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jordwest 57 minutes ago [-]
I’ve been on several silent retreats now and one of the most surprising discoveries was just how much speaking is unnecessary.
Without the pressure to speak amongst others, it became clear that I often said things out of anxiety - fear of looking weird or of making the other person uncomfortable.
Nowadays I rarely speak when I feel that pressure and paradoxically it has led to far deeper relationships and more interesting conversations.
It seems that the topics that come up when theres a pressure to fill the silence are the most mundane. Deeper connection seems to happen in the silences, or rather mutual comfort with silence.
Another way I could describe it is it feels almost as if there’s a fear of really being seen in silence that the surface level conversation manages to keep at bay.
tithe 3 minutes ago [-]
> Without the pressure to speak amongst others, it became clear that I often said things out of anxiety
I can't go probably 100 words without saying something stupid or flat out contradictory. I'll think back to the conversation, realize I don't actually think or believe what I said, and wonder just what possessed me to say that and how many people I've alienated with words that I don't even believe or hold to be true!
Silence is one way to avoid making those mistakes, but that's me avoiding the problem, not actually solving it (and it would be nice to speak all the time in truth, with coherence, and consistent with what I believe), despite not having much to say in the first place, unless:
- to clear misunderstanding / requests ("Excuse me, but I think this is my seat.")
I've done silent retreats as well, but I'm not a big fan. I live on my own and get plenty of silence that way. Being around other silent people was an odd experience, sort of like being on the train with people staring into space. It reminded me of being sent to Coventry. I did find it easy to communicate on silent retreat but not enjoyable. I just went off and read a book or took a walk.
1 minutes ago [-]
doublerabbit 18 minutes ago [-]
I live in a apartment with a courtyard, it's taken me 10 years of knocking on folks doors. Normally it's new tenants who don't know how much noise they make and I have to ask them nicely if they could turn down their devices and show consideration.
There have groans, feuds and aggressiveness towards me for asking for peace. I'm not unreasonable. If you wish to have a party, do it adult without DJs blaring till 3am.
Most of the time, it's that they didn't realise. But it's had aggressive moments where it's turned to "It's my apartment ..."; folk don't like being told to show consideration for their neighbours and only when the noise effects them do they realise how disrupting noise is.
The courtyard too has seagulls and at 5am it turns in to a hellish frenzy. So luckily this has taught folk a lot about how peaceful quiet actually is and on cases have made others move out.
The courtyard however does face a couple of restaurants at the back which has exhaust fans for their ovens. For some reason these whirl until 2am even though their restaurants close at 11pm. You can really feel the level of atmospheric vibration drop when they shut off. It's a sigh of relief when they do.
I've plead, and the local council is useless so I have put up with it. 3am is the only time I can actually relax my ears in to a slumber because having hyper audio sensory really sucks.
Peace is nice; I wish others would value it more. But with peace folk don't know what to do with quiet, it scares them.
Just now it's turned 00:40 whole writing this have the exhausts just stop. I just wish we could get all these resourceful exhausts serviced and silenced. Night from me.
nradov 8 minutes ago [-]
Other HN users keep telling us that we should support dense housing development. I think those people have never lived in an apartment complex with trashy neighbors.
richwater 5 minutes ago [-]
As we continue to devolve into a lower and lower trust society, the problem will get worse.
If people want to live in a shoebox surrounded by thousands of other people in a shoebox, I wont stop them but I"m not going to normalize it either.
dnemmers 10 minutes ago [-]
Even though the restaurant closes at 11, doesn't meant there isn't plenty of cleaning and 'closing' still left to do by the staff, often into the 'wee' hours.
2 hours ago [-]
herodoturtle 4 hours ago [-]
Article is behind a paywall for me.
Odd that it’s on HN front page :-/
EGreg 3 hours ago [-]
That’s how much their silence was able to accomplish!
pmontra 3 hours ago [-]
Reader mode bypasses it. It's only a JS layer on top of content that's already inside the HTML doc.
Disabling first party JS works too, using umatrix or similar tools. The site works perfectly without JS.
Edit: because of all of that, of course view source bypasses the paywall too and reveals tons of inlined CSS.
I agree with you though, it's obnoxious to share paywalled articles on Hacker News.
tomhow 1 hours ago [-]
Please don't post snarky comments like this on HN. We've wrestled with this for a long time and have settled on the least worst solution: paywalled articles are only allowable if there's an easy workaround that everyone access, like Archive.is, which you've helpfully shared. It's annoying that we have to deal with this issue but we're still better off with the articles than not.
We can do without mean words like “obnoxious” for people contributing interesting articles for the community to read.
Without the pressure to speak amongst others, it became clear that I often said things out of anxiety - fear of looking weird or of making the other person uncomfortable.
Nowadays I rarely speak when I feel that pressure and paradoxically it has led to far deeper relationships and more interesting conversations.
It seems that the topics that come up when theres a pressure to fill the silence are the most mundane. Deeper connection seems to happen in the silences, or rather mutual comfort with silence.
Another way I could describe it is it feels almost as if there’s a fear of really being seen in silence that the surface level conversation manages to keep at bay.
I can't go probably 100 words without saying something stupid or flat out contradictory. I'll think back to the conversation, realize I don't actually think or believe what I said, and wonder just what possessed me to say that and how many people I've alienated with words that I don't even believe or hold to be true!
Silence is one way to avoid making those mistakes, but that's me avoiding the problem, not actually solving it (and it would be nice to speak all the time in truth, with coherence, and consistent with what I believe), despite not having much to say in the first place, unless:
- to clear misunderstanding / requests ("Excuse me, but I think this is my seat.")
- to prevent harm / danger ("Look out!")
- civics / politeness ("Excuse me", "Good morning", "I'm fine, thank you.")
There have groans, feuds and aggressiveness towards me for asking for peace. I'm not unreasonable. If you wish to have a party, do it adult without DJs blaring till 3am.
Most of the time, it's that they didn't realise. But it's had aggressive moments where it's turned to "It's my apartment ..."; folk don't like being told to show consideration for their neighbours and only when the noise effects them do they realise how disrupting noise is.
The courtyard too has seagulls and at 5am it turns in to a hellish frenzy. So luckily this has taught folk a lot about how peaceful quiet actually is and on cases have made others move out.
The courtyard however does face a couple of restaurants at the back which has exhaust fans for their ovens. For some reason these whirl until 2am even though their restaurants close at 11pm. You can really feel the level of atmospheric vibration drop when they shut off. It's a sigh of relief when they do.
I've plead, and the local council is useless so I have put up with it. 3am is the only time I can actually relax my ears in to a slumber because having hyper audio sensory really sucks.
Peace is nice; I wish others would value it more. But with peace folk don't know what to do with quiet, it scares them.
Just now it's turned 00:40 whole writing this have the exhausts just stop. I just wish we could get all these resourceful exhausts serviced and silenced. Night from me.
If people want to live in a shoebox surrounded by thousands of other people in a shoebox, I wont stop them but I"m not going to normalize it either.
Odd that it’s on HN front page :-/
Disabling first party JS works too, using umatrix or similar tools. The site works perfectly without JS.
Edit: because of all of that, of course view source bypasses the paywall too and reveals tons of inlined CSS.
I agree with you though, it's obnoxious to share paywalled articles on Hacker News.
We can do without mean words like “obnoxious” for people contributing interesting articles for the community to read.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
HN sometimes likes to discuss texts that weren't published as a free contribution on some blog by a dev with lots of time on their hand.
It's not forbidden to post paywalled links on HN, AFAIK.
I also struggle to see an alternative when it comes to professional journalism.
Maybe a kind soul will be able to share a gift link.
> It's not forbidden to post paywalled links on HN, AFAIK.
The FAQ states that it's fine to post paywalled links as long as there is a workaround that everyone can easily access.