My mother declared my bedroom a disaster area (1984) | Hacker News Reader

My mother declared my bedroom a disaster area (1984)

news.lettersofnote.com

307 pointssohkamyung100 comments

This doesn't appear to be a thing you can easily do anymore now that social media has sort of supplanted it, but I used to email members of bands that I really liked when I was between the ages of ~12-16, so this would have been around ~~2003-2007 or so.

The band members wrote back with a surprising frequency, and were extremely polite and grateful for fanmail. I remember that I had a fairly in-depth email session with Justin Pierre, the lead singer for Motion City Soundtrack, where I asked him about how he comes up with songs and what touring was like.

Now, obviously, there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do this, because there's a lot of really crappy humans who might try and exploit the kids or do otherwise horrible things, but I was lucky enough to where that never happened to me, and everyone who wrote back to me was very professional and seemed flattered that anyone liked their music enough to write a fan email. I think email was still a new enough thing to where most people weren't writing fan emails.

It's something I reminisce about occasionally, and while I don't really agree with any of Reagan's policies, I will acknowledge that him writing back to this kid was genuinely a kind of cool thing to do.

ETA:

Before anyone goes judging them, I should point out that my parents did not know I was doing that, and would likely have told me to stop if they did, precisely because they would have been afraid of me being coerced into something horrible as a minor. I don't think they realized at the time that it was even possible to directly contact band members via email.

I continue to reach out to at least one independent band or artist each year, even now in my mid-30s. Around the end of each year, I review my top artists and songs to see which truly resonated with me as part of my life's soundtrack. Whether through email, SoundCloud, Facebook, LinkedIn, or VK, I take the time to express my appreciation for their work—sharing which songs touched me and why. Amazingly, nearly every artist responds. One memorable instance was when an artist, who hadn’t produced music in over a decade and was going through a tough divorce, told me a year later that my message had inspired him to return to music and embrace life anew. Your engagement with musicians can have a profound impact, perhaps even inspiring them to rediscover their passion. Keep reaching out and sharing your love for their art—it truly makes a difference, no matter your age!

Whenever I go out to see live music, I always make it a point to let the performing artists know they had a great set, even if the music itself isn't for me. In a world consumed by negative engagement, it's a small yet disproportionately effective way to keep the human spirit alive.

Seems OK to me and I would be fine with my kids doing the same. Risk for email is very low, especially when the child seeks out an adult, opposed to the other way around.

Ironically, my elderly father does the same thing today! He cold emails ivy league professors and writers from the WSJ, and I'm always surprised on how engaged they get with corresponding. They send preprints, lab data, and all kinds of followup.

Professionally it really works well as well. If you have a good rap and interesting questions you can connect with interesting people.

Think about it, most email is a pit of despair. Interesting human contact is rare.

Years ago I was working with a client on a really obscure bug with a storage system. I emailed a dude from the manufacturer who posted on an listserv about some similar-ish scenarios.

We emailed a few times and he ended up calling me. Turned out he was on the east coast for a conference an hour away and we ended up meeting up at the customer site unofficially, and he realized that whatever we were doing was outside of their test coverage in error. We both learned a lot and stayed in touch for a few years.

In the 90's I used to listen to Ian Masters' radio show Background Briefing which was a very pointy-headed, left-leaning examination of various issues.

At the time it was just a show run by a very competent host out of a public radio station in LA (KPFK - not an NPR affiliate). I think it has expanded since then.

Several times Ian said he was surprised to usually get a "yes" when he asked some relatively high-profile journalist, think-tanker, or university professor to be interviewed on his show. (Typical interview was 15-20 minutes of airtime - not just a sound bite.)

Basically, these folks seem to be surprisingly willing to chat when cold-called by an interested person.

In 2015, I found the phone number to radio host Jesse Lee Peterson's office, and around the same time had seen a clip of him saying that the "biggest mistake America ever made was allowing women to vote". I called the number to leave a message that I thought he was an "ignorant, sexist moron". [1]

The intern that answered the phone said "do you want to tell him yourself?", to which I quickly said "yes".

Jesse answered the phone, and I said "hey, Jesse Lee Peterson, I think you're an ignorant moron".

He replied back with "do you want to say this on the show tomorrow?" to which I said "absolutely". A producer reached out to me via email, and the next day I spoke to him on the radio for about 20 minutes. I doubt I convinced him or any of his listeners of anything, but at least I got to say my piece, for a lot longer than I thought I was going to.

While I still think he's an ignorant and sexist moron whose opinions have only gotten more radical and scary, I guess I'll give him a little credit for being a bit open to alternate arguments.

[1] Even if you disagree, don't try and convince me otherwise here, because you will not convince me otherwise in this case. If you don't know who he is, I advise that you don't Google him if you don't want to get depressed.

Kudos to you. But I don't think it was open mindedness. I think he wanted you on his show so he could use you as a foil.

Took a lot of bravery for you to do that.

Similarly I've done research on some of the more obscure older games, and cold emailing developers when I find contact info has resulted in a suprising number of successful correspondences.

Yeah, I recently got a response to a cold email to Dr. Karl Friston. Definitely a fanboy moment!

Regarding the risk of a minor doing this kind of outreach, 90% of all child abuse happens with someone known to the child and/or their guardian, and I doubt many of the remaining 10% are just waiting around for a child to contact them first. I'd say reaching out to people you admire is a useful enough skill that it's definitely worth honing as soon as there's an interest, though of course involving one's parents in the process is a good idea.

I don't think it's really that bad for kids to do this, nor for parents to let their kids do this. Obviously parents should supervise somewhat to make sure that the kids aren't being manipulated by some predator, but otherwise I think it's fine. The solution to "there are bad people in the world" isn't to shut out the world, it's to watch out for bad people.

Yeah, fair; I guess what I was getting at is that kids shouldn't do stuff like that unsupervised, especially really young kids. If it's just politely interacting with a singer, that's fine, but if the conversation gets too bad that can shut it down.

If the kid CC's their parent it's usually obvious that the conversation is supervised. A thoughtful and respectful individual will Reply All.

Completely agree, I think that's a very reasonable precaution that doesn't really "restrict" the kid, but hedges a bit against the famous person doing anything inappropriate. I also feel like nearly any famous person who isn't a creep would understand as well, within some degree of reason.

My wife as a teenager wrote a letter to a romance novel author, sincerely asking about the fates of some characters. I thought the author was a legend, she responded she just writes the books for money and doesnt think about it at all afterwards. Lol

Sounds like Gary Oldman giving an interview about any character he has played in a movie!

> Now, obviously, there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do this,

And what are they?

FYI: Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly are) and to be afraid of strangers is wrong. You should instead be teaching them how to tell a good stranger from a bad one.

> And what are they?

They’re in the rest of that sentence that you abruptly cut off while quoting, for some reason. You’re free to disagree, but leaving them out then acting like they aren’t there doesn’t feel like arguing in good faith.

> FYI: Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly are)

Furthermore, this is incredibly judgemental to lob at a (presumed) stranger. You shouldn’t assume someone’s life from a snippet on a comment on a random forum.

You whole argument could have been distilled without attacks to:

> Teaching children to live in fear and to be afraid of strangers is wrong. You should instead be teaching them how to tell a good stranger from a bad one.

It's reasonable to presume that a long-term implication of inculcating a "never talk to strangers" mentality into young children is the gradual decline of social trust, potentially leading to the collapse of civil society generally.

I think a t least some of the intense polarization, "culture war" acrimony, paranoia, and institutional dysfunction we're seeing today is attributable to the coming of age of people who were raised this way.

I really think this is a pretty large extrapolation from me saying "don't let your kids talk to random celebrities on the internet", claiming that what I suggested will lead to some kind of moral decay.

I agree that I probably should have clarified (and have in a few sister threads, you can find it if curious), but I don't actually think it's 100% analogous to say that being cautious when talking to famous people is the same as "don't talk to strangers". There's a pretty huge power differential between a kid and someone that they really admire vs some random stranger, and there is probably at least some degree of selection bias of people who pursue positions of power and have the desire to abuse it. I don't have kids, but if I did I probably wouldn't let them hang around a lot of people who actively pursue power completely unsupervised, e.g. basically any politician, religious leaders, etc.

You can call it paranoia if you want, but I think it's just being aware of selection bias; I probably wouldn't let a kid into an Incel Support Group for the same reason, because there's going to be selection biases towards justifying horrible stuff, even if a vast majority of incels are just dorky dudes who probably wouldn't do anything inappropriate to a child.

Most famous people are just average humans, and are perfectly professional and courteous, and I feel like I did at least kind of mention that in my original post when I said that nothing bad happened to me, but I don't think that implies you just throw caution to the wind and just let kids reach out to every stranger they want. I also don't think it's leading to a moral decay to think that parents should supervise very young kids on the internet.

> Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly are)

Well I don't (and can no longer) have kids so there's not much risk of me teaching children anything other than computer science at a school, and considering that I was the one sending the emails before, I don't think that I'm "living in fear".

I mostly agree though, I shouldn't fear-monger, most people don't suck. I guess I was just saying that because I've seen enough true-crime and creepy Hollywood casting couch and child exploitation that I just felt the need to put a bit of a disclaimer. Obviously those are generally outliers (that's why they're noteworthy enough to make into a documentary or something), but I do think it's probably a good idea to supervise/monitor kids' outgoing emails, especially very young kids.

I don't think it's "teaching them to live in fear" to give some very basic safety precautions, but I acknowledge that I didn't make that clear in the original post.

Agreed. This is ridiculous.

> there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do this, because there's a lot of really crappy humans who might try and exploit the kids or do otherwise horrible things

I know you're just making a CYA disclaimer, but that's not an effective approach to creating future adults. It just produces old children.

Good on you for doing this and hopefully your parents would have assisted you in staying safe (and polite) rather than stopping you.

After reading a sci-fi novel I really enjoyed, I emailed the author to let him know how much I appreciated his imagination, and received a rather lovely reply.

Absolutely didn't expect it, but it was really nice to get.

(Adrian Tchaikovsky, and his Children of Time series).

I was wondering if he was a real, individual human being because that author writes far more text in a short period of time than anybody I've ever seen.

I really liked Cage of Souls, it was like a Jack Vance revival. And it's always fun to reach Tchaikovsky and Alastair Reynolds books back to back.

Look up Georges Simenon (Maigret novels). Some people just write fast. Simenon used to write his novels in a week, and that isn't particularly unusual.

It certainly varies with genre, and the short writing periods tend to be more common in genres where people write series and the genre has very specific expectations (e.g. romance, crime mysteries) and where huge levels of originality isn't needed. NOT suggesting that is the case for Tchaikovsky.

I've written two novels, and when I first get myself to sit down and write (that's the hard part), I fairly consistently write 2k words an hour. A 200 page novel is in the 60k-65k word range, so 30-33 hours of writing.

If I could get myself to sit down and just write more consistently, I could churn out a lot too (of course whether it'd be good enough and/or commercial enough is another matter - most authors sell peanuts).

That ability to make themselves sit down and write with some degree of consistency is the most impressive part to me with authors who produce a lot, but that probably reflects what I personally find hardest (my second novel took three weeks from synopsis to first draft, and another four of editing; I'm now two years and 40k words into my third novel despite having planned the plot out in detail)

> I was wondering if he was a real, individual human being because that author writes far more text in a short period of time than anybody I've ever seen.

I've wondered the same thing about Stephen King. I figured it'd be easy enough for him to put out outlines and then make edits after others he trusted to write in his style wrote most of the words.

Stephen King has talked about his writing process. No outline, it just flows straight from his head from the first page to the last, and he goes where the story takes him.

He’s just actually that prolific.

I also really liked Cage of Souls. It seems like most of the people I know who have read any Tchakovsky have just read the Children of Time, and not any of his other prolific work.

I didn't get into his medieval insects one, but if Cage of Souls is the one with the jungle prison, that was really good, reminded me of the Book of the New Sun, except with less obscure words.

Also Dogs of War was good.

> there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do this

In the same way kids should never go outside on a sunny day because there is an exceptionally small chance that they could be struck by lighting? Back in my day writing letters like this was part of the elementary school curriculum.

Haha, I used to harass bands I loved as well. Like you, I got mostly positive and polite responses. I suppose my emails were constructive and kind so they appreciated it and reciprocated to some degree.

I learnt a fair bit about music from some of these exchanges. It was good fun. A relic of the old internet says I guess. These days you’d just look for content on YouTube or something instead. Still awesome in its own right, but different.

Before even then, when Cliff Burton (Metallica bassist) died in an auto accident, I wrote some physical mails to his parents expressing my sympathy. I forget how I got their address, but regardless they wrote back - by hand! and we had a few back and forth physical mails. Nice folks, and totally genuine.

Oh man I totally did this. I got really nice emails back from Jello Biafra and Sole from Anticon as an angsty teenager.

You might like Nick Cave’s newsletter, the Red Hand Files

People should never, ever write letters? You're kidding me. What is going to happen over the mail?

When I was a kid I wrote letters all the time to anyone I met and kept up some good correspondences. I felt it really enhanced me as a character and grew my literary skills.

Anyways the point -- I'm sure -- is moot as no one does that anymore, I'll bet.

I was speaking mostly with the concern that the famous person may try and solicit nudes from the kid, which is bad for obvious reasons.

I will acknowledge that I was speaking a bit too broadly, I have clarified a bit in sibling threads. I do think it’s a perfectly reasonable precaution, especially for very young kids, to ask them to CC the parents.

I still do this by shooting fan mail to indie game developers after I finish a game that I particularly enjoyed. 100% response rate so far, and always a pleasant experience for both parties.

I didn't think even Justin Pierre would know how Justin Pierre wrote music

These are like 19 year old memories, so they’re a bit hazy and I cannot seem to find the emails, but he mostly said he took inspiration from history with drug addiction, and that he usually starts with the melody.

The "best regards to your mother" at the end seems so innocent. Nowadays, it would read like a reference to an SNL skit starring Andy Samberg and Mark Whalberg.

"Word to your mother" was a thing around the time this was written and the history of potentially ambiguous maternal reference is probably about as long as that of language itself.

"Say hi to your mom for me." -- Biff Tannen, Back to the Future

I'm pretty sure Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake did that at the start of their song about threesomes they did with Lady Gaga.

And if I recall correctly, one of their mothers was played by Susan Sarandon?

> Andy Samberg and Mark Whalberg

Andy Samberg AS Mark Whalberg :)

Wahlberg lampooned himself in a follow-up appearance with Samberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYcHxF_cO8o. So: "and" is also correct.

I enjoy cheeky letters and even moreso, I really enjoy cheeky responses to said letters.

The staffer who replied probably enjoyed writing it.

This is one of my favorites:

https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-am-unable-to-accept-your-...

I like the Arkell versus Pressdram.

https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/arkell-v-pressdram

That is excellent, and if you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy the Cleveland Browns one:

https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/very-truly-yours

The cc: to Art Modell [0] was a nice touch. He was a real character. I imagine he thoroughly approved of the response, assuming he didn't think of it himself.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Modell

that was lovely. Sure enough the letter writer has a wikipedia article as Paul Devlin (filmmaker)

There is a reference to a "small grammatical error" in the rejection from Harvard, but I did not quite understand what he was referring to.

Was that obvious from his reply and I missed the point?

I am guessing it must be in the form of "Please accept our letter of rejection" or similar?

Yeah I’m pretty sure Reagan didn’t write this reply. Spending decades on social media has made me not trust anything I read that is “feel good”.

Around 2017-2018 I remember reading a really interesting article about how the Obama White House handled letters to the president. The vast majority of letters (hundreds per day, IIRC) were answered by staffers, but each day they would select 10 letters that Obama would read himself. He didn't personally write out a reply, but he'd make notes for the staff about how he wanted to respond. No idea how Reagan's team handled it, but it's at least possible that he was personally involved in the reply.

Reagan's administration worked in the same way. But Reagan himself was a prolific correspondent, and personally dictated a much greater share of those replies than most 20th century presidents.

(Reagan also was known for reading articles and scribbling notes to staff about a note to send "from him" about the content-- quite a few journalists and essayists received Reagan letters).

Would like to see responses from the Alzheimer's years. He got pretty bad towards the end. Biden sounds like a 20 year old in comparison. Trump is still off in cofeve land.

Social media has ruined our faith in kindness

I'm trying to figure out where 539 hurricanes is coming from? That's over an order of magnitude more than there's ever been in a single season...

It's likely a joke, but it sure stands out. Could also be transcription error. The letter itself contains a typo ("if you will privide") which is fixed in the transcription. (It should have been transcribed as is with "[sic]" added to note the original typo.) Too bad there's not an image of the reply.

BTW, the letter was shared to reddit 7 years ago and a redditor replied that it was his uncle Andy:

https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/5a95b8/til_i...

A photo of Andy:

https://imgur.com/gallery/tsWkg

The story has been circulating the Internet at least since 2004:

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/spring/c...

> A photo of Andy

What kind of amazing self-parody is 'Irmo man wrote letter'! That's brilliant

There's an image of the reply in that imgur gallery you linked. The image says 539.

I'm thinking it must be tornadoes. There were 907 tornadoes across all of 1984.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornado_events_by_year

Also curious that the letter was from May, before the start of the 1984 hurricane season. Per Wikipedia, 1984 did go on to have the highest activity since 1971, while 1983 the lowest since 1930. But 1983 caused more damage with Hurricane Alicia crossing Texas.

The Texas drought reference does appear to be accurate. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/16/us/crushing-drought-in-te...

Isn't all of the letter a joke?

It being a joke does not justify POTUS lying to US citizens :P

It's good to keep things in perspective. After all, there are 16,384 misunderstood comments each minute on this very website.

I misunderstood this comment initially, thinking that there can't be so many comments on HN. But then I realised each comment can be misunderstood more than once. Seems plausible. Pleased to have done my part.

And that number immediately triggers my "Nice neat power of 2 answer? Seems unlikely..." suspicions. :-)

If your comment is sarcasm, does my comment affect your calculations?

If my comment is sarcasm, does my comment affect your calculations?

I like your comment! Though, I dislike sarcasm, which your post seems to be.

I like your comment! Though, we may be in a liar and/or barber paradox.

Artists tell the truth using a lie. I dislike lying and yet love art.

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

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

I am reminded of what my Grandma used to always say.

"A lie spoken is easy to see. Repeating a lie colors it candidly. " -- Granny

So, I try to keep things in perspective, especially in comments on this website, so I don't get misunderstood.

Your grandmother sounds like smart lady.

I appreciate your perspective and share and interest in clarity of thought and expression. I originally thought you must be being sarcastic due to the implausibility of calculating a discrete number of potentially possible misunderstandings of comments when whether something is misunderstood or not is largely subjective and may simultaneously be both understood and misunderstood depending on the reading of a comment as serious or unserious, or both.

I thought for moment of asking you to show your work to derive your answer, but opted for a more lighthearted literary device.

Concepts like death of the author complicate matters. You may feel that a comment misunderstands your point, but your position as such should not be too privileged as a reader, and it’s possible to both say more and less than intended.

We also shouldn’t take for granted that we are understood, and being sensitive to potential misreadings are sometimes a useful device for playing with the actual ambiguity of reality itself.

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

The letter looks like pretty typical republican playbook:

It implausibly overestimates the scope of problems, then claims that the private sector / volunteer organizations have more capabilities / funding than the federal government.

I’m hoping it was self-parody and not just a canned form letter response.

maybe from a list of funding requests? :)

What tf did Reagan do that every other comment has a "Reagan bad" section?

Okay, I'll bite, although I'm afraid it's unlikely this will lead to much substantive discussion.

* "Trickle Down Economics": Large tax cuts for the wealthy while simultaneously dismantling social programs which benefit everyone else

* Arming authoritarian and far right militia in South America

* Environmental deregulation

* Giving a voice to the religious right and their anti-gay/anti-woman agenda

Reagan's administration did all that, and not to mention they side-channelled with Iran to not release the hostages so Carter couldn't have the win. Just pure machiavellian thought process.

Also: regulating ketchup as a "vegetable serving" (so school lunches didn't need to have fresh veggies).

Just thinking outside the box on how to completely F up government to serve their agenda.

The basic problem is that everyone makes mistakes. I feel bad if people do things maliciously or in bad faith. None of those, as bullets, feel that way. He did a lot of big things, some of which will invariably be big mistakes.

Expanded from bullets (e.g. Iran-Contra) there was badness, but what would be helpful would be to:

1) Expand those out a little bit, to where we can see the bad.

2) Compare to other presidents for level of bad.

On the whole, I have complex feelings here. The quality of recent presidents and presidential candidates has been very, very low. I think I'd take Reagan over Hillary Clinton, Trump, or Biden. On the other hand, I think I'd take Obama, Romney, and probably McCain over Reagan.

The right's obsession with trickle down economics alone and the no new tax pledge is enough to think Reagan was a bad president.

We see an entire portion government apparatus effectively obsessed with killing the government, but only performatively. This is what I see as a Reagan special.

I agree about the harm that caused by that movement, but as much as Reagan was part of it, I have a hard time attributing the whole movement to him.

FWIW, as much as a president has a soapbox to advocate from, budget and tax policy are set by congress.

oh yeah to begin he got real popular on being very pro union.

later on he fundamentally destroyed unions in America. unions have not recovered since all of what he did.

It would have been so cool if the mother had subsequently written a letter to Reagan requesting the funds!

The correspondence would have been very smooth and amusing

Amazing, hard not to think (if you've seen it) of the 'I declare bankruptcy' scene (surely you've seen a gif if not the show?) of the US remake of The Office.

I wouldn't have expected pro-US government propaganda coming from lettersofnote.com, but it is what is, this New Cold War demands sacrifices.

It's a cute interaction for sure but it's frustrating to see this sort of "I'm doing my best to make our government useless" attitude from the president.

A better response would have been "Sorry but your mother does not actually have the authority to declare federal disasters"

I'm aware that Reagan maybe had that attitude in general but I don't see it in this particular letter. He mentioned lack of available funds due to an excess of disasters, and promotes volunteerism, which I'd say is a pretty important component of a well-functioning society regardless of how well your government is performing.

Your "better" response isn't funny and violates the basic rule of improv comedy, which is that you go with what the other person gives you, instead of contradicting it. As an actor, Reagan was certainly familiar with this.

Richest country on earth and still there not enough money to clean up this child's bedroom.

I'm pretty much the opposite side of the political spectrum to Reagan - as a European left winger he was pretty much the bogeyman for us in the 80s - and I still found it funny.

It's pretty much what people would expect Reagan to write if it had been a serious request warranting a reply. What isn't expected, and makes it funny, is the humour of actually replying and pretending to take the letter seriously.

I think it'd lose its humour if it was markedly out of character and didn't sound like a serious reply.

This is a strange take on a very light-hearted interaction. Non of it was all that serious.

Is the image composition fair use? The website is commercial. I would argue the reagan borrow is fair while taking the whole room picture is probably not.

Do you seriously care?

Why not, it's a theoretical musing like much else on this forum.

FWIW, this mostly falls under one of the guidelines of things not to do:

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not a tangential thing, it was mentioned explicitly as a point in the text by the author.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com