1. Buying a house
2. Deciding not to have kids
3. Deciding not to plan to live past 50-55
Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
411–420 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering a lot of their work is sourced from abroad, this is very ironic (in the Morrissette sense).
While it's ironic, I think I understand why it's the case: there's a plethora of managers who can't really manage remotely the way they were used to in the office: by applying lots of pressure to those underneath them. It's much harder to show how big boss you are on zoom compared to an open space office,where 50 poor souls are scared to say anything back.
And most of them are redundant , was always wondering what most of the managers in our division actually did as we seemed to function better without them during WFH.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#413Buying a dishwasher. 1. Less drudgery means more time to relax 2. Less pressure to minimise kitchenware use means more ambitious and enjoyable cooking 3. I just get a little jolt of happiness when I walk into the kitchen and see my large cuboidal son sitting there
Interestingly, I found the dishwasher produced more stress than handwashing. Living alone, it takes days to fill up the dishwasher to a level where running it isn't wasteful. Every day, I'd eye how full it was and judge whether it was "worth it" to run it that day. Meanwhile, any time I cooked invariably the pot or pan I needed was sitting dirty in the dishwasher. With hand washing, I just spend 15 minutes usually ev…
> it takes days to fill up the dishwasher to a level where running it isn't wasteful
Dishwashers are much more efficient than you think -- more than handwashing. Just run it every day or two.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#414Quitting porn. At age 45, having been addicted since first finding I could download over 1200 baud dialup on my parents phone line and watching Cinemax late night through the static, it has just been a thing in my life almost daily and honestly I'd given up on caring whether it was a bad thing or not. I'd felt guilty about it sometimes, and sure, tried to quit on a number of occasions, but always ended up back within…
If you are referring to porn, despite the general perception I think it's quite harmless. Things like drugs, smoking, alcohol and even spedning time on Facebook and Instagram have much worse effect on someone's wellbeing. People use it mostly for stress relief and that's much better strategy than smoking pot or even casual drinking.
Some people don't just watch porn for 10 minutes while they masturbate. Some people obsess over finding the right video, open a million tabs, and watch porn for hours while obsessing over the content. Some people have an unhealthy relationship with porn.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#415It gave my marriage a well needed boost , me and the wife was slowly drifting apart due to travel/work as the kids became adults.
We share my office at home now and it has been great.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you end up feeding a primate/reproductive prime control system, using unlimited and synthetic input. The system was never designed for the this kind of "bandwidth". Since we are biological machines, other parts of the organism need to compensate... This compensation is very dangerous in the long run both from a personal and a social side. You could argue the same about entertainment. But seeking it is not a p…
And yet it’s still possible to eat ice cream even though such a thing would not be found on the savanna. Some people can’t control this and become wildly obese, but others eat ice cream, understand what it is, and get on with their life.
The drive for reproduction is way stronger than the need for energy (sugar - ice cream).
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#417Buying a pen plotter last summer was one of the best decision for a while. As I start my journey into programming with generative art, using macromedia director and processing, I always wanted to be able to create my on physical prints. So for the last months I got back to have fun writing code in my spare time. Some examples: https://twitter.com/eskimobloood/status/1366300689652187140 https://twitter.com/eskimoblooo…
Just logged in to say that this work is amazing and that I really like your style :)
I also keep coming back to generative art and think about getting a pen plotter for years already. Now I am getting one!
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#418I "retired" at 33 after working in tech for 12 years and saving a ton of money. With my free time I run a fun hobby business teaching kayaking which is way more fun and brings me way more happiness than anything I did in 2019 or before.
What do you do for health insurance?
Buy it on the ACA exchanges? Depending on your income, you may qualify for significant subsidies. Taxable retirement income for a given lifestyle is lower than most people seem to think -- dividends and LTCG have a lower tax rate than income; you don't pay taxes on the cost basis; you don't pay taxes on withdrawals from Roth accounts at all; and you don't need surplus income to save for retirement. If you live in a paid-off house, that can cut Cost of Living (CoL) needs substantially (e.g., the mortgage is something like 75% of my pre-retirement spending in a High CoL city).
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#419Myself; I realized while watching the decline and death of a close relative that the only person in my life making me unhappy was me.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are referring to porn, despite the general perception I think it's quite harmless. Things like drugs, smoking, alcohol and even spedning time on Facebook and Instagram have much worse effect on someone's wellbeing. People use it mostly for stress relief and that's much better strategy than smoking pot or even casual drinking.
Just because other things are also bad for you does not mean that porn isn't bad for you. It's established that it is.
> It's established that it is.
Is it?