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Terry Pratchett's Study

41 points • by ColinWright • today at 4:05 PM • 8 comments • view on HN

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simonw • today at 7:34 PM

Terry Pratchett once wrote about the concept of "horizontal wealth". Vertical wealth is where you spend money on rich people stuff - yachts and suchlike. Horizontal wealth is where you spend more money on the things you liked before you got rich: https://chibuikeani.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-price-of-happin...

"But horizontal wealth means not letting your increased income dictate your tastes. You like books and now you have money? Buy more books! Change those catenary bookshelves for good hardwood ones! In my case, build a library extension to your office. And, of course, you buy what will be useful for that most wonderful of pursuits, blind research, which is research without direction for the sheer joy of it."

(Original source is his book A Slip of the Keyboard - this linked blog post quotes that bit.)

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comrade1234 • today at 8:19 PM

You can see Francis bacon's studio in Dublin. They moved it from London to a museum in Dublin. I don't think he would have liked that - he was born in Dublin but I think he lived his life in London and maybe didn't care for Dublin that much.

It's a god damn mess. Shit is piled everywhere. You can see some works in progress. Apparently he bought a lot of art books of other artists. It was a big process to move it: "she assembled a team of conservators, curators, and archaeologists to carry out the move. The archaeologists made survey and elevation drawings of the small studio, mapping out the spaces and locations of all the objects, while the conservators prepared the works for travel and curators tagged and packed each of the items, including the dust. The walls, doors floor and ceiling were also removed."

https://hughlane.ie/arts_artists/francis-bacons-studio/

paulpauper • today at 8:52 PM

This is so fascinating. had no idea he had a 6-screen set up, was a doom fan, and the Alzheimer's page hits hard, as he died of that

valorzard • today at 8:37 PM

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY. Terry Pratchett, Hogfather (Discworld, #20; Death, #4)

Taken from: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather

timnetworks • today at 5:04 PM

Kinda surprised the website doesn't have clacks[1] overhead.

1. http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com

emil-lp • today at 8:19 PM

TIL he was an avid gamer!