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Tips for a Better Life

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Re: Tips for a Better Life

#421

Post by kleer001 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #321
kleer001 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got that perspective from hiring an artist (and being hired as an artist). What's the secret? Have what the client wants. I was looking to get a dog tattoo. So, I looked for a tattoo artist with dogs in the style I wanted in their portfolio. As a visual effects artist I happened to make some dust in my early features. Since then, after looking at my demo reel, I've gotten hired to make more dust in movies.

What dust have you worked on? Has your dust evolved over time?

Dozens of hollywood movies from Hellboy (2004), Constantine, to R.I.P.D.

Absolutely, and it tracked along with technology and my ability to just cram more particles in the simulation or use new structures entirely like VDBs or Sparse Volumes. But the basic use of many (many many) layers of sculpted Perlin noise never changed.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#422

Post by antihero »

jiggawatts wrote: post #242
redleggedfrog wrote: post #16

"8. When buying things, time and money trade-off against each other. If you’re low on money, take more time to find deals. If you’re low on time, stop looking for great deals and just buy things quickly online." I'm finding, as I've gotten older, that almost every time I've chosen money over time I've made a bad decision. And I see this among my family and friends, too. There's a mentality that emerges when exchangin…

I've applied this a lot in my life. For example, holidays: Every day that I'm overseas, I lose about $1,000 because I'm a contractor and I'm not getting paid, plus the base expenses of the flights and hotel rooms. If I'm not getting a thousand dollars worth of value from a day, that money is wasted. Spending $50 at a normal restaurant is not "saving money", it's actually a waste of a day! Once you've sunk days into f…

How do you factor in trips where being thrify - taking, for instance, public transport or staying in strange places or finding cheap back-street bars, are actually the way to have a far more genuine experience than throwing money at stuff? I've always found the trips I've taken when I've been broken to be the ones where I discover the most and immerse myself the most. When I've you're able to throw money at stuff you get lazy and don't get as much from it.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#423

Post by antihero »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #16

"8. When buying things, time and money trade-off against each other. If you’re low on money, take more time to find deals. If you’re low on time, stop looking for great deals and just buy things quickly online." I'm finding, as I've gotten older, that almost every time I've chosen money over time I've made a bad decision. And I see this among my family and friends, too. There's a mentality that emerges when exchangin…

Have you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance? Your attitude reminds me of the protagonist's friend.

When you do things for yourself, not only do you gain the experience when you have the agency and skills to add a layer of self-reliance, and not only do you have the beautiful experience of learning and appreciating the ins and outs of the things that contribute to your existence, but often when you achieve some degree of master of something you'll be building or maintaining things to a higher standard because you have a vested interest in keeping the tools around you that way as opposed to relying on a division of labour.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#424

Post by alisonkisk »

coldtea wrote: post #358
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I note that your rejection of Ayn Rand's philosophy is that it "leaves you cold", rather than a rational refutation of it. Ayn Rand begins with axioms, and logically derives her position from there. (Well, maybe. I suspect that at least to some degree, she already had her position, and derived her axioms from there, then argued for her position from her axioms.) So I attack her position by saying that in her third ax…

> Ayn Rand begins with axioms, and logically derives her position from there. There's no way to arrive "logically" at value judgements. You can just use logic as a klutch to support your pre-determined positions (and, of course, which is totally rational as a practice, to spread, support and enforce them).

http://www.andrej.com/objectivism/ is a beautiful work from an expert in rational thinking.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#425

Post by npsimons »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #15

> 11. Cooking pollutes the air. Opening windows for a few minutes after cooking can dramatically improve air quality. I was shocked when I got a smart air-purifier and it would send severe warnings when I was cooking. Especially in winter with windows closed for the entire day, my air quality would stay low for extended periods after cooking. Make sure you open a window for a few minutes even if it's cold outside.

I'm wondering if there is a difference between gas and electric. Of course, you can burn food and generate smoke on both, but I think just heating things up with electricity will by default produce less pollution (and yes, before any smart alecks chime in, my house is powered by renewable energy).

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#426

Post by meowface »

duckmysick wrote: post #92
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this was good advice in 2015. This is terrible advice in 2020. Reddit is astro-turfed up to it's eyeballs and the parts that aren't are people with little to no experience in niche X giving generally bad and nuance-free advice on niche X. The more niches you develop proficiency in the more you will see this.

What would be a better advice?

I'd still recommend digging through reddit results, personally. The signal:noise ratio may not be great but you can still often find valuable reviews of things if you look at a lot of different posts.

Searching HN can also sometimes be good. Slightly higher signal:noise than reddit, generally.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#427

Post by starky »

syntheticnature wrote: post #86
nlh wrote: post #19

These are really great! I imagine one could write a paragraph (or more) on each, and one could setup a whole process of following through with all of them. In fact, this is inspiring: I'm going to put these in a list and review them regularly and try to take a (small) action on each. Anyone wanna try it with me? BTW - only two that I disagree with: > 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find bet…

My big recipe secret from this year: Take the top N divergent recipe results (with some filter to prevent issues with the next step)... and average them. (More important for ingredient quantities and cook times, assuming similar heating protocol.)

My advice is that recipes are best used as inspiration. Rather focus on learning how to build flavour (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat is a good reference on this), and then have a solid reference cookbook and/or website to refer to (e.g. The Joy of Cooking, Serious Eats). Once you get familiar with cooking rather than following a recipe, it becomes really easy to branch out while identifying which recipes you find online will be crap.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#428

Post by spurdoman77 »

smichel17 wrote: post #142
paulpauper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

91. don't buy XRP but in seriousness, I think it is easier to apply these rules to people you know than strangers. Look how often people lose patience with each other online. >85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not. Interestingly, being smart does not protect…

> Look how often people lose patience with each other online. I think this is largely an issue of scale. Say you are driving on a single-lane, one-way road, which ends at a T intersection with a stop sign. The other road is also 1-way, 1-lane, and does not have a stop sign. It has a traffic light around 20 car lengths after your road. You are waiting for a chance to turn in; the other road has a fair amount of traffi…

My experience differs with the cars. During my life I have moved from very rural area to always denser places. The denser it gets the more helpful the other drivers are. Dunno why this happens.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#429

Post by slothtrop »

coldtea wrote: post #358
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I note that your rejection of Ayn Rand's philosophy is that it "leaves you cold", rather than a rational refutation of it. Ayn Rand begins with axioms, and logically derives her position from there. (Well, maybe. I suspect that at least to some degree, she already had her position, and derived her axioms from there, then argued for her position from her axioms.) So I attack her position by saying that in her third ax…

> Ayn Rand begins with axioms, and logically derives her position from there. There's no way to arrive "logically" at value judgements. You can just use logic as a klutch to support your pre-determined positions (and, of course, which is totally rational as a practice, to spread, support and enforce them).

Right, there's a difference between rationalizing and being rational.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#430

Post by tomcam »

monadgonad wrote: post #112
sullyj3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this advice is very much addressed to the kind of person who has no trouble with listening

I think the complete opposite. A shy, nerdy person who has trouble talking probably isn't truly listening when they're not talking.

My suspicion too
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