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Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

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Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#551

Post by robomartin »

carabiner wrote: post #441
jemmyw wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to your mother, this particular advice and view was rampant when I grew up in the 80s/90s. My experience was that this is quite backwards. Physical altercations at school didn't hurt that much, but the name calling, social shunning and constant verbal put down was very painful and has affected my whole life.

It's incredible how common the "it's just words" refrain is on HN. Wars happen over words. Marriages and divorces too.

> Wars happen over words. Marriages and divorces too.

Words are not the cause of these events. They might, in several ways, trigger them, of course. After all, a declaration of war is nothing but words and so is a legal divorce filing.

However, for these and other conflicts, if we dug down to root causes, we always find a lot more than just spoken or written words. Two that come to mind would be, in the case of war, strategic/national interests and, for divorce, infidelity or serious lack of agreement on matters the couple deem to be important.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#552

Post by gwnywg »

My dad told me, when I was 7, that school (as institution) will do everything to force me to fit into the same frames as everyone else and that I should not let that happen, that I should always think out of the box and not what teachers expect me to think. This stayed with me for my whole life.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#553

Post by digianarchist »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #146
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.

The peeing advice is gold! One day I just discovered that on my own and it changed everything.

The technical term is "post micturition dribble".

My doctor advised "milking your urethra" (same thing as OP mentioned). It's good to do it post ejaculation too.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#554

Post by thaw13579 »

FrontierPsych wrote: post #543
thaw13579 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see that working for presentations for a general audience like a TED talk or maybe intro/closing slides, but otherwise many presentations are context-specific, and trying to frame the content as a "deep truth" might not fly with the audience.

Yes, you are correct that specific situation require specific numbers. I think the difference is that you can add evergreen content to the specific numbers. But I guess if it is a daily 15 minute sales meeting for something like the number of sales made yesterday, it isn't going to require anything but numbers. But maybe once a week or once a month, the sales meeting could address bigger issues. The "why's" and "wher…

Yes, I agree it’s good to sprinkle them in, but not for every slide, like the OP advises. I think the challenge is that evergreen content, by its nature, is general and can come across as irrelevant to the specific topic at hand (and easily trend towards cliche). The OP describes all other slides as obsolete, but I think that’s okay in many circumstances.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#556

Post by tomcam »

javajosh wrote: post #281
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Could you elaborate on this? What was his argument for that statement: "He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet." I might be missing something.

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…

Love your speculation, agree it would make a wonderful discussion here.

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#557

Post by tomcam »

nonasktell wrote: post #106
ghstcode wrote: post #73

Before spending the last money I had on a coding book, the cashier could see my hesitation and said "don't worry, investing in yourself is never a waste of money". It had a profound impact on me.

For anyone reading this and thinking about spending your last 10 bucks on a programming book please use Libgen or a free mooc

Wait where are you getting programming books for $10?

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#558

Post by tomcam »

Jach wrote: post #288

With respect to comparing oneself with other people, "Better at, not better than" -- can't remember when this was given, want to say 8th grade from some counselor interviewing me for something or another (career guidance? I remember him asking me about a phrase I liked back then, "Through knowledge, power"). I don't really agree , but I mulled over it then and still remember it, and it's not terrible as far as generi…

> Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.

Apparently the tao never spent days as a kid running around the house putting pots under the ceiling when it rained, raised multiple kids with severe birth defects, being beaten at home and at school, kept getting shocked by the dryer, or had a wife whose meds cost $50K a year. I did, so I will cheerfully continue my chase for money and security!

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#559

Post by mariushn »

Bakary wrote: post #229

Time is the greatest resource, but energy management is your greatest goal. You will always run out of energy before you run out of time. If you have a life where you pursue autonomy, the development of your capacities, and a sense of meaningfulness in what you do, you'll be able to withstand and enjoy much more than you think. If you don't pursue these things, everything will be harder. Simply spending your time wit…

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Advice that changed your life?

#560

Post by MonkeyClub »

Nomentatus wrote: post #530
MonkeyClub wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prov…

An old guy's perspective: It's not this or that lesson or parental intent that matters, it's the sheer amount of one-on-one interaction with the parent(s), that matters most. IIRC, that's about twenty minutes a week for most kids. Nomads (See the book The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshal Thomas) don't have the same behavior problems at all; but the kids are getting an incredibly high amount of one on one interactions wit…

I think you're spot on with this. Contact affects manners, and also gives opportunity for bad manners to be weeded out early.

Definitely not something that twenty minutes a day is enough for. And perhaps such a lack not only allows for bad patterns to emerge and fester, but also traumatizes the child. Modern city life, and its discontents, I guess.

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