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Does life end after 35?

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211–220 of 228 posts

Re: Does life end after 35?

#211
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older guy will almost certainly have more experience, more confidence and more money. A young guy with a shaved head, if he isn't a Marine, is an emo or a hipster.

Living in Germany shaved heads are unfortunately also a right-wing political statement. Neo-nazis are using shaved heads for recognition and are known as "Glatzen" (skinheads). Which I think is one reason that you see only very few other people here doing that. Might be good reason for more people shaving their head so the nazis start to lose this symbol, but that takes some self-confidence.

In Netherland it was like that when I was young, but in the '90s, shaven heads became very popular with no right-wing association whatsoever.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, you'll eventually grow out of this attitude. Your confidence will increase. You won't have to say stuff like this in an effort to feel better about yourself. Hang in there and good luck.

No I'm serious. Ha. Hows the dating scene in the 40s? I'm going to be there soon. The 30's came on insanely fast.

I don't know. I got married during my 30s, so I have no need for dating. But at the same time, I'm way more confident and I'm sure I wouldn't suck as badly at it as I did during my 20s.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#213
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it is trite to say, "No one can afford having a kid." but it's really the truth. For me, sure daycare, toys, and food aren't putting me in the poorhouse, but there is no way I can bankroll everything I think my kids deserve.

Disagree for two reasons. One, kids deserve little but a loving home and a few educational toys. Giving them everything they want is recipe for building a little monster. Two, for beter or worse, govts subsidize families to the detriment of the single. When the wife and kid arrive, you'll get a ~$500 a month tax break, enough to pay for another bedroom and diapers. The total cost is much less than I'd imagined, espec…

I really wish I could simply buy an extra bedroom for $500 per month. But I'm afraid I'm really going to have to move.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#214
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I'm trying to solve actually exists." This is such a key point. Sometimes it takes years, if not decades, of experience to even know that the problem exists. Put another way, if the problem can be solved by a 22-year-old with no experience in the field, there's a good chance they've misunderstood the problem.

Yes, coming up with the problem is often the hard bit. But it happens the other way too, in that many young inventors tackle problems because "they didn't realize they were 'impossible'". More knowledgeable folk can do this too, but it requires a certain... disrespect for authority. Like Einstein's flexibility with time and space (though he was young then; he didn't make breakthroughs in later life, possibly because…

It's not a matter of "didn't realize it's impossible". The problem young startup entrepreneurs have is they don't realize that valuable problems exist. Valuable problems tend to be industry-specific and narrowly defined, so you need to be at least aware of the problems of an industry, and the existing solutions/workarounds. Without industry experience at anything but being a college student and reading HN, how are you going to find problems to solve? That's why you see so many me-too social apps. You solve what you know, and if your most extensive experience with computers is Facebook and Twitter, that's your space for problems.

There are a couple of other factors to consider. First, there are problems that can be solved with new tech that couldn't be solved with old tech. The web opened up a huge front of new solutions over the past 10-20 years. Mobile is opening up another wave of solutions.

And finally, consider the "aspirin or vitamin" question. Vitamins are tempting, but aspirin sells better. Me, I'm working in more or less the monitoring space for configuration management. My key competition isn't other monitoring tools, it's the DevOps movement and automation tools like Chef and Puppet. When people have enterprise configuration management suck, those are the recommended solutions. But they're vitamins being sold as aspirin. Simply getting to where there's organizational buy-in to go to DevOps or to automate what was once manual is a whole fresh sort of pain. My competitive advantage is a near-painless dose of aspirin - immediate relief without having to change the whole model.

Ain't no college kid coming up with that.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#216
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it is trite to say, "No one can afford having a kid." but it's really the truth. For me, sure daycare, toys, and food aren't putting me in the poorhouse, but there is no way I can bankroll everything I think my kids deserve.

My problem is my house is 50mq with just one bedroom, and I can't still afford moving to a larger one. Where larger means 2 bedrooms. Context: in Italy you are supposed to own a house vs renting one. Everything in the society and regulations is organized towards owning it vs renting.

Context: In Italy you have free education, healthcare and higher education is dirt cheap (and not necessarily bad) compared to other countries. It's by all accounts a first world country in terms of civil rights and development (regardless of what some italians, and non italians, think).

There are way worse countries to raise a child in (economically speaking). I was raised there with a brother and a sister just with my father's (lower middle class) salary, and I had a fantastic childhood.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#217

35 seems like a nice round number for people to self-sort into two bins: people that decided yes, it's time to stop trying, there will be no more sunrises... and then the other set, who think this is just ridiculous and roll their eyes that age has anything to do with it. And even if the second set is wrong, and there is actually something about getting older that actually slows us down or makes us worth less, it's a…

It's possible that I have an advanced case of "peter pan syndrome", but when I turned 30 things started to take off for me. At 33, I'm just starting to get little hints that I may in fact be a grown-up. I'm working at my first startup right now, having previously worked at more established companies and research institutions. If somehow in 1.75 years I just stop being able to do that, and start fading into a decline,…

41 here and still Peter Pan syndrome (except at startups). My first name even fits lol

Re: Does life end after 35?

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not already, look into doing a couple of resistance training sessions per week. You don't have to be He-man lifting huge weights, in fact you're better not to be. Focus on core and "all of body" movements. You'll not only feel stronger and look healthier, you'll also burn a lot of energy. And as you get older, maintaing strength and flexibility guards against aches, pains and injury.

I'm currently using variations of the 7-minute workout (7-min.com) + some minor weight lifting.

Any amount helps, but cardio benefits only start to kick in at 20 minutes or above, as I understand it, from the research.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#219
post #198
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a supplement not a food replacement You are wrong. ( http://abbottnutrition.com/brands/products/ensure-plus-retai... ) > For interim sole-source nutrition. edit: removed unnecessarily grumpy sentence.

Interim means provisional or temporary. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence. I have no idea whether Soylent is actually safe as a permanent sole-source nutrition solution but that's what they're marketing themselves as, and Ensure is not.

You can keep moving the goal posts but the fact is that Soylent is not new.

> [about use of word "interim"] Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

> [about safety of Soylent for sole use nutrition] I have no idea whether Soylent is actually safe as a permanent sole-source nutrition solution

This is an amazing sentence. It's fucking mind-boggling the amount of cognitive dissonance that the Soylent marketing guys have created. They deserve the funding for that alone. Like, God-Tier troll and God-Tier marketers.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#220
Life does not end after 35, but your energy levels and stamina will be lower than in your younger years. Yes, even if you exercise and eat healthy (indeed, you'll have to stay fit just to keep going). Moreover, with age (hopefully) comes experience, and with experience may come a jaded view of society that can kill your dreams on birth. Qohelet wisely stated that "For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."

I hope you will be among the exception.

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