Top all-time · #2732
Simon Sarris
Personal blog · simonsarris.substack.comwritingculture
Simon Sarris writes The Map is Mostly Water, a personal blog at simonsarris.substack.com about writing and culture. Since 2020, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 88 times, most often “In Praise of the Gods: What the Rationalistic World Forgot”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-25, and you can follow it by feed.
anecdotes, fables, tales, advice, photography, questions, sentiment, and ways to get lost in the forest. Click to read The Map is Mostly Water, by Simon Sarris, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- In Praise of the Gods: What the Rationalistic World Forgot6 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-07-19
- Stoicism is not enough5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-04-21
- Are We Still Thinking?4 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-01-19
- Welcome, Ghosts4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-04-28
- Familiarity and Belonging4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-11-17
- That which is unique, breaks3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-12-16
- On the Usefulness of Photography3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-03-31
- The most precious resource is agency2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-07-01
- Start with Creation2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-08-06
- The Sage's Garden2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-25
What Hacker News says?
Maybe you'll agree with this (really good) argument against stoicism: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/stoicism-is-not-enough
Comment linking /p/stoicism-is-not-enough
on “Life is not short”Submitted The most precious resource is agency as a story · 701 points
HN discussionA couple of my favorites: - https://meltingasphalt.com/ - https://simonsarris.substack.com/ - https://ava.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Patina and Intimacy as a story · 170 points
HN discussionI built GoJS, which is one of the most popular commercial JS diagramming libraries: https://gojs.net I built carefulwords, a very fast thesaurus and quote site for inspiration, used by... tens of people a day. Eg: https://carefulwords.com/gift https://carefulwords.com/solitude I made the site because I was mad that it was hard to type in urls to use thesaurus.com, and because that site fails to focus the cursor in t…
Comment linking /p/designing-a-new-old-home-curiosity
on “Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?”Submitted What the Mouse Knows as a story · 66 points
HN discussionI think it's an unfortunate effect of mass media. If anything however I think the internet made it 1% better, not worse. I wrote about the change from a world of actual dialogue to one of mass media, here: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/are-we-still-thinking
Comment linking /p/are-we-still-thinking
on “The media's lab leak fiasco”Submitted Stoicism is not enough as a story · 43 points
HN discussionI sort of wrote about this, under the heading Familiarity and Belonging https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/familiarity-and-belonging You can get some of this today simply by committing to being a regular at places, even if it is just a cafe, or a club, or even if its just twitter! (provided you use it in a way that is oriented towards making friends and not political demolition derby) It takes time and effort, but l…
Comment linking /p/familiarity-and-belonging
on “Tell HN: People underestimate the effect of colleges in making lifelong friends”Submitted On the Usefulness of Photography as a story · 27 points
HN discussionI am not really fond of this speech or way of thinking and wrote a counterpoint here: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/stoicism-is-not-enough Chiefly: > I suspect this kind of stoicism — for Marcus and Wallace and some modern popularizers — is a response to perceiving the breakdown of a functioning world. Their prescription for dealing with such troubles is to develop profound internal strength, and in doing so th…
Comment linking /p/stoicism-is-not-enough
on “This Is Water (2005)”Submitted In Praise of the Gods: What the Rationalistic World Forgot as a story · 9 points
HN discussionHe has quite a few other articles, perhaps not quite as good as that one but the same style - I'd say this guy has a very special skill that you don't see too often. https://simonsarris.substack.com/archive I'd go so far as to say that the ideas in that post, and the manner in which they're presented, is getting pretty deep into subversive propaganda territory, but in a good way.
Comment linking /archive
on “Everything I know about elite America I learned from Fresh Prince and West Wing”Submitted In Praise of the Gods: What the Rationalistic World Forgot as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI'm curious your thoughts on this: In Praise of the Gods - What the Rationalistic World Forgot https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-the-gods
Comment linking /p/in-praise-of-the-gods
on “Everything I know about elite America I learned from Fresh Prince and West Wing”Submitted That which is unique, breaks as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> His view of life was moral. He was loyal to mathematics, to order, to living the life he thought worth living. Le Corbusier dreamed of "cleaning and purging cities of disorder" with "calm and powerful architecture." (his words) His plan for Paris was never realized, though his ideals are apparent internationally, unfortunately. He was addicted to a certain kind of untested, abstract knowledge. I tried to articulat…
Comment linking /p/in-praise-of-the-gods
on “Le Corbusier as I Knew Him (1977)”Submitted Stoicism Is Not Enough as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFunny, I just built a largish (12x16 two story) shed in my back yard, but decided to just learn timber framing because how hard could it really be? The final cost was $5,206.72 (all local pine including boards, no plywood or glue, cedar shingles), and I partly took off about 2 months of work (working on this during the day) to frame it. There are some photos here, though far more on twitter: https://simonsarris.subs…
Comment linking /p/the-goose-palace
on “When worse-is-better – housing construction”Submitted Start with Creation as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> Having a job is a moral obligation and making kids work is good for them. The second part of this sentence is not obviously false to me. Kids working exploitative & dangerous jobs, yes that's bad. Kids being allowed to work in general, I think is good. I like Simon Sarris's take on this, from: https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/the-most-precious-resourc... > I find it striking just how early, and how varied, the a…
Comment linking /p/the-most-precious-resource-is-agency
on “Child Labor Is on the Rise”Submitted That which is unique, breaks as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://simonsarris.substack.com/p/designing-a-new-old-home-... Is highly opinionated but on-topic.
Comment linking /p/designing-a-new-old-home-beginnings
on “Ask HN: Advice on building a house?”Submitted In Praise of the Gods – What the Rationalistic World Forgot as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What the Lion Knows as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are We Still Thinking? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are We Still Thinking? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted In Praise of the Gods: What the Rationalistic World Forgot as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reading Well as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are We Still Thinking? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
