-1)._

Temporarily turning your bus into a DRAM to stuff a value into an ALU == living your best life

</comment><comment><USER3> This page gives the first low-level explanation I've ever found for why the 6502 requires a two-phase clock.

<comment> brian-armstrong Yeah, pretty interesting. And I remember the TA in my digital logic lab slapping our wrists if we tried to use latches like that.

<comment><USER4> An FPGA is not an ASIC. Latches are totally valid design choices and they take less silicon area if doing a custom layout. The thing is that an FPGA has a _lot_ of time/money spent on getting the clock network and tooling for that clock network correct in a flopped digital style, and you obviate that by trying to force latches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The RTL Verilog that the article talks about can be found at [http://ladybug.xs4all.nl/arlet/fpga/6502/](http://ladybug.xs4all.nl/arlet/fpga/6502/) .

I wonder whether anyone tackled the RTL for a complete 65816 . (Daniel Wallner's doco for T65 says that it isn't complete.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I had never heard of this chip. Any good resource to understand this? I am familiar (or was at one point) with 8085/86 architecture.

<comment><USER7> 6502 and its variants were used in many platforms, particularly video game systems and TV computers like the Apple II family, BBC Micro, Commodore Pet/VIC-20/64, Atari 400/800, Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom, and TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine. Introductory information about it tends to be oriented toward those platforms rather than the chip itself.

[https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/](https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/) might be a good starting point if you're already familiar with assembly language in general (it's styled as an assembly language tutorial, but I'm not really in a position to know how good it is at that).

<comment><USER6> Thanks. I was reading and listening to Chuck Peddle's talks last hour about his work at Motorola and MOS. At the age of 81, he still gives talks. Very inspiring stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Netflix Hated Enough To Inspire A "Netflix Killer"? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1773864/why-netflix-has-no-direct-competition-no-netflix-killers <comment><USER2> Hated enough?, man, this must be the country where everybody hates everything. You hate it -> dont pay -> stop hating.</comment>


Well-funded music startup seeks a lead developer - <AUTHOR>

New Orleans, Louisiana ::
Liveset is a new digital platform presenting live concert events on the web and mobile devices in handsome HD, with supporting content that provides a more powerful connection between artists and their online fan bases. Liveset brings the concert experience to artists' fans across the Internet as their show is happening and provides a platform for fans to watch an archived show at their convenience.
We're going to make Live shows as easy as Youtube. Our goal is to build a site for music fans that has an equally impressive set of features as MLB.TV for baseball fans. We also need to build out our own proprietary live-streaming platform – we're currently using Livestream.com, and we'd love to talk to you about why we want to replace it.
Liveset is a functioning, funded platform that needs help getting to the next level.  The platform was launched on September 29, 2010, and has been very well received.  We've done all of the development work through a contract relationship with a talented design and development firm out of New York (@crushlovely), but we want someone as committed as we are to come on board.
That means we're offering a real founder's spot. We need a Lead Developer, and we're willing to offer a 20% equity stake to the right person.  The post-money valuation on our last round was $2.5 million (we've raised $500,000).  That means we're offering up to a half-million (on paper, of course) for joining. We know that successful projects are built on talented engineers, and we mean business about bringing you on board.
The site is built in Rails.  We need a partner who's willing and eager to get in on the ground floor and help us build this into the platform we know it can be.
Why do you need co-founders if you're such an awesome developer?  We're experienced at what we do. One of your partners spent 7 years on the other side of the table in private equity. Another one has already built a successful video production company and is building another product, with plenty of investor interest. We'll raise money and keep your bills paid. We've already made dozens of connections (maybe you've heard of some of the bands on the current site, and you HAVE heard of some of the bands we can't talk about yet). We've made more connections you can't see: artists, booking agents, venues, managers, labels, sponsors, potential investors, consultants, entrepreneurs, streaming providers, CDN's, development firms, designers, etc. We know you've heard 'we need a technical co-founder' like they're replaceable, and we know better. We know the live streaming concert industry as well as anyone out there.  And we've done it all with just 2 people - we're not an over-funded New York VC-backed start-up trying to buy instead of build.
We mean it. Get in touch and let us show you what we have to offer. It'll be fun and profitable, we promise!
Plus we're in New Orleans – and if you were at RubyConf2010, you know how great a city this is. How about a bunch of free live music in one of the best music cities in the world? Awesome food? Great co-workers? We love this town, and we'll be sure you know it's impossible not to.
Actual-work wise, what we're looking for: _ Ruby on Rails _ Testing frameworks/methodologies (Rspec, Cucumber, etc.) _ Streaming media / video experience _ Rich Internet Applications (RIA), e.g. Flash, Silverlight _ Willingness to move to New Orleans, Louisiana
But really, aside from the moving, none of that is as important as what you bring to the table. We're not looking to give away 20% of an angel-funded company so we can tell you what to do. We've also got enough money raised that we can pay you a lot more than ramen money (and you can live like a king in New Orleans for half of what you'd make in California or New York). You don't need to forgo your IRA contributions for this gig.
We are firm about you coming to New Orleans. We're looking for a true partner. Given our small size and the fact that this is our first in-house developer, we really need you on the ground here with us. We want you there with us on the crazy late nights before a show...  and at the over the top celebration dinners afterwards. We're fully committed to this (some of that funding is our own money) and want someone who is able to fully commit as well.
If you're interested in working with us, email email@example.com and email@example.com. <comment><AUTHOR> To learn more about us, watch this video.

[http://staging.liveset.com/events/11-ben-kweller-denver- co#w...](http://staging.liveset.com/events/11-ben-kweller-denver-co#watch_251)

</comment><comment><USER2> _Plus we're in New Orleans – and if you were at RubyConf2010, you know how great a city this is. How about a bunch of free live music in one of the best music cities in the world? Awesome food?_

You had me at New Orleans. If I were a Rails guy, and not already knee-deep in a startup project, I'd be all over this... just for access to a nearly unlimited supply of Cajun food. Sadly though, I hear that my favorite restaurant in New Orleans (The Seaport Cafe) closed down. :-(

<comment><USER3> then upvote, tweet, and refer, and save some bandwidth when your project gets boring. This stuff is growing all the time down here.

<comment><USER2> Done and done on upvoting and tweeting. And I'm not opposed to relocating to New Orleans in the future, but there's just too much going on right now to mix moving into things as well. I do love the city of New Orleans though. What a great culture, and what great food... <sigh /></comment></comment></comment>


Twelve Year Old Top Selling Girl Scout's Sales Tips - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3026709/dialed/sales-secrets-from-a-top-selling-girl-scout

<comment><USER2> _As a top-selling Girl Scout in the San Jacinto Council (Texas), she sold 5,131 boxes of cookies last year. At four dollars a box, she could buy a car, her mother and troop leader Kimberly Welsh, jokes_

They must have a great pricing scheme in their troop or get the cookies for free, because in my daughter's troop that $4 per box only results in $0.65/box of profits (16.25%) given back to the girls. It's really an inefficient way to raise money.

On the other hand my son's Cub Scout pack sells overpriced lousy popcorn, but at least Trail's End kicks 66% of the money back to the boys (33% to the pack, 33% to the local council)

</comment><comment><USER3> They forgot about Sales Secret #6: Sell Girl Scout Cookies Outside Marijuana Dispensaries: "According to her mother, [Danielle] Lei sold 37 more boxes catering to the munchies crowd than what she sold during the same two-hour period outside a Safeway store the next day, proving once again that when it comes to business it's all about _location, location, location_." Read the full article "Girl Scout Sells Cookies Outside Medical Marijuana Clinic" in TIME (Feb. 21, 2014) at [http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/02/21/smart-cookie- girl-scout-...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2014/02/21/smart-cookie-girl-scout- sets-up-shop-outside-marijuana-dispensary/#ixzz2uI3WHEET")</comment>


Indian girl found in jungle was not living with monkeys, officials say - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/08/indian-girl-found-in-jungle-was-not-living-with-monkeys-officials-say <comment><USER2> I'm glad to see that The Guardian has dug further into this story to try to determine what actually happened. It's disturbing how even established media organizations like the Washington Post, which published the original claims about the girl having been living with monkeys, will rush to publish a sensational story with little evidence to back it up.

The Post has since issued a retraction of their story:

" _Editor's note: New information has been reported since publication of this story that raise significant doubts about the veracity of the initial accounts on which it was based. The story relied on reports by the Associated Press and the New Indian Express quoting local officials who came upon her, and a video interview with the physician who treated her. These versions of what happened to her are now being questioned by other officials quoted in the Guardian and the Hindustan Times. While the girl appears to have been abandoned near the forest in question, according to these new reports, these officials do not believe she had been living among monkeys. The original headline has been changed..._ "

This serves as a useful reminder to not believe everything you read in the press, especially breaking news that hasn't yet had a chance to be investigated thoroughly.

HN discussion of the Washington Post's story:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064161)</comment>


Show HN: Optical stripe reading and floppy disk imaging attempt - <AUTHOR> https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/optical-magnetic-stripe-reading/#start <comment><USER2> > No, they're just from using the Q-View magnetic developer & iron > nanoparticles, which I don't think give fine grained enough detail for > floppy disks unfortunately and then just imaged with a cheap usb microscope.

I wonder if this could be improved with, say, a Canon 6D and macro lens with a lossless image format. Better resolution, fewer artifacts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's a good point. I've got an Olympus BHM metallurgical microscope now along with the camera attachment for an SLR which I should try out for this.

<comment><USER2> Definitely give it a shot and let us know! I'm really curious about this and it really should be possible as long as you can visualize the magnetic field.

For comparison's sake (several orders of magnitude physically larger), apparently it's entirely possible to visually "read" vinyl records: [https://www.wired.com/2003/02/press-scan-to-play-old- albums/](https://www.wired.com/2003/02/press-scan-to-play-old-albums/)</comment></comment></comment>


A Review of Studies on Expert Estimation of Software Development Effort - <AUTHOR> http://simula.no/research/engineering/publications/SE.4.Joergensen.2004.c <comment><USER2> I used to obtain reasonable estimates like this: get everyone involved together and make a big list of things that need to be done. Everyone independently writes down how hard each thing seems (usually on a relative scale like 1 thru 5). Put the estimates in a spreadsheet and project it onto a wall. For any item where there's significant variance, argue about it until the variance dies down, or break the thing up into smaller tasks and re- estimate. Then take the mean of the estimates for each item. We'd insist on everyone playing along, even if they didn't know very much. The more data points the better.

Nowadays, though, I use the much better algorithm "it's done when it's done". It goes well with the software process, "program our asses off".</comment>


19 y/o is paying her way through college by naming over 677,000 Chinese babies - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/beau-jessup-teen-pays-college-fees-by-naming-chinese-babies.html <comment><USER2> I can't help but feel like an angry older software engineer for reading about some child born in 1999 being so successful for something so simple and meaningless.

But good for her, she found an opportunity, dug into it, and struck gold before someone else.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suppose there is some admiration due for the audacity to start this type of business, but seriously?!

Is she going to pivot to horoscopes next?

</comment><comment><USER4> I started with a small loan of 1,000,000 dollars

<comment><USER5> 1500GBP</comment></comment>


PHP Parser for Conll-U - <AUTHOR> If you need parse Conll-U data in PHP you can use https://github.com/mihailShumilov/conll-parser <comment><AUTHOR> Conll-U Plus</comment>


How much should I pay them? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at hiring students, still in University (Junior, Senior) for part time coding. JS, PHP, Python web app work. I know I'll have to spend some time training, I'm comfortable with this and have done before. We're in USA, a "top 20" metro area. What do you think I should pay per hour? <comment><USER2> Here in Philadelphia, software developer interns are typically paid $15-25 per hour. Drexel University runs one of the nation's largest coop programs (required work experience as part of the degree), and the employers that work with them to list jobs for students pay an average of $16,000 for 6 months across all majors. Most of the majors with a coop requirement are engineering related, including CS.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of my friends is now a sophomore at Berkeley with some good hacking skills and he made about 8k/month at a start-up over this past summer in SF. He does iOS and JS.

That would be about $65/hour based on his hours.

</comment><comment><USER4> The university of Waterloo publishes the salary ranges and averages for its students [1]. You want math or engineering, work terms 4 or higher.

The ranges cover mom and pop shops in small towns as well as big tech companies in Silicon Valley. Hopefully it's a good starting point!

[1]: [https://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/hourly- earnings-...](https://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/hourly-earnings- information-jan-dec-2013)

</comment><comment><USER5> My Coop while I was a Georgia Tech student payed 16.50$ to start out. The people I knew who did some free lance or part time development charged or were payed between 10$ to 30$ depending on their reputation.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was paid $18-$24/hr as an developer intern in college in Raleigh, NC (about 5 years ago).</comment>


Pointer Events Now in Firefox Nightly - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/08/pointer-events-now-in-firefox-nightly/

<comment><USER2> _pointermove_

"The page at xxxxx would like to track the movements of your mouse pointer. Do you wish to allow this action?"

I wonder how many pages are doing this already without their users noticing...

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of the old Win 95 joke:

        ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
        ┃ You have moved the mouse pointer ┃
        ┃                                  ┃
        ┃ Windows will have to restart to  ┃
        ┃        apply this change         ┃
        ┃                                  ┃
        ┃               [OK]               ┃
        ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

<comment><USER4> Wait! Did they fix that in Windows 10?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I often wonder if browser vendors, or _anybody_ really, believes that this sort of thing makes our world better.

All it does is add a third case that every application needs to support from here on out. You need to do your sniffing, then register mouse events or touch events or pointer events as necessary. And write similar but different code paths for each case. And you need to maintain and test all three of those branches for ever.

It's that XKCD comic. And that Joel blog post from fifteen years ago. Implemented with no irony whatsoever by people who seem not to have read either.

<comment><USER6> How about you link which xkcd [0] comic and Joel [1] blog post you're talking about rather than assuming we know.

[0] It's not capitalised

[1] Spolsky, I assume.

<comment><USER5> Sorry about that. I expected that the Internet would have sorted that out for me by now. Googling:

[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html)

<comment><USER7> Joel's article is barely relevant now. The main problem has been layout discrepancies, and the pages were made for IE+others back then. Nowadays it's very difficult to step on something not properly supported in your target browsers (except if your target includes old versions of IE). I develop exclusively on Chrome with a lot of fancy HTML5 stuff and _very rarely_ I have to tweak something for Firefox, IE11, Safari, Opera...

It's a completely different scenario than when I did web dev in 2008. Also, Joel article is not fifteen years old, it's nine.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you're not pushing things as much as you used to in '08\. The situation is no different today than it was in 1996 when I started this ride. There are sections of my current codebase that switch for iOS 4, 6, 7, 8+, android and desktop Chrome, working around idiosyncracies of each.

There's also IE, Firefox and "am I running from the local filesystem" checks in there. All necessary to work around real differences in implementation in the most current crop of "modern" browsers.

It's a rare feature that I can ship that works out of the box in every browser. But, as it was 20 years ago, this is the job we signed up for. I just wish people stopped going out of their way to add more unnecessary things that I need to special case around.

<comment><USER8> As a side note, new versions of iOS get adopted extremely fast. It's unlikely you need to maintain code to support more than a single version of iOS back. [https://developer.apple.com/support/app- store/](https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Available in IE11, Edge and Firefox for now - [http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer](http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm apparently a bit outdated, but it seems that Chrome is also now planning on implementing pointer events [0] after saying they wouldn't. Does anyone know if webkit has budged on their stance?

[0] [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink- dev/ODWmcKNQl0I)

</comment><comment><USER11> I really don't like the idea of a common pointer event.

Mouse interaction and touch interaction are as different as mouse interaction and keyboard interaction. They really do need to be treated completely differently, with different user experience models and code paths.

<comment><USER12> What makes you think this is limited to only mouse vs touch? By design the HTML+CSS+DOM platform only provides an abstraction that may _or may not_ have a meaningful mapping to the actual interface of the User Agent.

You really shouldn't be assuming you know _anything_ about the interface and only use pointer events in the most minimal, generic way possible. To that end, this new "pointer event" may be useful. If you want better, more detailed pointer information, you should use a platform that provides it such as writing a native app.

/* the same goes for reimplementing widgets like scrollbars: don't, that's the job of the User Agent */

<comment><USER11> This is dangerous, because you have to design for use model, not a generic model.

If you design for a generic model, you're going to end up with a crappy interface.</comment></comment></comment>


My VC Year - Joel Spolsky @ Business of Software - <AUTHOR> http://thebln.com/2010/10/joel-spolsky-business-of-software/

<comment><USER2> This was really hard to read, but I can't wait for the video to be released. Unfortunately for this conference (Business of Software) that tends to be a year later when they start selling tickets for next year's conference.

<comment><USER3> It's so lame that they don't release videos.

<comment><USER4> Did you attend the conference? Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER3> Elaborate on what? I think it's lame that they don't release videos of the presentations.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I misread you. I understood "The conference is so lame that they don't release the videos".

<comment><USER5> They need to secure permission from the presenters and content owners for every presentation, which is hard or impossible.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't they normally just write that into the speaker's contract?

<comment><USER7> I got a checkbox to say "Yes, you can tape this and use it for promotion." It was fairly straightforward. (I presented a lightning talk. It was fairly well received. You'll see on my blog when they post it - it worked better with the crowd than it did in my practice runs, and since it relies on a few reveals I won't spoil you.)

<comment><USER8> Your lightning talk was ridiculously good. I didn't even attempt to blog the lightning talks - and many of them weren't capable of being annotated.

I cannot wait to see the video of yours. A highlight of the event for many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody want me to write up my notes for all the presentations? I've got a couple of hours to kill once I get to the airport.

<comment><USER9> Please do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That was borderline incoherent. Terribly written.

Looked for a better account of his talk but couldn't find one.

<comment><USER11> It looks like it was written in near real-time. Going through the main site (<http://thebln.com/blog/>) there are notes for what looks like every talk.

If you read it in that context it doesn't seem so bad...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wrote this up as my notes on the talk as I did with all the others. I set my self a target of posting the notes by the time the next talk started otherwise I would not have got round to writing the notes up. Read them in that context and am very happy to get other input if I missed anything which I am sure I did.

Joel's talk was interesting but it was not hugely structured so notes probably represent that, though I take full responsibility if I misrepresent.

The issues around shares and employees however were a mess. Joel's company structure evolved out of Kibbutz where reward is based around time served and seniority of people. He admits happily to making a big mess of this and suggests getting advice from the outset. He had assumed that he could just give employees shares once the investment had been made but of course, if he did, they would have had to pay tax on them at market rate.

</comment><comment><USER12> _When the investment was made, lots of people had shares in the business. They had not done the paperwork on the shares etc and had not realised that just telling people they would be looked after to avoid paperwork would create big headaches._

Wow, I'm pretty shocked that someone who already owns and runs a business would not take care of something so basic when setting up a new business.

<comment><USER7> Option B: important information has been lost in your skimming of a two sentence summary of a ten minute description of a multiple-month battle about tax treatment and expectation management regarding a generous equity grant.

<comment><USER12> Good point. The more believable explanation is this transcription misrepresents the situation -- the fact that it was shocking should have made me question it.</comment></comment></comment>


Light propagation as oscillation swaps - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/wave-space-theory-4e7b97f5a15 <comment><AUTHOR> This is my interpretation of propagation of light, proposing the causality extending from present into the past, from the destination to source. I think the light is caused by absorption of it, instead of emission of it, similar to how electricity flow is caused by the consumption of it, instead of by the flick of a switch.

Kindly review and provide your valuable comments. Also please let me know if any of you can endorse its submission to arxive.org. Thank you very much!

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I like the way you think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much!</comment></comment></comment>


CSS Properties That Trigger Layout, Paint and Composite - ux-app http://csstriggers.com/

<comment> ux-app here's a write up of the methodology used to compile the list.

[http://aerotwist.com/blog/css-triggers/](http://aerotwist.com/blog/css- triggers/)</comment>