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Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#321

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

javajosh wrote: post #124

My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and stones..."). She also believed its "mean" to have any preference about people, calling it a version of "keeping score". In fact, "keeping score" was one of the worst things you could be accused of in my household. Her advice fails to accept the reality of social and emotional needs. It also fails…

> Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.

I, like you, grew up with religious parents who tried to equip me with the tools that helped them navigate their lives. As an adult, I try to be extremely skeptical of unsolicited advice, but I absolutely seek advice from people who have been in situations similar to mine.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#323

Post by bombcar »

arbitrage wrote: post #302
javajosh wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will hazard a guess. Cerf liked the top-level organization scheme com/org/edu because he worked hard on it and it carries meaningful information about the owner of the domain. E.g. identifies the domain-owner as either a for-profit corp, a non-profit org, or a school. By contrast new tlds like "app" or "website" imply absolutely nothing about the domain or the person/org that owns it. So there's a net loss in meani…

The .com and .org namespace has been diluted in meaning for decades. You can make no useful inference about the owner of a .com or a .org domain name. They literally signify nothing anymore.

Originally the hierarchy was supposed to be much more defined. But domains are so cheap nobody bothers. You see it a bit in .gov and .edu where subdomains are actually delegated somewhat sometimes.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#324

Post by GregLan »

The best advice I ever received was never compare yourself to anybody else. As a person who came from a humble family, in Africa, that advice got me going. I would see children from privileged families having better opportunities but I worked hard and was happy every time I looked back on where I have come from.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#327

Post by bombcar »

mlac wrote: post #128
spidersouris wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You must balance enjoying your time now with investing in yourself and your future. That is, to me, one of the most difficult things to apply in life, and I feel like the rest of your post doesn't exactly provide an answer on how to achieve this. There are so many things that I want to do in life but that I cannot afford to do now, and which I always postpone to later. And it feels like I'll let a great deal of thi…

You’re young. You could die early, but it’s statistically unlikely. There’s a balance. With 20k (and if you’re really lucky no debt) and a job that most people on this site have, you are lucky and will be able to do some things others can’t. I’ll give you one. I spent about $2,000 in 2014 to take my wife to Paris and London (part of the trip was covered by my work, so it was a little less expensive). At the time we h…

The only currency we really have is time and that can’t be banked or stored, only spent wisely or foolishly.

Choosing when to convert time to money is important but also recognizing when you can convert money to time.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#328

Post by NaN1352 »

From GTD methodology if I could remember only one simple thing it was "if ypu can do xyz in less than 5 mins do it now".

You’d be amazed how many things you can do in even ONE minute.

It helped me when depressed to come out of immobility and stop postponing even the simplest tasks : take out the garbage literally doable in under 60 seconds including going up and down the stairs, reply to some small emails, do some simple housekeeping tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#329

Post by MonkeyClub »

oneoff786 wrote: post #312
PaulHoule wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d agree. I was hurt by bullying enough that if I had ever made it big I would have found the most outrageous bullying case I could find and try to sue a school district out of existence? Maybe if teachers thought they could lose their pension maybe they would put a stop to bullying.

Suing to threaten the pensions of underpaid teachers. Makin’ a difference in the world.

Does raise an interesting question, though: Is it the teachers' or the parents' responsibility to teach manners to a child? Isn't this something that you'd pick up at home first, before ever stepping a foot into an institutionalized pedagogical setting?

Perhaps instead of suing the entire school district, GP should rather sue the parents of the offending child? /s

To remove the tongue from the cheek, though, and provide some anecdata in the same breath, let me say that I have a number of close friends who are teachers; their constant complaint is that the children reach school already too spoiled (in the rude and egocentric sense). Which apparently gets worse every year.

It's easier to make a case for a society-wide pandemic of negligent upbringing by parents who - goes without saying - are under-educated in child rearing, lack the traditional support networks ("it takes a village to raise a child") and generally overburdened by life's other demands. The children then get passed over to underpaid and overworked teachers (and overflowing classrooms), where the egos of the little cute monsters clash, occasionally loudly and physically, more frequently in passive-aggressive, bullyish manners.

But yeah, "back in mah day..."

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#330

Post by Mordisquitos »

jemmyw wrote: post #125

After you've been lying or sitting and you get up and go for a wee, once done press up just behind your balls. Oftentimes that pushes out a big drip that was otherwise going to come out later once you had your pants done up. The best abstract advice I've been given is to say "I don't know" when I don't know. No waffle, no bullshit, no trying to save face. Saves a lot of time.

> After you've been lying or sitting and you get up and go for a wee, once done press up just behind your balls.

Related to this, I "recently" (as in years ago, but already as an adult) discovered a method that, at least for me, performs the same capability without needing to manipulate my testicles. However, it may only be practicable for non-circumcised penes—I don't know.

The process is the following.

After you have finished your urination, even if (you think) you have shaken and squeezed out all that was left, you pull your foreskin back even further so it is behind the glans. Then, you use your thumb and index finger to pinch the foreskin on one side and use it as a handle to stretch your penis by pulling the glans away from you VERY lightly (no pain or discomfort please!), slightly bending the penis diagonally at that point until, usually a second or two later, you start feeling the need to pee again. Then you let go and... voilà! There's a whole new stream of urine that you wouldn't even believe was there when you "finished" peeing a few seconds ago.

I don't know if this is common knowledge, as I have never searched about it or talked about it (not out of any embarrassment or anything, it's just something so trivial). This also means I don't even know if it would work on any equipment or whether it is limited to specific internal wirings or anatomical features.

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