Empathy, patience, understanding.
Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
641–650 of 876 posts
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#642Learn a another human language. You don’t have to be good at it or even able to converse. Languages are systems of thinking as much as they are systems of communication. Some thoughts only make sense in a given language! The process of learning a language builds cognitive skills and perhaps fights cognitive decline. If you have absolutely no “ear” for human language start with Esperanto and work your way to additiona…
I only ever try reading latin. It does massage my brain.. the order of words, the way ideas combine slightly differently at many layers.. it does tickle the brain deeply. Even knowing alphabet (cyrillic is "fun" one) does stimulate.
I'd second the idea of learning a non-Latin alphabet. Cyrillic is fun and many English speakers would only be a few hours' study away from recognising and sounding out every character. Korean is surprisingly easy to grasp and has the bonus of appearing to be quite complex. Even just plain old Greek is familiar-yet-not enough to be a challenge.
In terms of ones I personally don't know but would enjoy - Georgian script is beautiful, and Armenian looks cool too. I know enough to suggest steering clear of Arabic and Hebrew unless you're willing to commit to learning the languages themselves though. I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this though!
Knowing the alphabets themselves aren't really practical unless you're going to the country (and even then only if you can then match the sounds to some words) so it's only really a little party trick or for personal satisfaction.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
What blows my mind is how much I took my ability to cook for granted. So many people my age (millennial) can barely cook anything. I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. People give me weird looks when every single workday I have the same answer to “you wanna go out and get some lunch?” “Nope. I have leftovers!”
I used to eat out almost every meal as well. It wasn't because I didn't know how to cook, and I even like cooking. The economics (monetary and time) just didn't work out for one person. I can't buy in bulk (at least not fresh produce) because there is only one of me, so the cost is about the same as eating out. It also takes me a while to cook, clean etc, which takes more time than just eating out some where or getti…
Cooking for myself became easier when I started using rice/quinoa/beans + meat with vegetables. The first part is a single pot, and can usually be made in large enough quantity to last most of the week (via reheating or reuse, like old rice into fried rice). The second part can also be done in a single pot. And I have found that vegetables last far enough into the week that usually one trip covers me. To handle running out, make stews and other freezable things for the end of the week (or to mix things up earlier in the week) and store in single-serving portions.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love cooking sometimes, but then again, other-times I would rather spend my time working on a client project. When you add up the time spent: 1. planning meals (may be minimal if you can ad-hoc quickly) 2. walking/driving to the grocery store 3. cooking 4. cleaning It can easily be more expensive for an individual person (or even a couple) to cook than it is to eat out. (I think this makes intuitive sense too, sinc…
If you care about it, it's easy to save money by cooking yourself with this one crazy trick: leftovers. It takes very little extra effort to make a much larger batch of whatever you're cooking. It's pretty simple to cook ~10 servings of a solid meal that costs ~$0.25 (e.g., Chana Masala w/ brown rice) each with about ~2 hours of time all in with grocery shopping + cooking + cleaning. Sure, if you're making $200+/hour…
Sure, but now you're eating the same thing for a week. I lived that way in college, it was great for saving money. Now i can afford to do a combination of delivery and blueapron style box'o'ingredients and enjoy the increased variety with less mental overhead (buying, prepping, and storing multiple servings for one has its own issues).
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to learn to cook off and on for years now and I get so discouraged all the time because I'm still either overcooking or undercooking something, still not getting the flavors right, not using the right amount of oil despite the recipe's prescription. I can't be alone in feeling that way.
I know you're getting a ton of responses, but if you do see this, look up Food Wishes on youtube. Would not be an exaggeration to say it has changed my life. 5-10m videos focused on one dish, usually including quite a bit of context and instruction aimed at beginners. Cook with stuff you like! That way even if you screw it up you're left with stuff you mostly don't mind. Can't count the number of times I've screwed u…
+1 to foodwishes. Most of my cooking knowledge comes from those videos. One thing that's hard to get from recipes is the actual cooking techniques, e.g. how loud onions should sizzle when you saute them. Foodwishes is great for learning and entertaining as well.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#646Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to eat out almost every meal as well. It wasn't because I didn't know how to cook, and I even like cooking. The economics (monetary and time) just didn't work out for one person. I can't buy in bulk (at least not fresh produce) because there is only one of me, so the cost is about the same as eating out. It also takes me a while to cook, clean etc, which takes more time than just eating out some where or getti…
I bought food to cook for 2 days at a time. Requires 3 visits to grocery store per week. Given your shopping list is small doesn't take that much.
Yes but then you loose the bulk discounts. Getting 2 days (for one person) worth of veggies, meat etc isn't much cheaper than eating out. Plus the time spent doing the grocery shopping 3 times a week, with the time to cook the individual portion, then cleaning up for me just wasn't worth it. Individual preference obviously, but just didn't make sense for me most of the time.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#647Starting conversations with strangers. Squat and deadlift. Eating healthier. Doing something kind for someone else every day. Honesty. Listening to people you disagree with. Driving safer (this is the most dangerous thing we do on a regular basis). Meditation.
Truthfully I dont think there is any reason for a regular person to deadlift. It's a pretty high risk exercise and you can hit those muscles groups with different exercises. If you are hard set on deadlifts though I recommend the hexbar deadlifts to reduce the chances for injury.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#648Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to eat out almost every meal as well. It wasn't because I didn't know how to cook, and I even like cooking. The economics (monetary and time) just didn't work out for one person. I can't buy in bulk (at least not fresh produce) because there is only one of me, so the cost is about the same as eating out. It also takes me a while to cook, clean etc, which takes more time than just eating out some where or getti…
Cooking for myself became easier when I started using rice/quinoa/beans + meat with vegetables. The first part is a single pot, and can usually be made in large enough quantity to last most of the week (via reheating or reuse, like old rice into fried rice). The second part can also be done in a single pot. And I have found that vegetables last far enough into the week that usually one trip covers me. To handle runni…
I had periods of doing something similar too. Make a pot of stew / curry / jambalaya with rice, eat with some salad.
Advantage of stew / curry is they can be frozen and later thawed and reheated. Over time though it got really monotonous for me. I like good food, and importantly variety.
Feels like there is some opportunity here. A way to scale home cooking for a bunch of individuals. Like if a few people in close proximity, say in the same apartment complex, rotated responsibilities for cooking. You can get bulk savings, time savings and variety.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#649Earlier quoted context omitted.
$75 is even an exaggeration. It might be more bland, but eggs, chicken breasts, some veggies should get you through a week for < $30.
And lentils with bread -most people look down on them for some reason, unless it's a side of some sort, but I find them just beautiful as proper dinner!
I'd love to cook and eat more lentils. They taste pretty good to me, are cheap and fairly easy to cook. My problem is, they tend (for me at least) produce a lot of undesired gas.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny thing about those people is they constantly complain about how expensive everything is, yet they spend frivolous amounts of money on what's probably the highest marked up item: food. Meal prep for a week for ~$75 and you're set. It would cost probably 4 times that (at least, depending on where you eat) to eat out, not to mention you don't know how it was prepared, and it's probably wildly unhealthy compared to…
Totally agree. It's so easy to overthink cooking. Take off the exec-chef-in-restaurant apron and focus on the simple stuff: - Add salt/pepper/spices by hand if you can. Shakers/larger-volume canisters lead to over-application, but it's so easy to grab a little bit of salt, apply, taste, and do it over again until you hit the right mark - Learn how to cook in a single pot - stews/soups/etc. Saves on cleaning, and brot…
A lot of this stuff can get pretty nuanced especially seasoning, and to me that makes or breaks any dish even if you're just using salt and pepper. I usually just go with what's recommended for a particular recipe... After trying a recipe a few times, I MIGHT tweak the seasoning based my or the wife's preferences. When I'm not sure what seasonings to use outside of salt/pepper, I usually just use seasoned salt.