Hacker News with Generative AI: Culture

Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet (lwn.net)
Reactions and follow up to College English Majors Can't Read (kittenbeloved.substack.com)
Well, that was a wild ride. As of the time of this writing, College English majors can’t read has 120,000 views and 535 comments.
In Vietnam, an unlikely outpost for Chicano culture (latimes.com)
European Space Agency will beam the famous 'Blue Danube' waltz into space (npr.org)
Johann Strauss II's popular orchestral piece "By the Beautiful Blue Danube" has been inextricably linked to space since it was used in the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding (thewayofcode.com)
The Last Nomads (thedial.world)
I first visited the highland villages of Adjara, a remote region in Georgia’s southwest near the Turkish border and the Black Sea, in 2013. Over the next decade, I would return at least twice a year, wanting to understand it more intimately.
The Philosophy of Byung-Chul Han (2020) (newintrigue.com)
In the 1980s, there were a series of writers who challenged the way people thought of the then-growing popularity of colour television and news media.
It’s So Over, We’re So Back: Doomer Techno-Optimism (2024) (americanaffairsjournal.org)
Tyler Cowen caused quite a stir when he published *The Great Stagnation* in 2011, claiming America achieved success by eating “all the low-hanging fruit of modern history” and was in for a period of stagnation.
A South Korean grand master on the art of the perfect soy sauce (theguardian.com)
In the lush foothills of Damyang county, South Jeolla province, rows of earthenware jars stand under the Korean sky. Inside each clay vessel, a quiet transformation is taking place, one that has been occurring on this land for centuries.
Opus Dei: The Handmaid's School (buenosairesherald.com)
Claudia Carrero walked into the kitchen, the biggest kitchen she had ever seen. A joyful girl wearing a uniform with tiny pink and white squares, she had to look up from her height of 4 ft 20” to see the dishwasher, which was twice as tall as her. She thought it was a modern, strange, and huge thing, just like everything she had seen after crossing the entrance gate holding her parents’ hands, an hour earlier.
The emoji problem (2022) (artofproblemsolving.com)
Button-sized eggs and teapot cities: A peek into the big, WW of miniatures (npr.org)
Miniatures are huge right now.
The Imaginary 16-Bit Amiga Games of Suzanne Treister (suzannetreister.net)
From the mid to late 1980s I spent a lot of time hanging around videogame arcades in London. I started to think about the games, their structures, their objectives, their themes, their addictiveness. I started to consider their cultural subtexts, antecedents, the effect they may have on society and how they might develop and connect to other mechanisms, developments and fantasies or projections of the future.
Capuchin monkeys develop 'fad' of abducting baby howlers, cameras reveal (phys.org)
On an island off the coast of Panama lives a population of wild primates with a remarkable culture.
Linguists find proof of sweeping language pattern once deemed a 'hoax' (scientificamerican.com)
In 1884 the anthropologist Franz Boas returned from Baffin Island with a discovery that would kick off decades of linguistic wrangling: by his count, the local Inuit language had four words for snow, suggesting a link between language and physical environment.
Why Every Generation Thinks It Was the Last to Touch Real Life (clickworlddaily.com)
Memory plays tricks, but maybe the truth is deeper than that.
Quoting Neal Stephenson (simonwillison.net)
Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. [...] Today, quite suddenly, billions of people have access to AI systems that provide augmentations, and inflict amputations, far more substantial than anything McLuhan could have imagined. This is the main thing I worry about currently as far as AI is concerned.
Do these Buddhist gods hint at the purpose of China's super-secret satellites? (arstechnica.com)
Until recently, China's entries in the realm of spaceflight patches often lacked the originality found in patches from the West.
Why Arabic Is Terrific (2011) (idlewords.com)
So I would like to stand up for the language nerds and give some reasons for studying Arabic that have nothing to do with politics.
Mexico accuses MrBeast of exploiting Mayan pyramids (bbc.co.uk)
Mexico is seeking compensation from US YouTuber MrBeast and a production company, accusing them of exploiting the nation's ancient pyramids for commercial gain.
The Connoisseur of Desire (nybooks.com)
10 Japanese Concepts That Will Change How You See the World (kanjimaster.ai)
Japan's language and culture are deeply intertwined, with kanji characters capturing ideas rich in philosophy and life wisdom. These unique concepts offer more than vocabulary—they provide insight into a distinctive worldview that can reshape your own perspectives. Here are ten influential Japanese concepts expressed through kanji that will inspire you and change the way you see the world.
Gateway Books: The lessons of a defunct canon (thepointmag.com)
It has to start somewhere, this business of being an intellectual. Chances are, it doesn’t start well. Your early efforts are bound be misdirected, a source of subsequent embarrassment.
Tipping Point: How America's Gratuity System Got Out of Hand (scrapstostacks.com)
World Video Game Hall of Fame Inducts Defender, Tamagotchi, GoldenEye 007, Quake (apnews.com)
Trump tells Gulf leaders Iran must cease support of proxy groups as part of any nuclear deal
The pigeon whistle: A defining sound of old Beijing (2019) (chinatoday.com.cn)
IF you have ever watched a movie that featured old Beijing, there is a good possibility that it contained a scene with a flock of pigeons flying over quadrangular dwellings (siheyuan), giving off a uniquely harmonic buzzing sound as they flew by. That sound is what local residents remember when they think of old Beijing.
Our narrative prison (aeon.co)
How is it that we live in an era of apparently unprecedented choice and yet almost every film and TV series, as well as a good many plays and novels, have exactly the same plot?
How “The Great Gatsby” took over high school (newyorker.com)
In the spring of 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald was worried about “The Great Gatsby.” It had been fifteen years since the novel was published, and the author had little to show for it. “My God I am a forgotten man,” Fitzgerald wrote to his wife, Zelda.
The Myth of the Genius Hacker (ft.com)
The myth of the genius hacker
The Battle to Bottle Palm Wine (2021) (atlasobscura.com)
It’s a common sight in tropical places from Nigeria to India to the Philippines.