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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?

#421

Post by watwut »

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…

Tho, I do not mind seeing partners stuff and like to have mine own in sight. It makes me more active - seeing that stuff make me want to interact with it. When I put books and crafting things somewhere I do not see, that project effectively died.

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

#422

Post by jws »

If when you coil a long cable or hose you find yourself fighting a twist as you coil… then you should learn to coil in an alternating overhand/underhand style. Google a video. Basically when grabbing the next hunk of cable you alternate between your thumb pointing away from you down the cable and your thumb point back up the cable to you and things just sort of happen right.

When you uncoil the cable it will be laying flat on the ground with no twists.

An alternative for massive cables it lay it out in a figure 8 on the ground. That will also pay out without twists.

Extension: The upright vacuum cleaner you've been using that releases the cord from the handle by twisting the top hook down? If it is leaving you with a twisted mess of cord, that means you haven't been winding it up in a figure 8.

Even more, since you got this far: Do this with your short cables too. Your USB and audio cables will last longer. When you have a twisted cable, a torque shows up at each individual wire where it meets its connector. The repeated twisting and untwisting leads to connection failure.

And when you get a new cable that is rolled up (any Apple cable), unroll it instead of pulling the ends apart. Then you cable need never have twists put into it.

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

#423

Post by heliophobicdude »

Rinsing after brushing my teeth.

This may be controversial, but keeping the fluoride on your teeth as much as possible helps prevent tooth decay. Rinsing immediately after brushing dilutes or removes fluoride. What was the point? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#424

Post by throwaway1777 »

Jommi wrote: post #204
ralmidani wrote: post #125

Putting off an annual checkup with a PCP (I’m 42, and the last PCP I had was a pediatrician). I had long suspected my cholesterol and triglycerides were high due to family history and my excessive love for cheese, and last week that suspicion was confirmed. I’m now more resolute than ever on lifestyle changes (exercise, less red meat, getting most of my calcium from 2% milk). On the bright side, I also got reassuranc…

FYI the above is american-focused healthcare language. There are no annual checkups in most other countries outside of certain age or risk groups. You might however get a health checkup from occupational healthcare sometimes! Just putting this a note here for non-american readers so they don't get confused.

That being said most people in America don’t get annual checkups unless they have issues either. And there’s also a school of thought that more preventative medicine would be a good thing, so maybe other countries should consider it.

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

#425

Post by high_byte »

Frost1x wrote: post #132
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 a similar dental hygiene note, I was told I should brush before having breakfast, coffee etc. It always stood to reason to me that it makes more sense to just eat my first meal and drink, then brush, to keep a cleaner state of my teeth for longer but supposedly according to a few dentists I spoke with, the protection you get from the first brush is more significant than removing those first food particles. Chances…

brush before and have a good wash after as well

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

#426

Post by Kiro »

informalo wrote: post #403
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.

Something related I came to know only recently is that it has been shown to be more effective to floss before brushing teeth. I have been doing it the other way around my entire life.

Don't you leave a lot of scraps after flossing? Not brushing afterwards is unthinkable to me.

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

#427

Post by wingerlang »

intrasight wrote: post #271
LVB wrote: post #173

Not using a bidet. I was enlightened the first time I traveled to Japan, and an affordable ($50) add-on has been installed in our master bath ever since.

My current toilet has a sink besides it. Wet TP does equivalent. But in my new house, the sink is not within reaching distance. I am considering an add-on.

Wet TP is by no means equivalent to a bidet (or spray-hose-thingy, as we have where I live). It is worlds better than dry TP, still.

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

#428

Post by maccard »

fedeb95 wrote: post #297
muzani wrote: post #29

Pasta and sauce are not meant to be separate. Once you cook the pasta, drain it, and immediately toss with the sauce. This is part of the reason it was meant to be al dente, to absorb and deliver the flavor of the sauce better. Unlike rice, it's fine to "soak" pasta in the sauce; it expands when freshly cooked but not when cool. Also most sauce recipes are probably overcomplicated. Most need less than 5 ingredients.…

The following is well known by Italians, but apparently not the rest of the world so I'll post here. I'll use italian names whenever I don't know the english ones so you can search them and make a cool impression on friends. This is the base of any tomato based sauce: 1. Choose your soffritto base. Onion or garlic are fine, more exotic variations include scalogno or porro. 2. Choose your tomato. Canned, fresh, whatev…

This post is wrong in many areas,

> Canned, fresh, whatever, just keep in mind that fresh ones may need longer cooking times.

Unless you know you've got _excellent_ fresh tomatoes, canned ones will win.

> Oil or butter are fine

Cooking your onion in butter is going to give a very very different result to using oil. Personally speaking, not one I would recommend.

> It may be hard to find proper olive oil outside of Italy I'm told.

High quality dop/docg olive oil is readily available all over the world, and there are plenty of places all around the mediterranean that have olive oil as good as Italian oil.

> Put 1l of water for every 100g of pasta in a pot. Add salt.

This is way too much water. serious eats[0] has an excellent article that is well worth reading if you care about pasta. You also should give an indication of how much salt to use - it's way way way more than you think it is. Like, tablespoon of salt per litre of water salty.

[0] https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...

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

#429

Post by charlie0 »

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. That last one comes in handy when you need to cross streams.

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

#430

Post by qwerty456127 »

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.

My dentist told me I should only use a sonic toothbrush Sonicare or similar because they actually clean while rotational electronic toothbrushes almost literally sweep the crap to under your gums (so they clean the teeth but harm gum gealth).
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