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.)
I like this mindset and have tried to adopt it as I’ve made some money. What has proven more insidious than being tempted to buy yachts though is just the daily creep of spending slightly more on everyday things or when you travel.
I bought a house, lived there for a couple years and then bought a better tractor (Kubota L45) than we had on the farm growing up. Now I can get 10 truckloads of woodchips from ChipDrop and mulch a whole acre of my yard in an afternoon.
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."
You're kidding. That's a miniature setting? I know that a photo can elide details that give us scale but I would never have noticed. I thought the coat hanger was a bit oddly gaudy and blobby for a full size but if it were miniature that makes sense. Hard to get that detail. Nicely done! Also, the website itself is pretty neat and old school. I'm quite the fan.
She made it as a present for her son. Maybe only he is the big Terry Pratchett fan? On the other hand, this is made with so much love to detail, she obviously knows a lot about Pratchett.
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)
It's wild how you can read basically any Discworld book and find gems like that one. I read them as a teenager and loved them, going back to them decades later I find that there was so much wisdom in there that my teenage brain hadn't even begun to appreciate.
Guards, Guards (from 1987) is crammed with them:
> They avoided one another's faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard...
> No one said anything. The cowards, thought each man.
So much insight about the human condition in those books.
You can see the gaming influence in several of the books. In particular, a big part of Snuff was inspired by the goblin caves in Oblivion (IIRC had had a mod created that made the goblins peaceful, and he also contributed to the Vilja companion mod), and you can see his love of the Thief games in various parts of Night Watch and Making Money.
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.)
I like this mindset and have tried to adopt it as I’ve made some money. What has proven more insidious than being tempted to buy yachts though is just the daily creep of spending slightly more on everyday things or when you travel.
Traveling is a strange phenomenon that has mutated into a narcissistic behavior. Not sure where it comes from.
I bought a house, lived there for a couple years and then bought a better tractor (Kubota L45) than we had on the farm growing up. Now I can get 10 truckloads of woodchips from ChipDrop and mulch a whole acre of my yard in an afternoon.
This documentary of a French nouveau-millionaire perfectly showcases this mindset: https://youtu.be/jK4wnCLuBtI?is=2Q2QYQyfoCnaObhv (AI powered English subtitles available)
> "I bought 10 Kangoo vans"
> "I used to drink one bottle of [awful] wine a day, now I drink 10"
> "He bought 1500 pairs of the [horrible] shoes he wears everyday"
> "I used to spend a month a year camping, now I can spend 10 months a year camping"
Note: this is not a real documentary but a satirical one.
> "I used to spend a month a year camping, now I can spend 10 months a year camping"
Okay but most of those are contemptible and that one sounds like a marked change in one’s commitment to enjoying life.
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/
You're kidding. That's a miniature setting? I know that a photo can elide details that give us scale but I would never have noticed. I thought the coat hanger was a bit oddly gaudy and blobby for a full size but if it were miniature that makes sense. Hard to get that detail. Nicely done! Also, the website itself is pretty neat and old school. I'm quite the fan.
Kinda surprised the website doesn't have clacks[1] overhead.
1. http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com
She made it as a present for her son. Maybe only he is the big Terry Pratchett fan? On the other hand, this is made with so much love to detail, she obviously knows a lot about Pratchett.
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
It's wild how you can read basically any Discworld book and find gems like that one. I read them as a teenager and loved them, going back to them decades later I find that there was so much wisdom in there that my teenage brain hadn't even begun to appreciate.
Guards, Guards (from 1987) is crammed with them:
> They avoided one another's faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard...
> No one said anything. The cowards, thought each man.
So much insight about the human condition in those books.
That narrow desk makes me uneasy. Seems like a mini ordeal where you have to perfectly line up the chair to insert and extricate yourself.
TIL he was an avid gamer!
This is a great story about the Oblivion mod he worked on: https://www.eurogamer.net/the-story-behind-the-oblivion-mod-...
In his Usenet days he was also active on the newsgroups about the game Thief, he played that a lot.
His daughter is (or at least was) a game designer.
You can see the gaming influence in several of the books. In particular, a big part of Snuff was inspired by the goblin caves in Oblivion (IIRC had had a mod created that made the goblins peaceful, and he also contributed to the Vilja companion mod), and you can see his love of the Thief games in various parts of Night Watch and Making Money.
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
Pretty sure that was the point.
His reason for having 6 screens was "I don't have room for 8".