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As someone who first knew Terry Davis from Slashdot where his clearly mentally ill posts seemed to get downvoted a lot of the time, it is remarkable to see that
by OfSanguineFire 3y ago
As someone who first knew Terry Davis from Slashdot where his clearly mentally ill posts seemed to get downvoted a lot of the time, it is remarkable to see that the products of his madness have become regarded as real art with staying power. He is like the Adolf Wölfli of the hacker crowd.
- meindnoch 3y agoHe's also the origin of the word "glowie": https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/glowie https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/glowie
- pengaru 3y agoKind of? he never actually used the word glowie AFAIK. 4chan is the origin.
- DANmode 3y agoPerhaps the modern/mainstream popularization.
- meindnoch 3y agoHuh? Where do you think it originates then?
- red-iron-pine 3y agoIt's from Terry. But the shortened, less overtly racist term 'Glowie' comes from 4chan and similar environs
- DANmode 3y ago"Glowing" was used as a description of government agents before Terry's "popularity"; the most common modern version is tongue-in-cheek "jokes" using the term while "outing" someone, usually someone who is asking odd, or personal questions, especially in a security or privacy community.
- AlbertoGP 3y agoAFAIK that originated with the video where he said this: NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbG6u86t4bA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbG6u86t4bA Then the word “glowie” was coined in 4chan based on that, as others commented here already.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoTempleOS is actually pretty cool, when viewed as the product of one man's dream. How many people can say they've written a 64-bit, multi-core, protected mode OS that comes with its own programming language? Then, throw in a flight simulator game, just for giggles. Honestly, if it weren't the product of religious delusions common with schizophrenia, I'd say TempleOS and HolyC would be more than enough of a resume to get hired into many programming jobs.
- tombert 3y agoI totally agree; regardless of Terry Davis' strangeness, there's no doubt a certain level of brilliance to it. Honestly, I think that's kind of why TempleOS has been so compelling to people. It's insane, but also beyond the skills of 99.99% of the population. So much of the so-bad-its-good stuff required effort, and TempleOS is no exception.
- chmod600 3y agoFor someone so delusional, it's interesting that he was effective enough to do anything. How far detached from reality can you be and still create something that objectively works? Could someone delusional also create a rocket ship? Or is there something special about programming that makes it compatible with delusional thinking?
- Paul-Craft 3y ago"Delusional thinking" is a pretty broad umbrella. There's nothing that's fundamentally incompatible with a delusional thought process per se, but the particulars might be a problem. In Terry's case, it sounded like he suffered from a lot of delusions of persecution (e.g. thinking the CIA is after him), and religious delusions. Neither of these are fundamentally incompatible with any sort of technical or scientific thought process. Had he not been delusional, I suspect we might either never have heard of him, or he'd be one of the people making the front page of HN on a semi-regular basis.
- Hasu 3y ago> Could someone delusional also create a rocket ship? Or is there something special about programming that makes it compatible with delusional thinking? Newton studied alchemy and Linus Pauling believed against all evidence that vitamin C cured cancer and basically everything else. Humans are very good at applying their (ir)rationality to certain subfields while abandoning it in others.