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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?

#851

Chef knives are designed to be held by pinching the blade between the forefinger and the thumb, and wrapping the rest of your fingers around the handle. I used to wrap all my fingers around the handle, until Jacques Pepin showed me how to do it properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMA2SqaDgG8

Dang! I just finished watching your half-hour video on how to cut/dice vegetables :-) There is something which grabs your attention and fills you with admiration when you see a Master displaying his expertise so effortlessly and easily. I am now going to watch more of Mr. Jacques Pepin.

His chicken ballotine is a great video

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

#852
post #737
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…

Curious, do you still eat meat? And if you do, do you prefer small farm butchers?

No I'm completely vegan by now (though I was vegetarian for a long time because cheese had a strong hold on me). Regarding small butchers / organic farms: a long time ago, I spent two days at a tiny organic farm that was run by a local politician of a European Greens party. By meat industry standards, this farm was an absolute animal paradise. I helped around the farm, including with slaughtering a pig. My job as the guy from the city was to just herd it into the kill room. The pig seemed intelligent to me, it was confused and didn't want to die. A crew of men dressed in wifebeaters stunned the pig with an electroshocker, lifted it up with a chain, sliced its arteries to let it bleed out, all while cheerfully drinking beer. They made crude remarks while blood and guts was spilling everywhere. Needless to say, there was way more chopping to be done after that. The scene had a surreal quality to me - what had just been alive a moment ago was now dangling in halves in front of me like in a horror movie. The pig probably didn't suffer, but the experience still felt deeply wrong to me. But here's the kicker: even after this close-up slaughter experience I still continued to eat meat for years, because I just was so used to it. Back in the city, in the gleaming supermarket, meat again stopped being something that lived, and was again a yummy product to buy.

Long story short: even the best farm and the best butcher (which are getting exceedingly rare) are still using, abusing, and ultimately killing intelligent beings. This also does something to the people that do the killing: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683

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

#853
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…

Also, never shout at your wife.

100% agree. If it makes you feel better, I didn't actually yell or raise my voice.

I chose the word "yelled" because it was the simplest way to imply the frustration/betrayal/hurt I was feeling at the time. In retrospect, I could have said, "cried out," and captured the emotion/action more accurately without sacrificing brevity. But that phrase didn't occur to me at the time.

Words are hard.

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

#854
Food is not a reward. Food is not for recreation. Food is not for fun.

Food is fuel.

Food should be delicious and enjoyable. Your enjoyment can come from taste, not from quantity. Being hungry is a good sign, not a problem. And "Just full enough" is more than full enough.

I have a long way to go, but at 46 years old, this is all a revelation to me.

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

#855

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.…

This only applies when you can accurately judge the quality of the clothes. I've stopped buying mid-market clothing a few years ago because they didn't last longer than the cheap stuff.

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

#856

I used to assume the religious people were missing something and missing out on the latest and greatest. Now I am seeing that often it's us the non-religious that have lost something of value and are trying to replace it with things that don't work as well.

There are a lot of things religion provides that modern society is really dismal at providing: community, care, socialization across class/career lines, relationships with people who live near you, a support system for sick/hurting people, and other benefits The thing is, none of those are innately tied to religion. We've abandoned churches for what I feel are largely good reasons, but we haven't found something else…

Thanks for the response - yes and no.

I think you are right in that in theory you could have "all that stuff" sans religion. And in fact I think Atheism in the boomer generation benefited from cultural inertia - like, you could say you don't belong to a religion but still marry, have kids, participate in community etc simply because that's what everyone else (by the virtue of their religion) was doing around you.

But today it seems like critical mass is elsewhere, and it seems like the religious folks now have a huge advantage over everyone else in terms of marriage, family formation, community and maybe even mental health. So while in theory it's possible, it seems like in practice all of those things declined among the non-religious, just perhaps with a lag of a generation.

The reason I think it might make sense to reengage with religion is the crux of this question: does life have a point, a meaning, etc. Not even "what" the point is but does it exist at all. The idea that the universe is a total accident and nothing is relevant takes you in a certain direction in life and society, while the idea of "there's meaning and purpose" in another.

I think it's hard to anchor your life in the value of meaning without logically accepting a creator of that meaning.

So I think there's an element of faith - either you chose to believe there's meaning or you chose to believe there isn't, everything else is implied by that choice of belief.

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

#857
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've known this one for years and years but it always surprises a few of my students (who come from warmer climates) when I mention it: The scarf goes on the inside of the coat. If you put the scarf on the outside, like you think you've seen in TV and movies, it's just decoration. Put it on the inside and it's an insulation layer and it blocks the cold air from blowing down your front. Absolutely game-changing. (Also…

Wait, some people wear scarfs outside unironically?

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

#858

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.

I had the exact opposite experience. I bought a Sonicare Diamondwhatever and was incredibly disappointed. After two or three months of using that I had visible stains on my teeth that had never been there before. So now I'm back to manual brushing and I've had no significant problems.

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

#859
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…

This is so absolutely hilarious to me because this is 100% something I'd do. I had a friend come over once and then he came over again a week later and all of my kitchen cabinet doors were open and in the exact same position as they had been a week prior. He was like "dude did you not shut your cabinet doors? Wtf" Its just not even on my radar

An illuminating experience for me was a housemate and a fairly sharp one at that who wondered if we would get visited by ghosts at night because cabinet doors were always open in the kitchen in the morning. It didn't occur to her that the extremely more likely scenario was that I would scavenge around after she went to sleep and never shut doors.

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

#860

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…

Just an addendum since HN is so often quick to try new things.

Do not. Do not. Do not jump into jogging with barefoot or minimal shoes without a very very slow increase in distance. Even if you feel fine and don't notice any pain or problem, or your cardio can support you going 5 kilometers, you want to very slowly adjust up your distance/time spent doing harder exercise with that type of big change in footwear.

Otherwise you can give yourself injuries that can lead to short-term or even long-term/permanent complications that interfere with your quality of life and physical abilities.

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