Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

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

#781

Post by wingworks »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #241
yamtaddle wrote: post #79

Not using an electric toothbrush. First time I used one it felt like I'd had a proper dental cleaning. An extremely half-assed effort with that kind of brush beats a thorough one with a manual brush. I thought they were a gimmick, but no, they're amazing.

On the flip side, don't brush your gums too much with an electric toothbrush. I destroyed my gums when my parents got me an electric toothbrush when I was 13 - and AFAIK - there's still not really any way to repair it. Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong! Would make my day to be wrong.

Yeah, this! Also, if you still use manual brush (don't), use soft bristle and be gental. Harder is not better when it comes to tooth brushing. Don't do what you typically see in movies.

As for your gums, they don't grow back I believe, but you can get surgery of sorts by using other parts of your mouth and stick them in your gums. See; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF6EgSM5TlA

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

#782

Post by solarmist »

FigurativeVoid wrote: post #531

Not getting my dog professionally trained. I spent the money to send him to a proper board and train, and it was life changing. Our relationship is better. He is happier and less stressed. I was able to take him off sedatives. Plus it's cool to have a dog with perfect recall that I can take anywhere without worrying. If you can afford it, I can't recommend finding a reputable balanced trainer more highly.

This is interesting. What part of the curriculum do you think made the difference?

I feel like this would only be half a solution. That, to work as a pair, you would need some amount of training as well. To better understand your dog's signals to you and know how to respond appropriately.

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

#783

Post by mahogany »

lumb63 wrote: post #760
f3b5 wrote: post #725

Not waking up earlier to the fact that the meat section in the supermarket is a product of systemic, gruesome torture of intelligent beings. Like probably many of you who read this, I usually felt a bit guilty when I was confronted with the ugly facts we are all vaguely familiar with. I justified my meat consumption with specieist arguments (humans are so much better than pigs, cows, etc). My wife challenged me to wa…

My stock response to assertions that eating meat is cruel: plants feel too. Many species are self-aware every bit as much as animals are. It’s only because wheat and corn don’t have big googly eyes that we feel no sympathy for them. Implicit in the act of consumption is the notion that our lives are worth more than the lives of whatever we eat.

Even if it's true that plants feel and suffer, the pipeline of plants -> livestock -> food still kills many (an order of magnitude at least) more plants than the direct pipeline of plants -> food, so eating animals still causes more overall suffering.

In that sense, it seems to me that a plant-based diet is still the preferable choice if one wants to reduce unnecessary suffering.

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

#784

Post by fknorangesite »

015a wrote: post #710
achenatx wrote: post #578

Ive modestly tried to lose weight my whole life. Ive never been fat, but still had to work to keep my calories low. Im 5' 9", and it took 10 years to go from 170 to more like 160. Losing weight made me weaker and caused me to lose muscle. Ive recently started weightlifting for strength (low reps high weights) and the mindset is totally different. With weightlifting to keep your lifts going up you have to eat more. On…

Any advice/links on getting started lifting?

The /r/fitness wiki is a surprisingly good resource for beginners: https://thefitness.wiki/

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

#785

Post by progman32 »

jxramos wrote: post #619
rjmill wrote: post #152

When my then-gf/now-wife and I first moved in together, I got really mad at her because she kept "hiding" my stuff when I left it out for more than a day. I couldn't find anything! At some point, I yelled, "It's like you don't even want to see any of my things when I'm not using them!" Then I stopped for a second. For the first time in my life, it made sense. The whole point of putting things away is to hide them! No…

yah there's a saying surrounding that I believe, cluttered space, cluttered mind. I think there's something to it, keeping a bunch of stuff in sleep mode in some back corner mental stack of your mind that gets subliminally refreshed each time you visually glance over strewn clutter.

For some, this is a feature. I need to keep my stuff out so everything gets at least a couple brain cycles every day. I work in a generalist shop though with many concurrent (and very different) projects so it's not for everyone. Never liked spreadsheets/ticketing systems for this. I keep separate files for each project but need to physically see the objects for it to work for my mind.

Part of the motivation is the minor discomfort of seeing so many projects open and set aside. For me the solution is to complete projects, not categorize and hide everything.

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

#786

Post by halkony »

kraftman wrote: post #648

Not my entire life, but competing with my girlfriend/wife. Trying to win arguments instead of trying to solve the problem. Holding onto resentments instead of letting them go. We used to have huge arguements all the time, it took having a kid together to finally hammer it into my head that we are on the same team, we need to work together. Since then we've had 2 kids under 2 during covid and barely argued in 4 years

This reminds me of an article I read some time ago written by a house wife. In it, she admitted to verbally abusing her husband and demeaning his intelligence. When he'd do things like accidentally put colors in the wrong wash, she would chew him out and belittle him for not doing it right. And of course he felt ashamed and uncomfortable sharing his trivial mistakes with his wife. Then one time she left his tools out in the rain and they rusted. She apologized profusely but all he said was "It's okay, they're only tools."

It made her rethink how she treated her husband. She married him because she knew he was intelligent and kind, so why does she look for evidence to the contrary and berate him for it? She says their marriage was much better after she realized her fault in this. That article left a deep impression on me as to how I should treat my partner/people I respect.

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

#789

Post by sgt101 »

charlie0 wrote: post #429

Buying fewer more expensive items of clothing > buying more items at a much cheaper price point. I've noticed this the most with outdoorsy equipment, like my pair of wool socks (Darn Tough). They are 3x more expensive that cotton, but they keep my feet warm without overheating them, are thicker so I can comfortably walk around the house with no other footwear, they don't hardly get smelly, they also dry really fast.…

I'll chip in with a vote for proper boots, I was going to say $500 Trickers but now I see that they are more like $800 new... but $300 on Ebay.

And it's worth it - I've had two pairs (from ebay) that have lasted me for 10 years between them. Resoled many times, but still absolutely excellent.

10 years!

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

#790

Post by solarmist »

charlieflowers wrote: post #769
Dowwie wrote: post #293

One of the worst thing I did for many decades was drink bottled water and/or tap water. For many years I bought bottled water for home consumption. I eventually learned about under-sink reverse-osmosis water filtration systems and invested in one. For the last ~15 years, I've used such systems, following scheduled filter replacements. The water tastes and feels better than bottled water. Last year, my county water ut…

Can you recommend a brand? They are expensive and there are the usual low quality, planned obscelesence game playing techniques to sort through.

AO Smith works well from what I've tried.

> there are the usual low quality, planned obscelesence game playing techniques to sort through

Umm, a water filter is mostly a reservoir, tubing, and a pile of chemical reactants. This is not planned obsolescence. This is just pure chemistry. The reactants become saturated and need replacing.

All water filtration systems require periodic changing of filters.

That said, there are many stage filtration systems, and you don't need most of them. A three-stage reverse osmosis system will give you the cleanest water possible. Like mine was a 4 stage with a final remineralization step that I just didn't hook up.

If you want to understand it better watch this [1], just skip the deionization step because drinking deionized water is very unhealthy.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb1w15DHO4g

Post reply on HN