Top all-time · #9868
roon’s blog
Personal blog · roonscape.substack.comaiculture
roon’s blog is a personal blog at roonscape.substack.com about ai and culture. Since 2022, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 8 times, most often “A Song of Shapes and Words”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite this Substack's "A Song of Shapes and Words" post on the shape rotator versus wordcel split in tech culture. One commenter also lists it among favourite Substacks.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
gonzo journalism in the age of AGI.
Most-linked posts?
- A Song of Shapes and Words7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-02-03
What Hacker News says?
There you go: https://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words?...
Comment linking /p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words?utm_source=url
on “Show HN: Test your shape rotation skills”Submitted A Song of Shapes and Words as a story · 29 points
HN discussionWell, it is a joke. There's a genre of Twitter jokes based on "men are better at spatial visualization" studies where they imagine men entertaining themselves by rotating objects in their heads as a hobby. I think the joke inventor made up a philosophy behind it to stop the VC guys from turning it into a culture war thing. He also put crypto guys under "wordcels" not "shape rotators" because they like writing whitep…
Comment linking /p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
on “The data are clear: The boys are not all right”Submitted A Song of Shapes and Words as a story · 5 points
HN discussionhttps://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wordcels-numbercels-defi... tl;dr think NY Times writer vs nerd programmer
Comment linking /p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
on “The dangers of high status, low wage jobs”Submitted Wordcels and Shape Rotators as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhy should this discussion play out again and again in this exact form is beyond me. It's always the same troupe of beaten up arguments trying to pass while being expressed in academia-flavored rhetorics, is it the canon critical thinking essay tone they teach in the US? Insofar as the grandparent post contained some useful inquiry this should amount to uncharitable derail. So often this blows up when anything relat…
Comment linking /p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
on “Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient?”https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/ - I read a good post there and feel like "subscribing to give something back" but I don't pay. I don't have time/energy to read that much anymore. Same with a dozen others ( https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ , https://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words )
Comment linking /p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite Substacks?”
