Top all-time · #1629
Neil Gaiman
Personal blog · journal.neilgaiman.comwritingculture
Neil Gaiman's personal blog at journal.neilgaiman.com covers writing and culture. Since 2008, 44 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “Entitlement issues (2009)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 32 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Gaiman's journal essays, especially 'Entitlement issues' ('George R.R. Martin is not your bitch') on reader entitlement, plus posts on free speech and imposter syndrome.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called 'wonderful' and 'excellent'; imposter syndrome post called 'calming and centering'; one commenter says they send it to new engineers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 32 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Neil Gaiman's Journal: started February 2001 when nobody knew what the word Blog meant. Talking about writing, comics, books, films, bees, demonic tomatoes, cats, travel and a dog ever since.
Most-linked posts?
- Entitlement issues (2009)10 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2012-01-21
- Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech? 9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2009-02-07
- Entitlement issues (2009)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-12-02
- /2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top.asp2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-12-30
- The Neil story, with additional footnote (2017)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-23
What Hacker News says?
Or as Neil Gaiman would have said it: Notch isn't your bitch. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.htm...
Comment linking /2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
on “I'm Leaving Mojang”Submitted Neil Gaiman: Why defend freedom of icky speech? as a story · 259 points
HN discussionhttps://journal.neilgaiman.com/2017/05/the-neil-story-with-a... It's a story of two Neils dealing with imposter syndrome. Every time I start feeling like I'm just the guy who goes where others point and I didn't actually accomplish anything, I go back and read this. To every new engineer I've worked with who has struggled with self-doubt, I have sent this. I cannot overstate how calming and centering this post has b…
Comment linking /2017/05/the-neil-story-with-additional-footnote.html?m=1
on “Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?”Submitted Entitlement issues (2009) as a story · 121 points
HN discussionCouldn't agree more. Calibre is Kovid's labor of love and he wouldn't be so active on it if it weren't, especially considering there is little to no monetary incentive for him to spend the amount of time he does on it. It's also open source. Literally every whiner has the opportunity to fork it and do with it what they please, but instead, they just want to sit by the sidelines and criticize him for his decisions. A…
Comment linking /2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
on “Calibre 4.0”Submitted Neil Armstrong, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman as a story · 112 points
HN discussionNeil Gaiman made a joke about this in 1996 in the novel Neverwhere. Search for "dead channel at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top...
Comment linking /2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top.asp
on “Bouncing DVD Logo”Submitted Entitlement issues (2009) as a story · 85 points
HN discussionMost of the comments here remind me of the famous Neil Gaiman quote, "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch." [1] But I don't think that's the right framing. People buy the first book because they hope there will be a second, even though they haven't paid for that second book and hence are not entitled to it. People use your open-source project because you said, hey, here's this exciting new thing, try it out, so the…
Comment linking /2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
on “My boundaries as an open source developer”Submitted The Neil story, with additional footnote (2017) as a story · 43 points
HN discussionWell, lines have been drawn. "Fighting words", "obscenity", "clear and present danger", "libel", and so on. There are a lot of checks on speech, some of which people feel go too far. And it's the purpose of the courts to set precedent and handle fuzziness. Gaiman has talked about this quite well: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-... The quotable is "The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not…
Comment linking /2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html
on “Racism at a gaming company”Submitted Why defend freedom of icky speech? as a story · 20 points
HN discussionWhy do you try to fill people with a false sense of security Akemi? How do we know obscenity charges are rare? Why should we think it would only apply to 'hardcore' porn? http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-... Perhaps you'd have people believe that Christopher Handley's circumstances are rare, but perhaps they're but a minority of what we manage to see publicized for what it is. Obscenity la…
Comment linking /2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html
on “Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn”Submitted Stephen King interviewed by Neil Gaiman as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAh, unfortunately Elena was discredited as a fraud more than a decade ago. In reality she was on an escorted tour through Chernobyl and brought along her motorcycle helmet to use in photos. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/05/fraud-exposed-and-true...
Comment linking /2004/05/fraud-exposed-and-true-thing.asp
on “The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples”Submitted Iain Banks. With or without the M as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSony's private key is, essentially, a random number. As for copyright protection, you should reflect on this page: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/index.html And then this one: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/GeoHot/ To the point with Harry Potter: you can think of a continuum of infringement. If you tear a page out and copy it, you will violate the copyright. If you reuse characters or scenes and use them to cr…
Comment linking /2008/04/fair-use-and-other-things.html
on “White House: What's Blocking Innovation in America? My Answer: IP Laws”Submitted Breaking the Silence as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'm late to the party on this discussion, but did want to say this brings to mind the similar troubles popular authors can have with their readers. ... and which prompted this wonderful essay/rant from Neil Gaiman "Entitlement issues" (aka "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch") http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.htm...
Comment linking /2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
on “Taking a month off from OSS volunteering”Submitted John M. Ford as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA fan asked Neil Gaiman about it and here's the exchange: A fan: "You're either paying homage to Gibson, which is weird because the two books are in different genres and he isn't mentioned in the acknowledgements, or perhaps there's some manner of Jungian collective unconscious phenomenon at work here, in which you have unwittingly mimicked Gibson, or..?" Neil Gaiman: "Or it was a very small joke, essentially pointi…
Comment linking /2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top.asp
on “William Gibson: How I wrote Neuromancer”Submitted Entitlement issues (2009) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNeil Gaiman says it best. George R.R. Martin is not your bitch. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.htm...
Comment linking /2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
on “John Resig: Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja Update”Submitted Fantasy Author Neil Gaiman Offers "Neverwhere" ebook for Free as a story · 2 points
HN discussion"Without that consent, it is assault." I hate to be contrarian, because by the standards in most cultural spaces in the US I wholeheartedly agree with that statement, but I've traveled enough to know that there are exceptions to the exceptions people are taking with this material when you take culture differences into account. The majority of women in the majority of cultural spaces we on HN frequent of are saying i…
Comment linking /2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html
on “We were wrong”Submitted George R.R. Martin is not your bitch (2009) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis blog post is from another domain, writing, but it’s stuck with me over the years and colored how I see things like open source projects: https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.ht...
Comment linking /2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
on “An analysis of the Keycloak authentication system”Submitted Entitlement Issues (2009) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttp://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-...
Comment linking /2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html
on “With Domain Name Seizures Increasing, It's Time For A Decentralized DNS System”Submitted Entitlement Issues (2009) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
