kgin (u/kgin) - Readit News

kgin commented on I love you, Hacker News, but you’re toxic kg.dev/thoughts/i-love-yo... · Posted by u/kashnote

kgin · 4 years ago

Most of the internet is actually a MMORPG where you use comment boxes to tell people why they're wrong.

HN is a very advanced level in this game, with high standards for gameplay, but it's very much a part of the game nonetheless.

kgin commented on Launch HN: Anja Health (YC W22) – Freezing stem cells at birth for future health anjahealth.com... · Posted by u/pkukp9

biot · 4 years ago

My understanding is that stem cells are special because they have the potential to turn into any type of specialized cell the body needs, whereas regular cells have already turned into specialized cell types and there's no un-frying the egg, as it were.

Has there been any research on producing stem cells from specialized cells? Or is there something fundamentally impossible about this, akin to producing the original content given only a hash value?

kgin · 4 years ago

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41587-022-00002-4

Even though nobody is quite sure how it works, it's possible to reverse the epigenetics of a cell back to its original differentiated state and even back to stem cell form not entirely unlike rolling back git commits.

kgin commented on Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project? · Posted by u/JNRowe

FriedPickles · 4 years ago

When you plug a Macbook in with the included two-prong power adapter, sometimes it buzzes slightly when you stroke it gently (ground loop). Im working with a factory to make a grounded duckhead adapter to fix this.

https://ibb.co/P4Bjstg

kgin · 4 years ago

I think this actually will succeed

kgin commented on Ask HN: How do you cope with realizing you mostly wasted your potential? · Posted by u/throwawaynay

kgin · 4 years ago

Listen, you are being overly harsh on yourself.

You say that your intelligence was “given” to you, like a gift. But then you turn around and say the parts of you that made choices that didn’t result in the life you compare yourself to… those parts you say are 100% your fault. You’re saying your positive qualities are from the outside, but your negative qualities are all you. You’re not being fair to yourself.

We make choices, yes. You can choose to take job A instead of job B. But you can’t choose to be the kind of person who chooses job A instead of job B. Or if you can, you can’t choose to be the kind person who chooses to be the kind of person who chooses job A. At some level, there is something that you don’t choose. It just is. It’s not “choices all the way down”.

This powerful feeling inside you right now is a gift, as awful as it feels. You can, if you want, channel it into the energy you’ll need to confront the things that held you back. Change takes incredible amounts of energy and this feeling combusting inside you might be enough to nudge you in a different direction. Or if you want, you can sublimate that energy and apply it to something like helping bright kids growing up in tough circumstances. You may not be the elite 10x graybeard you imagined, but you probably know better than anyone how to help kids who are growing up like you did. Or you may take that energy and channel it into something totally different.

The way you get past the regret is to use this fire for something. But please, please do not take this fire and turn it on yourself like a blowtorch. Don’t use it to beat yourself and make yourself more timid and more afraid and more hobbled by your past.

You’re going to be ok.

kgin commented on Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost? · Posted by u/trendingwaifu

unfocussed_mike · 4 years ago

(wishy-washy, unverifiable emotional pseudo-psychology follows)

What I mean is -- you do not need to have a partner and your own kids. There are all sorts of families (macro and micro) out there that can benefit from us.

On the micro side: you can allow yourself to be included in your best friend's family, you can allow friends to become close enough that you know they'd be there if you were sick and vice versa. You can think about lonely older people who you feel kinship for and be brave enough to offer them support. You can sometimes convert former romantic relationships into trusted friendships, and you can widen your romantic ideals to include joining a single-parent family that already exists.

One step up: you can treat your wider friendship circle like a family, believe in them like you would your family.

On the macro side of things: you can join a community and allow yourself to be absorbed into it as someone of significance; you can help people find their people. Introduce people to other people; be the reason other people have people.

All of these things require a kind of bravery that deserts most of us at some time, and obviously a kind of comfort with other people that not all of us find easy at all, but really any step you make to try to build a "family" is better than no step.

When you're young you don't need it and you forget to look for it, because new experiences outweigh family ties. When you're old you need it and it is harder to find.

When you're 35... this is the time to enjoy the thrill of being brave and seeking real connections with a mature mind, and allow yourself to think of it as building family and significance into your life.

I managed some of this -- a real social life, real connections -- for a long time from the age of 33[0], and then the pandemic has undone a lot of that; people have scattered. And if all of the above sounds preachy and patronising it is because it's really all I think about again -- how do I get that back, at the age I am now?

[0] "Lord, to be 33 forever"

kgin · 4 years ago

This is a beautiful answer, thank you. It puts into words so much of what I’ve had at the back of my mind for awhile now.

kgin commented on Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost? · Posted by u/trendingwaifu

athinggoingon · 4 years ago

Reading through the comments, does it feel like they have no idea what you're going through or where you're coming from? If so, let me tell you what worked for me. None of these comments ever works without having someone around you that you can reality test with. You need to find a partner in life. You need to get married. And no, a live-in partner won't do.

That is it. There is no other solutions for you. Meetups, hobbies, social contacts, "experiences", ... They won't work. You will come back to an empty home at the end of it and discover the same old problems you were trying to deal with.

Just get married.

kgin · 4 years ago

How does one “just get married”?