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Very interesting. I confess I actually would be interested in some sort of modern equivalent, if that could even exist. Those few times I've been lucky enough t

• peterburkimsher 7y ago
  Google Cloud Vision is pretty good for OCR. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmokgbialjjgfhfofbgfcghhbkejac https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmo...
• badpun 7y ago
  I'm generally very curious about the internal lives of all people around me. I don't think that being rich makes, on average, one more or less interesting. If anything, rich people tend to be more robotic (single-minded and logic-driven), which would make them less interesting targets for dissection, if it were somehow possible.
  • drclau 7y ago
    Why would you think that about rich people? I'm honestly curious.
    • badpun 7y ago
      In order to become rich, you need to be very focused on the goal. This means that you're either naturally very single-minded, or you've managed to prune other interests, doubts, thoughts from your head, and just executed mercilessly for years. In either case, this makes you a rather one-dimensional person. Additionally, successful people tend to be in always-be-selling mode, so it's super-hard to have an honest conversation with them.
      • thrav 7y ago
        In my experience this is fairly accurate. Most of the self made people I know (outside of Silicon Valley, of course) are just incredibly disciplined old men who almost exclusively care about money and their family.
      • lisper 7y ago
        > In order to become rich, you need to be very focused on the goal. Or lucky. That worked for me.
      • cheerlessbog 7y ago
        Many rich people, maybe most, inherited it. Presumably.
      • closeparen 7y ago
        Most rich people are skilled workers punching a clock, same as everyone else, but in better compensated fields. Monomaniacal focus on getting rich will make you an outcast in the societies you need to network with - everything is supposed to be about passion and impact.
        • badpun 7y ago
          > Monomaniacal focus on getting rich will make you an outcast in the societies you need to network with - everything is supposed to be about passion and impact. I dunno, I work in a bank and here being semi-openly cynical and greedy is not seen as faux-pas. Not to mention that part of being a successful person is being able to fake whatever needs to be faked in a given environment if necessary - be it passion, impact or whatever.
  • holoduke 7y ago
    I don't agree. Same that you cannot say that poor people tend to be more lazy without any passion and therefor not interesting. In my opinion it doesn't matter. Rich, poor or between. You got friendly and douches in all categories.
  • amelius 7y ago
    There's this Tolstoy quote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Perhaps a similar thing is true for rich versus poor. (And of course, wealth translates to happiness too).
• jbuzbee 7y ago
  Everybody has a story. Everybody. Greg Lopez was a great newspaper columnist for The Rock Mountain News in Denver who wrote about everyday people. It was like he could just walk up to anyone on the street and get a fascinating story out of them. Unfortunately, he was killed by a drunk driver - Rich, listless kid driving an exotic sports car. Tragic loss. It's been a long time, but I still remember him. I could only find one of his columns online since his paper shut down but here it is: https://www.syracuse.com/kirst/2009/03/greg_lopez_and_the_rocky_mount.html https://www.syracuse.com/kirst/2009/03/greg_lopez_and_the_ro...
  • i_am_proteus 7y ago
    I recommend Up In The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell. He wrote the stories of everyday New Yorkers for a column in the New Yorker, and the book is a collection of his best work.
• technothrasher 7y ago
  I don't want to disappoint you, but I'm fortunate to have enough money to have stayed in many of the top luxury hotel all over the world, and hang out in business class lounges pretty much whenever I fly and... I'd bet I'm pretty much just like you. No grand story.
  • Aeolun 7y ago
    Everybody has a grand story. Or rather, the people that have a story that would be considered grand are so far and few between that finding one requires more luck than going to a hotel lobby. Also, I may be wrong, but so far my experience with top-class hotels has had them being just slightly fancier versions of their less esteemed counterparts. I guess most of the value of the really high quality/more expensive hotels comes from limiting the guests to ones with a larger amount of money/influence and hopefully, higher class.
    • technothrasher 7y ago
      I'm not sure what "class" is supposed to be. But as far as character, I find almost no relationship between money and character. There are a*holes in all walks of life, as are there decent folks. What I do tend to find in expensive hotels is a demographic shift toward older clientele, which tends to bring at least quieter behavior.
      • Aeolun 7y ago
        To be honest, I’m not entirely sure either. But I’m generally put off by trashy types, and some hotels have a ton more of them. Thinking about it a bit more, I’m starting to think it might be more cultural though.
  • tsunamifury 7y ago
    You simply must not be trying. Between first class on international flights and hotel lounges I meet c suite, founders and investors to the tune of 3-4 per trip. I have an easier time networking in a hotel bar in London than anywhere in the sf bay. I’ve even met my direct competitor projects accidentally and shared a drink and a laugh purely by coincidence.
• tgb 7y ago
  The modern equivalent seems to be "People of New York" which of course is not focused on just the well-to-do and influential but still has the spirit of thinking that there's a story if you just ask. I would also assume that there are microfilm copies of the Washington Post though perhaps the scan is actually of good quality. The newspapers are intentionally cheaply printed and this was a hundred years ago. It might have just looked like that.
  • drdrey 7y ago
    I think you mean "Humans of New York"
• JoshMnem 7y ago
  If you want to meet interesting travelers, stay at hostels off the beaten track, outside of high-season. (A hostel is like a hotel, but you rent a dorm bed in a shared room instead of a private room.)
  • FabHK 7y ago
    The trick is not so much the hostel, but the off-the-beaten-track. If you go off-the-beaten-track enough, there is not much choice in accommodation, anyway.
    • JoshMnem 7y ago
      The hostels make it easier to meet people. Other places with communal areas, like campgrounds, work too.
      • Symbiote 7y ago
        I once met a rich guy (owned an American hotel franchise) backpacking in Viet Nam. We were both waiting for the overnight train somewhere, and ended up in the same compartment. At the destination, I checked into the hostel, and he checked into the 5-star hotel. He came by the hotel bar later to share stories, and bought everyone a drink. (This wasn't especially off-the-beaten track, even 10 years ago, but there were simply fewer tourists then.)
    • mrisoli 7y ago
      Having stayed in 40+ hostels, it can get tiring very quickly, at first it's easy to be impressed at seeing so many different people in one location, but eventually I started feeling like everyone was the same, with the exception of someone here and there. I do agree that off-the-beaten-track is better, location really defines the profile of the majority of the travelers you'll meet there, such as the european party trail(Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague-Budapest) where you're more likely to meet people who just want to get wasted(and hit on 'locals' if they are men). Not to mention the universal adoption of smartphones, cheap data tourist plans, google maps and trip recommendations at your palm, more often than not, if I'm stepping into a hostel common area I'm more likely to see a bunch of zombies glued to their phones before deciding to hit some of the top 5 recommendations on TripAdvisor, it also makes it more difficult to start conversations in a place where that was way more natural just a few years back. These days I'm only staying in hostels for the monetary value which is still way cheaper than most Hotels or AirBnBs, trying to stay in dorms that have no more than 6 beds, I end being one of those who is just staring at their phones and doesn't really engage with other travelers(I do believe this is the majority of hostel guests these days). I'll get a hotel for the comfort every now and then. I guess living in a backpacker destination made me a bit bitter about backpackers in general.
• lisper 7y ago
  > Is there any current or near future OCR/ML system which might be capable of transcribing the raw scans with any acceptable level of accuracy? Mechanical Turk should be able to do it for a pretty nominal cost.
• amelius 7y ago
  If you're interested in other people's thoughts, you might want to try driving for Uber for a while.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • xvector 7y ago
    That’s all well and good until someone throws up in your car!
• perfmode 7y ago
  virtue isn’t clustered at the top. virtue is to be found everywhere. virtue... the good... whatever you want to call it.
• ct520 7y ago
  Executive lounges, higher end hotel bars, and airport bars are my favorite place to meet like minded people and network. People tend to less territorial in these atmospheres and more open to conversation. So many people I’ve met this with and stay in contact to this day with.
  • Bjartr 7y ago
    What's your approach here? And what do you do to pass the time?
    • ct520 7y ago
      I'm curious by nature and very inquisitive. I think it comes off genuine. Turns out when you genuinely inquisitive people are happy to talk about themselves and what they do. It excites me to learn about people from different walks of life, many who are successful if they are type of here. I think they notice the excitement and this fuels the conversation.
      • Bjartr 7y ago
        What's your go-to question for starting such a conversation, if you've got one?
        • ct520 7y ago
          Man that’s hard. I don’t have a playbook. If I had to think of it. My natural go to (if I’m lucky) is disarming, relatable, an intelligent play on words that provides a compliment, piques their interest and shows I’m interested in what they are or what they are doing. Lot of times it’s just me paraphrasing something in real life that we just witnessed. Really depends how many ipas deep I am LOL. I think the biggest driver is I’m usually so interested in people and what they do from all walks of life. That passion shows.
• smacktoward 7y ago
  > It's a challenging read even for this human! You make a good point. I thought about transcribing the images when I originally wrote the post, but eventually convinced myself that was something I could get around to later, which of course meant that I never actually got around to it. Your comment gave me the necessary kick in the butt to actually go back and do that, so thanks! Transcriptions are now provided for all the images. And as long as I was in there, I went ahead and added links to various contemporary terms that might not be clear to the modern reader, pointing to more information on what they mean.
  • m463 7y ago
    I'm glad you left in the originals, they add... I think texture would be the word. :)