Hacker News with Generative AI: Biography

When Louis Armstrong conquered Chicago (honest-broker.com)
If you want to understand 20th century American music, you really must start with Louis Armstrong.
Music, History, Biography, American Culture
98 points by paulpauper 14 days ago | 14 comments
Franz Kafka – the workers' friend (2018) (marywcraig.com)
Everyone has heard of Franz Kafka, the writer of such masterpieces such as Metamorphosis and The Trial. His troubled relationship with his father, his love life and his eventual early death from tuberculosis are all well documented. What is less well known is his work for Die Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anhalt für das Königreich Böhmen in Prag (the Workers Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague).
Franz Kafka, Literature, Biography, History
53 points by robtherobber 16 days ago | 4 comments
Nellie Bly (wikipedia.org)
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, and for an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within.
Journalism, Biography, History, Women's History
87 points by samclemens 17 days ago | 14 comments
Review of "Source Code" by Bill Gates (theguardian.com)
The enduring mystery about William Henry Gates III is this: how did a precocious and sometimes obnoxious kid evolve into a billionaire tech lord and then into an elder statesman and philanthropist? This book gives us only the first part of the story, tracing Gates’s evolution from birth in 1955 to the founding of Microsoft in 1975. For the next part of the story, we will just have to wait for the sequel.
Biography, Technology, Microsoft, Bill Gates
23 points by Archelaos 19 days ago | 4 comments
Byte Queue Limits: the unauthorized biography (medium.com)
Of the technologies I’ve worked on, Byte Queue Limits, or just BQL, seems the one for which I get the most comments!
Software, Biography, Technology
27 points by tkhattra 21 days ago | 2 comments
Pianist David Kadouch probes gay composers' hidden loves, through music (npr.org)
Where words fail, music speaks.
Classical Music, LGBTQ+, Biography
5 points by rossant 21 days ago | 0 comments
Operation Leg – a pilot unlike any other (2020) (rafbf.org)
Douglas Bader was a Battle of Britain pilot unlike any other.  Medically discharged against his will in 1932, the outbreak of the war was an opportunity for Bader to re-join the RAF and take back to the skies. Although hampered by the loss of his two legs, Bader was a remarkable pilot and, once captured by the German, a persistent escapee.
Military History, Aviation, Biography
175 points by FinnLobsien 25 days ago | 77 comments
The British Micro Behemoth (abortretry.fail)
Clive Marles Sinclair was born on the 30th of July in 1940 in Ealing, Middlesex, England.
Biography, Technology, United Kingdom
145 points by rbanffy 29 days ago | 76 comments
The forgotten brilliance of Hélène de Beauvoir, sister of Simone (theguardian.com)
Simone de Beauvoir, the French feminist icon, novelist and philosopher who bestrode the 20th century, had a younger sister called Hélène. She was not famous like Simone but she was every bit as radical and prolific, as both a feminist and a painter. It seems ridiculous that history would have sidelined this woman whose work Picasso complimented at her first Paris show in 1936, calling it “original”.
Feminism, Art, History, Biography
53 points by bookofjoe 32 days ago | 3 comments
Frankenstein inspired by suicide of Mary Shelley's half-sister, book reveals (theguardian.com)
Frankenstein’s monster, as horror fans know, did not really spark into life with a bolt of lightning, but was born inside the mind of Mary Shelley during a dreary holiday on a ­mountainside above Geneva.
Literature, Biography, History
11 points by mellosouls 33 days ago | 2 comments
The Charango (longreads.com)
I can see him. He stands proud, with his shoulders back; he’s short and stocky like a pitbull. His voice is just as proud as his posture, loud and deep, with a thick, warm, Andean accent. His wide jaw and square head make him look stern when his face is resting. But my dad is a performer, so his face is not often resting. Most of the time it is in a wide, amicable grin.
Music, Culture, Biography
12 points by mooreds 35 days ago | 0 comments
Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien's Middle-Earth (nytimes.com)
In 1977, Karen Wynn Fonstad made a long shot cold call to J.R.R. Tolkien’s American publisher with the hope of landing a dream assignment: to create an exhaustive atlas of Middle-earth, the setting of the author’s widely popular “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
Fantasy Literature, Maps, Biography, J.R.R. Tolkien
27 points by indigoabstract 36 days ago | 4 comments
Byte Queue Limits – The unauthorized biography (medium.com)
Of the technologies I’ve worked on, Byte Queue Limits, or just BQL, seems the one for which I get the most comments! It’s rather ancient now dating back to 2011, however to my surprise it still seems quite relevant. Anyway, I thought it’d be fun today to look at it as part retrospective and part exposé.
Technology, Programming, Retrospective, Biography
11 points by dtaht 38 days ago | 0 comments
Shavarsh Karapetyan (wikipedia.org)
Shavarsh Karapetyan trained his eyes on the asphalt as he rounded the corner. He had 45 pounds of sand strapped to his back, facing the final push on a 13-mile run fueled by the fury he’d been nursing ever since Soviet coaches dropped him from the national swim team.
Sports, Biography, Perseverance
204 points by handfuloflight 42 days ago | 24 comments
The Tedious Heroism of David Ruggles (commonplace.online)
History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.
History, Biography, Social Justice
140 points by samclemens 42 days ago | 22 comments
Edwin Cohn and the Harvard Blood Factory (asimov.press)
Edwin Cohn, a temperamental and entrepreneurial protein chemist working at Harvard University in the early 1900s, is perhaps one of the most underrated translational scientists of all time.
Science, History, Biography
43 points by mailyk 47 days ago | 6 comments
The sham legacy of Richard Feynman [video] (youtube.com)
Physics, Legacy, Biography, Science, Video
7 points by chrismatic 47 days ago | 4 comments
Bob Dylan has some Dylanesque thoughts on the "sorcery" of technology (arstechnica.com)
With the holiday release of the biopic A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is once again in the national spotlight.
Music, Technology, Biography, Bob Dylan
6 points by pseudolus 48 days ago | 0 comments
Bob Dylan has some Dylanesque thoughts on the "sorcery" of technology (arstechnica.com)
With the holiday release of the biopic A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is once again in the national spotlight.
Music, Technology, Biography
6 points by Tomte 48 days ago | 0 comments
A Private Life – Nikolai Tolstoy Remembers Patrick O'Brian (unseenhistories.com)
A Very Private Life – Nikolai Tolstoy Remembers Patrick O’Brian
Biography, History, Literature, Authors
82 points by unseenhistories 50 days ago | 31 comments
Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba (lrb.co.uk)
In​ 1977, Abba were waiting at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm when they noticed a dishevelled young man charging towards them.
Music, Biography, Culture
19 points by avidly 51 days ago | 23 comments
Walter Isaacson: My So-Called Writing Life (2014) (wordpress.com)
Walter Isaacson is the 2014 LEH Humanist of the Year. President and CEO of The Aspen Institute and the best-selling author of biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin, Isaacson contributed this autobiographical article to the new issue of Louisiana Cultural Vistas magazine. To read the full issue online and view more photos from this article, click here.  To renew your subscription to LCV, click here. The LEH will honor Isaacson at the March 29th Humanities Awards. 
Biography, Writing, Authors, Leadership, Humanities
50 points by nsoonhui 52 days ago | 14 comments
Intolerable Genius: Berkeley's Most Controversial Nobel Laureate (2019) (alumni.berkeley.edu)
IN THE SUMMER OF 1984 the senior scientists of Cetus Corp., a Berkeley biotech company, found themselves in a bind. One of their employees, a promising young scientist named Kary Mullis, had dreamed up a technique to exponentially replicate tiny scraps of DNA. He called it polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and if it worked it would change the world and likely earn Cetus a mountain of money. The only problem was Mullis was an interpersonal wrecking ball.
Science, Biography, Controversy, Academia
22 points by oli5679 54 days ago | 24 comments
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory (abortretry.fail)
William Bradford Shockley Jr was born on the 13th of February in 1910 in London.
History, Biography, Semiconductor Industry
126 points by BirAdam 59 days ago | 40 comments
Turing Machines (samwho.dev)
On June 8th, 1954, Alan Turing was found dead in bed, at his home in Wilmslow. He had died the day before, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning. A half-slice of apple was on his bedside table, laced with cyanide. An inquest ruled the death a suicide.
Computer Science, History, Biography
115 points by jakelazaroff 63 days ago | 35 comments
Khalid Sheldrake: The East Dulwich man who would be King (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
Bertie Sheldrake was a South London pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam and became king of a far-flung Islamic republic before returning to London and settling back into obscurity.
Biography, History, United Kingdom, Religion, Islam
59 points by Geekette 65 days ago | 31 comments
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a Modern Antihero (newyorker.com)
He is from a wealthy and prominent Maryland family, the valedictorian of a prestigious private school, an Ivy League graduate. His family and friends speak of him fondly, and they worried about him when he fell off the grid, some months ago.
Crime, Biography, Social Class
12 points by rbanffy 69 days ago | 5 comments
True Crime: Allan Pinkerton's Thirty Years a Detective (1884) (publicdomainreview.org)
Allan Pinkerton, Thirty Years a Detective: A Thorough and Comprehensive Exposé of Criminal Practices of All Grades and Classes (New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1884).
True Crime, History, Biography, Crime, Law Enforcement
60 points by samclemens 75 days ago | 20 comments
Arthur Cravan: The Disappearing Dadaist (historytoday.com)
The last time anyone saw Arthur Cravan alive, he was sailing off, alone, into the Pacific Ocean on a leaky boat.
Art, History, Dadaism, Biography
26 points by apollinaire 76 days ago | 1 comments
Memory is all we have (onepercentrule.substack.com)
Few lives illuminate the deep capacity of the human mind as vividly as that of Eric Kandel. A Nobel laureate whose life story intertwines survival, curiosity, and groundbreaking discovery, Kandel exemplifies how life’s relentless challenges serve as an enduring test of intelligence in all its forms.
Memory, Neuroscience, Biography, Intelligence
40 points by drcwpl 78 days ago | 11 comments