Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?
I was helping my son learn to write and realized I’ve been holding the pencil wrong when I write. When I changed my grip to match how my son was learning, it was more comfortable. What have you learned that is different and better than something you’ve always done?
1,869 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadNothing proves flossing is beneficial actually
Also, nothing doesn't prove eating twelve apples per day cures cancer so why not try it ?
All else being equal, it's obviously better not to spend an extra minute or two doing something useless.
If you think it is not actually equal, and that scraping is indeed better, well say so and qualify your statement. You can even say that it's recommended by dentists, it's an authority argument but it surely is better than nothing.
I’m not sure why I have have to defend flossing of all things. I’m not trained in that field, neither are you, we should listen to the people who are and guess what? They almost all recommend flossing.
That argument was accepted with COVID vaccines, so why not now?
Far from universally and even in the pockets where it was, at least some percentage did it just to be able to go back to doing normal things which were gated by government rules.
Don’t do anything blindly. They won’t be the ones bearing the cost if and when something goes wrong.
>A nothing proves it isn’t, so you might as well
That's completely different from
>I’m not trained in that field, neither are you, we should listen to the people who are and guess what? They almost all recommend flossing.
If the goal of toothbrushing and flossing is to remove bacteria and food debris from your mouth, hopefully an uncontroversial premise, it's pretty obvious how flossing helps.
Just flossing and carefully watching the action of the floss and the plaque is sufficient to demonstrate the benefit.
Sometimes your common sense is more than enough to make sense of the world, no ivy league double blind study required.
I suppose you could skip going to the dentist altogether but that comes with risks of larger issues down the road.
You're right though that there's no established effect on cavities.
Having said that, it's difficult to get people to actually floss, so there's a certain amount of uncertainty about the results of those RCTs, and whether participants were doing what they were supposed to be doing.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-teeth-and-gums/how-to-k...
That's just so wrong already. Regular toothbrushes are absolute trash compared to sonics, every dentist will tell you that.
> don't use mouthwash (even a fluoride one) straight after brushing your teeth or it'll wash away the concentrated fluoride in the toothpaste left on your teeth
So in a nutshell, don't use it because it'll wash away the flouride... that you've already rinsed out. Yeah not much of a minus there.
Gonna need a cite on that. Pretty sure the recommendation is to hold the brush at 45 degrees and use circular movements.
Maybe bring this up in your next session.
> We all eat all sorts of things and it's fine That's like saying you can lose some IQ every so often because you'll live so what
Toothpaste: 4mg / teaspoon
So you'd need to swallow several whole teaspoons to pass std. safety levels
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride
I just point that out, because I am acutely aware how good people are at convincing themselves with statistics of anything, really.
Yes that is better than getting shot 1000 times, not better than getting shot only once, in case you are wondering.
Complexity != Fragile
Basically, even if you swallow all your toothpaste you're unlikely to have problems unless your diet is already rich in fluoride, and spitting but not rinsing is fine.
I had canker sores for my entire life, well into my late 20s. I tried everything: changing toothpastes (more on this in a second), changing brushes, using mouthwash, being told my mouth was "dirty" and I need to brush more, etc.
Turns out (at least for me) the sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) used as a foaming agent in (almost) every single toothpaste causes canker sores. I found "canker sore toothpaste" that lacks the SLS, for $7 a tube. I used it for couple of years and it worked!
If you read up on SLS, this is not super-surprising. It's a known skin irritant, and is known to cause more irritation when left on the skin for more than a couple of minutes. Canker sores are an autoimmune issue, so my theory is the irritation triggers an immune response, leading to the sore.
And then I discovered if I rinse thoroughly (twice) after brushing, even with normal toothpaste, I just don't get canker sores anymore! Not sure if it's universal, but canker sores suck so much, I hope this helps someone suffering like I was.
Much better than any over the counter stuff.
[0] https://enchroma.com/
The way they hire actors to play out wholesome videos and upload them to YouTube as if it's organic content, with massive fake users to comment and push up false claims and down vote brigade all negative comments should tell you all you need about this shady company.
This website doesn’t work on my iPhone’s screen. It’s impossible to discern most of the numbers, and the UI doesn’t instill confidence. Are they just using this garbage to hock their glasses to people who don’t need them?
This website is thoroughly broken, and nobody should even use it as a suggestion that they are or aren’t colorblind.
I, without color-blindness, can't make out any numbers. A coworker who is red/green colorblind also could not make out any numbers. Then the results, as I said, show that the whole process was broken from the start.
It really should be a part of general screening upon admittance to primary school. Then again, this was 30 years ago, so maybe it is now.
Projection screen was lowered, lights turned off, and a series of multi-coloured dots on many slides were displayed one after another on the screen.
In the dots, there were numbers / letters in colours different from the general background colour of the slide.
Adult: "Can everyone see the number?"
Almost everyone: "YESSSSSS."
One boy: "Ummm - there's no number on the screen!"
Pregnant pause.
One boy: "Oh yeah. Now I see it."
Almost everyone turns their head to look at that one boy.
Test continues.
Afterwards, the one boy was selected for further consultation...
This is when it would've been good to ask someone about it.
Something coworkers from years ago still like to give me grief about.
> Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It can also be interpreted as ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computing. And one last extra question for the road…
> How do you pronounce Ubuntu? Many people don’t get it right the first time, but it’s pronounced: oǒ’boǒntoō.
> There’s no ‘y’ at the beginning!
https://ubuntu.com/blog/top-10-questions-about-ubuntu
While Mark Shuttleworth is originally from South Africa, where bantu people originates, he was not classified as a Bantu by apartheid government. Which is strange because the word Bantu means people. During our dark days of apartheid, as in less than 30 years ago, areas designated for black only were called bantustans.
umuntu, also(muthu, motho) = person bantu, vhathu, batho, etc = people ubuntu, vhuthu, botho, etc = normal behaviour of a human being.
We are still called bantu(people) and ubuntu is our way of life. Ok. Theoretically.
I tried it (age 50-something), and discovered that I no longer needed to double-knot my shoes.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT2XiPgiZK8
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
Another view:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cBtqhq5P28
https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/secureknot.htm
Orange Elastic No Tie Shoe Laces... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PK2N1PD?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBbc6TackDQ
The "incorrect" knot still works relatively well and looks almost the same as the "correct" knot. The "incorrect" one also requires significantly less finger dexterity which is why children tend to prefer it.
It's objectively not as flexible as the traditional spoon grip but I can't seem to shake the habit. Gets me strange looks sometimes
Now I am seeing that often it's us the non-religious that have lost something of value and are trying to replace it with things that don't work as well.
But I recall most people in the actual church at least had some form of a community, and many seemed happy and selfless. This modern church that pretends it isn't a church only breeds toxicity, selfishness, vitriol, and depression. Everyone is holding each other hostage, knowing that if anyone steps out of line and questions the status quo they'll be burned in the village square as an example to whoever might do it next. The actual church community I was in was more accepting in almost all regards than this new system.
I honestly wish a lot of these people would just find a normal religion. It's way easier to get along with normal religious people than the types people being getting hooked on these new systems of thought.
I think that's because these things aren't from church, they're part of human nature.
One of the churches I went to as a child was toxic, the other wasn't. The religious community isn't immune to human nature.
50-60 years ago the country was much more religious and you’d encounter people saying they’d never let their child marry a democrat and vice-versa according to my grandparents. To them, things are mostly better and what we have is the appearance of greater division.
I think religion adapts and changes; religion was more mainstream, less toxic, and uniform than it is now. The median person is probably less religious (in terms of sticking to an established religion) but the upper 1/3 of the spectrum is more religious, in that they believe more extreme things, with less evidence, and are less likely to compromise. The past 40 years of the evangelical movement, which has been coopted by the conservative movement, has been extremely polarizing.
My mother clearly remembers being called out in front of her church for the unforgivable sin of attending a school dance, and that was in the mid-60s. Don't forget why the Southern Baptists broke away from the Baptists.
and 100 years ago, much less! at most 40% of the US regularly attended church services in the 1910s.
And i can think of ~three answers: post-war trauma, a population bubble, and a percieved need in the white middle class for social discrimination and "order" against internally, integration and externally, "the godless commies". (see: HUAC, adding "under god" to the pledge)
I figure that the 50s were an anomaly, not the other way around.
"build a church and school within reasonable walking distance" was rule 1 of new towns for a good long while.
People serve these idols, and many others, to give meaning to their lives, to justify their existence. They are afraid of death--that is, not only physical death but everything which does or seems to militate against life: alienation, lack of identity, frustration, pain, meaninglessness. And so they grasp, as it were, after aspects of life which seem to promise freedom from some form of death, and serve them as idols. But what they are really serving is death, for the fear of death is the power behind all idolatry. And yet, as we have seen, idolatry can only lead to death in one form or another, to violence and dehumanization and also to the degradation or destruction of what is idolized.
It is a distinctive mark of the biblical mind to discern that human history is a drama of death and resurrection and not, as religionists of all sorts suppose, a simplistic conflict of evil vs. good in an abstract sense. For what is "good" is, basically, what is good for man and creation--in other words, what is life-giving, life-preserving, life-perfecting. God, the Living One, is the author of life, he is on the side of life...That which is truly evil is that which thwarts life. And sin is any denial or rejection of the gift of life; an offense against God who bestows the gift. But the wages of sin is death, not by some arbitrary decree on God's part, but because sin by its nature is possessed of death, anti-life, death-dealing, both to the sinner and in the various kinds of death it occasions in the world.
You're probably in the right head space to appreciate "Impostors of God: Inquiries Into Favorite Idols" by William Stringfellow (1969).
Cryptonomicon is another good one, though far less prophetic/scholarly:
To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy's fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability.
The failure mode of churches (and, yes, some of the more optimistic commune arrangements) is toxic positivity: everything is great, and anyone who doesn't agree is going to be dealt with. This makes it extremely difficult to report when someone has been raping adults or children.
In more atheistic countries, the religious people are the ones that are harder to get along with, as normal people are a lot less religious.
We have lost something very important on the conversion of our society to laic values. We have gained very important things too, so I don't think the best correction is to reverse anything, but we have some work to do on those things that we lost.
This has been replaced by ersatz religions, but I think we should start explicitly worshipping the concept of civilization and progress. From a certain point of view, civilization is a cybernetic organism that encompasses all of us and gives us all sorts of neat things.
There's no doubt about that. Humans have a very strong religious bent that is bred into us by evolution selecting for motivated, tenacious people who fight to survive but whose brains can't stop patterning-matching, perceiving threats and agency behind things, and performing rituals. Not to mention, organizing around common beliefs. Without various sky-friend myths, we organize around other myths. Thankfully we have good science now, but that's unfortunately often less sexy (and more difficult) than pseudo-science and fads.
Isn't this exactly what the French Revolution's first wave, the Nazis, the Soviets, and the Maoists all did? Or are you suggesting something more explicitly Hegelian like the religion of "The sign of the T" from Brave New World (though that religion was focused on production not transformation)?
~ C. S. Lewis
That's much too simplistic and isn't going to convince anyone of the point you're trying to make.
> his has been replaced by ersatz religions, but I think we should start explicitly worshipping the concept of civilization and progress
We've done this multiple times before and always with disastrous or at least dissipative results. The technical term for this is "cult" and more specifically "idolatry". There are very good reasons why this has generally been proscribed by monotheistic religions.
> civilization is a cybernetic organism that encompasses all of us
Saying civilization is cybernetic in that it consists of feedback loops that keep it in a stable condition is stretching it. Perhaps a nation could be cybernetic since it contains a variety of channels through which this information can flow in both directions but a civilization as a supranational system has some very tight bottlenecks that would impede such functioning.
> gives us all sorts of neat things
It does not. People do that and the things are not so much given as they are bargained for whether with money or by signing on to a social contract or adopting cultural values.
Dennis Prager is pretty good on this front too. But, he thinks that religion is a necessity for a happy life.
I don't follow any faith. There are too many religions for any one to be "correct". But I do see religion as a good moral guide, particularly in times of hardship.
Peterson at least attempts to offer balanced. Prager is a religious quack.
I don't think that it is an overstatement to say that Peterson alone has helped millions improve their lives through his books, talks, and interviews.
Whether or not the changes many have made in their lives as a result of Peterson’s work are improvements is also debatable.
People give thanks to prosperity preachers for their spiritual guidance even as they sit hungry watching the preacher drive away in his Bentley purchased with the money they tithed.
The thing is, none of those are innately tied to religion. We've abandoned churches for what I feel are largely good reasons, but we haven't found something else to fill that void in community and care. We're more insular, more online, less of us know our neighbours or really have a stake in our community welfare in the same way. I don't think the solution is going back to religion.
I think you are right in that in theory you could have "all that stuff" sans religion. And in fact I think Atheism in the boomer generation benefited from cultural inertia - like, you could say you don't belong to a religion but still marry, have kids, participate in community etc simply because that's what everyone else (by the virtue of their religion) was doing around you.
But today it seems like critical mass is elsewhere, and it seems like the religious folks now have a huge advantage over everyone else in terms of marriage, family formation, community and maybe even mental health. So while in theory it's possible, it seems like in practice all of those things declined among the non-religious, just perhaps with a lag of a generation.
The reason I think it might make sense to reengage with religion is the crux of this question: does life have a point, a meaning, etc. Not even "what" the point is but does it exist at all. The idea that the universe is a total accident and nothing is relevant takes you in a certain direction in life and society, while the idea of "there's meaning and purpose" in another.
I think it's hard to anchor your life in the value of meaning without logically accepting a creator of that meaning.
So I think there's an element of faith - either you chose to believe there's meaning or you chose to believe there isn't, everything else is implied by that choice of belief.
Interestingly, Muslims believe most messengers began their missions at or around 40, so maybe everything before is “formative years”. The one known exception is Jesus Christ, whom we believe was raised to God at 33 but still has a huge role to play in shaping the world.
I get saddened when religious storytelling fills people with fairy tales and arbitrary hate and makes them incapable of seeing things about existence that are truly beautiful.
I'm not sure exactly how to explain this, but the seemingly infinite level of "detail" or "texture" or "complexity" to our universe. No matter how small or large you go, there's always some patterns, some structures, some details to be seen. There's always some other perspective or way of grouping and organizing to reveal new information. The complexity is infinitely deep, wide and layered. Some of that I think is inherent, and some of it is what we create as living entities - which is a great privilege we enjoy.
Take a white painted wall made of drywall. Relatively uninteresting most of the time. But the potential amount of information about it is almost infinite:
* What are all the layers of construction needed to make it?
* What did it cost? For every cent of that money, where did it eventually go? All of them can be tracked from its creation until the end of the currency.
* What people designed the methods to construct it? What were their lives like, what led to them doing so?
* What does the surface look like if you were to look at it at 10x, 100x, 10,000x, etc. scale? How does all of that structure change when it's under pressure? Or wet? Or on fire? Or crushed? Or at different temperatures?
* What does it look like as molecules of air bounce off of it and it insulates the room?
* What are its physical properties? What does it look like in all the different wavelengths of light?
* What is it history, from the retrieval of the materials to its final destruction some time in the future? What is its eventual fate? Will it be destroyed to make room for a newer building? Or in a war? A natural disaster?
* What people were near it? What were they doing and why? Office workers? Secretaries? Programmers? Nurses? Was it separating people who were friends or hated each other?
* What's the history of the design of the pigment used on the wall? What previous pigments did it replace and why?
* If you look at the pattern of bumps and valleys on the surface, does it match some existing pattern? What mathematical formula would most closely re-create the surface variations? What's the closest match to that pattern anywhere in the universe, at any scale? Maybe there's some sand on a beach or a cluster of stars that when viewed from just the right angle matches the pits and valleys on the wall.
* What does the surface feel like? Not just for one person, but for all humans? If you were to take every single human who has ever lived and let them feel the wall, what would happen? Which ones would tell jokes? Which ones would remember something from their past? Which would have some interesting specialist perspective on it? Which ones would like it? Hate it? How would they all describe it?
We only have access to a tiny fraction of that information. But it's all there! You could spend an eternity studying a single blade of grass and it's relation to everything else and all of the history. There's always some new abstraction or perspective or way to look at everything.
John Vervaeke and the Pageau Brothers are working hard on this front. I'd highly recommend John's Meaning Crisis Videos, Mathieu Pageau's book on Cosmic Symbolism and Johnathan's educational videos.
If you are new to this, it can be a bit mind bending, but it's duly needed in our time.
https://www.meaningcrisis.co/all-transcripts/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIJuIN6kUcU
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Creation-Symbolism-Genesis-C...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtmLCK1keFI&t=1874s
Academic science resembles religion with its dogmas, nepotism, bureaucracies, and favor-currying shibboleths. Deep learning in particular is akin to modern alchemy [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7psGHgatGM
What’s frustrating is nobody tells you how to reverse a life of agnosticism bordering on atheism, and suddenly be catholic,Buddhist,etc
As someone who is formerly deeply Christian and left for intellectual/theological reasons. I miss the communal binding of organized worship. But reversing or getting back to that place requires either 1) letting go of intellectual integrity, or 2) finding a group who is similarly interested in dispassionate community organizing without supernatural theology.
The 1st has proven personally impossible. The 2nd seems very unlikely. All the attempts of secular church I have seen never pick up steam and trail off over time. Thus, the person who sees religious association as a broad good is left without a natural landing spot.
I love how you crystalized the point although I've reached a different conclusion.
This was actually my original "before" state - I assumed that religion was an illogical holdover and not something that I ( a logical / scientist ) person can internalize.
But over time, I connected with people who are very smart and very logical and whose faith is deepened by this (though to be clear, faith is still faith - even if you believe in the absence of a deity that's still a belief)
So I am very happy that I am at a place where I can grow my religious and faithful over time while being logically and internally consistent.
I appreciate that this is something that matters to you and perhaps something you could enjoy is to connect with someone whom you respect as an intellectual who is also religious, and see how they make sense of it.
But... HOW?
I don't know a single person who is an intellectual, scientifically minded, and openly religious. So I'm asking genuinely here on HN how you do it.
But you may well know people who are intellectual, scientifically minded and closeted religious. As this thread can attest, there is rampant discrimination against religious experience and thought in the science/tech community.
> So I'm asking genuinely here on HN how you do it.
I believe that most deep religious experiences are things that happen to you, not things that you actively plan for. But having said that, I believe that the key in general is humility. So many people in this thread (and others on HN) have displayed incredible arrogance that is an effective protective barrier from having a religious experience. This is very much their loss. We all end up humbled eventually though.
No matter how you feel about religion in the 21st century, we would not have a civilization were it not for religion. When you dig deep enough, you will generally find that the seed of the society came from a visionary mystic. Even Genghis Khan was a shaman as much as he was a warrior.
Empirical science is neither the beginning nor the end, though it is an extraordinarily powerful tool. The rules of empirical science are bounded in such a way that it is essentially impossible to talk scientifically about some of the most important aspects of being human. Funnily enough, scientists engage just as much as religious people in mysticism when they throw up their hands and describe consciousness as an "emergent" phenomenon.
Religious texts are deeply fascinating if you allow them to be. Think of them as founding civilizational documents like a constitution. All of us live in cultures that descend from these (relatively) ancient texts. You would not be here if it weren't for these past religious traditions. That doesn't mean that we should blindly follow religious leaders or accept everything that we read in these texts. But we should at least have some curiosity about how we got here and ask what relevant wisdom might still be there for us in these texts. That is a far more scientific approach than casually dismissing religion as nonsense.
I need to write in more depth about it. I'll give you a super short TLDR and I apologize if this is not sufficient to intellectually connect to.
Let me hit it from two angles:
First of all, you do know many such people. For example, Isaac Newton was deeply religious, as was Darwin (his faith was later shaken by the loss of a child), Georges Lemaître who theorized the Big Bang was a Catholic Priest, Edward Hubble who observed evidence of the Big Bang, was a devout Christian. People claim that not much is known about Einstein's religiosity, but it's interesting that he supported a fundraising effort to translate the Talmud into English for example.
So one angle is - you know the founding figures today's science and many/most of them saw no conflict between their science and religion. A quick response may be "well that's what people just believed back then" but - what is the understanding that we have that these scientists didn't, which gives us firm foundation to dismiss religion whey they themselves embraced it?
Second, let's go on a quick mental experiment. Let's accept for the moment that the universe is an accident, that all life is random and that the only reason humans are as we are, is because we evolved to outsmart our predators and prey. A logical implication of that is that we would have no reason to develop the intellect and senses that enable us to understand true reality - to grasp how the universe works. We evolved to just be smart enough to eat a cow rather than be eaten by a wolf.
If you accept that perception/intellectual limitation, the implication is that humans can't expect to assert anything about reality. Just because our instruments don't detect something or our eyes can't see something speaks nothing of the existence of that thing either way. Same as just because some creature didn't evolve sight, doesn't mean that the thing it could have seen if it had sight, doesn't exist - but that creature has no idea!
That takes us to a logical place: humans aren't equipped to objectively conclude anything about the universe. So if you assert lack of creation, lack of divinity - that's just what you chose to believe despite the fact that your tooling for perceiving these things is lacking. So it's faith either way.
I don't think I articulate the 2nd point well enough, it needs more. But let me know how it sounds, I'd appreciate the feedback.
And partly through his influence, today I am Christian and openly religious enough to write this comment. As to whether I'm intellectual and scientifically minded... I'd say so, though it seems a little vain to admit to being intellectual. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Plantinga
I wouldn't say I'm a born-again-whatever - I usually describe myself as an optimistic spiritual agnostic - but I think a combination of broadening my horizons physically (geographically moving around) and mentally (actually paying attention in grad school to the liberal arts that I thumbed my nose at as an undergrad) and getting hit repeatedly with how little I/we actually know about anything has let me inch away from the cynical a(nti)religiosity and submit to something larger than me.
This has also given me a better appreciation of the books I (was supposed to have) read in high school; in hindsight, I don't think there's any way many students could draw much meaning from them without having their own life experiences.
I don't think there's a simple answer on how to flip that light switch but I can share some ideas.
First, do you have religious people in your life whom you respect even if you don't share their faith. Ask them about it - you can literally say "I don't get it at all but I am curious, what's this like for you?" And just see what resonates.
Second, that is a question you can direct to a member of clergy. If you can't envision yourself walking into a house of worship, shoot an email and be like "I am faithless but curious. I am sure I am not the first one..."
Third, be really for hits and misses. Not every religious person can articulate it in a way that will make sense to you, and not every clergy person can speak to it effectively either (some people can only preach to the converted, to borrow a phrase.) But if you ping a few people, some of them may give you something that's a good thread to follow.
Fourth, I suggest starting with whatever faith your family was historically in. There's something cool about that.
Fifth, if really nothing else - shoot me a way to contact you and we can chat about my experience.
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence
To me the choice to clear- be true to yourself. In that sense, organized religion has no place in this world.
IMO, religion isn't really about truth, or "there is an afterlife", or "there's a magical almighty person(s) out there". Rather, it's mostly just a bunch of advice, principles and curated wisdom passed down from generation and generation to help people live a happy, meaningful life.
Like "you shall not kill", or "you shall not steal" or "treat your neighbor like you would yourself" - are arguably good principles to follow if you want to live in a peaceful society free from violence, as obeying these rules minimizes desire for anyone to have vengeance upon their neighbor. Or take Buddhism, which preaches that nirvana is absence of desire and craving, which shows that sometimes your own greed and ambitions can be the cause of your suffering, and by simply being grateful, can bring you happiness.
In this sense, I think it's valuable and has a place in the world. I mean, are we alone in existence, and is death the end? I think so, but if it makes some people feel better thinking otherwise is possible, then what's wrong with letting them believe or put hope into that?
So to me, religion isn't so much about "what is true and not true", but more rather: "here's some wisdom on how to lead an enjoyable life".
Even the original "God is dead" quotes from Nietzsche sound mournful, not arrogant. From what I understand he was trying to convey the same thing you are: that by turning away from religion, we are undoing many of the basic moral underpinnings of our culture. Now we have to rebuild them with something new, and quite obviously, people can't agree on one set of ideas.
Don't forget that to some of us religious stories contain nothing of particular interest or are similar to ancient fairy tales, and the history of various churches and religions is a mere part of the general human history of power struggles between elites in various countries. When you haven't been raised in religious ways, you feel no guilt about making blasphemous remarks and do not fear the wrath of supposed supernatural entities.
How is that arrogant? It seems humble to me to acknowledge that I as an individual and a society on the whole don't actually mean much.
Everyone of us wants to feel significant, loved, and giving up on an idea that we live forever, that there's always someone external looking out for us etc is an emotionally difficult process to go through.
But that's what personal growth is. It doesn't mean that you go nuts and do crazy shit - consequences exist. What it means is that your perspective changes and you become OK with just being you, and taking a journey on a speeding rock through space.
People think that you lose when you give up religion, which is in part true - but there is also a lot to be gained - in personal development, seeing life from a different perspective and appreciating the limited time we have before donating our atoms back to the universe.
So replace religion with unscientifically naive optimism? That too is a delusional narrative. "Donating your atoms back to the universe" as if a personified "universe" cares about you on its way to heat death, someone get me my spirit crystals.
You might say you're off the religious dance-floor, but you're still doing the moves. In fact it's almost more rational to get back into one of the holy books, at least there you can connect the dots on attaching meaning to the present.
Not sure what's so delusional about having your atoms be reused for other purposes when you die... what else would happen?
As for the word "donating", that's more a personal mindset. What I'm saying is, I'm OK with death, I'm not so egotistical to think that I'm anything more than a moment in time.
Optimism and naivety, well you can interpret whatever I said however you like, but there's actually no real argument that you've made in relation to what I wrote.
I find that disturbing, too, even as someone who believes it's likely true.
But when I was deeply Christian, I also found my denomination's view on the afterlife disturbing, too. If you live literally forever, what happens when you've done everything that matters? What even matters anymore in a world without need? How can everyone be happy at the same time if happiness depends on other people whose wants may not align? If existence in the afterlife is fundamentally different from the mortal life, there's still something of familiarity to me that will end forever. Maybe that's equivalent to my current conscious experience blinking out.
I've come to view life as a ride. It's valuable for its own sake, not because of some greater meaning I can't ascertain. It's an absolute miracle that we all exist, in the thousands of years of culture and writing, we're nowhere close to knowing why we're here, so why bother wasting my one life worrying about it when the joys of existing are self-evident.
I think humans have an in-built moral compass but sometimes that compass gets warped and distorted by our environment.
Name a society that hasn’t valued love, friendship, family, etc.
It's not the worst thing in the world to be deluded - and frankly I just don't care what they do and say unless it starts to impact me and mine. It's not religion per se I dislike - people are free to live their lives as they see fit, it's the control-structure scam of an organized religion that reels in the gullible, the poor, the disadvantages, those who believe what they're being told. That is disgusting, IM(ns)HO.
These megapastors (and even not-so-megapastors) bilking their flock to pay for the latest Learjet... I think they believe in religion as much as I do, tbh.
Of course “religious” folks who tell people they should simply endure, rather than resist, injustice and inequality are disgusting. But sometimes despite your best efforts, the bad guys still win (temporarily).
Telling people that this life is not the end-all-be-all is only manipulative if it’s meant to make people passive. And I know that not everyone informs people about the afterlife out of malice.
TL;DR: grip the bar across the joint at the bottom of your fingers instead of across the middle of your palm. This doesn't apply to bench pressing (a push), but applies to all moves that involve pulling/lifting the bar.
I don't know, maybe I'll try this next time I deadlift but I feel like it would just weaken my already weak grip.
Grip is the main way we interact with the world, so it's worth training it. Also, grip strength is the most reliable predictor we have found for life expectancy. (i.e. higher grip strength means higher life expectancy). It could be correlation/causation fallacy, but I have decided to just assume it's worth training it for all the other benefits that having good grip strength brings.
Where can I read more about the techniques and/or bad habits? Interesting.
As long as you can easily modulo the time, this works for the range 1 minute (60) to 1 minute 39 seconds (99). Technically you could also do this for times like 2:65 instead of 3:05 but at that point you're not saving a keystroke. And on most microwaves they have an annoying delay between when you can do another keystoke after doing the last one, so I've appreciated the little bit of time saving I get with this knowledge.
They don't actually reduce the 'power' of the microwave, but they turn it on and then back off again for a proportion of time, over and over.
It takes longer to reheat stuff this way, but it comes out much more evenly heated, I find.
The newer microwaves with a sensor reheat button are pretty great.
Unfortunately, at least on my current model, the UX to access this feature is very bad: repeatedly pressing the "power" button until it reaches the desired level. I've had other microwaves where you just key in the desired power after pressing "power", and much prefer that method.
I don't know whether Panasonic has licensed this to any other manufacturer.
Ooh that's a good use case. What else do you do with it?
Depends on the microwave, you can get models that do adjust the power and they are very nice to use. Being able to slowly and evenly heat up food in the microwave is a huge game changer when it comes to how you use your microwave.
(I agree it applies just as well generally - but defrosting makes it more apparent/visible.)
I grew to prefer that method of interfacing with a microwave. "Just go! I don't care about the cook time!" When my wife and I bought our first house and purchased our appliance set, I wanted a microwave that did not force me to go through a timer workflow. Having such a workflow was good, but I also wanted some sort of "on" button on it. We picked out a GE Profile unit that had two user-assignable functions on the main interface. I assigned a "30s cook" function to one of the buttons. This is my "on" button. Additional presses of the button append 30s to the timer. This satisfies most of my needs.
Unfortunately, when I want to reduce power, the buttons that I have to press to do so are not as simple. I start the cook via the normal quick 30s button, but then I have to press the power button, then have to press the down button several times to lower the default power level of 10 to something more reasonable like 5 or 3, then I have to press to confirm that level. This takes precious seconds -- if it's a sensitive item like a small dipping bowl of marinara or something, the adjustment may be too late. Sure, I guess I could go through the full cook workflow, but that's not how I want to interact with it. And you know, if I am expending the time and energy to lower the power level from 10, it is highly unlikely that 9 will be my desired power level. Instead, I wish there was a "halve power level" button on the cook screen that cut the active duty cycle in half. So one press takes me from PL10 to PL5, another press goes to PL2.5, and so forth. Then I'd be happy.
I don't use any of the other features buried in the menus. It's all superfluous.
Buttons suck.
If I recall correctly - 60 imperial seconds are equivalent to 100 metric seconds a sort of inverse to the 100 kph being equivalent to 60 mph (metric units were mandated on American speedometers at the same time)
Of course on the speedometer you can just display both units where as on the microwave entry it's more the intention of the user that drives interpretation. So they got stuck at 100=60 and since everyone just interpreted 100 metric seconds as 1:00, minute it never caught on but never went away either.
This sounds like complete nonsense and I can't find any evidence of such a "mandated by the government metric time" with Google.
The Metric Conversion Act was in 1975, not the 1960s, and I am fairly sure that a decimalized minute was never part of any plans for US metrication anyhow.
This seems like an urban legend where the more likely reason is that its a practical design to treat the last two digits as seconds abd everything before as minutes, irrespective of whether the last two digits are greater than one minute, when making a keypad entry system. It bith does what is likely intended and avoids needing validation/error reporting since every possible numerical entry becomes correct.
Related: hold down 2 on the microwave for a couple of seconds to silence all chirps.
I often type 33, 111, 222, etc for the time saving benefit
It’s amazing how they manage to sell that touch nonsense for $$$$.
I was 28 the first time a friend told me "I love you" in a pure friendship way (and while sober), and without being a part of a special situation. I've also done it afterwards, and because I had never told my friend i love them, it made the message even stronger.
It feels wrong that we don't do this more often.
Share the love.
Like, my best friends, I love them in a sense I guess…but I wouldn’t say that. It just doesn’t feel natural to me. I’d characterize our relationship as close, and that I care about them a lot, but “love” isn’t something that comes to mind outside of my parents or someone I’ve been in a long term relationship with.
I’m not sure why. Maybe it has to do with being an only child. Maybe it has to do with all my grandparents dying when I was young, and not being that close with extended family, so there was never really anyone to love outside of my parents for the vast majority of my life prior to any long term relationships.
I'm also an only child. I wasn't told "I love you", I was told "shut up". Being able to say "I love you" to somebody in the context we're discussing has been a game changer for me. It's just so freeing.
Like, even when I’m around extended family that says love you, I just feel awkward and almost forced to respond with love you too back to them. Like I care for them of course…but I would never say I love you to one of them without them saying it to me first.
Awkward is the feeling of trying something new (a form of play). Similar to giddiness.
Like trying out a new style of clothing, it's just the feeling of a new experience.
It's an intense sensation because we don't allow ourselves to feel as adults and assume it means I did something wrong/bad. No, it's just the experience of doing something different than you've always done. The context can tell you if it is problematic, but usually, it isn't something others notice.
When that happens, a funny thought pops into my head -- love is a four letter word.
i’m not sure extended family is the right analog for this love. as you hint, that family is kinda forced on you, and that implicit v.s. opt-in nature of family vs friendship has big implications for how open you can be with each other, for example. it’s really its own thing.
However, in my own life, I've found that there isn't some limited supply of love I have to share with others—in fact, it's been the opposite experience. The more freely I love those around me, the more fulfilling I find those relationships to be.
I am more reticent to use that language quite so flippantly with those I am actually romantically interested in though. When the potential for misunderstanding is there (i.e. romantic love vs platonic love or eros vs. philia vs. agape love to use koine greek terms), I tend to err on the side of caution so I don't accidentally communicate a level of depth that I don't intend.
You can say "te amo" to your significant other and "te quiero" to your friends and family.
Instead they're all lumped into "love". Ugh.
I never really learned a better way; I am just a really fast typist now and I type everything.
But it stuck with me because my father was always around really nice people and I realised he faced the opposite of the prison effect. If you're consistently nice to people, you end up in the crowd of people with better intentions. It's a selection bias.
Also, be careful how you assign "bad". It can either be unethical or illegal, as they are not the same thing.
Bad means someone who would molest a child because it's a new experience or run over a stranger with a car. A business owner who is proud that the people he hires don't make enough money to eat.
Hitmen who consider the people they kill as rats so they don't get emotional scarred by the murder - they're in the 80%. A tyrant who orders a city pillaged and raped to assert dominance, also in the 80%.
Bad people don't end up in prison, not for the most part. Bad intention and crime aren't the same thing.
But it got me thinking that there are people out there who will stab you just for disagreeing with them. We don't encounter them often because nearly all the people who can't control themselves end up in prison. It's dangerous to assume that people will always act in their own best interest.
Nobody is out to get me. Also, it’s a C+ world out there, with a lot of incompetent people.
Be smart, and be very careful about whether you trust somebody to deliver the outcome that you want. But if they mess it up, come up with some reasons other than “so-and-so is evil” or "so-and-so hates me". It’ll help your state of mind, and also your interactions with them.
Also most sauce recipes are probably overcomplicated. Most need less than 5 ingredients. You probably don't need all that onion and garlic, but one of them. Definitely not two tablespoons of dried oregano.
The way you cut onions and garlic changes the flavor a lot too. Finely minced garlic, from a food processor or garlic press can be overpowering yet not deliver the flavor. One trick is to crush the garlic and let the oil it's in carry the flavor. Half an onion can work really well in a sauce you cooking for half an hour.
Why is this bad with rice? When I make a stew I often put some rice in, with the expectation that the rice will absorb some of the stew.
I think stew might be an exception, because you want it to be porridge-like. But for many sauces, that's too soggy. You usually want it to soak for a few seconds to minutes but not an hour.
I don't believe there's a 'gourmet method' or anything like that which can get better results than just 'correctly cooked' pasta.
But, you can measure the perfect cooking time/hydration by measuring the length ratio of cooked/dry (assuming spaghetti): https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2201/2201.09621.pdf
Perhaps you could use this to devise a protocol to parboil the pasta, and then finish hydrating it to the perfect consistency in the hot sauce.
https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
I've switched to his method. It works really well. Doesn't take as long to boil, uses less gas, uses less water, uses less salt (b/c you waste less in the water). Now I just heat the water to boiling, throw in the pasta, let it come back to a boil, stir a bunch, turn off the heat, and put the lid on. Works every time.
I was visiting a friend and had it all cooked together in the pan for the first time and it was eye opening.
My wife and I always heat the pesto a little in the pan - is that not the right thing to do?
BUT: Once I started cooking I started coaching her back. Specifically, I taught her to defrost her burgers before grilling.
My parents were on the lower end of rural middle-class so on the rare occasion we went to a restaurant, steak was avoided as the most expensive thing on the menu, and as kids, we didn't have the option of steak anyway. Our meats while growing up were mainly fish, chicken, pork, and hamburger. When I was a teen, my mom got a deal on a big box of steaks somehow and cooked them on the grill every other night for dinner. She made it sound like we were living like royalty but no matter what kind of sauces or seasonings I slathered on, they were always dry and tasteless. I voluntarily skipped a lot of dinners that summer and thought I just hated steak.
In my mid-20s, I befriended a Brazilian. He invited my spouse and I over for a barbecue. When we got there, I found out the only thing going on the grill was steak, a.k.a. Brazilian Beef. Basically thick chunks of steak "marinated" in rock salt then cooked over open coals to sear the outside, but never long enough to get the inside more than medium-rare. I probably mentioned not caring for steak but he assured me I was going to like it. And wow, he was right. So tasty, so juicy. Decades later, I still make it every chance I get.
My wife and I sometimes talk about how our parents basically ruined whole categories of food for us until we got out into the world and experienced (or learned for ourselves) how things were _supposed_ to be cooked.
Funny enough the other day I had a liverwurst sandwich, something my Grandmother would have easily recognized, except I bought it from a local whole animal butcher. What was once one of the cheapest forms of meat is now rare gourmet sandwich.
At this point, when I meet people my age who describe themselves as "picky eaters" my internal response is "Your parents were probably just bad cooks." At least the experience taught me to take responsibility for what I put into my body.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=super+tasters&ia=web
Interestingly, the wikipedia page for super tasters mentions that "some studies also show that increased sensitivity to bitter tastes may be a cause of selective eating." Interesting potential feedback loop.
I remember Anthony Bourdain asking his Sicilian family this question, and the table erupted in hot debate. I'm not sure you are "wrong".
Morocco is the leading supplier to the EU, accounting for 70% of the EU's total imports, followed by Turkey.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#Italy
Same ie potatoes in eastern Europe, a base in many many 'traditional' dishes. Yes if we look maybe 10 generations back, not so much for say 30 generations
So much of creativity is the result of mixing diverse elements in unique ways. And it's especially rich to rant about "purity" or cultural "ownership" regarding something that is fundamentally the result of such a fusion.
EDIT: Speaking of which, if you haven't tried pasta or pizza with a Portuguese pepper-tomato sauce, you're missing out.
Make noodle soup and let it sit in the fridge for a week. It will expand.
1) Salt your pasta water! Pasta is meant to be cooked in salty water that, according and excellently-put by Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) - "is reminiscent of the sea".
2) Save and use a splash of ("dirty") pasta water - aka the water the pasta was just cooked in - when you're tossing the pasta with the sauce. The water is filled with delightful liquified starch from the pasta, and it helps the sauce coat the pasta more thoroughly.
Had lots of funny moments in my life relating to salting pasta water. Almost all the people I know put like two pinches of salt into the water. Which causes them to look at me like I'm a psycho when I pour salt in for almost a full second, straight out of the container.
I can +1 both of your tips, I follow them both since I learned to cook and they're a (small but effective) game-changer.
INB4, "save your pasta water." I don't have a big kitchen or freezer, a pot full of water is a giant waste of space for me.
As for "salty water vs. salty sauce", the better way from a culinary perspective is both. Over salting one thing to compensate for another thing often leads to uneven flavor; if everything is salted roughly appropriately it all kinda comes together without any extra effort. I suggest trying it, hell maybe even do an A/B test. It's subtle, but salt penetrating the pasta during cooking makes it taste that much better.
disclaimer: it might be /slightly/ energy inefficient.
But salt your water, salting the sauce is just not the same.
- Ingredients cook differently when salted. Not sure about pasta specifically: I _think_ I can taste a difference between pasta cooked in salted water and pasta salted after being cooked, but I'm not certain.
- Definitely don't keep pasta water around, it's just for the sauce you're currently making
I can't ever say I've felt like cooking pasta without salt is "under salted." Is it as savory and delicious as what I'd buy at a restaurant? No - but having done it like that in the past I just think the benefits are marginal for how much you waste.
I make pasta _very_ often, I love it and want it to be as good as it possibly can, so I'm very happy optimising for taste. FWIW I use a tablespoon of salt per portion, and get a 1.3kg pack of salt every few months: hardly a huge waste!
- A good ratio of salt/water is one tablespoon per litre (or gallon). Reduce if the sauce is going to be very salty already (eg carbonara). We're talking kosher salt here (specifically Diamon Crystal), if using table salt it's probably going to be half of that: salt density varies a lot depending on the type.
- Cook your pasta is _as little_ water as possible. For some reason there's some myth that you want to cook pasta in a large volume of water: that's BS. What makes pasta water "liquid gold" is the starch that comes from the pasta, you want that as concentrated as possible.
A gallon is 3.5-4 litres. This doesn't seem right.
Cook your pasta is _as little_ water as possible.
This advice is worthless without some baseline like g of pasta to l water or how much water to cover your pasta with. You should cook your pasta in a large volume of water so the water will still be hot when you add the pasta and the pasta will be cooked as quickly as possible. Too little water and you risk the pasta sticking to itself as well. All this in mind, properly cooked pasta with diluted pasta water is a better outcome than starchy pasta water with pasta that has an odd texture. Maybe that last bit is personal preference, but when eating pasta, the first thing I notice is the texture of the pasta, not the starchiness of the pasta water. Hell, maybe we're thinking about the same amount of water, and you've just seen people try to cook with comically large amounts, I dunno.
And in dishes with less salt, you'd normally salt the pasta and not the sauce.
Any idea why the pasta carries it better? I usually add it to the sauce, the idea being both that I need to use less salt (healthier), and that it interacts with the herbs I added to the sauce.
It really doesn't. Oil doesn't mix with water. The only thing it does is oiling your pasta when you drain the water, which prevents the sauce from sticking correctly.
Pasta naturally don't stick together if you use a pot large enough, with enough water. And even then it doesn't stick, I honestly don't know how people make their pasta stick.
that's another secret to making pasta: abundant water, not just barely covering it.
Secondly, not stirring at all. Boiling will do some circulation, but you have to keep some amount of stirring to prevent a small sticking turn into a burned to the pan problem.
1. Choose your soffritto base. Onion or garlic are fine, more exotic variations include scalogno or porro.
2. Choose your tomato. Canned, fresh, whatever, just keep in mind that fresh ones may need longer cooking times. As for canned, check that they contain no seasoning at all!
3. Choose your grease. Oil or butter are fine, the standard is olive oil though. It may be hard to find proper olive oil outside of Italy I'm told.
4. Start cooking. Put your oil in a large pan, enough to contain all the pasta you plan to use afterwards. Not too much oil: just enough to cover the pan with a thin layer. Don't start heating the pan.
5. Cut your onion or whatever in small pieces and add them to the oil. Now turn on the heat at a reasonable level. Not too high but not low. Don't touch the onion!
6. When the onion looks a bit browny (not dark brown), add the tomato and lower at minimum the heat. If you have a thermometer, ideally you don't want to cross 60 degrees celsius over all the cooking period. This period can vary between 10 minutes and 60 minutes, it gives different tastes (all good) to the sauce. If you opt for the shortest time, go back at step 5 and at the same time start the next step.
7. Put 1l of water for every 100g of pasta in a pot. Add salt. With experience you'll get the right amount, usually I use about a small fist for two people (160-200g). Heat up the water and wait until boiling.
8. Drop the pasta in the water. Start a chronometer. Almost immediately mix it or otherwise it will stick. Wait a couple of minutes and mix again.
9. Meanwhile the sauce will start bubbling and, depending on your kitchen, you may need to mix it. If you see large discrepancies in texture, definitely mix. Otherwise don't. If it becomes too dry, add some water from the cooking pasta to the sauce.
10. When the chronometer is at cooking_time_on_pasta_packaging - 2 minutes, take a glass of water and fill it with water from the pasta pot. Dry the pasta, and put it in the pan with the sauce. Make the heat level for the pan a bit higher.
11. Cook it until "al dente", that is still a bit hard at the inside, but not completely. If the sauce dries too much (it should, if not turn the heat higher), add the water you kept in the glass. This step is where science stops and art begins: you need to calibrate your taste to your desired results and in turn calibrate water and heating. During all this step, mix your pasta in the same direction continuously. This is called "risottatura". Taste the pasta while cooking often.
11. Take everything off the fire, serve, add parmisan.
Edit: look at maccard comment for water and salt because I don't recall the right quantities. After a while you go by eye.
Edit 2: preventing more comments on oil, that is merely my very limited experience and I'd say, as a rule of thumb (not incontrovertible truth), that if you like your oil alone with bread it is a good oil.
Personally, I prefer cooking first for 5-6 minutes and then putting it in the sauce. Just my personal preference of course.
> 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...
About oil it's clear, I think, if not sorry, that that is my experience, and as such should be interpreted. If you have good oil, all is good. I like to use butter, it's not standard but it's used. Of course you need less butter than the same amount of oil you'd use.
As for water/salt, you may be right and I will update my comment. I go by eye because I'm accustomed to the right quantities (or I taste the water for salt) so I was going by memory.
South, oil.
North, butter.
My grandmother (from Parma) firmly believed that olive oil was to be used uncooked for salads and similar.
JFYI:
https://www.cittadellolio.it/2017/06/15/olio-cucina-4-secoli...
In that case your entire post can be replaced with "use high quality ingredients, cook them".
> Anyway, using fresh tomatoes, especially if small, changes a dish completely because of its texture.
The texture is different, but "fresh" tomatoes that are readily available to most people even in season from their greengrocers are a poor substitue for even supermarket tinned tomatoes. My experience in Italy (and france/spain/croatia) is that excellent stuff is _available_, but it's not necessary "just" to use italian tomatoes - there's plenty of awful tomatoes available, and a large amount of the high quality tomatoes that _are_ grown in italy are canned and available outside italy; again DOCG San Marzano Tinned Tomatoes are available in supermarkets here in the UK.
> About oil it's clear, I think, if not sorry, that that is my experience, and as such should be interpreted.
It _really_ didn't come across as that to me, it came
Another point: I don't think my whole comment can be reduced to the quality of ingredients. Of course better ingredient better your plate, but the process is important. Take good quality ingredients and mix everything in a pot, you don't get a good pasta (specific recipies excluded, general rule of thumb)
I would agree on this one. I live in France, so not that far from Italy, and our fresh tomatoes suck compared to Italian fresh tomatoes. Italian cuisine use simple products with few transformations because their products are amazing. If I try to do something as basic as tomato-mozzarella at home, it'll never be as good as the same Italian recipe because our tomatoes don't grow in the same weather.
Italian cuisine is very hard to make at home as well as they do it because of the quality of their raw products.
> 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.
There's a whole rabbit hole you can go down here. It's not clear cut AFAICT.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil_regulation_and_adult...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_fraud#Examples
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccahughes/2022/06/02/cheese...
[2] https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2022/12/e2m-of-fake-champa...
It may be available, but readily available seems like a bit of a stretch to me. It can be deceptively difficult to obtain.
> It's reliably reported that 80% of the Italian olive oil on the market is fraudulent.[0]
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the...
Spanish and Greeks have nothing to be shy about here.
Portugal as well.
If you have a recipe in mind to make, look it up on Serious Eats. Their MO is to give you ideas on how to level up each recipe (compared to food network or similar) and explain the principles behind the techniques.
And when you add in the tomato puree (or your preference), add a tiny bit of sugar. If the sauce looks like it has a sheen, it's ruined. Just a tiny amount will do.
Do this and your sauce will taste 10 times better. Not a fan of anchovies, but you won't even be able to tell.
You can just mix tomato sauce, oregano, salt, and pepper, then slap it on the pie. It cooks in the oven. No need to pre-cook it.
[EDIT] unless you're gonna use it for dipping. There's a reason places have a separate "marinara", often, for that purpose. Even giving your pizza sauce a quick simmer will make it a lot better for dipping. Raw pizza sauce is... palatable, but not great, for dipping.
Risotto would like a word.
Also different rices.
I usually sauté garlic in oil separately, discard the garlic and then use the oil as a sort of super garlic flavor concentrate.
I used to believe the actual ingredients were ~80% of the puzzle of cooking. I now believe they're closer to ~20% for most cases. The process you follow is way more important than anything else.
Just take a sweet onion for instance. The difference 2-3 minutes makes in a hot pan is incredible. If you simply chopped it up and threw it directly into whatever, you will wind up with something that tastes substantially less flavorful.
In the winter, I used to stay warm by turning up the thermostat. Then I discovered (via HN) the Low-Tech Magazine article, "Insulation: first the body, then the home." [0] The article argued that it's much more efficient to focus on heating yourself rather than your whole living space.
I invested in high-quality wool clothes that I wear in layers and warm slippers. Now, I keep my home about 5 degrees F cooler than I used to for the same comfort, and it's a big reduction in oil and wood consumption for home heat.
[0] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-ther...
I'm happy to pay the extra cost to heat the room I'm in with a space heater in the winter time.
My favorite t-shirt is now a lightweight filson 100% wool shirt that is just as comfortable by itself at 80 deg as it is under a button up shirt at 30 deg.
And doesn't get cold when wet like cotton does.
It really does fit the "life changing" topic if you've never tried it.
https://www.filson.com/tops/210g-merino-wool-short-sleeve-cr...
> Merino wool is able to ditch the itch thanks to its fiber's smaller diameter, or being “finer”. These fibers are more flexible and softly bend when pressed against the skin and, therefore, don't itch like other wool.
https://www.smartwool.com/discover/why-merino-wool/merino-wo...
There are other wools like possum wool with similar properties that are less ambiguous in terms of ethics. Merino can be ethically sourced.
If usage of animal products is a concern, that seems hardly relevent to a question of the feel of the material. I applaud the concern, just find the "could be" to be glib and/or ignorant
I'm happy to pay the extra cost
As an aside, we've got the externalities of climate change all wrong. Oil is a non renewable resource. We can't just give the planet a bunch of money and have it produce more oil for us to burn when we're uncomfortable. This cost is not really borne by you; it'll be borne by future generations.
It goes against common sense but is human nature.
I don't fault them for it, I'm guilty of it in some situations.
If you care about climate change, you should be advocating for completely green electricity generation, and carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. That would completely solve the fundamental problem.
Our society is fundamentally based on energy, and people like to use energy towards things that give them comfort. Taking away comfort is going to be a "nope" for most people.
It's unfortunate, but it does appear to have the opposite effect on some section of the populace. They just get pissed off and consume more out of spite. One thing to temper that is to massively tax (over-) consumption. Use taxes tend to be regressive, so to avoid targeting the poor, there needs to be some thought put into the tax structure.
If politics is the issue, let's not start about politics and partisanship? I don't know much about USA politics but it seems to me that this automatically turns your comment into something to ignore and dismiss for precisely half your population, as they're part of the party you're blaming as a whole (which might or might not be a fair thing to do).
Clean energy production is an everyone problem. I'd encourage not letting politicians pit you against other parts of the population, which is just an emotionally satisfying substitute to actually addressing fundamental problems.
You can both work with the current reality, where energy produced by non-renewable means should be used with more thought while advocating for a better solution for the future so you can have your luxury of heating the house to 25C if you so wish and can afford to...
I agree on not letting politicians pit one against other parts of the population, I also believe that people should take responsibility and be mindful of the luxuries they want and what's the cost to the general society, not only that you can afford to do it even though it's detrimental to others.
Although I agree that it isn't, in practicality most people do actually think that way, and have room in their heads for only one approach to a given problem.
And many people, for whatever reason, tend to prefer "solutions" that involve hating on some other part of the population. Politicians use this to great effect to avoid actually addressing problems.
This is the reason I so strongly advocate for focusing on fundamentals instead of the limited-return shame-based approaches.
And thus create a Veblen good, or a political status good.
Big trucks are a status symbol in part because they are gas guzzlers.
> completely green electricity generation
The problem with green electricity is that there is no such thing as green electricity.
The wind turbines? Massive blocks of concrete in the ground, heavy machinery to put it in, lifespan not so great. Solar? Destabilizes the grid, takes plenty of minerals to produce, do you know what happens with solar panels after their lifespan?
The only "green" electricity is one that isn't even produced to begin with.
> The wind turbines? Massive blocks of concrete in the ground, heavy machinery to put it in, lifespan not so great. Solar? Destabilizes the grid, takes plenty of minerals to produce, do you know what happens with solar panels after their lifespan?
These are all things that can be recycled given the correct application of energy. Not profitably as a standalone enterprise of course, but energetically positive in comparison to what a given installation produces in its lifetime. Therefore the added cost can be baked into the final cost of the energy produced.
> The only "green" electricity is one that isn't even produced to begin with.
Most of us don't care for your extreme version of "green", so I'll point back to my original comment. You're not going to be able to convince people to willingly give up comfort, so focus on reducing the impacts of people deciding to live that way. "Much better" is worse than "perfect", but "much better" is still better than what we're doing today. You're not going to get "perfect" unless humanity is wiped out completely.
Thing is with wind and solar, that’s the total harm done. When averaged out over the MWh they produce, you realise that in comparison to coal, oil or gas based power their CO2 impact is utterly negligible.
Is there more that can be done to reduce it further? Sure.
But saying because there is some lifecycle CO2 in their usage means they should be considered harmful is like saying cycling to work is harmful just like taking a helicopter, because rubber tyres aren’t entirely environmentally friendly. It’s honestly that absurd a comparison.
I'm in no way advocating for burning coal/oil/gas. I'm advocating for reduction.
If we were looking for an alternative, how is total (incl build/destruction) CO2 impact of wind/solar/etc compared to nuclear energy?
You know without any energy generation limitations, I once calculated that we could grow enough food to feed the world in less than 10000 skyscraper farms and return all those millions of hectares of cropland, pastures and plantations that we have terraformed over thousands of years to nature.
Yes, but we can try to do something about those "Green" activists who prevent the proliferation of the cleanest power on Earth: nuclear energy. Look at what did they do to Germany!
"Has Russia Been Financing Western Environmentalism?" (2022) [0]
"Putin Is Funding Green Groups to Discredit Natural Gas Fracking" (2017) [1]
"German green group branded a Russian ‘puppet’ over Nord Stream II gas pipeline" (2021) [2]
[0]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-envi...
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredi...
[2]: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-green-group-brande...
Increased low carbon energy by more than the first twelve years of the messmer plan in spite of being betrayed by the SDR immediately and then having the conservatives cut funding further?
"The anti-nuclear movement was one of the key driving factors behind the foundation of the Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) in 1980." [0]
[0]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-ge...
It's not customer's duty to pay more than they are asked, either in money or in inconvenience.
Citizen has no meaning in context of economy (except for taxation). So using it in context of economic activity mixes up two unrelated things.
Bad actors in the economy tend to exploit such mix ups to shift the burden away from them.
Read up on introduction and promotion of the concept of individual carbon footprint. Or the reality of recycling which was promoted as alternative to producers of plastic being directly responsible for introducing plastic into the environment.
What's the point of resources if they're not consumed? If we follow your advice to its logical conclusion, then we'd have oils that are consumed by nobody, because every generation doesn't want to consume it for fear of "cost [...] borne by future generations".
Just to add some nuance, this seems to imply everyone has the same environmental psychology. There are lots of (often competing) perspectives. If you have a utilitarian environmental psychology, you may think resources are there to be consumed for human benefit. If you instead have a stewardship environmental psychology, you may feel its your duty to protect those resources from being pilfered.
Stephen Kellert has a good description of these different perspectives in "The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature". Some of his categories include: utilitarian, naturalistic, ecologistic-scientific, aesthetic, symbolic, humanistic, moralistic, dominionistic, and negativistic. Other researchers define the human-environment interactions differently. For example, [1] defines them in terms of master, apathy, steward, partner, participant, and user. So it's not hard to see why people's thoughts differ on this issue. Like with most human value systems, it's not likely that there is a singular "right" perspective.
[1] https://www.academia.edu/download/53480185/Yoshida_et_al._20...
That's not really the logical conclusion of my advice. In actuality, there's a lot of possibilities between "I'm the one buying it, so I'm the only one dealing with the consequences" and "Not use any oil at all". But I get it, it's easier to argue against strawmen.
It's also easier to feel smug and accuse people of strawmanning when you're engaging in motte and bailey :^)
Accusations of fallacy aside, what is your actual argument then? That there's some non-zero harm inflicted on future generations when we consume fossil fuels, because they won't be able to use them anymore? That would seem like the motte argument, because it's trivially true, but what does this translate in terms of how we should behave? A cost of $0.000001 would be trivially easy to defend, but also means I can turn my thermostat to 78F guilt free.
You also argue that we've "we've got the externalities of climate change all wrong", implying that the future generations not being able to use fossil fuels is somehow worse than people being displaced by climate change today. What is your basis for that?
(Using oil for heating is outrageous, of course; as Mendeleev have said, it is exactly the same as heating your fireplace with money bills).
this is because we don't use very much nuclear power. There is currently enough known uranium reserves to provide 2 years of global energy production at current rates.
Moving the blame from corporations to the individual is how companies have avoided doing anything to combat climate change and only serves to make the individuals who do the blaming self righteous and the ones being blamed bad.
In fact, the person trying to shift blame here is you: by downplaying the smaller yet still significant role of individuals in a sustainable future.
We could easily have abundant nuclear energy so that “home heating” would be a non-issue and trivial cost.
Everyone's all "we must care about the environment" but then you ask them why Germany isn't reforesting (after razing the cities they built on old forests) and why Europe is deforesting at an accelerated rate and it's all this and that.
Plus, y’know, winter clothes are the best clothes. Tweeds, woolens, gloves, coats, scarves, hats: all these are great!
I was amazed to find out that even in this air conditioned age we spend far more heating buildings than air conditioning them (four times as much, according to the first Google hit I just found). That means that it makes a lot more sense to dress warmly in the winter than lightly in the summer.
"radiant IR" (red glowing elements) type heaters are wonderful tools for heating the body instead of the air.
(But if you've got some kind of super-insulated house, then never mind.)
Also, I'm not sure if there is an easy way to actually increase humidity without reducing the temperature. From my experience, increasing humidity while keeping the overall temperature at the same time requires additional energy.
Also, less humid air may allow you to actually wear less cloths as it is more difficult for the air to get energy off your body.
So, in that environment adding moisture makes the air warmer. (with proper heating of course)
I learned from a swimming teacher "water transmits heat/cold 10 times faster than air", therefore a logical conclusion is that dry air is insulating more than moist air.
Heat and cold transfer in air happens, just take your shirt off, you feel the temperature change immediately. Go to a very, very cold climate with dry air, if there is no wind, it truly doesn't affect you that badly. Same with Arizona in the summer ("it's a dry heat" is a state motto, IIRC)
In my experience 60 is cold no matter what. But feeling cold at 70 degrees stinks.
In England or Ireland? Ya, damp all the time all winter. It just depends on the environment. (don't want anymore moisture in the air)
You simply need layers and good enough deodorant. A bit of experience helps as well - you learn how warm to keep your base layer after some time. If you sweat in non-standard places (like under breasts), spray deodorant might be your friend.
I personally deal with this because of hormones - I'm a female in my mid-40s, so I get to have hot flashes and night sweats during part of my cycle right now.
For instance, I've finally learned to embrace "long-john" style long underwear under my pants, but it's only possible because I'm working from home. They are amazing layers for warmth, but unlike additional shirts, hoodies, jackets, scarves, hats, long underwear can't be casually removed. You have to take off your shoes and your pants! So if (when) I was going into an office, I always made the choice to have cold legs during the commute but comfortable legs all day. Now I can wear them in the morning, take them off if the day warms up, and put them back on whenever the temp. drops again.
But overall I'll echo a few comments in here that some of the more expensive gear, even as base layers, really is better technology. And getting to know my body and my situational habits, it's been possible to figure out layering clothing that worked for me, but only because I was working in tech and felt like I had enough money to get it wrong a couple times... If I were still living on a student or even "average" budget, I would've been much shyer about trying some new $30 shirt just to see if it agreed with me.
https://pothies.co.uk/hotwater-bottle-carrier-from-pothies/
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/01/the-revenge-of-the-h...
(HN discussion from 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023681)
If anyone her wants to pay the postage from NZ, I'll happily send them around the world for no cost :)
Alternatively, keep some fingerless gloves around - or learn to knit/crochet/sew and make some (they aren't all that complicated for something basic). For around the house, you could honestly convert some socks if you aren't worried about how they might look. I'd get some of the no-fray glue they sell at craft stores if you go this route. These are great when you are idle.
What can the doctor do about it?
Yes, doctor said I have poor circulation in my extremities. Except she said that using Latin, so that was super helpful. /s
From what I've read, the body primarily measures core temp around the chest, so wearing lots of layers on the body can cause the extremities to get cold since the body goes "everything is warm enough, no need to even try and warm things up with extra blood flow!"
So paradoxically, wearing less clothes can help.
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/12/30/
But what do you do when you're spread-eagle naked in the shade and still sweating like a pig? That's not a place for humans =)
There is a saying where I live that wind is when the sheep don’t have curly hair anymore. And rain when the fish are swimming on your eye level.
In all seriousness though, it’s of course true.
Another factor is to keep the material thin between the fingers or it affects typing. Wish I could design my own (sigh).
My main issue in the winter is my feet. (And I hate slippers.) Maybe I'll get one of these and put it under my desk.
[0] https://www.birkenstock.com/us/arizona-essentials/arizona-ev...
[1] - https://www.thenorthface.com/en-us/sale-c829803/mens-thermob...
something like these https://www.primark.com/en-gb/p/thinsulate-knitted-gloves-bl.... The particular ones I have also seem to work somewhat on touchscreens which is useful for the commute home
This works even when my hands are the only part of my body that feel cold. The body is effectively prioritizing keeping my core warm instead of the extremities, so adding insulation to the body has the trickle-down effect of warming the hands. On the other hand, trying to warm just the hands never feels like enough.
The scarf goes on the inside of the coat.
If you put the scarf on the outside, like you think you've seen in TV and movies, it's just decoration. Put it on the inside and it's an insulation layer and it blocks the cold air from blowing down your front. Absolutely game-changing. (Also, have a good coat, but that one seems more obvious to people.)
Hollywood doesn't know what winter is :P
I can tie a scarf to be just slightly looser than the gaiter, and the extra space decreases the dampness massively, while still retaining almost all of the warmth.
It does get a bit moist after prolonged biking, but not badly, and that's not really against my skin.
The main effect is that there's a little pocket of exhaled warm air, just enough to mix with the next inhalation and help warm it a bit.
I don't know what happened but it is as if this was never a problem at all. And it is not "getting used to the bad thing" I just don't feel bad at all.
Breathing through the nose only helps.
After two weeks of doing that (I started around Christmas) it was not a problem anymore.
At my local college there are a lot of people from the Bahamas. They often wear hoodies and sandals with socks in the winter! It can get to -20C here and hoodies just won't cut it and sandals with socks could very quickly mean frost bite.
Yes scarfs are great since necks are a prime spot to loose heat during winter. A scarf or even a hood both together are even better. Long coats too none of these waits level ones get a coat at least past your waist preferably past your butt.
Layers are important more for temperature control. Even a hoodies and some sweaters can be warm if you have enough and one outside with wind protection.
Boots not sneakers to keep warm and the grip. So many people wear sneakers all winter now it blows me away. They're slippery, cold, and they probably cost more than winter boots these days.
But for a few years I lived in a very well insulated (smallish) apartment in a moderate climate. When it would get cold, I would turn the heat on. My bill would go up by a few dollars.
Then, I changed jobs and started working in a colder building. I spent more on warm clothes than I usually spent on heat! (And I had baseboard resistive heating, and I payed extra for wind power.)
A sweater and warm socks are game changers, as is a warm winter jacket and a good scarf. Add some tea and candles and the winter isn't half bad anymore. It's much easier to get through the cold months if you don't dread being outside.
So most likely you still need to keep heating on but it might not need to be super high - just enough to have convection from heater moving air at home and having some ventilation letting in a bit of outside air in and warm one getting moisture out.
I wish floor heating was more widespread where I live.
Just silly not to focus the heat where the need is. Do you light up the whole house to illuminate your desk?
I'm not guessing or imagining anything, I know it's much worse.
I focus the heat where the need is - the air around me. Otherwise, everything you touch is cold, the air you breath is cold, exposed skin gets cold. Sex only under blankets? No thanks.
To be clear, I'm not talking about freezing, everything under 18 degrees C is really cold for me, and under 23 degrees C is somewhat cold.
People talk about wearing fingerless gloves at home - yeah I did that as a kid because we were poor, never doing it again unless I go broke.
That's what happens when central planning makes the above observation.
[1] https://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/heating.html
I just moved and now renting a place with electric water heater with pump moving that heated water around via radiators. It is quite large apartment with shitty, to be honest, insulation. The difference between "I put several layers of clothes on" and "I am wearing a t-shirt" is about 600 kWh per month. The same amount of energy is needed to prodice 30 kg of aluminium or run a single rack in a datacenter for just 2 days.
Never in your life your energy consumption can be compared with industrial usage. Likewise, never in you life your water consuption can reach a visible fraction of agricultural irrigation. Stop listening to coprorate PR.
If every home ran a server rack for two days a month, or produced 30kg of aluminum, that would obviously add up extremely quickly.
Congratulations...
Me: "Why don't you turn on the shower, wait for it to get warm, then get in?"
Him, realizing he'd been using a shower wrong for over 6 decades: "... huh."
> The best part of having cold showers every day? You'll never get arthritis!
> The worst part? You'll have cold showers every day.
Is that so? My joints in fingers and toes can hurt quite badly after being to too much cold water. Doesn't feel like it's helping them in any way - quite the opposite.
This can save a lot of water if you're the type to let your shower run until it is warm. So some jurisdictions encourage their installation.
I've just started looking into either getting a tank-less water heater in the master bathroom or a recirculating system to save water. I like that the recirculating system would help with the entire house, not just that one bathroom, but it is looking to be quite expensive and wasteful of energy, unless we can do something like have switches in the bathrooms and kitchen to manually turn on the recirculator for a few minutes before use instead of running the water for a few minutes.
Fossil gas tankless units are nice because they can be installed on the exterior of a home and are maintenance free, but emit CO2 and can be expensive depending on your gas costs (they’re better for seasonal dwellings imho). Ideal combination is resistive instant heaters at points of use with a heat pump water heater for the whole dwelling.
When you turn on the shower, the head operates normally while the water is cold. When the water becomes warm a valve in the head closes to stop the flow. There is a button on the head you press to open the valve, which then stays open until you turn off the water.
The idea is that many people turn on the shower to warm up but don't just wait around in the bathroom to jump in as soon as the water is warm. They go do other things like start their coffee machine or wake up the kids or check the news and weather. Between the time the shower warms up and they get around to coming to see if it is warm they might waster several minutes worth of warm water.
With this clever shower head they don't waste that water. Also, if they can hear the shower running from wherever they are doing other stuff when they hear it stop they know the warm water is ready.
This seems natural to me, but I've never met anyone else who does it this way.
At other apartments, I’ve had more involved systems.
This thread is making me think of that blog title: Reality has a surprising amount of detail.
It's probably most useful when the hot water comes up quick, less useful when you have to wait a while for that. And it fails horribly when the hot water isn't working.
I've never felt the need to adjust though, except for shower-only stalls and the like.
As I understand it (and I am NOT a plumber) -- when you turn on the hot water, it pushes hot water up the line. Turn off the water, and that water will cool. But, if you add a one-way valve that allows flow from hot to cold, it will allow the higher pressure hot water line to flow into the cold water line so that it keeps hot water to the tap so that you don't have to wait (in my case) 5 minutes to flush out the cold water that has accumulated before getting to the hot water.
A plumber friend suggested this to me when I complained about my master bathroom (the furthest in the house away from the heater) taking SO LONG to warm up. Then he came out and installed it in about 15 minutes (which would probably amount to a one hour minimum charge for a plumber not doing it for free) plus a $10 part he had us buy on Amazon.
TLDR, now instead of taking 5 minutes to heat up from ice cold to warm to eventually hot, the hot water is warm from the second I open it, and hot within about 15-20 seconds.
It seems like a no brainer, but the prices are so high (like £700 / $900) that it would take many many years to pay back the cost, so it wasn't worth it.
So you should turn it off when you go on vacation.
This mainly saves time, but it also saves water if your shower mixer valve doesn't go to 100% hot. (It's generally good to keep the hot limiter below 100%, to avoid full-body scalding.)
Then when you get in, you pull a cord and it releases the full pressure of nice hot water.
I do it to help others, not myself.
With the method you described, it takes longer, with more water usage, to get into position, plus you let some water spray out into the rest of the bathroom as you transition inside it.
The Superman method: put your hand up to block the blast.
The Spiderman method: jump to the opposite side of the shower to avoid the blast.
The clever method: turn on the shower and wait outside.
Years of marriage before we figured out I hate cleaning small things (silverware and glasses) and she hates cleaning big things (pots and pans). We permanently changed how we clean up after meals.
Not exactly in line with your premise, but changed my entire outlook about expressing what I want or prefer about almost anything.
They still refuse to do the proper technique. They cut themselves regularly. Their stubbornness knows no bounds. Even when it involves literal blood at least once a week.
Once I realized my wrist should be straight when using a knife and adjusted my stance to be slightly angled away from the cutting board, my knife skills leveled up a ton.
The only cooking knives really meant to be held always by the handle entirely are heavy butcher cleavers, that have all the weight in the blade and you're meant to sling it around. Even a paring knife is often best used by holding the blade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s10etP1p2bU
I was taught to choke up on the blade by a Western chef as well.
Then I went to Japan and was told to only hold the handle for their style of knives. Apparently, they balance the weight of the blade and handle differently there.
I tried to choke up on the blade at a very professional knife store in a market and was immediately corrected by one of the Japanese chefs there.
Then, the following evening, we went to a Michelin star rated kaiseki, all of the chefs were holding the knives by only the handle, no choking.
I realized I probably looked very foreign choking up on the blade in that store earlier. Humbling moment!
There is something which grabs your attention and fills you with admiration when you see a Master displaying his expertise so effortlessly and easily.
I am now going to watch more of Mr. Jacques Pepin.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34051860
The new protocol is MEAT instead of RICE.
The knowledge hasn’t reached every medical provider yet
- Soap: it disrupt the skin microbiome. Only useful for hand washing and to clean private parts / the bottom. Even then use high quality soap like Marseille soap or Aleppo soap.
Note: Also as mentioned in the comments if you avoid soap / deodorant you *will* probably need to shower two times a day even without doing physical activities. Three times with physical activities.
You may also need to particularly rub the smelly parts of the body (e.g. the armpits) with a clean sponge, use mild to hot water (cold water doesn’t do it without soap) and trim your body hair. There is no magic. People use soap for a reason: it’s more “practical” and it requires less care to stay clean
And if you are used to wash yourself with soap and you brutally stop you may smell a little the first month until your microbiome is able to handle all the waste and your skin to balance its oil production. Even if you shower multiple times a day.
- Shampoo: Most shampoos are very a agressive for your scalp / hairs and should be avoided. Especially if you have fragile / curly hair. You can wash them with plain water or conditioner instead.
Note: Using a gentle shampoo without silicones and surfactants can still be useful from time to time. Especially to reset the pH of the scalp.
Also using a shampoo rarely and co-washing instead can be impractical if you have long hair as it’s way harder to clean and takes far longer to dry
- Toothpaste: it can be useful but it’s not so important. What really is important is to brush your teeth energetically to remove by mechanical friction the dental plaques and to change toothbrush frequently. Avoiding for a time to use toothpaste and using dental plaque revealer can be a great way to learn how to properly wash one’s teeth
Note: As someone else noted “energetically” means speed and taking your time. *Not* applying pressure on your teeth. Also toothpaste helps the teeth by providing fluoride. It’s just that using it every time may not be so useful and do not replace brushing your teeth effectively
Soap and toothpaste are good things. These are miraculous modern inventions. Use them.
The solution is to remove them, but you can only do that by using strong solvents.
So you use shampoos that contain strong solvents. This damages your hair, so you make sure to use conditioners to repair the damage. Except they don't repair, they fill in the holes with silicones. The silicones are now deeper into your individual hair strands. It looks good, but after a while, they break down. So you use solvents, deeper this time.
This damages your hair. Then you use conditioners. Most conditioners are filled with silicones that are not water soluble. Yet, after a short time...
The comment we are commenting under is not even saying that but recommending that we pay attention to the ingredients: "Most shampoos are very a agressive for your scalp [...] Using a gentle shampoo without silicones and surfactants"
Here is an interesting web application that allows you to scan products to know their ingredients. It tells you if they contain hard to remove silicones or harsh solvents. https://curlscan.com/
Using it to scan the brands at the stores that are local to me reveals that only a small minority of product do not contain the silicone-solvent circle.
Anecdotal, sure, but I have been teaching this to all the women in my life and they all report back that they are able to go longer without washing their hair with products now that they pay attention to the ingredients. Turns out that for a lot of people, we were going through the motion of adding a coat of product and removing that coat of product daily instead of actually fighting grime and sweat.
As something to do, or something to avoid? Most tribespeople and animals don't floss and have healthier teeth than modern people. I'm not sure sawing between ones gums is the ideal way of removing plaque, and I suspect is not been tested properly because I don't believe people actually do floss every every day.
Yes, obviously.
> Which may be more unrealistic than flossing every day...
Why?
>Why?
Assuming your question is in good faith, because refined sugar is everywhere. Not just in sweet treats which are commonly part of cultural celebration but also in a wide range of processed and prepared foods.
The problem with this comparison is that most tribespeople had kids by 18-20 so health issues that come much later don’t have much of an evolutionary hit. Losing teeth at 40 was not going to change things much for their genes.
Most tribespeople have diet that basically has no sugar, no processed carbs, and most men died by 40-50 due to intertribal warfare/infection so it didn’t matter much if you lose some teeth at 50. When you see documentaries of tribespeople almost all the old people have some missing teeth. If you don’t mind loosing teeth when you get older then I guess you can ignore that advice.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34575939
You might have something meaningful to contribute to the discussion, but using a "word" like "innit" is not going to get anyone to take your comment seriously.
> Shampoo: Most shampoos are very a agressive for your scalp / hairs and should be avoided. Especially if you have fragile / curly hair. You can wash them with plain water or conditioner instead.
Wait, what? I would love to see some supporting evidence for all this.
It obviously depends on your body, diet, and microbiome.
There's no definitive answer like if Earth was balls around the Sun. The answer is personal. Does that work for you or not? What have you tried and what works and what doesn't
Like the friend of mine who told me she never used shampoo in which my immediate reaction was “no shit..”
On the flip side, I do have a close friend who admitted he only showers every three days or so, and smells impeccable (which is extra funny because he has anosmia)
On the other hand, moisturizing and sunscreen has helped with dryness and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation from acne.
Soap is a rather recent invention (the Romans didn't have it until later in their Empire), and one that until 1-2 centuries ago people used sparringly. And yes, they did clean themselves with bathing, even in medieval times, despite the prevalent myths about those times.
Also, the last 80 years or so, after TV became popular soaps and fancy shampoos have been marketed to death with BS snakeoil claims. 99% of what you hear in those ads is bogus, including claims about the efficacy of their fancy sounding ingredients...
Might also want to check the book "Clean"
[0] https://www.aobiome.com/published-articles-and-papers/
[1] https://mightynest.com/shop/bath-body/skin-care/soaps-bodywa...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20181116064007/https://motherdir...
I have had luck opting for gentler shampoos and not using them every wash, but I wouldn’t speak for anyone else. There is large variance in peoples’ bodies.
They don’t smell it because their olfactory neurons have habituated.
Or maybe until you stop noticing the smell? Ask a friend perhaps.
For example, if you've been asking "I don't smell bad right?? I smell great, right!?" you're unlikely to get honest replies.
Reminds me of "The Mom Test" [1]. The book has a few tricks that can help with asking tough questions and receiving an honest feedback.
[1] https://www.momtestbook.com/
And you indeed smell if you don’t shower two times a day without soap and deodorant.
And even by showering two times a day you will smell the first month until the skin regulates its oil production and the microbiome is able to handle skin wastes.
Great book btw.
The big thing some people don't do is shower after work before going out for the evening. Women might be able to get away with that, but if you're a man and you occasionally sweat you can't, soap or not.
If you're not dancing closely with people maybe you can extend that time a little bit, but those are the numbers we settled on as a dance community who regularly had dances longer than 4 hours...
1) Soap/Shampoo: I stopped using fancy perfumed big-brand shampoos (Dial/Dove/Pert/etc. filled with things like Methylchloroisothiazolinone which, despite being an endless source of literary entertainment, is just a preservative) and started using very very simple soaps, like Dr. Bronner's all-purpose castile stuff, and I've found my hair/body is just as clean and doesn't turn to oil/grease after a skipping one day
2) Toothpaste: I switched to a brand that does NOT have sodium lauryl sulfate (which just makes fake foam) and any minor bumps or scratches (from an awkward tortilla chip chomp, for example) no longer cause days worth of pain. MAJOR life improvement.
Potentially bad advice. If you apply too much pressure or use too hard of a toothbrush you will get yourself early gum recession. Brush gently using a soft brush, ideally electric because it cleans better. Lots of info available on this online, or ask your dentist.
I always assumed dynamic tripod grip was what was taught, and the best, as it's how I write, but a couple of my kids used a cross between lateral tripod and quadrupod - and their teachers would complain about their writing.
I had to restrain myself when I realized this is what they'd been taught, and next met the teachers responsible.
Oooo-uh head waveang
The ones I still hear despite knowing the correct lyrics are the first itemized one in the bullet list in that article, "there's a bathroom on the right".
My personal favorite one though is "I want to rock and roll all night, and part of every day" (instead of "party every day"), mostly because unlike most mondegreens it sort of works, but changes this confident declaration of desire into a bizarrely flaccid one. (Listening directly to the audio in a pristine listening environment like I'm in now I don't hear this, but in a normal day-to-day environment with other life happening I can still hear this.)
A modern day warrior Mean, mean stride Today's Tom Sawyer Mean, mean guy
The most naturally-ergonomic toilet is actually the seatless "turkish" hole. Unfortunately it's often not the easiest to use in a hygienic manner, and it requires a lot of space. I wish someone would invest in evolving that model into something better.
> old people have problems squatting.
They shouldn't be required to, but everyone else should have the option to preserve their bodies better.