logoalt Hacker News

DonHopkinstoday at 8:36 AM0 repliesview on HN

This makes about as much sense as blue laws, and suffers from the same failure mode: controlling other people is not a substitute for self-control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_laws_in_the_United_States

Sunday is my day for boycotting religion's effects on society, so I take a break from observing any form of worship, abstinence, or superstition on Sunday, just as I do every other day of the week.

Mitch Hedberg would appreciate my internal consistency:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHA5CIL0fg

If screen time is bad for you, why not reduce your own screen time every day? That would be seven times as effective. And why go out of your way to eliminate other people's screen time instead of your own?

You don't have to turn off your server to keep yourself from opening your own web page. In fact, the server isn't off at all: it remains online all Sunday to serve a paternalistic sermon telling everyone to go away, complete with a link to a swag shop that remains open for business, like a church with a gift shop.

None of this prevents you from reading a cached copy, working on the site locally, or watching stand-up comedy and cat videos on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf9oitkXG3Y

There is a purely client-side, and far more effective, solution: just don't open your own website, or anything else on your screen. Withholding it from everybody else substitutes access control for self-control.

Obviously this is nowhere near as malicious or consequential as opposing same-sex marriage. But it follows the same logic on a much smaller scale: "I choose to abstain from this, therefore you must abstain from it too."

The bigots aren't satisfied with simply not marrying someone of the same sex themselves; they feel compelled to make love illegal for everyone else, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 1/4 days a year, for an entire lifetime.

He owns the site and is entitled to close it whenever he likes. But calling the inconvenience "encouragement" doesn't make it any less paternalistic.

If he practices what he preaches, it's a pity he won't see or engage with this discussion of his Sunday closure while it's still open -- or at least while it's still fresh.

But if I love his website, I can read it on archive.org any day of the week.

So what's next -- blocking archive.org?