Jimmy Buffett has died | Hacker News Reader

Jimmy Buffett has died

rollingstone.com

59 pointsdivbzero47 comments

Wow, this hits hard. I became a fan because my father-in-law was a big fan. I was amazed at the business side of the artist. The way he basically turned a single hit album from 1977 into a life-long career and a giant enterprise delivering a lifestyle or vacation message to help millions of us let go of the everyday.

Not enough people are happy these days. I read about people that haven't taken a vacation in years -- slowly turning into automotons by the gears of capitalism. The grind of life is a real thing.

Many bosses are small, angry people, and live to make their employees hell. Maybe not on purpose, always, but it was the style of management they worked through and know of no other kind.

That smile of him on the sailboat is awesome. I'm glad he got to live his life that way. I wish more people were able to do that.

The Margaritaville stages of debugging:

  1. It's nobody's fault
  2. It could be my fault
  3. It's my own damn fault

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6478121

My-shitty-code

Codin' on my laptop, watching the clock tock All of these errors pop up on the screen... Fixing my syntax, I fire up emacs... compile again, hope now my code's clean

Struggling again with debugging my shitty code, Searching for my lost semicolon, Some people say that there’s maintainers to blame But I know... it’s nobody’s fault

Don’t know the reason, my eyes started seizin, Stare at screens all night, one more pot of brew... Empty bags of Doritos, I'm covered in Cheetos, And still how to solve it, I haven't a clue

Struggling again with debugging my shitty code, Searching for my lost semicolon, Some people say that there’s maintainers to blame Now I think, hell, it could be my fault

I've broken the code base, ruined each of the edge case Get an exception, pull up the console My heart starts to flutter, as I consider the other, Jobs and lives that I could have chose

Struggling again with debugging my shitty code, Searching for my lost semicolon, Some people say that there’s maintainers to blame But I know... it’s my own damn fault

Is this a copypasta or did you just write this yourself? Because this is absolutely brilliant.

Very likely just chatgpt output.

gpt4 in bing but then I changed like 20% of the words

Read every line in Jimmy's voice to the music. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Posted while drinking a (third) margarita in honor of Jimmy Buffett.

Years ago I met Jimmy Buffett. I was working at AT&T Labs in Florham Park, NJ and we (or rather, some real audio researchers) had developed a multi-microphone spatial recording rig that we wanted to use for streaming concerts. Buffett was interested in talking to us about streaming music to his Margaritaville locations. The talks went nowhere, but I had the pleasure of giving a demo to Jimmy Buffett -- who was really honestly impressed and picked out subtle details in the recording. The only other thing I remember about the experience was that he flew into New Jersey on his own seaplane (as in, he allegedly did the flying.)

More likely than an allegation, Buffett was lucky enough to in fact be a pilot and owned a Grumman Widgeon seaplane[1] until he was lucky enough to survive abruptly decommissioning the plane[2] in 1994.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_G-44_Widgeon 2 https://www.accidents.app/summaries/accident/20001206X01974

Presumably into Morristown Municipal Airport?

At one point in college, I was really depressed, went to a Jimmy Buffett concert, and felt so much better for a while. Bon voyage Jimmy.

He’ll be missed. I’m a (relatively) young fan of his and been to several shows over the last 20 years. He’s of course best known for Margaritaville and Come Monday. But theres a wealth of great storytelling and sing-along type songs in his catalog.

A few of my favorites if you’re interested in exploring:

A Pirate Looks at Forty

Son of a Son of a Sailor

Havana Daydreaming

The Captain and the Kid

Barefoot Children

Treat Her Like a Lady

He Went to Paris

Gotta add "Beach House on the Moon" to that list! One my absolute favorites.

Boat Drinks

Find

Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude

Cheeseburger in Paradise

I always put Jimmy Buffet and Harry Chapin as two sides of the coin. Buffet, for happy vibes, Chapin for melancholy.

A lot of memories from his music, but one that frequently pops into my head was Cheeseburger in Paradise being used in a SeaQuest episode that had a side-plot of a contraband REAL BEEF HAMBURGER.

May he find his lost shaker of salt.

What a full life. Hope he was actually as happy as he always seemed. Well done.

Presumably he is now enjoying a Cheeseburger in Paradise.

Just after Ted Nivison and Eddy Burback visited all 22 NA Margaritaville locations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsb9T1g5nlE

Always enjoyed the energy Buffet seemed to emanate. A redneck surfer boy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Buffett

Sucks. 76 doesn’t even seem that old really, it’s like a young senior age. Plenty of people often live 10 or even 20 years longer, often without being a billionaire too.

I actually looked this up, 76 is the average life expectancy for a male in the US.

My dad is 76. Smoke and drank his whole life. Walks foe miles with me while I play golf, nearly has a 6 pack.

Doesn't have any teeth though but he never co planned or even tried to get dentures.

Safe to say I'm not going to be in that type of shape at 76

Jimmy Buffett (with Evangeline as opener) was my very first concert. It was wildly good and fun.

I'm still surprised by how bad our "transformative" healthcare remains. People worth a billion dollars can afford extreme extravagances in day-to-day life (and frequently indulge in them), yet when it comes to extending lifespans, billionaires don't seem to live much longer than anyone else.

Regardless, RIP Jimmy Buffet. Some great songs and a seemingly very savvy businessman.

>I'm still surprised by how bad our "transformative" healthcare remains

You're comparing it to itself and surprised that it doesn't look exceptional in comparison. But in 1800, 46% of people in the US died before the age of six.

The reduction of infant mortality is kinda the low-hanging fruit of modern medicine.

Yet we still can't get our population reliably vaccinated for whooping cough, or a myriad of other diseases that children are most susceptible to.

But that is a coordination / buy-in problem, not a problem of ability.

Nothing like exercise, good sleep, and a good diet for healthspan and longevity. Those are a state of mind and mostly available to anyone. Money could buy a good personal trainer, chef and a quiet, dark sleeping room, but you still have to want it and do it. No purchaseable intervention can build muscle and stability. Some pills can help with memory though at least. And money can buy a decent doctor. Vampiring blood from the young is a possible financial advantage.

So the state of the art is bad because it only goes so far even for billionaires. It's as if technology can't let you live forever.

What a silly take. "Modern technology isn't good enough because it's only modern." You can't write a check for a treatment that doesn't exist yet.

I don't think they are saying "live forever". I think they are wondering why such a wealthy individual died in his 70s, where living into your 90s isn't entirely uncommon.

I think substance abuse in his younger days could have been a contributing factor.

You think substance abuse in his younger days was a contributing factor to his skin cancer?

Of course it has nothing to do with environmental factors, life choices, or just bad luck.

As someone whose parents are pushing that age, and whose grandparents did years ago, it's not that simple. Someone's personal medical situation and what they do and don't have matters a lot more 70+. Diabetes, cancer, and heart disease in particular; I've lost colleagues to the last two as young as their 40s and 50s.

When the dice of fate come up snake-eyes, whether due to an undiagnosed problem that got missed or wonky genetics, it's your time, and no one is entitled to live into their 90s.

This feels like a needlessly unkind and uncharitable response to someone pondering something.

My point is they're tilting at windmills talking about "transformative" healthcare as if Jimmy's death was some indictment of the US healthcare system that could be used for whatever partisan ends that poster wants.

Jimmy had functionally unlimited resources at his disposal. He just ran into the inconvenient fact that eventually, we all still die. That should be humbling for all of us, not an excuse to go on a rant about US healthcare. He was lucky enough to be a person who would have had access to the best care money could buy . . . but it turned out money still can't buy immortality. Again, that should be humbling, not an excuse to "fight the man." At least he wasn't stupid enough to pull a Steve Jobs and try to fight cancer with fruit juice.

I got introduced to his music when I went on a High Adventure trip with the Boy Scouts to the Florida Keys with my dad in the 90s. I won't claim his catalog is Beethoven, but it was a fun bond to have with my Mom and Dad. And when now and then he dropped the cheeseball "island" act, he wrote some very heartfelt ballads. I'm sad he's gone, because he brought some joy to my family over the years. But when it's someone's time, it's their time, and I'll take more time to be glad he had the musical career he did than I will to hijack his death for a policy rant.

If what you say is true, then another way to say it is that access to health care is relatively uniform. Surely that would be a good thing?

Perhaps how you take care of yourself plays a part, like life choices and all..

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