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awanderingmindon Show HN: Free tool to find RSS feeds, even if not linked on the page

Thanks for this comment, it encouraged me to go and add this to the <head> of my blog.

awanderingmindon On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (1988)

Me too! I think it's the pontification presented in a self-aware, humorous way.

I strongly agree with about half of the essay, while I want to agree with the other half in principle, but instead I think it is indeed "...so ridiculous that [he is] obviously out of touch with the real world".

awanderingmindon Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

Since this thread is full of Tao Te Ching enthusiasts, someone might enjoy this blog post of mine: https://www.awanderingmind.blog/posts/2024-01-14-tao-te-chin...

awanderingmindon American flag sort

There is currently a typo in the link which prevents it from working - the correct link is https://static.usenix.org/publications/compsystems/1993/win_...

Interesting read, thanks!

awanderingmindon Some Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching

A blog post about the Tao Te Ching, and Taoism in general. Includes an LLM generated version of the Tao Te Ching at the end, along with a discussion of the process of creating it, and the quality of the output (ok but not amazing).

awanderingmindon Ask HN: Experience Starting a Blog

I recommend writing for the sake of writing. Posting content can be scary, but as others have said: just don't add a comments section. You'll avoid the majority of the unhelpful 'your writing is awful and you suck' type responses if you add even the tiniest barrier to giving feedback.

I've had a blog since May 2021, although I haven't posted much: https://www.awanderingmind.blog/. Sometimes people send me nice emails. It hasn't helped in the slightest with getting a new job, but that's not why I write.

awanderingmindon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

No specific advice I'm afraid - although I guess you could try just expanding the entire page and leave the margins blank?

In any case, keep on writing!

awanderingmindon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

Hey! You have some interesting content. If you had a rss/atom feed I'd happily subscribe to it.

A comment on your site: I have to zoom to 300% on firefox to get what seems like a 'natural' view. Without this it feels like I'm viewing a pdf. This is not serious criticism, but something that bothered me a bit. Others may feel differently.

awanderingmindon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://www.awanderingmind.blog/

People seem to have enjoyed my book reviews, of which there are currently a grand total of two: https://www.awanderingmind.blog/tags/book%20review.html.

Most recently I have tried to make a case against the dangers of intelligence explosions (I am unsure I succeeded): https://www.awanderingmind.blog/posts/2023-05-31-the-case-ag...

I have an RSS feed you can subscribe to. I welcome constructive feedback, regarding both my writing or the site itself.

awanderingmindon [dead]

A review of the short story 'The Mold of Yancy' but Philip K. Dick.

awanderingmindon Geometric Algebra and Classical Mechanics

An elementary introduction to geometric algebra, with examples of applications to problems from classical mechanics

awanderingmindon The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

Thanks for a thoughtful response :). I agree with most of what you say. You are right that 50 years is a long time - that was poor phrasing on my part.

awanderingmindon The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

If you are implying that I am trying make a racist claim you are wrong.

awanderingmindon The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

You may be right.

awanderingmindon The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

It's not an issue of maintaining a 'western European' standard of living - it's an issue of millions of people suffering because of lack of access to basic services, and a sky high crime rate that brutalises the population. The situation can be much better than it is without being comparable to western European standards.

According to worldbank data the murder rate in SA is around 10 times higher than in Egypt, and around 5 times as high as in Mongolia.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?location...

If you like the correct framing is 'extreme suffering due to poverty', not 'high inequality'. The inequality is galling because there is a small percentage of people (myself included) who enjoy a good quality of life while millions of people live in poverty.

Purely in terms of 'inequality being bad', there are good reasons to believe that it undermines democracy (citation required I suppose).

awanderingmindon The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

That's not quite what I was going for - I didn't propose any solutions, but that doesn't mean I believe the situation is completely beyond repair. By all means live your life as you believe best, but to anyone else reading this comment, please don't think this is a course I recommend.

awanderingmindon The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

I think I sort of agree with you?

awanderingmindon The state of South Africa, 28ish years post-apartheid

My apologies if this came across as tone deaf. I in no way mean to minimise the damage caused by apartheid, which was one of the great evils of the 20th century.

One of the challenges in writing is realising that no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to please every one. I spent a lot of time on this post, and it went through several revisions. In some versions I was harsher on the ruling party; in others I went into more detail about the brutality of colonialism and apartheid.

As I acknowledged in the post, I have my own biases, and therefore encourage people to do their own research. I also provided a very short list of some of the terrible things associated with, or directly caused, by apartheid. I could certainly have expanded upon that, but then the post would have been about apartheid, and not the current state of the country. I could also have expressed more empathy for the suffering of the millions of people in the country who lack access to basic services, decent jobs, access to educational opportunities, etc. I have however become increasingly disillusioned by that type of writing, as it does not seem to have helped improve the situation. It is rather a style that I think helps to salve the conscience, at the expense of avoiding true self-reflection.

A child comment to this points out that spatial apartheid is still very much a thing; I agree completely. I could have written about that; but that is not what I wanted to write about. I am more concerned by the fact that spatial apartheid still exists, and that little to no progress has been made in addressing it, than in the fact that a certain group of terrible people situated at a specific point in history were responsible for it.

An unfortunate situation has arisen where any criticism of the current situation in the country is construed as 'minimising the damage of apartheid' or something similar, with the subtext that the critic is probably racist in some way (or just too privileged to understand). South Africans need to wake up to this - it is one of the primary ways that the ruling party has entrenched itself, and shuts down any criticism of itself.