My partner and I pretend we're divorced.

We noticed before we had our first that our friends who were divorced with kids actually got out once in a while, because they shared custody. So we have what amounts to an oncall schedule - certain days I'm 100% in charge of kiddo, certain days he is. There's some exceptions for commute stuff - daycare is closer to my work- but this means you sleep in on your weekend day off, and you can schedule nights to game and hang out with friends, etc.

Most of the time we aren't out; kiddo is fun. But the difference between hanging out with a kid and being in charge of them getting their needs met is pretty significant.

Re: commute, I'm hauling the kiddo in with me on my bicycle, dropping her off at daycare, and heading to my work. It's exercise and commute together and I love it. It's about 40 minutes one way, so I have to be careful about not over training, but it's awesome otherwise.

Edit: We also do side projects on our off nights. And we pay people to clean/do the yard work, which also does a lot for free time.

I've looked longingly at divorced folks myself, with every other week off.

More expenses though.

Well, divorced roommates ;)

I've been reading HN for a while now- I discovered Graham's essays in high school, a year or two before he started the y combinator. I was a soon-to-be-aerospace-engineering major, then.

I haven't really programmed since my freshmen year, when I switched to anthropology. Had an interesting year, post graduation, doing archaeology for CRM firms. Then I decided I kinda liked getting paid, and now I'm doing instructional design for a retailer. I am slightly less broke.

I am also going, "Hm, all my engineering co-horts are not broke. And jeez, why do I read HN all the time? Maybe I should start playing around, again..."

But, no, at the moment, no skillz.

The subtler point of this article is that a simple no is a good test of your authority- service personnel, students, people he had power over; they had to except his "no." Girlfriend? Not so much.

The power in question isn't the added power of using the word- it's the way the word reveals the power dynamics at play. He didn't gain more authority by using the word; the word revealed to him his authority and its limits.

Surely you must see the Tao in all this?

Reject duality. "Yes" and "No" create each other. They are both to be used, in harmony.

This article is really about honesty. Eliminating posturing and the little face-saving nothings from "No" half-way empowered the author. But at the end, he found it was not enough. Now, he must find honesty in "Yes."

> they had to except his "no."

They didn't. They could have asked for explanations, justifications, clarifications. He might have given them or not, might have continued the conversation or not (as he notes he did with a student), but that doesn't mean they had to accept his "no" for an answer.

Well, yes, they could have asked for any number of things, but the end decision still rested with him. Which means, yes, actually, they did have to accept his "no." If he refused to answer any further questions except with "no," they would have to accept that too.

I don't mean accept in the sense of "be at peace with the decision." I mean accept in the sense of "there ain't shit you can do about it, kiddo."

Well, sure, no one _has_ to do anything if you take free will far enough.

If you have the power to not clarify and walk away, they do.

"Unless you actually convey femininity as a woman or masculinity as a man, you're not going to attract a suitable companion of the opposite sex."

How... heteronormative... of him. I'll pick my own brand of suitable, thankyouverymuch.

I'd imagine there's probably a completely different set of rules for homosexual attraction though.

There are actually no rules for homosexual or heterosexual attraction. People are far too complex for that sort of categorisation.

And global weather patterns are too complex to predict.

This article makes me smile because I am a Hacker News groupie.

People can passionately follow art or music or movies and no one thinks them odd for not producing some of the same- that's how I feel about programming. I just like following it, especially the underlying philosophies. I'm an armchair hacker- oh, I've put a few things together in my day but they're the programming equivalent of Harry/Draco slash.

I guess this means Y Combinator's Hacker News has an official fangirl ;)

Objectively... funny? As in, if the entire human race disappeared and no other beings capable of abstract thought existed, certain things would have the qualities of funny?

Expound.

Also, "there are certain words that are used differently than what they actually mean." Huh? What is the inherit meaning of a word? Do words exist somewhere, true, pure, fixed in meaning, waiting to be used- and they are used, horribly, by every passing stranger, growing uglier and more cynical each day as they begin to believe the lies about the true nature of their "meaning?" (Yes, I just conflated linguistics and prostitution.)

I think your distinction between objective and subjective is really the distinction between popular and particular. For example, I know the Mona Lisa is popularly meaningful, and I acknowledge that, but I in particular am unmoved. It is a perfect way to avoid argument. Who tries to avoid argument on the internet? You are no sage.

However, your use of the word "funny" in the first paragraph to mean "humor," and then in the third paragraph to mean "a little off" is actually quite clever, as you were discussing novel breakages and the unexpected ways in which words acquire new meanings. You cunning linguist, you ;)

"Do words exist somewhere, true, pure, fixed in meaning, waiting to be used"

I don't think so. But I think when we talk about, for example, an idea, there is some consensus that we are talking about a mental model of the way something works, the way something could work, or the way something has worked previously. (For sufficiently large definitions of something.) And if I asked you whether or not a fact was the same as an idea, you would agree that it was not. So our collective agreement on what the word means doesn't differ from the dictionary definition because it comes from some platonic ideal, but rather the definition in the dictionary is wrong because of a quirk in the way dictionaries are made.

"Objectively... funny? As in, if the entire human race disappeared and no other beings capable of abstract thought existed, certain things would have the qualities of funny?"

All humor comes from something being novel or broken relative to a set of existing mental models. When I say something can be objectively funny, what I mean is that something can be objectively novel or broken in relation to an existing mental model, whether or not anyone else realizes it.

So, can something be funny independently of humans?

Imagine if you will something being novel or broken relative to a mental model that no one actually holds. Is this funny? Clearly it can't be subjectively funny to anyone, because the humor is relative to a belief that no person holds. But can it be objectively funny, in sort of a mathematical sense? I don't see why not.

"All humor comes from something being novel or broken relative to a set of existing mental models. When I say something can be objectively funny, what I mean is that something can be objectively novel or broken in relation to an existing mental model, whether or not anyone else realizes it."

So you're saying that something can be objective subject to its relationship with something else. Isn't that subjective?

"I don't see why not."

Well. Going along with your definition before, the one regarding that study, you need to realize that there is no way of quantifying the unexpected. Take Monty Python. They and their fans showed that you can take something unexpected and, by repeating it, make it more expected and therefore less funny, subjectively, over time. So the joke is subjective in terms of who it appeals to.

Now, you couldn't quantify something like the humorous value inherent in the Spanish Inquisition Sketch, and here's why. The primary punch line relies on the knowledge of the fact that "I didn't expect the bloody Spanish Inquisition" is a snippy, commonplace response to somebody's becoming overreacted to something. In order for "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" to be funny, you need to understand a) the perception that the preceding dialogue is indeed snippy, b) the understanding that the lead-up line is a gross exaggeration, and c) the knowledge of what the Spanish Inquisition was, and why they are, in fact, unexpected.

The problem is that all three of these things are subjective. You said it yourself: animals wouldn't find it funny. And the reason for that is that our humor is largely based on notions about our society. They're only funny subjectively within our society. Without the society, there is no humor inherent in many of these things. That also explains why infants laugh so much at funny noises. When you're young, these things are entirely unexpected. The older and more sophisticated you get, the more you come to expect from things and the harder it gets to produce a funny response. And people evolve their responses at different speeds. I don't laugh at very many jokes anymore, because between dedicated study and a set of rude friends, I've heard an incredible variety of jokes and humorous situations. The comedic shows I watch tend to be the ones that are more focused on craftsmanship rather than on the unexpected. When I do find a new type of humor, my response is delightedly juvenile - and usually, my responses to other forms of humor are lessened. This is all entirely subjective. You can't define it. You can monitor it, as that study did, but that's something different entirely.

"So you're saying that something can be objective subject to its relationship with something else. Isn't that subjective?"

Two is larger subjective to its relationship with one, but two is objectively larger than one.

First off, "two is objectively larger" is silly. If you're comparing two to one, then there's subjectivity involved. Rather, your argument is like saying two is objectively large, period. That's something that you can't do.

But humor isn't as harshly defined as the number system is. Rather, defining humor like that would be like saying "the sound of the word 'two' is objectively greater than the sound of the word 'one'." Once you say that, you need to define what those sounds actually mean, determine the numeric value of each, and then make the comparison. Until you do all those things - and all of those things require subjectivity within the confines of a language - then the sound of the word "two" has no meaning. The concept of two is objective, because mathematics deals only with objectivity. But humor doesn't have such harsh definitions, none of it is objective, and you can't limit it in a way that makes it objective.

Similarly, the word "humor" can mean both "response to something funny" and "state of mind." That's what makes "objective humor" kind of hard.

I'm amused that the author seems to think that precious metals are in some way more real than paper money. They are limited in physical presence, perhaps, yes. But their worth is no less determined by human whim than a series of binary jokes laughing their way through the Wall Street infrastructure. Money is one of the ultimate human abstracts.

What you say may have been true once, but by now they all have applications in industry.

Understand it.

One word: Emo

I'm a little worried that he thinks it's a good idea for the computer to sign the "legalese" contract for you... I realize very few people actually read them, but do you really want the lawyers to know that not only will you probably sign something without looking, it's the default setting on your machine?