Top all-time · #25869
Jonathan Rogers
Personal blog · thehabit.cowritingculture
Jonathan Rogers writes The Habit, a personal blog at thehabit.co about writing and culture. Since 2022, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-03-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Jonathan Rogers's blog for posts on word meanings and origins, such as eponyms like "nimrod" and the shifting sense of "jerk", plus essays on software and joy and a quote anecdote.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
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What Hacker News says?
The evolution of "jerk" makes me also think of "nimrod" and how it referred to the biblical hunter and meant someone with great skills in hunting, until it was used to refer to Elmer Fudd, at which point the meaning changed to mean a complete idiot. https://thehabit.co/nimrod-hectoring-maudlin-eponymns-and-pe...
Comment linking /nimrod-hectoring-maudlin-eponymns-and-pejoration/
on “The forgotten meaning of "jerk"”See also: "You don't have to monetize your joy" https://thehabit.co/you-dont-have-to-monetize-your-joy/
Comment linking /you-dont-have-to-monetize-your-joy/
on “Write some software, give it away for free”This is my all time favourite one of these: https://thehabit.co/knowledge-is-power-france-is-bacon/ > When I was young my father said to me: “Knowledge is power, Francis Bacon.” I understood it as “Knowledge is power, France is bacon.” > For more than a decade I wondered over the meaning of the second part and what was the surreal linkage between the two. If I said the quote to someone, “Knowledge is power, France i…
Comment linking /knowledge-is-power-france-is-bacon/
on “Show HN: Using stylometry to find HN users with alternate accounts”