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Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

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Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#81

Post by ColFrancis »

hedora wrote: post #66
Jap2-0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > minus temperatures > Nitpick: it is difficult to take a shower with water in solid form (ice). Nitpick: having a temperature below zero does not necessarily mean that it is in a solid form; for example, it could be at a high pressure or not have a nucleus to freeze around (supercooling).

I’d like to see a video of this hypothetical subzero shower stream turning to a block of ice around an unsuspecting nucleus. Bonus points if you can scale it up to a mannequin.

A shock would likely cause a nucleus site anyway. When people do this with water in the freezer a good knock sets it off. So when the water starts to flow I think it'd freeze in the pipes.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#82

Post by dk775 »

djedr wrote: post #6

wow, an exceptional character what caught my attention is that when asked about his secret to longevity, he said that he eats lots of fruit and takes cold showers not the first time I'm hearing about cold showers being beneficial; been doing that myself regularly for a few months and I definitely find benefits this is definitely encouraging to continue does anybody have a longer experience with cold showers and can s…

What benefits are you noticing at a few months in?

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#83

Post by winter_blue »

bitexploder wrote: post #30
trangon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do it. You never know where it will lead. For example I started screwing around with C a few months ago and now I playing with microcontrollers and cameras because of that.

I started playing with Linux and C in 96. I was just an ignorant teenager. I didn’t know C was “hard”. I didn’t really care that Linux was different from Win95, I just knew Linux had fvwm2, gedit, and C compilers I needed for hacking on MUDs. I didn’t know chasing down obscure memory leaks was hard, I just linked libefence and did it. I was just playing and learning. Then I got offered a job doing web development wit…

This is beautiful.

I had a similar experience growing up as well. At age 8, I learned QBasic (on an MS-DOS / Win 3.1 system). At age 13, I learned C, and wrote a lot of code in it as well. (I used to write tons of C code up until around the middle of age 17. I had grand plans for all sorts of glorious software projects.)

But then, at the middle of age 17, a certain mild depression ("dysthymia") set in, and I lost a lot of hope, inspiration, and motivation. And now, I'm 31, and I've accomplished very little of my teenage dreams (even though I still hold/aspire towards those software dreams). I might be "successful" in society's eyes, with software engineering jobs paying in the ~200k range (which is not really that impressive, as I have many friends making in the 300k to 400k (USD) range); but in my own eyes, I still feel very much like a failure.

The depression or dysthymia had a crippling effect, that made a lot of dreams hard to accomplish. My 2021 New Year's resolution has been to overcome it my mental issues, and live life to the fullest.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#84

Post by theodric »

coldtea wrote: post #77
gchamonlive wrote: post #67

I watch these types of videos and I can't help but wonder if we transcended the need for elderly advice or we just grown as a youth centric society. It could also be a matter of language, and words can't convey the elders experiences as effectively as it could in simples times, where symbols did not need to account for vastly different experiences. So when someone says "I don't regret working hard" in the context of…

> I watch these types of videos and I can't help but wonder if we transcended the need for elderly advice or we just grown as a youth centric society. I think we've combined "youth-centric" with "faux-young" (aka immaturity), where 40-year olds are "excited" about the latest superhero movie and 50 year olds act like teenagers...

If you're unable to muster excitement for things you love purely because of your age, I'm genuinely sorry for you.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#85

Post by offtop5 »

every wrote: post #43

I'm a mere youngster at 71. I had to wait until retirement before I could spend the time I wanted on things that interested me. Currently that is the Unix Toolkit. There should be enough there to keep me busy for a while...

Are you at all disappointed in the lack of discipline in younger programmers. I know when JavaScript first started to become a server-side language, I worked with a slightly older programmer, he was maybe 40 in 2014, and he hated it.

I tend to stick with higher level easier languages for the most part ( JS, Python, C#)

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#86

Post by duopixel »

jp57 wrote: post #60

Fruit and cold showers! Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?" They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think maybe there's something to that cold shower thing after all . Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same. He no more knows t…

> I have to think that he knows this

He exclaims out loud "I don't know!" (in Spanish) before humoring with his own speculations about his longevity.

But attributing it entirely to hitting the genetic lottery would also be a mistake: the genetic potential can be easily squandered by allowing your mind, heart and body to decay at an accelerated rate. It is obvious this is a happy and lucid human being who still finds plenty of reasons to stick around.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#87

Post by majkinetor »

jp57 wrote: post #60

Fruit and cold showers! Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?" They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think maybe there's something to that cold shower thing after all . Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same. He no more knows t…

Indeed. Cold showers sure have potential to reduce wrinkle formation tho. And to make you temporarily much more alive, if not live longer (just go and try it, use as much cold as possible which probably means you will scream at start).

The centurian thing is probably ocam's razor: specific genes in combination with specific environment must be a good fit for longevity. Knowing that we are in no way closer in understanding anything about it, but at least we know we can't expect random centurian giving meaningful answer.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#90

Post by majkinetor »

dmos62 wrote: post #89

Here's an observation: people who've survived longer than most are quick to smile. I like checking out stories about them, because I know I'll see an energizing photo of an upbeat person.

Good observation. I knew personally a centuran woman and although she had a terrible life experiences (she lost both her husband and son very early) she was always smiling and had positive look at the world.
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