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Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

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Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#451

Post by kukkeliskuu »

uncharted9 wrote: post #66

Learning about my own mind and how to tame it. I've started realizing that I don't have much control over the external world, people or events, and only my perception of it can keep me sane or fix my mental issues. This has effectively forced me to see my relationship with my devices with more scrutiny. I've repeatedly found that digital consumption, whether it is infotainment, knowledge, or mindless Reels or Shorts,…

Perhaps you might be interested in the works of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. When I encountered his ideas, I was impressed by his psychological insights. I had never encountered same level of insight before. It really resonated with me.

His approach is not religious in the usual sense -- there is no need to believe anything or pray to some entities. It is not in conflict with religions either. Gurdjieff is presenting the psychological and spiritual ideas that are behind many mystical traditions of religions in a way that is more digestible by the modern man, and possible to apply in modern life.

His own books are probably too dense to start from. A good starting point for me was the book series Psychological commentaries by Nicoll. Another popular one is In the search of the Miraculous by Ouspensky. You can only get the Commentaries as used, and they are really expensive, but you only need one of them to start with and PDF versions can be found online. One one book of the series will do, as they all are all composed of one pagers on recurring topics.

Drop me a note if you are interested.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#452

Post by hahahacorn »

csharpminor wrote: post #446
tyler_sf wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat as you. I have been running since the summer and I recently finished a couch to 5km plan. My pace is similar at 35-38 minutes. Do you have any tips on going from 38 to 25 minutes? Thanks

Do more short high effort intervals. Find a track to run at if you can and alternate easy/hard laps. The visual cues of a track will really help you feel confident pushing hard because it’s easy to see how much distance remains. Also, check out your local running clubs on Strava. I know social running isn’t for everyone, but it’s a really good way to push your speed up. Every club I’ve run with has been psyched to ge…

As a second opinion, everyone is different. This is quite literally the last advice I would give anyone starting out. Short high effort intervals and spiking HR for someone with poor cardiovascular strength (myself 12 weeks ago) feels like absolute horrid shit and I would never want to go to the track again.

Prioritize enjoying the run. Which you can’t do when your body thinks you might be having a heart attack.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#453

Post by danielmarkbruce »

costco wrote: post #254

I'm reading a book about electricity markets. Modeling electricity prices using a mean-reverting model with "jumps", exotic derivatives, etc. Pretty exciting stuff. Though you need a million dollars in liquid net worth to trade with any ISO so it's a bit out of my league. Really interesting author too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mack Am working on some large scale authorship attribution stuff on the side and…

If you get to the point where you have some insight on trading electricity... i know some people who have some capital..

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#455

Post by hahahacorn »

tommychillfiger wrote: post #396
hahahacorn wrote: post #344

Running. I got the bug about 12 weeks ago. I had never ran longer than 1.5 miles continuously 12 weeks ago. Now I’m planning my next Sundays long run. 12.5ish miles. Im a heavy guy. My heaviest was 270, but I’m down to 220 now. I hated running my entire life. But I finally figured out how to run pain free and now it’s the thing I look forward to everyday. It’s also tremendously rewarding to see such rapid improvement…

Running has pretty much changed my life completely - very good stuff. For all of the snake oil out there promising ridiculous benefits, consistently running anything more than about an hour a week is as close to the real McCoy as I have ever experienced.

The changes I’ve seen in 3 months are frankly staggering. I quit smoking, cut like 95% of my alcohol consumptions, started eating healthier, etc. and it was really easy for me to do all at the same time.

I had tried tackling each of these problems independently before and typically failed. Withdrawals, cravings, etc. are too much. But man I really fucking love running now and smoking, binge drinking and junk food just look so gross to me now that I know they’re gonna ruin my runs.

The brain is weird. I’m insanely grateful.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#456

Post by hahahacorn »

theryan wrote: post #351
hahahacorn wrote: post #344

Running. I got the bug about 12 weeks ago. I had never ran longer than 1.5 miles continuously 12 weeks ago. Now I’m planning my next Sundays long run. 12.5ish miles. Im a heavy guy. My heaviest was 270, but I’m down to 220 now. I hated running my entire life. But I finally figured out how to run pain free and now it’s the thing I look forward to everyday. It’s also tremendously rewarding to see such rapid improvement…

Any tips for running pain free? I used to run pretty often (3-5 times per week) for 5+ miles. Longest was 11. However, my feet started hurting while running -- never while walking even long distances.

For me, slowing down, proper foot striking (go for a couple barefoot runs at the park until you know what feels right and then translate that to form with running shoe on), and I did feet and ankle strength training for the first month.

Oh and #1 is listen to your body. I’m running for the joy of running. If something hurts I’m not gonna run, lol. Important to rest.

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#457

Post by serialNumber »

lewisjoe wrote: post #414
vivekd wrote: post #354

This post caught my attention because recently I met a woman I really admire. She dropped out of her computer engineering class, took a vow of celibacy and poverty and became a missionary with a Catholic sect. The reason I admire her isn't that. What caught my attention about her is that she has a sense of purpose. She has a purpose in life and has devoted her life to it. I used to have one. My goal was to make the l…

I worked with a founder who had the same vision. Democratising legal industry using tech. It was my first job after college and was fun building a contract negotiation platform, document assembling API, etc. Learnt a lot but had to leave because something was missing & it wasn't working out. The person who I worked with has the same name signature as yours: vivek durai

Would be incredible if it was the same person

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#459

Post by wannabebarista »

Reading research from the past.

There are several papers/books in math, economics, logic, philosophy, etc. from the past 200 years that I've been interested in reading but have never had a structured plan to go about it. I've occasionally just read random stuff.

This year I started a project where I write some thoughts on a handful of papers/books from 100, 150, and 200 years ago. Here's the result from 1923 [1], and I'm nearly finished with 1873.

Organizing the reading like this has kept the scope manageable and the project fun. Hopefully, it's something I'll continue into the future.

[1] https://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1923/

Re: Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

#460

Post by theossuary »

november84 wrote: post #409
SwiftyBug wrote: post #260

Learning to use Vim! I've tried three times before in the past 10 years. This is the first time it actually clicked. It's the first time I've tried Neovim. It's awesome and I feel like I'm playing a game with myself while working. I thought it would take much longer to get to the speed I'm at now. I've been using Vim exclusively for a month.

Any resources you can share or did you jump into the docs?

Tbh the best bit of advice I ever got for learning vim is to keep a sticky note on your monitor with 5-10 motions you want to learn, and replace it once you've started using them consistently.

Start with h, j, k, l, w, b, a, i, o, esc And go from there

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