I must admit I can't recall a single experience as "life changing", maybe it's a cultural thing, but I can't imagine a single event (other than a very serious, debilitating accident, or winning an insane sum of money) could be understood as life changing, much less reading a blog post, or anything else for that matter.
Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
241–250 of 393 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#242Not really life changing but still my favorite blog post of all time https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
Man, that was a great read. Definitely wasted some work time reading this instead because I couldn’t pull myself away.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#243http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2014/07/instant-pot-el... If you see cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby, I very strongly recommend getting an electric pressure cooker. It greatly simplifies cooking because it's automated. Just add the ingredients, close the lid, press a button, and wait. You will get a perfectly cooked one-pot meal with minimum effort. You can even mix fresh a…
> If you see cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby, I very strongly recommend getting an electric pressure cooker. Oh hi there! Do you have any recipes that you recommend? I actually bought an Instant Pot a couple months ago, and so far have found one great one pot meal that I cook in bulk on the weekend - basically tomatoes + sweet potatoes + peppers + beans + quinoa. Toss it all in a…
When i'm cooking in this mode, i use a rice cooker to cook lentils, the Puy / French / lentilles vertes / speckled type. I like those because they retain a lot of texture when cooked, and have a decent flavour. Dry lentils, olive oil (apply to the dry lentils and stir to coat), water, fraction of a stock cube or some miso paste, garlic, herbs, spices, whatever else you like; cook on the white rice programme. Extremely easy, pretty tasty, and with loads of scope for variation.
As an addition, sliced chorizo is great, the spicy pork fat melts out and improves everything. Lardons are almost as good. You can float a chicken thigh on top, and it will cook nicely, but won't get crispy, but you can finish it up under the grill. Sliced onion is remarkably good, soaks up the stock and comes out juicy. I often add leafy brassicas like cabbage or kale, not very exciting but it's healthy.
I've used the same rice cooker on a slow cooking setting to cook beef ragout, something like cassoulet, and pork knuckle.
A pressure cooker can do all this, but can do the high-temperature bits faster!
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#244http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2014/07/instant-pot-el... If you see cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby, I very strongly recommend getting an electric pressure cooker. It greatly simplifies cooking because it's automated. Just add the ingredients, close the lid, press a button, and wait. You will get a perfectly cooked one-pot meal with minimum effort. You can even mix fresh a…
> It also makes dried legumes far more practical, because you can skip the pre-soak phase.
What do you do about the indigestible sugars found in many beans? Traditionally, pre-soaking reduces the amount of sugars and the corresponding flatulence.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you see cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby, I very strongly recommend getting an electric pressure cooker. Oh hi there! Do you have any recipes that you recommend? I actually bought an Instant Pot a couple months ago, and so far have found one great one pot meal that I cook in bulk on the weekend - basically tomatoes + sweet potatoes + peppers + beans + quinoa. Toss it all in a…
I've been using my instant pot and your meal sounds great but I am unfortunately hopeless at cooking. Can you let me know what you do with those ingredients? Do you dice the potatoes/peppers? Do you have to cook the beans/quinoa first? How long?
Hey, I'm not the parent poster, but anyway...
You'll want to cut up the potatoes and peppers, but when you're cooking them like this, the size doesn't matter much, it's just what you prefer. I'd go a bit chunkier -- smaller will have all the flavors blend more, chunkier and you'll be able to taste the separate ingredients a bit better.
Quinoa definitely does not need to be pre-cooked -- it cooks very quickly. If you're putting in dry beans, you'll want to use the "multigrain" setting for... 60 minutes I think? And add plenty of water for the beans and quinoa to absorb.
If you're using canned beans or pre-cooked beans, you can drop that time down to 15 minutes or so, that should be plenty for the quinoa to cook.
I'd also probably add some spices. You just gotta experiment and see what you like. Make sure you add enough -- when making a big pot of food, don't just add a little spice. I think cumin and/or coriander would go nicely with this. Cinnamon is another that might be good here. Can't go wrong with black pepper.
But really, this is a dish that could go nicely with lots of different spice blends. So don't be afraid to experiment! Try stuff, fail, it's ok, and it's how you get a feel for cooking. If it doesn't come out great, spread some hot sauce on there and it might make it good enough to eat :)
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#246http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2014/07/instant-pot-el... If you see cooking primarily as a means of getting nutrients rather than a hobby, I very strongly recommend getting an electric pressure cooker. It greatly simplifies cooking because it's automated. Just add the ingredients, close the lid, press a button, and wait. You will get a perfectly cooked one-pot meal with minimum effort. You can even mix fresh a…
Isn’t one of the benefits of presoaking is that it releases certain gases that can wreck havoc on your gastrointestinal system? Does the same thing happen if you use a pressure cooker?
Oligosaccharides rather than gases [1] - but your gut bacteria digest those to produce gases. Personally, i can eat unsoaked beans, but i think that varies from person to person.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It dawned on me that my attempt at completely controlling my life had, in fact, caused me to lose control over it. Could you possibly unpack this for me a little bit? It strikes me as absolutely true for me, too, or at least sounds like it could be true, but I'm pulling at a thread I can't quite grasp.
I tried so hard to make everything go as I wanted that I increasingly avoided situations where I couldn't predict how they would go. That included stuff like talking about my feelings or asking for a favor or eventually going grocery shopping(anything could happen!! ;). Of course those are all pretty useful things and my difficulty with them convinced me even more that I had to absolutely make sure I had covered ever…
This is also a deep principle of physics. Very simple systems can be "linear" and you can say "okay, if you tweak this little knob, e.g. increase the input, then such-and-so is what must happen, e.g. an increase in the output." But most interactions and feedback loops and so forth create a "complex system" and the result of tweaking one knob is not always what you'd expect -- you add more cars to a freeway and the throughput drops radically. Sounds like you were turning up the "control things" knob, and things got progressively more out of control -- this is quite common.
Another example is that often people who give up dieting will lose weight and keep it off. What matters is not the calories but the health of the relationship with food, and if the diet is taking an unhealthy relationship and making it even more dysfunctional, then how could it help?
Of course, you found the Buddhist solution which is quite meritorious in its own right and served me well at a difficult time in my life. There is also a Christian mystic solution which has similar aspects.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#248Aphantasia: How it feels to be blind in your mind By Blake Ross https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A... Before reading this post I had no idea I had aphantasia and thought everyone else was the same as me, unable to see anything when they closed their eyes. This helped me understand myself and my relationships so much better than ever before. Thanks Blake!
I wonder if those with aphantasia tend to hate reading novels. For me, once I get into a book I basically "see" it playing out in my head and I won't even notice that I'm reading words.
I could totally understand how it would be bland if you were just reading a description and nothing was coming to you.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#2497 years ago I had just aborted an internship, my foray into being an employed adult, because I found myself unable to deal with disagreements. Contrary to my naive hope that the confidence boost from being a Professional Software Developer(tm) would solve all my emotional problems I now knew that my limitations would follow me around anywhere I would go. But I had no idea how to change and was too stuck in my own anx…
> It dawned on me that my attempt at completely controlling my life had, in fact, caused me to lose control over it. Could you possibly unpack this for me a little bit? It strikes me as absolutely true for me, too, or at least sounds like it could be true, but I'm pulling at a thread I can't quite grasp.
One more logic-focused on it is that control is a false concept in general. You can only choose what to control what you think about at best but outside factors are out of your control so you become a slave to those changing factors. So, effectively, attempting to control external factors makes the external factors control your thinking.
Imagine leading an animal into a cage with food. To that animal, they are controlling their food intake and their lunch! In that attempt to exert control over the situation they have lost all primary control.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?
#250https://blog.tjcx.me/p/consume-less-create-more This article inspired me on two things : 1) Lots of the things I do in everyday life is just to consume: buying, watching, following, etc. These things either consume my money, or my time. These things make me feel good, but it does not generate real value. In order to get rich, I need to create things. I also start to realize that great people are great because they st…
I don't understand this worldview. I guess appreciating art or music, or bullshitting with friends, or just enjoying some time off with a beer and a movie is lumped into the evils of consumption?
And by replacing all of this filthy filthy idleness with endless creation just to be creating, we... achieve enlightenment?
I guess it seems like this author is driving himself to write and write not so much because he loves it or loves books or anything, but more out of a drive to discipline himself into working constantly