Hacker News with Generative AI: Culture

Is Cultural Technical Debt Sabotaging Our Survival? (joanwestenberg.com)
Technical debt occurs when software development relies on quick-fix solutions or outdated code to keep systems running smoothly. These temporary patches often serve immediate needs, but over time, they accumulate, slowing down performance and complicating future changes.

Software Development, Technical Debt, Culture

12 points by lamename 15 hours ago | 4 comments

The Rise of Malört, an Unexpected Midwest princess (nytimes.com)
The divisive yet beloved liquor, once available only in Chicago, has gained devotees nationally. Can it retain its roots?

Alcohol, Midwest, Culture, Chicago, Trends

76 points by mooreds 16 hours ago | 131 comments

How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment (nytimes.com)
Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible.

Google, Antitrust, Culture, Corporate Culture, Legal Practices

149 points by tysone 19 hours ago | 165 comments

How Japanese black companies oppress workers (2014) (tofugu.com)
If you hear the term "black company", what kind of company do you imagine? As we all know, black is the darkest color, so if you pictured an evil company with a dark side then you would be on the right track. A black company (aka "black corporation" or "black business") is buraku kigyō ブラック（）企業（きぎょう） in Japanese. In general, it is a term used to refer to an unacceptably exploitative employment system.

Japan, Labor, Culture, Employment Practices

177 points by rawgabbit 3 days ago | 229 comments

Museum of Bad Art (museumofbadart.org)
MOBA is the world’s only museum dedicated to the collection, exhibition, and celebration of art that would not be welcomed to any traditional art museum.

Art, Museums, Culture, Humor

204 points by purkka 3 days ago | 137 comments

Buddhist Retreat: Why I gave up on finding my religion (2003) (slate.com)
For a 2,500-year-old religion, Buddhism seems remarkably compatible with our scientifically oriented culture, which may explain its surging popularity here in America.

Buddhism, Religion, Personal Experience, Culture, Science

35 points by whereistimbo 3 days ago | 76 comments

The Structure of a Worldview (allcatsarefemale.com)
All this thinking about worldviews and cultural drift has been deeply engaging. Between Robin Hanson questioning the rationality of trusting in our deepest cultural values, and reading Thomas Sowell, who very clearly articulates the anti-idealist position and bias in favor of tradition—I’ve been evaluating political and moral disagreements in a new light.

Philosophy, Culture, Political Science

87 points by jger15 5 days ago | 134 comments

"Here I Gather All the Friends" Machiavelli and Emergence of the Private Study (publicdomainreview.org)
Reading is a form of necromancy, a way to summon and commune once again with the dead, but in what ersatz temple should such a ritual take place?

History, Books, Literature, Philosophy, Culture

23 points by Jhsto 6 days ago | 0 comments

Immorality Begins at 40 (2016) (ribbonfarm.com)
I discovered something a couple of years ago: Almost all culture, old or new, is designed for consumption by people under 40. People between 40 and Ω (an indeterminate number defined as “really, just way too old”), are primarily employed as meaning-makers for the under-40 set. This is because they are mostly good for nothing else, and on average not valuable enough themselves for society to invest meaning in.

Society, Culture, Age, Demographics

54 points by lispybanana 8 days ago | 24 comments

Russian family lived alone in the Siberian wilderness for 40 years (2013) (smithsonianmag.com)
In 1978, Soviet geologists stumbled upon a family of five in the taiga. They had been cut off from almost all human contact since fleeing religious persecution in 1936

History, Russia, Culture, Isolation, Survival

166 points by baxtr 8 days ago | 204 comments

The Internet Gopher from Minnesota (abortretry.fail)
In the early 1990s, the nascent Internet was commonly, and often sensationally, referred to as the Information Superhighway despite the very acute feelings of vicarious embarrassment that the usage of this term aroused in young people of the time.

Internet History, Culture, Humor

108 points by rbanffy 10 days ago | 43 comments

Coffee, sandwiches, underwear, beer: a day in the life of Japan's konbini (theguardian.com)
Convenience stores are a neat and functional retail institution in Japan, where customers can access the daily essentials, from buying breakfast to paying bills

Japan, Convenience Stores, Retail, Culture

112 points by tosh 13 days ago | 76 comments

Is There a Crisis of Seriousness? (honest-broker.com)
Back in 1996, critic Susan Sontag warned that seriousness was disappearing from society.

Culture, Criticism, Society

6 points by achairapart 14 days ago | 2 comments

Programmer in Berlin: Culture (wickedchicken.github.io)
This is part 4 of a 5-part series detailing what I wish I had known as an American programmer moving to Berlin. This page details cultural differences and things I wasn’t aware of until I stumbled on them.

Culture, Programming, Germany, Berlin

114 points by jnord 16 days ago | 225 comments

A Bad Year for Catherines (techdirt.com)
Say That Again

Names, Culture, Humor

18 points by hn_acker 16 days ago | 4 comments

How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2021) (city-journal.org)
A new book explores the religious origins of the West’s divergent political, technological, and cultural development.

History, Culture, Religion, Sociology, Economics

6 points by walterbell 17 days ago | 0 comments

The History and Evolution of Playing Cards (playingcarddecks.com)
Because we are all familiar with the modern deck of playing cards, a standard deck of Bicycle rider back playing cards seems very "normal" and "traditional" to most of us. But to people of the past, a deck like this is anything but normal! The reality is that playing cards have undergone a radical transformation since their first beginnings several centuries ago.

History, Playing Cards, Games, Culture

39 points by gaws 17 days ago | 10 comments

Chi-fi tuning – Why it sounds piercing to Western ears (2020) (audioreviews.org)

Audio, Music, Culture, Sound

68 points by userbinator 18 days ago | 53 comments

The Language of Faces (domofutu.substack.com)
Facial expressions and accents are like universal cues that connect us, allowing emotions to cross cultural boundaries. But it turns out even these instinctual ways of communicating carry subtle accents influenced by culture, social background, and the context around us. Just like spoken language varies across regions, our facial expressions reflect layers of identity, cultural norms, and social expectations.

Body Language, Communication, Culture, Social Psychology

40 points by domofutu 18 days ago | 15 comments

The Cult of Microsoft (wheresyoured.at)
At the core of Microsoft, a three-trillion-dollar hardware and software company, lies a kind of social poison — an ill-defined, cult-like pseudo-scientific concept called 'The Growth Mindset

Microsoft, Culture, Business, Technology, Criticism

81 points by zdw 19 days ago | 61 comments

Japan's Eightfold Fence (2017) (americanaffairsjournal.org)
For Westerners sympathetically acculturated to accepting radical multiculturalism, Japan offers an almost shocking vision of an alternate reality.

Japan, Culture, Multiculturalism, Sociology

11 points by ciconia 20 days ago | 0 comments

Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record (archive.org)
In today’s digital landscape, corporate interests, shifting distribution models, and malicious cyber attacks are threatening public access to our shared cultural history.

Culture, Digital Preservation, History

6 points by MrVandemar 21 days ago | 1 comments

Max Levchin: To Build a Meritocracy (levch.in)
About a year ago, we at Affirm decided to add an OKR to our annual planning titled “High Performance Culture”, to help shore up the necessary means (for the necessary means) of improving our collective productivity.

Meritocracy, Productivity, Management, Culture

10 points by kaonwarb 23 days ago | 2 comments

A deep history of Halloween (resobscura.substack.com)
You know the holiday: the one where people wear outlandish costumes and sweet things are eaten. It’s fun, but also otherworldly, with roots in an ancient belief that this evening — this one night at the change of the seasons — is when spirits roam the earth.

History, Halloween, Culture, Folklore

132 points by benbreen 23 days ago | 47 comments

Psychological safety vs. high standards: A misunderstood dynamic (leadingsapiens.com)
The term “psychological safety” is often misleading. When managers hear safety, many dismiss it as a soft style that implies complacency. Meanwhile, psychology implies too much mumbo jumbo. High-profile figures like Elon Musk advocating for a “hardcore” style perpetuate this misconception. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between high standards and psychological safety.

Management, Psychology, Leadership, Culture, Work

124 points by sherilm 24 days ago | 58 comments

On Good Software Engineers (candost.blog)
Setting expectations for software engineers is tricky for all managers. Every company has different needs and a different structure, tech stack, and culture. Whenever someone joins a team, one of the manager’s challenges is aligning the organization’s expectations with those of the new joiner. As there’s no universal guidance on this subject, I set out to find a simple definition that would help managers frame the fundamental things they expect from software engineers.

Software Engineering, Management, Expectations, Culture, Hiring

130 points by BerislavLopac 24 days ago | 102 comments

The 1600s were a watershed for swear words (2022) (historytoday.com)
Swear words are a constant, but their ability to cause offence is in flux. In the 1600s, today's obscenities were mundane.

Language, History, Linguistics, Culture, Social Change

119 points by pepys 24 days ago | 145 comments

The Influence of Japanese Archaeology on the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (jgeekstudies.org)
The game developing team’s careful integration of Japanese archaeological and historical heritage, especially from the Jōmon period, into Breath of the Wild, reflects the enduring influence of the Japan’s ancient past on contemporary culture.

Video Games, Archaeology, Japan, History, Culture

255 points by zdw 24 days ago | 50 comments

Dead Labor, Dead Speech – What happens when culture becomes an industry's raw... (newcartographies.com)
If, as Marx argued, capital is dead labor, then the products of large language models might best be understood as dead speech.