My advice, as the father of a ten year old, would be to get off hacker news and enjoy every second of having an amazing two year old! It's a wonderful time and it flies by.
I second the comments about this wonderful plane delivering a superior experience. I used to fly Manchester (UK) - DXB - Melbourne and loved every second of being in economy on one of these. Flying with Emirates even in the cheap seats is always exciting with great food and drink, so much so I'd arrive at my destination both drunk and hungover, but feeling good because of the nice clean air and quiet ride of the A380. Flying on the 777 or with a carrier like Etihad isn't even a comparable experience. The little things really count on a long-haul flight so that little bit more legroom, comfort, and class that the A380 gives makes flying on one a real treat, even if you are flying with 500 other people. Big shame there weren't more customers for Airbus, and more carriers couldn't make this plane work for them.
Part of the joke of Infinite Jest is the physical size of the thing. You'll realise if you ever manage to get more than halfway through. It's so much more than just a story...
I think publicly calling one of the rescuers a paedophile without grounds sunk Musk permanently on this one, regardless of the excellent but unusable engineering solution provided by his nootropicly charged ego.
I think this article is unfair in dismissing Robert Anton Wilson offhand. RAW was an interesting character who created a body of interesting work. He definitely punches above his weight in cultural impact, and was certainly 'open to experiences' which the writer seems to be somewhat astounded about. Indeed, some of his best work could be considered as a guide to how one can programme oneself to become more 'open to experiences' whilst developing a healthier sense of scepticism and discernment about those experiences.
I think Abbey Road (and probably other studios of the era) had an ambiphonic system similar to as described in the paper. They had an array of speakers built into the walls of their recording room so that could feed back signals from it, artificially changing the length of the reverb decay of the room.
His whole canon fits together somewhat, in that he refreshes and repeats ideas throughout his writing career, which means that you can almost jump in anywhere and pick up the thread. I'd recommend "Prometheus Rising" and "Quantum Psychology" as a good place to start. Also, don't be put off by his use of the word 'illuminati' in his work - he started that whole joke.
I can't agree more with this. Robert Anton Wilson's books are extremely readable, entertaining, and will definitely help you see a new perspective. For programmers and tech people I'd recommend RAW above Godel, Escher, Bach, for example. One of his many intriguing ideas, borrowed from Alfred Korzybski, is that "The Map is Not the Territory". Always know that whatever map or idea you have is only ever, at best, a fragmentary and limited version of whatever in the objective world it's meant to represent. Kudos.