Top all-time · #13294
Tim Challies
Personal blog · challies.comculturephilosophy
Tim Challies's personal blog at challies.com covers culture and philosophy. Since 2010, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 6 times, most often “"No Man's Sky" and 10k Bowls of Plain Oatmeal”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Challies's No Man's Sky piece on the "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" problem, where procedurally generated content is technically unique but not different enough to matter. Also cited for a quotes page on Puritan views of sex.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Informing the Reforming Daily Since 2003
Most-linked posts?
- "No Man's Sky" and 10k Bowls of Plain Oatmeal4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-10-27
What Hacker News says?
A big name in proc gen is Kate Compton who coined the term "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" to describe this phenomenon of technically unique but not different enough to matter - I googled "10000 bowls of oatmeal" to see if there was a good article and the second link was about it and nms https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...
Comment linking /articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowls-of-plain-oatmeal/
on “No Man's Sky Cosmos”Submitted "No Man's Sky" and 10k Bowls of Plain Oatmeal as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPuritans were actually very pro-sex (within marriage), which was a marked contrast to the pro-celibacy views of Roman Catholicism, and opposite the view of the Shakers. See, for example, http://www.challies.com/quotes/the-puritans-and-sex which quotes quite a few Puritan writings.
Comment linking /quotes/the-puritans-and-sex
on “Why do old statues have such small penises?”Submitted IPad: The Most Awesomely Average Device in Human History as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> fully navigable, interactive 3D worlds that you can actually walk around and explore. You can explore, but is there a single interesting thing to find? https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...
Comment linking /articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowls-of-plain-oatmeal/
on “WorldGen – Text to Immersive 3D Worlds”Indeed, this has been described in the past as "The Oatmeal Problem" [1] [1] https://www.challies.com/articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowl...
Comment linking /articles/no-mans-sky-and-10000-bowls-of-plain-oatmeal/
on “WorldGrow: Generating Infinite 3D World”
