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Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

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Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#401

Post by OrbitRock »

gpanders wrote: post #347
forinti wrote: post #315

Studying Russian. What a beautiful language and culture. I just love to listen about Russian culture and history. Their museums have wonderful social media channels.

Any resources you’d recommend for someone interested in doing this?

My top language learning advice:

Get on an app to talk with natives. Plenty such apps exist, HelloTalk and iTalki being the main ones.

In the spirit of this post, this has probably radically increased my own happiness, because I’ve 1) met friends from all over the world, 2) went on really great travels that came out of that, and 3) ended up with a romantic partner in my target language.

Now I feel really enriched (cliche but true) for the ability to access the cultures of the languages I’ve learned, it’s a great experience.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#402

Post by harph »

OrbitRock wrote: post #392
sprkv5 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. This is exactly what I started watching last summer to keep myself calm and optimistic through the pandemic. The channels I watch are - Nomadic Ambience[1], NIPPON WANDERING TV[2] and IURETA e[3]. Here are my favorite[4] video[5] walks[6] from Japan. Hope you like it. As for other places, here's two from NYC[7][8] and another from Olympic National Park[9] which is not a video walk per se, but would appeal to fo…

I’m wondering what camera would be best for this kind of thing? I’d love to make some.

Looks like some gopro type actioncam with stabilization would work nicely. I made videos of hikes when I was on Azores a few years ago with an old GoPro 5 and they look pretty good, so newer hardware should make it even better.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#403

Post by kirubakaran »

hasbot wrote: post #367
twic wrote: post #257

Buying a dishwasher. 1. Less drudgery means more time to relax 2. Less pressure to minimise kitchenware use means more ambitious and enjoyable cooking 3. I just get a little jolt of happiness when I walk into the kitchen and see my large cuboidal son sitting there

Interestingly, I found the dishwasher produced more stress than handwashing. Living alone, it takes days to fill up the dishwasher to a level where running it isn't wasteful. Every day, I'd eye how full it was and judge whether it was "worth it" to run it that day. Meanwhile, any time I cooked invariably the pot or pan I needed was sitting dirty in the dishwasher. With hand washing, I just spend 15 minutes usually ev…

An average faucet flows at 2 gallons per minute. An average dishwasher uses 4 gallons of water. Unless you can do your dishes in 2 minutes, dishwasher uses less water.

Ref https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-much-water-do-dishwashers-us...

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#404

Post by giantg2 »

Viker wrote: post #358
giantg2 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The move to remote work is saving me about 1.5 hours of commute each day, plus a couple hundred in gas money each month. The return to the office later this year will be brutal.

I will be refusing to return to the office for several reasons: 1- the threat of Covid is not going away in the next 2-3 years. I am no risking it! 2- I and everyone in my team have been more effective, less stressed working from home for more than a year now. Why would I go back to a less efficient way of work?

I agree. Management is telling us we are more productive now that we are remote. Yet they want to bring us back to the office. The only thing I've really heard to support this (poorly so at that), is that people are feeling more burnt out. Once you add back the commute time and remove the flexibility that we got used to from working from home, do they really think this will fix the burnout? I think it will only make it worse.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#405

Post by prawn »

OrbitRock wrote: post #396
prawn wrote: post #95

Probably two things: Intrastate travel. Main line of work (web) stalled but I picked up a solid amount of drone photography/videography work that allowed me to get paid travelling more than usual around the state. Australia has been in a good position with regard to COVID-19 which obviously helped, but I did get a few travel jobs during only-travel-for-work lockdowns. In the last 12 months, I've visited every sub-reg…

> Main line of work (web) stalled but I picked up a solid amount of drone photography/videography work Do you mind me prying into what field you’re doing drone photo/videography in? I’ve done drone surveys before and always thought that that would be cool too, especially when combined with travel.

Mostly tourism. Examples here: https://serio.com.au/ (Warning: Heavy page load.)

If I don't have a specific commission, I go on holiday somewhere I suspect the tourism authority needs content, shoot it and then edit/sell when I get home. Can't think of when it hasn't worked.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#406

Post by giantg2 »

digianarchist wrote: post #398
swimfar wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not common at all, but it's very achievable for most engineers in the US if they're willing to live below their means. Engineers in the US make 2-3x the median income. The difference in disposable income is even greater when you subtract off the costs of necessities. And yet, those other people aren't working 2-3x as many years. It may mean not going out to eat all the time, not buying a fancy new car all the ti…

I think it’s less likely as housing trends towards unaffordable.

I agree and think there's a somewhat hidden piece to that. Property taxes are increasing commensurate with the property value and generally increasing as a percentage. You might be able to pay off a mortgage, but the property tax can remain a burden. Like in my area, you can end up spending thousands per year in perpetuity on a reasonably modest property, with that amount constantly going up.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#407

Post by loeg »

giantg2 wrote: post #335
swimfar wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not common at all, but it's very achievable for most engineers in the US if they're willing to live below their means. Engineers in the US make 2-3x the median income. The difference in disposable income is even greater when you subtract off the costs of necessities. And yet, those other people aren't working 2-3x as many years. It may mean not going out to eat all the time, not buying a fancy new car all the ti…

"it's very achievable for most engineers in the US" I feel like this isn't true at all for retiring prior to age 50. You have to adjust for cost of living and the area's median income. The median income in my state is $60k-65k and my salary is about $85k. I'm a midlevel dev in the industry for 9 years (no way could I retire at 15-20 years, even for a lower paying job). I also have a family to support. I do live withi…

Where do you live that has a moderately high cost of living and a 9-years of experience dev can only demand $85k? I feel like that is an uncommon combination in the US.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#408

Post by bradlys »

snidane wrote: post #346
twic wrote: post #257

Buying a dishwasher. 1. Less drudgery means more time to relax 2. Less pressure to minimise kitchenware use means more ambitious and enjoyable cooking 3. I just get a little jolt of happiness when I walk into the kitchen and see my large cuboidal son sitting there

If you cook and have to clean large pots and baking trays, then dishwasher doesn't help you with that as much. These items cannot fit into a regular home dishwasher and these take the most time to clean and dry compared to washing plain plates and utensils. Also dishwashers are not good for roommate arrangements because unless strict rules are enforced things keep piling up in it or you cannot put stuff inside while…

Large pots and baking trays fit in my dishwasher pretty fine. If you are using 5 multi-gallon pots every day then maybe dishwasher isn’t ideal.

That said, we don’t rinse our dishes or anything. It goes into the dishwasher and comes out spotless. Uses way less energy and water than we would manually washing too.

Dishwasher with roommates actually can be fine. Either run it no matter what is in it at end of day or when it fills up. And just have a lot more dishes than you normally would.

Dishwashers work great for people with an excessive amount of dishes. If you have an exact amount of utensils and dishes then that’s when they fall apart. But that is true of letting dishes pile up in the sink too. So, moot point to me.

The dishwasher has been amazing for my wife who does cook and bake a lot. The whole reason I got one is because she’d spend 30+ minutes everyday standing at the sink manually cleaning every single thing. Huge waste of time and water.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#409

Post by gonehome »

giantg2 wrote: post #309
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to vouch for this comment. I get that this looks misogynistic, but what parent describes is exactly my experience. It literally describes my post break-up relationship with my wife. the meddling of her led to poisoning of my relationship with the kids. she was the one who was hitting me any time there was an argument, threw plates and glass, or became physical in other ways that I had no choice than call the po…

I feel like there's a lot a brainwashing and manipulation even when spouses aren't physically abusive. My wife tells me stuff that just doesn't make sense. When I sold my nice car and quit doing track days when we got married with plans to have kids, she kept telling me that I could've kept it and that the only reason I had it must have been to get girls. That simply wasn't true. And keep it? Using what money! I pay…

Many people have terrible social skills, and introspection.

There’s also the issue that many people choose mates because they want to have sex with them, or because they were young, or gave them attention, or were just around (or some combination of all these things).

People are awful at choosing long term mates and the discussion around this and the selection criteria is really bad.

If your partner has core value differences or just isn’t at some threshold of general intelligence the relationship will be filled with this kind of anxiety inducing misery.

This goes both ways too - I’ve known brilliant women who dated oafish/dumber, but very good-looking/fit men that were filled with similar insecurities. People should select more on core value alignment and intelligence than they do.

The brainwashing isn’t some secret truth of spousal relationships, except perhaps that people are bad at long term mate selection and select for the wrong things.

Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?

#410

Post by OrbitRock »

Yenrabbit wrote: post #59

- Paying close attention to nature. I've seen thousands of cool creatures I would previously have missed, and logged a lot of them on iNaturalist so it is also contributing to citizen science ( https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_i... ) - My wife and family. Without much opportunity to see anyone outside our bubble these close relationships have become even more important and special. - Dialing…

I once followed that thread of starting to observe nature around me so far that I ended up switching careers and became an ecologist, lol.

It’s definitely good for the mind!

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