In the winter, I used to stay warm by turning up the thermostat. Then I discovered (via HN) the Low-Tech Magazine article, "Insulation: first the body, then the home." [0] The article argued that it's much more efficient to focus on heating yourself rather than your whole living space.
I invested in high-quality wool clothes that I wear in layers and warm slippers. Now, I keep my home about 5 degrees F cooler than I used to for the same comfort, and it's a big reduction in oil and wood consumption for home heat.
[0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-ther...
The scarf goes on the inside of the coat.
If you put the scarf on the outside, like you think you've seen in TV and movies, it's just decoration. Put it on the inside and it's an insulation layer and it blocks the cold air from blowing down your front. Absolutely game-changing. (Also, have a good coat, but that one seems more obvious to people.)
I'm happy to pay the extra cost to heat the room I'm in with a space heater in the winter time.
I wish floor heating was more widespread where I live.
That's what happens when central planning makes the above observation.
But for a few years I lived in a very well insulated (smallish) apartment in a moderate climate. When it would get cold, I would turn the heat on. My bill would go up by a few dollars.
Then, I changed jobs and started working in a colder building. I spent more on warm clothes than I usually spent on heat! (And I had baseboard resistive heating, and I payed extra for wind power.)
A sweater and warm socks are game changers, as is a warm winter jacket and a good scarf. Add some tea and candles and the winter isn't half bad anymore. It's much easier to get through the cold months if you don't dread being outside.
So most likely you still need to keep heating on but it might not need to be super high - just enough to have convection from heater moving air at home and having some ventilation letting in a bit of outside air in and warm one getting moisture out.
I just moved and now renting a place with electric water heater with pump moving that heated water around via radiators. It is quite large apartment with shitty, to be honest, insulation. The difference between "I put several layers of clothes on" and "I am wearing a t-shirt" is about 600 kWh per month. The same amount of energy is needed to prodice 30 kg of aluminium or run a single rack in a datacenter for just 2 days.
Never in your life your energy consumption can be compared with industrial usage. Likewise, never in you life your water consuption can reach a visible fraction of agricultural irrigation. Stop listening to coprorate PR.
Congratulations...
At some point, I yelled, "It's like you don't even want to see any of my things when I'm not using them!" Then I stopped for a second. For the first time in my life, it made sense.
The whole point of putting things away is to hide them! No one wants to look at your crap when you're not using it.
The kids (4 and 5) have adapted to this wonderfully. It really helps them. It makes cleanup a trivial task because everything is known to belong somewhere specific.
Related to this: the recognition that everything is harder in a messy home. If you have stuff everywhere, you are paying a small tax any time you want to find or do something. Even cluttering your cupboards and drawers means you're tediously sifting through too much stuff or constantly worried about knocking something over while getting something else out. It's been especially good to avoid the dance of removing items to get the items underneath, then putting them back.
Finally: the lesson that when you keep stuff, you are paying a "tax" on keeping it. Throw away stuff you don't think you'll ever need again. It's cheaper to re-buy 1 or 2 things than to keep 100 of them for years and years. That storage space could be better used.
Bonus: If everything has a home, and you run out of homes, you quickly recognize that you have too much stuff and it might be time to make trade-offs. This puts an upper bound on the amount of stuff in our home.
Note that this could all easily sound super hardcore but it's not. It's just a general guide we have. We aren't forcing our kids to throw excess toys away and we're not writing a book about it. A flexible tool to guide behaviour, not enforce it.
https://nathanwpyle.threadless.com/designs/we-own-things/hom...
Its just not even on my radar
When I hide things I just forget that I have half of them almost immediately. Let alone remembering where I have them.
Some people have mental disease that makes them annoyed where the flat surfaces are covered with immediately useful and easily accessible stuff and act up. "Oh look at those flat surfaces that don't get used for anything useful 99% of the time, how neat and tidy"
Some other kind of people have different disease of just leavin shit lying around for months and never use it, where it should be put back in storage (or bin) weeks ago already. "Don't touch my stuff, if you move it I won't remember where it is!" (then promptly forgets and wastes time searching thru clutter anyway.
Sane compromise is somewhere in the middle. Don't constantly hide the favourite knife every fucking day, ain't nobody got time for that shit. But probably clean it so the next time you use it you won't waste time on that. Cutting board can stay out, you use it every day, multiple times anyway.
This reminds me of the difference between 'tidy' and 'organised' .. They are independent properties and an area may be very tidy while being very disorganized and vice versa.. Eg. typical thing where if there is a pile of random crap on a table someone will dump it all into a drawer. The area is now more 'tidy' but also more disorganized.
Tidiness is superficial, whereas being organized has practical benefits.
Well, there is another reason. When your room has a consistent default state, it's easier to look around the room and notice anything that is unusual. It makes the room into a sort of sensor. When it is always changing states — things here one day, there another — any changes can be missed. Subconsciously, we usually feel calmer when we know what's going on around us, which is facilitated by an orderly living/working environment.
It helped me to start putting things away in drawers and so on, but also to think about how often I use them, or if I still need them.
The tv show was about "proffesional organizers".
Make your home work for you, don’t work for your home.
If that means the best way for you to live your life is to leave things out so you can find them more easily, then do that. Chances are though that having a “home” for everything (mentioned in other comments) is going to work better for you. It’s a process of learning and iteration.
She freaked out when I told her, but it came with two keys and I gave her one so she doesn't think I'm hiding anything from her.
Ideally I'd have ceiling-to-floor shelves EVERYWHERE.
GTD says your mind is not so much storing to-do's as for processing them. Likewise, the contents of spaces. Memorizing contents is unnecessary mind clutter.
If you’re in the bottom drawers, less closet space, back of the fridge, at the bottom of the pile, the the more awkward storage space, fewer drawers, appliances that like to be seen but not used, or more of your stuff is in storage it might not entirely be you.
At the same time it’s valuable to learn to build shared storage solutions jointly to let both (and little ones) put the items most used, important or at hand is a critical skill to develop together, early on.
Otherwise deferral or indifference can be quite tough when one of you might have a change of heart.
There are many thinna that happen in life where you will literally not remember to do.something (medication, etc) if it’s not sitting out on the counter.
In my experience women do this a lot. I don't know if it's some kind of an evolutionary thing. On the one hand that it was something women traditionally did and can't let go, on the other that it is/was a way to make themselves more important. You become very important when somebody needs you all the time to tell them where things are.
Cabinets without doors, and shelves without doors are critical too. I'm not sure why but if I do not have regular visible sight of things, they may as well not exist and I will quickly forget that they are there, leading to all kinds of chaos.
It talks about needing less space in general and being more free, simply by having fewer things, since things beget things; the more things you have, the more organizational containers you need, in turn creating yet more things and yet more space to store them in. Since then, I've tried to actively limit the amount of things and space they take up, since I hate clutter, but I hate organization as well.
Also I firmly believe really nice drawer hardware, like soft close and good runners can encourage this behaviour by making operation enjoyable. Grew up with very satisfyingly click put to open drawers, in retrospect not as functional as direct pulling, but man that click conditioned me to want to tidy.
It's also a battle because of the clutter, 10% of it is mine, and I never move their stuff.
The problem comes in when there's something that could reasonably be trash (usually a box that I might need to return something) gets tossed. :(
EDIT: change "private zones" to "public zones"
I realized also that this is a TERRIBLE reminder system. I started putting everything in OneNote and my calendar via the Getting Things Done Methodology, and I'm honestly upset that no one ever taught me such a system a long time ago. I've been told a million times to "use a planner", "write things down", "use a calendar", "use a notebook" etc. etc., but no one ever told me HOW to use those things. Getting Things Done is awesome because it told me almost exactly how to use that stuff, and the effect has been life-changing for me. My spaces have never been cleaner, and I've never been more effective in my life.
I think that it is rather to have them all in one place, and that they do not take the place of other things or are in your way.
The fact that they are hidden is because they are behind a door, probably to avoid that catching dust.
I notice this in reverse as well, it's probably best when moving in with someone to get a new place and set expectations early.
What was that HN article recently of Las Vegas and windows on buildings more of something causes distress and less is more soothing to a point.
You can't hide their makeup that they are not using, the 10 bottles of shampoo with different colors and allegedly different properties, the 7 bottles of hair conditioner etc etc
So everyday I wake up to something like this, but worse
https://i0.wp.com/blog.cliomakeup.com/wp-content/uploads/201...
Lucky us we have two bathrooms, so we can keep one tidy, right?
WRONG!
The second bathroom is for the exclusive use of our 2 cats.
Could I have a say about it?
Of course not.
Is it logical?
Absolutely not.
People don't want to see other people's crap, but are more than happy to live surrounded by their own.
If there's a paradise, many people deserve it just for going through all of this, every day.
Realizing that sitting for 8 to 12 hours per day coding is catastrophic for my health.
Understanding the incredibly high and hidden cost of conflict and anger. Films romanticize fighting the good fight. Avoiding a fight (legal, arguments, etc) until you absolutely can’t is worth a lot.
Creativity and intellectual progress happen in a quiet relaxed and happy environment.
Leadership starts with humility.
Big companies signal unassailable leads and competence but tend to be wildly dysfunctional which makes them vulnerable.
Yoga fixes lifelong back pain that drugs, swimming obsessively, chiropractors and workouts could not fix.
Confronting death isn’t that scary, even for an atheist.
We don’t deserve dogs.
Everyone is the main character in their story, including you.
You can be good at just about anything you love doing but can’t be good at many things.
You can’t buy time but managing your time obsessively has its own cost.
Early mornings are a very special time because no one else is up and it is the quietest and most productive part of the day.
For the exact same reason, so also are very late nights (~1 to 5am).
I used to look at dogs and think that if any other sentient species came by, the things we'd done to an apex predator would be sufficient to mark our species for quarantine at best, but I was playing with a friend's dog the other day and it occurred to me that we've aggressively selected for the happiest, most loyal, friendliest critters we can find - that's what we want, that's what we want to be around*. The world's complicated and our actions in it don't always reflect us at our best, but there's something redemptive about our choice in companions.
(*Yes, some dogs are bred to be dicks, and some people are dicks, but most dogs are good dogs, and most people are, too.)
This is known to be great project management advice _and_ terrible relationship advice.
For interpersonal relationships, signaling misalignment early, directly, openly, with a sympathetic and reconciling demeanor, has been the best choice for me. Can't find sources anymore, sorry.
For projects, I won't expend more effort than what I have to.
Where does the project work stop and the interpersonal work starts, that's a vague art that demands a bit of intuition.
That resonates strongly with me. It's better to just take the loss because entering a conflict because of it will cost more, even if you win, in almost all cases.
> Yoga fixes lifelong back pain that drugs, swimming obsessively, chiropractors and workouts could not fix.
I'm healing a back problem that Yoga would definitely just make it worse
Chances are you already have a lot bacteria in your mouth and once you eat your breakfast (which for many is sugary) they immediately eat and consume this and produce acid. So, brush before breakfast, supposedly.
P.S. If you never tried these gizmos, get a portable, battery powered one, so you can use it over the bathtub (or in the bathtub). They tend to soak everything around you.
I destroyed my gums when my parents got me an electric toothbrush when I was 13 - and AFAIK - there's still not really any way to repair it.
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong! Would make my day to be wrong.
If you're teeth-grinder at night, a few tiny pieces of eggshells help keep the grinding at bay, because you can grind on a piece of eggshell without danger and then relax again.
Btw. I went through bunch of cheap noname toothbrushes to realize there is reason you pay for Philips and Oral-B brands, all cheap toothbrushes will fail within few weeks/months due to humidity or other failures, didn't have such experience with those two famous brands, wife and me use Oral-B Pulsonic Slim for years (extremely slim and light, but less powerful), for son who had problem with teeth I bought a bit better (heavier but more powerful) Philips HX6511 (still quite cheap, next time I'd buy this also for myself). Daughter has still cheap Xiaomi, waiting when it will finally break (from 4 I bought 3 broken), then will probably go for same Philips.
Btw. be aware most of the electric toothbrushes still use old NiCd batteries with memory effect, so to achieve maximum battery life/longetivity you should NOT leave tootbrush in charger, but charge it only when it runs out of battery, if you keep it in charger stand it is significantly decreasing battery life with each charging to the point it is useless already by the end of warranty.
I finally tried a name brand brush from Costco when my wife insisted and it blew my mind. Actually excited to go to the dentist to see what they say this time when I’m not full of plaque for once
A few months later she went together with her sister to their annual dentist checkup. The dentist praised her sister for how clean her teeth were, while he told my gf hers were "OK". What was it that her sister was doing differently? She was using an electric toothbrush.
I'm pretty certain you can guess what was the very first thing my then gf did coming out of the dentist.
Same here. It's completely changed my life. For mini-me, the built-in timer helps them be sure to brush enough.
How did you get into the habit?
Also most sauce recipes are probably overcomplicated. Most need less than 5 ingredients. You probably don't need all that onion and garlic, but one of them. Definitely not two tablespoons of dried oregano.
The way you cut onions and garlic changes the flavor a lot too. Finely minced garlic, from a food processor or garlic press can be overpowering yet not deliver the flavor. One trick is to crush the garlic and let the oil it's in carry the flavor. Half an onion can work really well in a sauce you cooking for half an hour.
1) Salt your pasta water! Pasta is meant to be cooked in salty water that, according and excellently-put by Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) - "is reminiscent of the sea".
2) Save and use a splash of ("dirty") pasta water - aka the water the pasta was just cooked in - when you're tossing the pasta with the sauce. The water is filled with delightful liquified starch from the pasta, and it helps the sauce coat the pasta more thoroughly.
I was visiting a friend and had it all cooked together in the pan for the first time and it was eye opening.
I remember Anthony Bourdain asking his Sicilian family this question, and the table erupted in hot debate. I'm not sure you are "wrong".
I usually sauté garlic in oil separately, discard the garlic and then use the oil as a sort of super garlic flavor concentrate.
I used to believe the actual ingredients were ~80% of the puzzle of cooking. I now believe they're closer to ~20% for most cases. The process you follow is way more important than anything else.
Just take a sweet onion for instance. The difference 2-3 minutes makes in a hot pan is incredible. If you simply chopped it up and threw it directly into whatever, you will wind up with something that tastes substantially less flavorful.
Why is this bad with rice? When I make a stew I often put some rice in, with the expectation that the rice will absorb some of the stew.
You can just mix tomato sauce, oregano, salt, and pepper, then slap it on the pie. It cooks in the oven. No need to pre-cook it.
[EDIT] unless you're gonna use it for dipping. There's a reason places have a separate "marinara", often, for that purpose. Even giving your pizza sauce a quick simmer will make it a lot better for dipping. Raw pizza sauce is... palatable, but not great, for dipping.
1. Choose your soffritto base. Onion or garlic are fine, more exotic variations include scalogno or porro.
2. Choose your tomato. Canned, fresh, whatever, just keep in mind that fresh ones may need longer cooking times. As for canned, check that they contain no seasoning at all!
3. Choose your grease. Oil or butter are fine, the standard is olive oil though. It may be hard to find proper olive oil outside of Italy I'm told.
4. Start cooking. Put your oil in a large pan, enough to contain all the pasta you plan to use afterwards. Not too much oil: just enough to cover the pan with a thin layer. Don't start heating the pan.
5. Cut your onion or whatever in small pieces and add them to the oil. Now turn on the heat at a reasonable level. Not too high but not low. Don't touch the onion!
6. When the onion looks a bit browny (not dark brown), add the tomato and lower at minimum the heat. If you have a thermometer, ideally you don't want to cross 60 degrees celsius over all the cooking period. This period can vary between 10 minutes and 60 minutes, it gives different tastes (all good) to the sauce. If you opt for the shortest time, go back at step 5 and at the same time start the next step.
7. Put 1l of water for every 100g of pasta in a pot. Add salt. With experience you'll get the right amount, usually I use about a small fist for two people (160-200g). Heat up the water and wait until boiling.
8. Drop the pasta in the water. Start a chronometer. Almost immediately mix it or otherwise it will stick. Wait a couple of minutes and mix again.
9. Meanwhile the sauce will start bubbling and, depending on your kitchen, you may need to mix it. If you see large discrepancies in texture, definitely mix. Otherwise don't. If it becomes too dry, add some water from the cooking pasta to the sauce.
10. When the chronometer is at cooking_time_on_pasta_packaging - 2 minutes, take a glass of water and fill it with water from the pasta pot. Dry the pasta, and put it in the pan with the sauce. Make the heat level for the pan a bit higher.
11. Cook it until "al dente", that is still a bit hard at the inside, but not completely. If the sauce dries too much (it should, if not turn the heat higher), add the water you kept in the glass. This step is where science stops and art begins: you need to calibrate your taste to your desired results and in turn calibrate water and heating. During all this step, mix your pasta in the same direction continuously. This is called "risottatura". Taste the pasta while cooking often.
11. Take everything off the fire, serve, add parmisan.
Edit: look at maccard comment for water and salt because I don't recall the right quantities. After a while you go by eye.
Edit 2: preventing more comments on oil, that is merely my very limited experience and I'd say, as a rule of thumb (not incontrovertible truth), that if you like your oil alone with bread it is a good oil.
And when you add in the tomato puree (or your preference), add a tiny bit of sugar. If the sauce looks like it has a sheen, it's ruined. Just a tiny amount will do.
Do this and your sauce will taste 10 times better. Not a fan of anchovies, but you won't even be able to tell.
Make noodle soup and let it sit in the fridge for a week. It will expand.
Risotto would like a word.
This is when it would've been good to ask someone about it.
Me: "Why don't you turn on the shower, wait for it to get warm, then get in?"
Him, realizing he'd been using a shower wrong for over 6 decades: "... huh."
Then when you get in, you pull a cord and it releases the full pressure of nice hot water.
The Superman method: put your hand up to block the blast.
The Spiderman method: jump to the opposite side of the shower to avoid the blast.
The clever method: turn on the shower and wait outside.
This can save a lot of water if you're the type to let your shower run until it is warm. So some jurisdictions encourage their installation.
This mainly saves time, but it also saves water if your shower mixer valve doesn't go to 100% hot. (It's generally good to keep the hot limiter below 100%, to avoid full-body scalding.)
With the method you described, it takes longer, with more water usage, to get into position, plus you let some water spray out into the rest of the bathroom as you transition inside it.
I wasted so much time and energy on this but as I get older I've realised there is so little of what we can actually control vs what we think we can do. Most of the time just saying Yes and waiting for things to actually happen is so much easier. A lot of time what you worry about never happens and if it does it isn't always as bad as you make things out to be in your head. A lot of times it turns out to be actually good and it would've been a shame to avoid it.
Also when you say yes to people, a lot of time the other person never actually follows through the thing you didn't want. Otoh if you would argue or say No beforehand it always has the opposite effect.
I guess for most people this is common sense but I did this wrong for a large younger part of my life.
> Also when you say yes to people, a lot of time the other person never actually follows through the thing you didn't want. Otoh if you would argue or say No beforehand it always has the opposite effect.
I recently started doing this and it's amazing. I was the one saying 'no' to so many 'offers' (as a full stack developer, from idea people), and always ended up being the negative guy that doesn't want to do things.
Recently I've started enthousiastically saying "Yeah, that sounds great! In order to get started, I'd need <whatever_thing_that_they_need_to_do> from you.". Up till now no one has followed up. When we talk about it next, I am as excited as in the beginning and mentioned the thing that they need to do again, and they usually go like "Oh yeah! I need to do that." and then I never hear about it again. It's a shocker to me.
I do see the Illusion of Control aspect in myself and others, and it’s weird being on the other side of that now and trying to explain to people that what they want isn’t what they need and also that we can put as much effort in as we like or we can just plan to do it twice and get on with it.
The latter is a problem magnified by management, who don’t want to pay for anything twice and will apply huge social pressure in service of the sunk cost fallacy.
Can you give an example? Like “do you want to go ice skating Saturday?” also doesn't seem to fit your comment.
When you uncoil the cable it will be laying flat on the ground with no twists.
An alternative for massive cables it lay it out in a figure 8 on the ground. That will also pay out without twists.
Extension: The upright vacuum cleaner you've been using that releases the cord from the handle by twisting the top hook down? If it is leaving you with a twisted mess of cord, that means you haven't been winding it up in a figure 8.
Even more, since you got this far: Do this with your short cables too. Your USB and audio cables will last longer. When you have a twisted cable, a torque shows up at each individual wire where it meets its connector. The repeated twisting and untwisting leads to connection failure.
And when you get a new cable that is rolled up (any Apple cable), unroll it instead of pulling the ends apart. Then you cable need never have twists put into it.
This also works better for air hoses, water hoses, etc. If the thing isn't on a winding/unwinding reel, use the double-loop method; everything will last longer and you'll save yourself a lot of trouble.
An alternative method is gravity. Hold the cable up by one end and let it untwist. Obviously, don't do this for 10 foot (3m) cables unless you're very tall.
A quarter twist per loop is all it takes for nicely rolled cords your whole life!
Rereading your comment, yours is a more complicated one. I'll have to look it up. I've never needed more than a quarter twist per loop.
20ish years later, seeing the homelessness, property crime, and housing crisis in the Bay Area, I am convinced I was wrong and wish that the area had built a ton more housing in the past. There used to be so many artists that were able to survive on a part-time cafe job back then. That's no longer possible and it's a bummer and makes the area so much more mundane.
I do still consider open space and parks important and valuable and don't support building new housing on a lot of those types of places.
We don't want people homeless but on the other hand, we don't want people producing unsafe housing just to keep costs down.
It's a particularly nasty problem that I've only seen discussed in that one article.
(2:38min if you want to skip ahead)
I was 28 the first time a friend told me "I love you" in a pure friendship way (and while sober), and without being a part of a special situation. I've also done it afterwards, and because I had never told my friend i love them, it made the message even stronger.
It feels wrong that we don't do this more often.
Like, my best friends, I love them in a sense I guess…but I wouldn’t say that. It just doesn’t feel natural to me. I’d characterize our relationship as close, and that I care about them a lot, but “love” isn’t something that comes to mind outside of my parents or someone I’ve been in a long term relationship with.
I’m not sure why. Maybe it has to do with being an only child. Maybe it has to do with all my grandparents dying when I was young, and not being that close with extended family, so there was never really anyone to love outside of my parents for the vast majority of my life prior to any long term relationships.
Share the love.
I was taught to choke up on the blade by a Western chef as well.
Then I went to Japan and was told to only hold the handle for their style of knives. Apparently, they balance the weight of the blade and handle differently there.
I tried to choke up on the blade at a very professional knife store in a market and was immediately corrected by one of the Japanese chefs there.
Then, the following evening, we went to a Michelin star rated kaiseki, all of the chefs were holding the knives by only the handle, no choking.
I realized I probably looked very foreign choking up on the blade in that store earlier. Humbling moment!
There is something which grabs your attention and fills you with admiration when you see a Master displaying his expertise so effortlessly and easily.
I am now going to watch more of Mr. Jacques Pepin.
This has led me to change employment, often, but not that often. It has made me approach many challenges from multiple angles.
Maybe it didn't made me rich (so far) but I feel much wiser and I observe people on the other side, they are stuck in their beliefs and loyalty. So many clever people, smarter than me, but lost to ideas, opportunities and self- improvement.
This is the best response here. Too many people are stuck in a self defeating mindset of expecting life to happen to them, and blaming others when it doesn't, rather than taking charge for themselves.
> I now think that the extreme abuse of animals by the food industry on behalf of ignorant consumers is probably the worst evil of the 21st century.
I agree, there's no comparison, billions of land animals a year, trillions including sea life. I can't count that high.
The pain has gotten worse year after year. You watch otherwise smart people give bad arguments, or complete ignorance. To maintain any kind of social life you have to deal with being uncomfortable with those around you.
Hopefully we can have small impactful moments upon other's lives.
I get your point and don't disagree that animal suffering is terrible, but I wish people were more moderate in their language and not so quick to jump to hyperbole. No one can care about everything, and everyone's thing is 'the worst thing'.
A little context: Growing up, no one ever talked about managing their money. No one had any money to manage. Everyone in my circle lived paycheck-to-paycheck. Any talk about money management was for rich folk, and that wasn't us. So basically, I never learned any of this stuff. Next, my career hit its stride right after the Enron scandal, and then the early-2000s dot-com meltdown. So I just saw investment/retirement accounts, and the stock market in general, as a big con to steal my money. (If you don't know about the Enron scandal, and you wanna be depressed, read up.) Anyway, I was full of FUD, and I was just gonna keep stuffing money in my mattress.
Then, a random conversation with a trusted colleague led to him spending an entire afternoon explaining it all to me. He explained that his various investments were extremely low-risk, and he was still making thousands every year, and that my mattress-stuffing strategy was leaving a lot of easy money on the table. It was the way he explained it all, and the fact that I trusted/respected him that changed everything for me. I'll always owe him.
Never think of yourself as wrong, invalid, defective or unworthy. That's wrong. Don't do it.
For about 90 % of my life I've thought about myself as defective in many ways.
- In puberty I thought I was defective because other boys were talking about their crushes, how they'd like to f--- this girl or that girl or how they got a boner just looking at them. Later almost everyone got a girlfriend or two. None of that happened for me, so I felt defective. Turns out I'm gay.
- Also in puberty I'd get random boners when sitting down in the bus. It made me feel ashamed and like a pervert, so I stopped sitting down in public transit. Turns out many boys experience this in puberty because, well... the vibrations. They're called "bus boners".
- I always struggled a lot remembering faces and names. I felt bad about it because I thought it meant I didn't care or try enough. I've always had issues forming relationships and again I felt bad and thought I just had to try harder and make a better effort, which didn't work. And various other issues, and for each of them I thought it was a defect of myself. Turns out I'm on the spectrum and my parents didn't bother telling me about being diagnosed as a child. I only found out when bored me stumbled over online autism tests and literally all of them came out strongly autistic-neurodivergent.
Another piece is understanding your body's feelings and your emotions. Many people aren't taught how to understand their feelings and emotions, especially men. This is NOT automatic. It is not difficult, but it can be very hard and unpleasant. Everyone needs to be taught how to process emotions, emotionally healthy people are taught this as children.
But to balance this a bit.
You, as a person, are never wrong, but you are still accountable for your actions/words. This is an important distinction to keep in mind.
Ian's Knot [1] not only is super-fast (once you've learned it properly), it also ensures you are tying a strong knot.
Also, a heel lock [2] is a independent thing which is also good to learn.
[1] https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBbc6TackDQThis knot will not come undone:
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
And you can still untie by pulling on one of the ends. Though you have to make sure that while untying, you don't allow the loop to go over the other end of the shoelace.
Worked hard believing it would be rewarded.
On the bright side, I also got reassurance that outside the lipid panel, everything else (sugar, kidney and liver function, PSA, etc.) seems normal.
Other than laziness and procrastination, a huge part of me was dreading being told I need a prostate exam and colonoscopy, but fortunately I don’t need either for at least 3 more years.
Wearing toe socks and minimalist shoes, combined with going barefoot as much as possible, has rescued my feet, ankles, and knees from pain.
At some point I heard this thought experiment: If you could only have one, which is more important: To love or to be loved?
Now I understand that if I want to receive love and connection that I have to be able to give it. This shift has strengthened so many of my relationships and helped me build new ones as well.
Now I am seeing that often it's us the non-religious that have lost something of value and are trying to replace it with things that don't work as well.
I've noticed this the most with outdoorsy equipment, like my pair of wool socks (Darn Tough). They are 3x more expensive that cotton, but they keep my feet warm without overheating them, are thicker so I can comfortably walk around the house with no other footwear, they don't hardly get smelly, they also dry really fast. That last one comes in handy when you need to cross streams.
Ive recently started weightlifting for strength (low reps high weights) and the mindset is totally different. With weightlifting to keep your lifts going up you have to eat more. One standard is 1g protein/pound of target body weight. It turns out it is really hard to eat that much protein and when you do you arent that hungry. Im now trying to gain weight to get up to 190-200. Ive gained 10 pounds back to 170, but it is more muscle than fat.
In the end weight is just a meaningless number and building muscle becomes a positive spiral. Losing weight causes a loss in muscle which becomes a negative spiral.
Paradoxically you can be leaner, look better, and be stronger at a higher weight.
Currently in my late 30s, I've long enjoyed pushing my limits in many forms of physical exertion - running, climbing, skiing, mountain biking, etc. However, as I've aged and my bones are no longer made of rubber, I have been forced to realize that pain is not often gain.
Dealing with the many persistent aches and pains, I was prompted by a friend to get a 'gait analysis' to assist with my running longer distances and in more diverse terrain. I quickly learned from my very skillful physical therapist/gait analyst, that my gait for running is not sustainable- and will lead to kinks and pains as I progress. Taking a step back, she identified that many of those gait quirks stem from my walking gait. And she quickly identified that my walking gait is out-of-wack due to an injury I sustained while playing basketball when I was 13.
25 years later, I am challenged to learn how to walk correctly.. so the question I have is if I haven't yet learned to walk, have I really ever been able to run? I doubt it, but I'm a pretty firm believer that I will be able to in the future.
Edit: I can't spelle
But no. One day I realized it's just that my toilet always started from a flushed state... like a normal person. But they knew somewhere out there, someone would try to clean their toilet still full of piss and shit.
Yesterday while visiting him it just struck me like a lightning strike that I had no connection with him. Our world views are so fundamentally different that I might have disrespected him by some honest mistake. It was a difficult realization to process, but I feel like there's no going back from this.
Something very deep inside has changed. I spent the night awaken next to my toddler thinking how I want a different fate for our own relationship, while at the same time having no clue how to even bring this up to my father. He expects something from me that I just can't (and don't) want to give.
Still, I think this is progress, somehow.
I was enlightened the first time I traveled to Japan, and an affordable ($50) add-on has been installed in our master bath ever since.
I spent the money to send him to a proper board and train, and it was life changing. Our relationship is better. He is happier and less stressed. I was able to take him off sedatives. Plus it's cool to have a dog with perfect recall that I can take anywhere without worrying.
If you can afford it, I can't recommend finding a reputable balanced trainer more highly.
Turns out, I had spent most of my life dehydrated. I feel so much better when I drink a ton of water.
Now I work hard on being friendly, curious and kind towards others.
Here’s the kicker though: I’m more dexterous with chopsticks than even she is. I can pick and place a single grain of rice, or hold the most slippery noodles with ease. So she just laughed about it and told me to keep doing whatever the heck I do.
In reality it is a “sack” that you hit, not a “shack”.
Car side mirrors. I spent more than a decade of driving adjusting them wrong. You want them so you don't see cars behind you at all in your side mirrors until they're transitioning off the edge of your center rear-view mirror. This gives you far more coverage of your sides, and every car is still visible in at least one mirror at all times. For me, where I put my seat, this usually means setting them as far out as they'll go.
Proper tongue positioning is when you rest your tongue on the roof of the mouth and away from the teeth. It's been 2 years I've been "mewing"[1]. A good side effect for me: Now I stop snoring and I believe I have better posture. Some claim that it will improve your jawline but not for me, I guess I started too late. If I had started in my teen, I believe I would have had a great face today ?
[1] Check youtube videos for "mewing" or lookup JawHacks videos
Years of marriage before we figured out I hate cleaning small things (silverware and glasses) and she hates cleaning big things (pots and pans). We permanently changed how we clean up after meals.
Not exactly in line with your premise, but changed my entire outlook about expressing what I want or prefer about almost anything.
I was sucking my gut in on inhale, and expanding it on exhale. Once I tried it the other way around, it locked and I've breathed this new way ever since.
It's obvious to give your lungs more room, couldn't believe to have been doing something so basic wrong.
I used to open them from the hard stem bit which was not always successful, but it turns out that if you pinch them at the other end, they open up much easier:
Then I realized that I should align its speaker to be right against my ear canal, that is 1-2 cm lower. And now I could hear the other person so much better!
Not: “What’s up”
Not: “<open-ended question>”
Not: “<this is what I did over the weekend>. How was yours?”
Yes: <Logistics of meeting up>
Every time I tried it, I'd sabotage my efforts not knowing by chewing gum, eating tic tacs, using flavored tea, etc this would just trigger my insulin response and I'd get hungry throughout the day.
All I had to do, is just simplify my intake to any of these: water, black coffee, black tea or any tea with a bitter profile.
And that's it. Fasting would get easier after that, especially after first few days.
And you could do 4h, 6h, 8h, 12h, 20h easy peasy. No problem.
And if you should experience the desire to eat during those periods, most of the time it was just psychological. Your body isn't dying. You are more resilient than that.
The spine is adapted to bend multiple ways, including rounding, as a matter of good exercise form. It's a major function of your abdominal musculature, in fact, to compress the spine forward along the transverse plane. Just don't pick up heavy stuff that way or hunch over a desk all day.
Later in life I trained myself into touch-typing (and then to use Colemak), but for some reason I can't seem to shake off this annoying thumb bit.
Another thing would be flossing with dental brushes. Gum infections can ruin your health in many ways.
But I want to. I want friends. But I can't accept friends, because they will find out I have no worth, so I only have acquaintances. Honestly, I want my best friend back, my ex, but that is way gone.
Being superman != a way to measure your worth. Work != the value of you. You != nothing.
Be kind to yourself, show yourself love. You have value. I know that you do. If only I knew that I do too.
One day it dawned on me that I was littering.
Odd thing was I never littered outside of that. In fact cleaning up litter was part of my job at the time.
You are acting incredibly selfishly if you help people because you feel it entitles you to a specific outcome.
I now see why people have called me childish. You have to let people have their own agency and decide whether they want your help or even like what your doing. You can't get upset if they don't think it's as good as you do.
Find people who care and lean into those. Forget the rest. Don't get emotionally attached to people who don't care about you. You can never "nice" them into liking you. Fake friendships are everywhere and you may seem "rude" by realizing this or pointing it out... but you can both live better lives by not continuing the charade.
I've voted twice to (successfully) repeal prohibition laws in states I've lived in, and would do it again.
Cannabis dependency is real however, and it's the "safe" drug compared to, say, heroin; but I'd recommend taking breaks, or consider stopping.
This may be controversial, but keeping the fluoride on your teeth as much as possible helps prevent tooth decay. Rinsing immediately after brushing dilutes or removes fluoride. What was the point? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Actually managing sugar intake in general. I'm 30 and just starting to do something about it.
No, grandma doesn't need a fibre connection with a NAS server with plex, using usenet, when she just wants the basic gardening channels :D
When my child would ask to do something or desire something I might have said, "Not today but I promise in the future ...". Often I would never follow up on those.
Now, I am more inclined to say, "I will do my best to make that happen" or something along those lines but no promises.
Now I've learned to take almost nothing for granted, which makes me happier.
Using shears is a far better experience, and they're useful for pizza too.
TL;DR: grip the bar across the joint at the bottom of your fingers instead of across the middle of your palm. This doesn't apply to bench pressing (a push), but applies to all moves that involve pulling/lifting the bar.
That, and using flushable wipes when at home instead of just 100% toilet paper.
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm
Small, but life-changing discovery.
I trained myself to breathe through my nose during the day. And at night, I put a little piece of tape on my mouth to make sure I breathe through my nose.
I was doing what Ian calls the "Un-balanced Shoelace Knot". Reversing the starting knot makes all the difference.
Removed the two, started surfing and 50kg (110 pounds) later I’m happier and more active than I’ve ever been.
The primary global benefit of teaching, in my experience, is that it keeps us jaded experts constantly at the entry point to our field. Close to the basic, foundational material. Making sure that it’s easy for new people to join, because that’s how the field grows and it’s good for everyone in it.
The primary local benefit, to the teacher, is that you have moments like this that allow you to constantly refine your worldview to be more congruent with reality. This allows you to better define what should be taught, and how.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.de/umwelt/2022/03/hormone-im-...
As long as you can easily modulo the time, this works for the range 1 minute (60) to 1 minute 39 seconds (99). Technically you could also do this for times like 2:65 instead of 3:05 but at that point you're not saving a keystroke. And on most microwaves they have an annoying delay between when you can do another keystoke after doing the last one, so I've appreciated the little bit of time saving I get with this knowledge.
- Soap: it disrupt the skin microbiome. Only useful for hand washing and to clean private parts / the bottom. Even then use high quality soap like Marseille soap or Aleppo soap.
Note: Also as mentioned in the comments if you avoid soap / deodorant you *will* probably need to shower two times a day even without doing physical activities. Three times with physical activities.
You may also need to particularly rub the smelly parts of the body (e.g. the armpits) with a clean sponge, use mild to hot water (cold water doesn’t do it without soap) and trim your body hair. There is no magic. People use soap for a reason: it’s more “practical” and it requires less care to stay clean
And if you are used to wash yourself with soap and you brutally stop you may smell a little the first month until your microbiome is able to handle all the waste and your skin to balance its oil production. Even if you shower multiple times a day.
- Shampoo: Most shampoos are very a agressive for your scalp / hairs and should be avoided. Especially if you have fragile / curly hair. You can wash them with plain water or conditioner instead.
Note: Using a gentle shampoo without silicones and surfactants can still be useful from time to time. Especially to reset the pH of the scalp.
Also using a shampoo rarely and co-washing instead can be impractical if you have long hair as it’s way harder to clean and takes far longer to dry
- Toothpaste: it can be useful but it’s not so important. What really is important is to brush your teeth energetically to remove by mechanical friction the dental plaques and to change toothbrush frequently. Avoiding for a time to use toothpaste and using dental plaque revealer can be a great way to learn how to properly wash one’s teeth
Note: As someone else noted “energetically” means speed and taking your time. *Not* applying pressure on your teeth. Also toothpaste helps the teeth by providing fluoride. It’s just that using it every time may not be so useful and do not replace brushing your teeth effectively
This video explains it very well:
Not answering strictly according to "you've done your whole life", but I see this often when deliberately looking at other's shoe laces. I just recently tried to correct someone's 40yr old habit :)
It's objectively not as flexible as the traditional spoon grip but I can't seem to shake the habit. Gets me strange looks sometimes
1) Working for someone else instead of starting my own company.
2) Trusting people to do right thing instead of accepting that people are selfish.
3) Giving up on interesting tech projects because my friends didn't understand its value.
4) Write a lot of code before testing it haha
5) Avoiding tech bubbles instead of figuring out how to get in and out quickly.
6) Not keeping close contact with my tech friends (many of whom are super successful now).
If you do this properly, you never need to double knot your shoes.
One thing to keep in mind, it will be harder at first and that might lead to your initial knot being looser which will lead to unties. Keep at it, and I guarantee it is better. It still blows me away that the other method is so prevalent when this one is better and no harder. How does that happen!?
Source and graphics: https://www.realmenrealstyle.com/tie-shoes-right-way/
I tried it (age 50-something), and discovered that I no longer needed to double-knot my shoes.
Food is fuel.
Food should be delicious and enjoyable. Your enjoyment can come from taste, not from quantity. Being hungry is a good sign, not a problem. And "Just full enough" is more than full enough.
I have a long way to go, but at 46 years old, this is all a revelation to me.
But then trying to come up with a good link I hit this alternative version which is really cool: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
Likely you can do an Ian knot reversed from the square knob, but I need to play with that.
I never really learned a better way; I am just a really fast typist now and I type everything.
I've also been trying to snap my fingers wrong for 20 years until somebody finally explained to me that it wasn't my fingers rubbing / clicking / pouncing against each other that made the sound, it was the finger snapping/clapping on the meaty part of your wrist. Doh!
I'm not dumb, I just never looked at the lyrics I guess? IDK, it was a life changing moment I'll tell you that much.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-teeth-and-gums/how-to-k...
> Don't rinse with water straight after toothbrushing
> After brushing, spit out any excess toothpaste.
> Don't rinse your mouth immediately after brushing, as it'll wash away the concentrated fluoride in the remaining toothpaste.
> Rinsing dilutes it and reduces its preventative effects.
Nope!
[1] OK, maybe not my whole like but at least from 10-11 onwards.
• If you like a girl, tell her she's pretty
• Buy a girl some flowers and watch her appreciate it
• Just make her laugh, women love a guy with a sense of humour
• Just let her know how you really feel if you like her
• Just hold the door open for her
• Just ask her out, the worst she can say is no
• Just find a girl that likes you for you
• Just listen to her and show her you care
• Just be a gentleman and pay her compliments
• Just be yourself!
• Just stop trying and the girl of your dreams will come into your life when you least expect it.
I always assumed dynamic tripod grip was what was taught, and the best, as it's how I write, but a couple of my kids used a cross between lateral tripod and quadrupod - and their teachers would complain about their writing.
I had to restrain myself when I realized this is what they'd been taught, and next met the teachers responsible.
For almost 40 years my RT shoe lace would always come undone after walking for a few minutes.
Turns out I was making the same mistake on only my RT shoe, rather constantly.
Thanks Ian! https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm
Also, it appears Roth IRAs need you to pick an investment option, but when I created one I don't recall there being an option. Invested ~3k and many moons later it was still ~3k.
The classic knot has two versions, the weak one where loops are more vertical, and the strong one where loops are more horizontal.
It took me about two weeks to re-learn tying my shoes.
Operated like Clarence Thomas did at oral arguments for close to a decade... Assumed that if something was worth asking someone else would ask it.
I know it’s wrong, but it’s in muscle memory already.
see second image here to see what I mean by wrong: https://thecrackedamethyst.tumblr.com/post/180226225116/appa...
(Also turns out you can buy perfectly good shoes without laces so extra win)
Something coworkers from years ago still like to give me grief about.
That and wearing incorrectly sized dress shirts and feeling like I was being choked in ties.
I thank my partner for introducing that habit into my life.
I used to get real upset when the codebase I working on was shit and even left companies due to this. In reality what was more important was those companies where paying a shit wage that was why their codebase stank.
Curiosity or lack of understanding of topic is great opportunity to learn new things. And also put my ego on side.
In my late 30s, I learned that I'd been tying my shoes wrong my entire life.
I think the only option for these people will be to file an insurance claim, let the insurance company sort out who's at fault and try to pursue them.
The knot has to be balanced. I never knew.
Long story short, I put a 4x4 (3.5" actual) across the head of the box spring and a 2x4" (1.5" actual) across the middle. I have been sleeping a whole lot better even since.