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Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

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Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#711

Post by antognini »

nlh wrote: post #171
muzani wrote: post #29

Pasta and sauce are not meant to be separate. Once you cook the pasta, drain it, and immediately toss with the sauce. This is part of the reason it was meant to be al dente, to absorb and deliver the flavor of the sauce better. Unlike rice, it's fine to "soak" pasta in the sauce; it expands when freshly cooked but not when cool. Also most sauce recipes are probably overcomplicated. Most need less than 5 ingredients.…

Two related tips while on the subject: 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 water should be "as salty as tears."

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#712

Post by nativespecies »

yodsanklai wrote: post #161

Sleeping on my stomach. I'm pretty sure it makes my back/neck pain worse, but I'm just unable to change this habit.

I've tried changing from stomach to side sleeping for probably the last 5 years and have completely failed. I have resorted to the "rotisserie chicken" method where I have to turn every which way multiple times all night to get sleep.

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#714

Post by high_byte »

j_m_b wrote: post #113

Not sure if I was doing it wrong, but I recently started putting the pizza out of the oven and into the frozen pizza box it came in. It's much cleaner!

my cousin taught me that frying cold pizza in a pan is 1000x better than microwaving. I could only think of the hundreds of microwaved pizzas I've lost the opportunity to do this to. it's even better than when you just order it!

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#715

Post by dflock »

koonsolo wrote: post #635
mtlynch wrote: post #33

Staying warm. 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…

I have a problem with my hands. They are always cold when working on the computer.

Heated desk pads are a thing, they will fix this issue.

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#716

Post by antognini »

nbaugh1 wrote: post #664
jethkl wrote: post #8

I thought colorblindness tests were designed to be tricky and subtle, so I always passed them through very close inspection. I'm just colorblind.

Had a friend who was absolutely convinced we were all pranking him when doing a colorblindness test. We were all doing the test because about 15 minutes prior, someone had asked him to grab a pink object off of a shelf and he came back with a green one in total seriousness

My mom had me tested in kindergarten when we were learning the colors and I couldn't get pink right. I kept confusing it with white.

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#717

Post by wscott »

You are tying your shoes wrong: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/theres-a-better-way-to-tie-... (tie the bow reversed from the square knot and it will last much longer)

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.

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#718

Post by niom »

Mental health. Haven't seen it mentioned yet.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#719

Post by solarmist »

jws wrote: post #422

If when you coil a long cable or hose you find yourself fighting a twist as you coil… then you should learn to coil in an alternating overhand/underhand style. Google a video. Basically when grabbing the next hunk of cable you alternate between your thumb pointing away from you down the cable and your thumb point back up the cable to you and things just sort of happen right. When you uncoil the cable it will be layin…

Yup, this! I learned it from a musician for patch cables.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

#720

Post by thefaux »

blamestross wrote: post #514
tashoecraft wrote: post #163

Wearing modern shoes. As a society, we have somehow led everyone down the path that feet must be wrapped in socks that constrict the feet, then placed in shoes that are designed for looks and not anatomy. It's led to generations of people that have weak feet, and unnecessary pain all throughout their body because the base of what they stand on has been weakened. Wearing toe socks and minimalist shoes, combined with g…

I'll add to this. There are situations and people who need modern arch support for functional feet, but if you have healthy feet, arch support all the time only takes away from the muscle strength needed to keep them that way. I've found similarly for back support, my back is doing better sitting on a yoga pillow or stool (And putting effort into proper posture) than any amount of ergonomic back support. Ergonomic ke…

> arch support all the time only takes away from the muscle strength needed to keep them that way

Years ago, I suddenly increased my walking and started having horrific pain in my arches. In response, I started wearing arch support insoles all the time. If I didn't wear them, my arches would ache. Like you said, my foot strength got very poor and I eventually suffered a serious injury in my midfoot playing basketball. During rehab, I stopped wearing the arch supports and eventually moved on to minimalist shoes and my feet have gotten dramatically stronger and I never notice weakness in my arches anymore.

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