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Holes (1996-2025)

54 points · 12 comments · surprisetalk

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  1. roosterIllusi0n · · focus · HN ↗
    Every human is a donut.
    1. SpaceNoodled · · focus · HN ↗
      Can confirm, am delicious.
  2. jcmontx · · focus · HN ↗
    I could have gone my whole life without thinking this
  3. amelius · · focus · HN ↗
    No mention of semiconductors?
    1. Bluestein · · focus · HN ↗
      Interesting thought ...
  4. andai · · focus · HN ↗
    Excerpt:

    a. Holes are ontologically parasitic: they are always in something and cannot exist in isolation. (‘There is no such thing as a hole by itself’, Tucholsky 1931: 100; ‘Take away the thing, and the hole goes too’, Heath 1967: 524). This is why there cannot exist a world consisting only of holes (Coggins 2010: 71).

    b. Holes are fillable. You don’t necessarily destroy a hole by filling it up (except perhaps when the filling is homogeneous with the hole-lining); you don’t create a new hole by removing the filling.

    c. Holes are locationally gracious. When you fill or put something in a hole, the hole does not squeeze to the side; it shares its location with its guest (and if the guest has a hole, you get two co-located entities of the same kind).

    1. smitty1e · · focus · HN ↗
      How about engineering usage when removing material from, e.g. a beam, can help achieve overall weight/flexibility goals?
  5. fwlr · · focus · HN ↗
    A lovely surprise to see this here; this was my favorite text for explaining “what is philosophy” to people.
  6. alister · · focus · HN ↗
    > Some languages even discriminate different types of hole, distinguishing e.g. between superficial hollows, inner cavities, and see-through perforations.

    This blew me away when learning Portuguese. You have to use different words depending on the kind of hole: for a hole in the ground or in your tooth, it's buraco, and for hole to pass a shoelace, it's furo. A hole that is closed at one end is different than one that's pass-through. I never thought about the distinction before learning another language.

    1. gcanyon · · focus · HN ↗
      [delayed]
    2. tiagod · · focus · HN ↗
      And (at at least in European Portuguese), a speed bump is a "lomba".

      Also we don't say caroço or solavanco for that, at least where I live. I would probably say "alto" in both cases.

  7. jl6 · · focus · HN ↗
    I see this as a broadening of the problem of how we assign identities and names to things. Clearly we can name the absence of things too, and in doing so perhaps eliminate their absence…
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