An article like this that makes no mention of Tardigrades?
"They are among the most resilient animals known, with individual species able to survive severe conditions – such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation – that would quickly kill most other forms of life. They have survived exposure to outer space." [1]
> But if 2-9-3 really had been isolated from its relative for a quarter billion years, enough random mutations in the rDNA should have accumulated for there to be a difference of at least 50 base pairs
Occams razor definitely points to this just being a sterilization problem. But it would be funny if the bacteria was just way more stable than people expect.
This has occurred to people! But if you run the numbers, they are still not good enough in that early (~100 My) window when stars in the parent nebula are close together, you get something like 1 chance in 1000 of possible panspermia events (based on modeling lumps of rock flying back and forth). Not terrible odds, but nothing like the Mars -> Earth odds.
A more extreme version of this is the idea of panspermia in the early universe, when the cosmic microwave background radiation was warm enough to keep water liquid: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/habitable.pdf
Yes indeed, I've thought panspermia in the Sun's natal cluster is an interesting idea. What could make it even more interesting is that small bodies in our Solar System (and likely its sister systems) were warm enough for liquid water to exist for some millions of years then, so there would be an enormous volume of material in which Origin of Life might have occurred (and, if it did, to then spread after the parent body froze and then fragmented.)
It would make a fine science fictional scenario that could get around the Fermi problem: those 10,000 or so systems could have life, but the rest of the universe not have life.
>those 10,000 or so systems could have life, but the rest of the universe not have life.
That's also neat to contemplate, thanks.
I was thinking bigger: if panspermia gets dramatically more viable, then nebula could switch over in their probability distribution from "default sterile" to default teeming.
In this scenario, we could find (related!) life essentially everywhere, and caused by panspermia no less, despite numbers still saying panspermia is wildly improbable for mature stars.
"Default teaming" really isn't viable due to the Fermi problem.
But if OoL is extremely unlikely, the cluster panspermia idea still allows extraterrestrial life to reasonably exist and be reachable, because that life didn't require a separate highly unlikely OoL event.
I think SETI should focus on stars that look like the Sun's siblings.
"Teaming" (social) organisms are also fun, sure. ;)
The Fermi paradox assumes we'd be good at observing aliens, and that aliens will leave evidence that's conspicuous to us. These two statements are roughly equivalent, basically saying there can't be too much "impedance mismatch" between the two.
But again, even besides that, the nebula can still "teem" even though we never see any here on Earth, because the Sun vs nebula math is just so different for interstellar travel too. Many civilizations, seeded from common dirty chemistry, then permanently separated by vast distance as the star migrates out of the nebula.
TL;DR nebula parameter differences solve Fermi even in a teeming universe, but I doubt we'd see the aliens even if they were here. ;)
Forgive my ignorance here, but at such an early period in the solar system, wouldn't there have been few if any rocks with sufficient gravity for life to form on?
I mean we as humans have a way to approach light speed (with nuclear explosions) today, with our primitive technology. Anything even 500 years more advanced than us can probably travel very long distances.
I think if we do not first figure out how to cooperate on this planet, the division will only grow. IMO the Expanse is more or less what I would expect if we began colonizing the solar system right now.
We’re going to be able to potentially make “perfect” humans through genetic engineering less than a 100 years from now, we are not stuck with our current state forever is something I never see sci-fi tackle, probably because it would take away most things in a story humans find interesting.
For you, life cannot wait. Please go out and make contacts. Be welcoming to people. Fall in love.
I wonder how my life would have turned out differently. I am a nerd. I am an introvert. I am single. Mostly, I am enjoying it. Sometimes - and increasingly more often - I am questioning it. I have baggage. Was visiting my (younger) sister's grave today. She had baggage with a sad outcome. I am thinking more about my existence.
I wish this world would be a more kind place. And I am praising anyone who is contributing to that. Try to be a contributor.
Maybe OP didn’t read the article, but often the title of the article is more interesting to HN than the article itself, which may be the case in this instance given it’s (currently) the top-voted comment.
(As a side note, I wish titles were more fitting to the article, vs. trying to bait clicks with catchy titles that often suggest a different topic.)
Perhaps a good solution in this case would be to add something to the HN title, say (to borrow a suggestion from the author): "How long can life wait? (microbe survival times in salt, permafrost, and open space)".
I'm not thrilled with this kind of clickbait-y title, but when you're subscribed to the blog, you know what it's likely to be about and ignore that, and the problem only appears here when this context is lost.
What would a better title have been, on a substack that is exclusively about space exploration?
"Hey lonely HN nerds, wipe the tear from your eye and come read about microbe survival times in salt, permafrost, and open space"? Something else? I'm open to suggestions.
Besides activity, another advice would be mindset.
As in, are you ready to meet your dream partner today and invite him to your home?
No? Not ready? Place is a mess and you are not really comfortable opening up in the first place right now?
Then this would be something one can work on.
Does not mean your place needs to be always perfect and a date does not have to start by inviting someone in. But are you actually ready for it?
What is it, that you really want?
While I was single for a long time, I was neither clear nor prepared for a partner, yet yearning for one. That did not work. I had some growing up to do first.
My advice is, go dancing. Learn to enjoy your body and how to move it freely for fun, then you will find a likeminded body to enjoy together. But depending where you life, finding a good place to dance with nice people and not just drunk idiots can be a bit harder unfortunately.
Triathlon clubs are another great place to meet people. My club has has 8 weddings this year from people who met training. Turns out chatting over an 80 mile bike ride is a great way to get to know someone.
LOL, this obsession people have with dancing. This is horrible advice. Find a club or social scene doing something you like, don't pick up a random hobby you don't like just to "meet people".
Dancing is good advice because you have a good mix of genders and it's something you can grow to love over time. It's also a great community that's fairly welcoming once you start going regularly. Take a class and you automatically have a social group of other beginners.
The problem with nerds finding a social scene for what they already enjoy doing already is that there's a very good chance it's going to be a male-dominated activity. Going to a tech meetup or a board game night is a decent way to make friends, but not so much a mate.
I just share how I successfully meet and connect with women.
Dancing is the language of the body. I don't like small talk and am probably a introvert, but by dancing - connection comes easy and natural to me (at the right place).
Besides, the village dance was the traditional way for couples to hook up. And before that, there was the tribal drum.
I met my wife during climbing. Many girlfriends before due to organizing climbing sessions for various folks. Go climbing. Its just natural movement, sort of like vertical ballet on the wall, feels absolutely great, one does semi-continuously builds massive mental resilience to everything in life, since looking in the face of your death and coming out on top, multiple times an evening, many evenings, builds character like very few other endeavors. People you meet in community are often very inspiring. Its also high intensity interval training for upper body.
And then you try climbing outdoors on rocks big and small and thats it, people quit their careers and do vans/camping for rest of their lives just to do climbing (plus connected sports, there are many).
Can be many other activities, dancing ain't more special than many others. I'll stick with my climbing, you with your dance. Everybody wins.
"As far as village dance blah blah, people absolutely meet at parties, lots of people also dance at parties, correlation is not causation."
Maybe do some more casual science on social history?
But you surely can meet partners however you like and not everyone needs to love dancing, but the "obsession" people have with it simply goes back a looong way.
And aside, I actually do claim anyone who is not physically handycapped, very likely enjoys dancing if introduced to it in a easy way (look at how most children behave if you give them a rhytm), most grownups nowdays just associate it with awkward social situations, which I think is sad. I know some fellow nerds of mine, forever single, forever avoiding all situations where they would meed potential partners.
If you can walk, you can dance, despite having other major malfunctions with one's body. Just look at that contestant on "Dancing with the Stars" who has only one leg.
Lifting weights is a way to show physical dominance. Physically dominant men provide security and safety to women meaning they will be seen as the best mates. Throughout history the most physically dominant men had the most sexual success. Therefore I recommend you don't dance and lift weights instead.
See how fucking annoying and dumb this bro science is. Dancing is nothing special, just happens to be a social activity YOU like and I agree a lot of women like it. But the advice to "learn to like dancing" if you don't is bad.
Not sure how open you are challenging your perspective. Because in some ways, yes lifting weights does work for a certain subset of women.
But if you take the dominance angle, dancing works better here. Because it shows dexterty, moving along with other people .. and self confidence in a social setting. Knowing how to dance through life. Not awkwardly stand aside. And lifting weights (on its own) is just a indicator of muscle mass, not muscles in combination with brain, which is evolutionary much better. Otherwise we all would have evolved as big bulls.
Unfortunately, to get to where dancing becomes enjoyable you have to go through the "two left feet" stage. That filters out most people. Moving around the floor in perfect harmony with the music and your partner is wonderful.
The ship hasn't sailed at all. You're mid-20s are gone, of course, but don't waste your 30s worrying about your 20s; fully embrace this moment and this phase of life (not that phases are so tightly tied to age), even the sad parts.
Time seems to go faster, the older you are. When 5, a day lasts enormously, a month forever away.
When 30, a day is still noticeable. When 50, a day flies past. When 70? A week vanishes so very quickly.
A bitter truth of age, is the older you get, the less time you have left? Well, the faster that time seems to move to you. It's as if the more you try to hold on, the faster it goes away.
There are ways to improve this. New experience is one. Doing the same thing every day, with no challenge or change, just makes life fly by.
You can be an introvert and still experience loads of new and of change. Trust me on this. And as a geeky introvert, you have a mind to learn daily, and more importantly, learn different things, not just tech.
But I guess what I'm saying is, do indeed "live more", but do it as you. Don't let these weirdo extroverts make you dance to their tune.
It seems to me that my mental model of how long I've lived is it's a fixed amount of time. Hence, the longer I live, the more perceived time is compressed.
I'm something of the opposite. Very introverted, moved to a very extroverted American city (which one isn't) in my 20s for work and excitement. I pushed myself - dates, meetups, social stuff. Never cold approaches but now if you'd met me you'd think me an extrovert. I'm not, because people stress and exhaust me, but I hide it.
In my 20s and early 30s whenever I left the city sometimes on the weekends, I'd feel this FOMO like I'm missing something fun.
Something changed as I got older. I think around the pandemic. When I was in the city on a beautiful day, I felt this sad feeling like I should be in nature instead.
I eventually got a place in the country. Now that I'm not single, I couldn't give two craps about going out, meeting people, and I hate crowds and noise. There's no greater pleasure than sitting and listening to water sounds outside, reading and studying.
People are overrated, but you need them sometimes. Don't feel bad about being an introvert.
There's a point when it feels it's over, there's no point. Some people think more about the end rather than the existence and realise there's no point – as in, there's really no point to any of this. This feeling doesn't necessarily mean the person is heading to the sad outcome. I mean that could have been a relief, at least to the person. But the saddest outcome is that there's really no recovery for some people and evolution keeps them going.
haa... you really don't need others to justify your life you know... it's annoying how that's always the default, and how often i'm pushed to conform to it.
The best comment of the day; thank you. For those comments wondering how to do it, the first step is to see, know, and love yourself. Nobody else can know you if you don't; nobody else can love you if you don't. And once you do know and love yourself, you'll find the other people are not threatening - they can't really hurt you; you'll want to know and love them.
And if you think you know yourself, this is silly, it's easy, you don't know even what you're missing. I once thought that. Now I see that nobody really knows themself completely.
Please don't take up discussion space for something else like that. You can write about that in plenty of other places where it's germane to the topic at hand.
Your comment is far outside the culture here. If you don't like someone's comment, read something else; click the minus sign (collapse thread) if you like. HN pages are not paper; we're not running out of space, and this thread has only 64 comments.
Also, have some empathy. You're talking to a human being.
I think their comment is the most beautiful thing I've seen today; I'm so glad they left it here.
You have a point, that the comment isn't actually about the article. And yet, einrealist also has a point that is worth hearing. It's OT, but it's worth hearing.
I really hate these articles that come out with these deep philosophical questions and then you open it up and it’s something stupid about microbes in a meteor or whatever. I was expecting a much more relatable read.
To answer the question, you should really not “wait” for anything in life anymore past 30. At some point between 35-45 you will likely cross the halfway point of your life and will begin the journey of being on your way out. Life has a cadence, and it’s not fun to be past that point still “waiting” for things you thought you’d have.
Obviously this advice will hit differently for people past a certain age, I’m mostly talking to people in their 20s. They can be saved, but others it may be too late.
You must actualize the person you want to be as early as you can, so you can maximize your time in life being that person. That’s when you will have “arrived” to your life, and can focus on just living instead of constantly chasing who you want to be. If you don’t, you might never get there, and then in the end if you think too much you’ll realize your life will have been a waste. That is a private hell.
At some point, if you wait too long, there may no longer be enough time or resources to actually live the life destined for you, and then it’s all over. Your chance at life expires: dreams unfinished, like cutting off in the middle of sente
Well that was the ambiguity in the title, but if you follow the blog, it was always about space and microbes. I'm not sure care about microbe aliens, but i do enjoy the read.
I hate the website. Why? Because when I scroll
down, I get blocked, that is, I can not easily copy/paste
via a selection anymore; the selection simply does not
work, and is connected to the slow-fade out and pop-in
of an irrelevant widget I can not want to be bothered to
even look at.
Any author who uses such a website strategy gets insta-perma-banned by me.
It is not worth my time "reading" anything that is made useless
by really horrible UI choices, be it infinite scrolling or
fafe-out-scrolling-click-to-continue. No, I do not want to
click on anything to continue. I don't even want to see
accept-cookies. Whenever such a question comes up I'd auto-say
no, no pester-widget. Thankfully for the latter there are
extensions available, but I have not found a strategy against
the slow-fade-in-pester-strategy.
Why can I not easily select the text I wish to copy/paste here, from
that horrible website? I have no clue, but I can not
invest time to investigate this. Hopefully more and
more people realise that any strategy to pester people
means you devalue YOUR OWN CONTENT as-is. The same
applies to medium.com too - it is one reason I do not
read anything from there anymore. People need to
stop putting up barriers if they want people to read
anything.
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
An article like this that makes no mention of Tardigrades?
"They are among the most resilient animals known, with individual species able to survive severe conditions – such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation – that would quickly kill most other forms of life. They have survived exposure to outer space." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
> But if 2-9-3 really had been isolated from its relative for a quarter billion years, enough random mutations in the rDNA should have accumulated for there to be a difference of at least 50 base pairs
Occams razor definitely points to this just being a sterilization problem. But it would be funny if the bacteria was just way more stable than people expect.
Ribosomal DNA is extremely highly conserved and normal random mutation models do not predict it's changes well at all.
One thing about panspermia math: why assume current travel conditions between the stars?
Today the Sun is very far from other stars, but early in star formation (within nebula) the stars are
1. much closer together
2. have a higher rate of material ejection (mass exchange)
3. likely have more benign radiation environments unless near a star, due to GCR shielding by nebula gas
4. likely have higher equilibrium temperature in interstellar/interplanetary space
Combined, these factors yield orders of magnitude improvement in panspermia efficiency vs the Sun.
This has occurred to people! But if you run the numbers, they are still not good enough in that early (~100 My) window when stars in the parent nebula are close together, you get something like 1 chance in 1000 of possible panspermia events (based on modeling lumps of rock flying back and forth). Not terrible odds, but nothing like the Mars -> Earth odds.
A more extreme version of this is the idea of panspermia in the early universe, when the cosmic microwave background radiation was warm enough to keep water liquid: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/habitable.pdf
I knew I couldn't be the first, but I was more commenting on the lack of discussion I've found in the peer-reviewed literature!
The key was to change "nebula" (returning results for "stellar nebula") to "star forming region."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2005.5.497
Yes indeed, I've thought panspermia in the Sun's natal cluster is an interesting idea. What could make it even more interesting is that small bodies in our Solar System (and likely its sister systems) were warm enough for liquid water to exist for some millions of years then, so there would be an enormous volume of material in which Origin of Life might have occurred (and, if it did, to then spread after the parent body froze and then fragmented.)
It would make a fine science fictional scenario that could get around the Fermi problem: those 10,000 or so systems could have life, but the rest of the universe not have life.
I was thinking bigger: if panspermia gets dramatically more viable, then nebula could switch over in their probability distribution from "default sterile" to default teeming.
In this scenario, we could find (related!) life essentially everywhere, and caused by panspermia no less, despite numbers still saying panspermia is wildly improbable for mature stars.
"Default teaming" really isn't viable due to the Fermi problem.
But if OoL is extremely unlikely, the cluster panspermia idea still allows extraterrestrial life to reasonably exist and be reachable, because that life didn't require a separate highly unlikely OoL event.
I think SETI should focus on stars that look like the Sun's siblings.
"Teaming" (social) organisms are also fun, sure. ;)
The Fermi paradox assumes we'd be good at observing aliens, and that aliens will leave evidence that's conspicuous to us. These two statements are roughly equivalent, basically saying there can't be too much "impedance mismatch" between the two.
But again, even besides that, the nebula can still "teem" even though we never see any here on Earth, because the Sun vs nebula math is just so different for interstellar travel too. Many civilizations, seeded from common dirty chemistry, then permanently separated by vast distance as the star migrates out of the nebula.
TL;DR nebula parameter differences solve Fermi even in a teeming universe, but I doubt we'd see the aliens even if they were here. ;)
Forgive my ignorance here, but at such an early period in the solar system, wouldn't there have been few if any rocks with sufficient gravity for life to form on?
I mean we as humans have a way to approach light speed (with nuclear explosions) today, with our primitive technology. Anything even 500 years more advanced than us can probably travel very long distances.
Based on the article, there is solid proof that microbes can remain viable for up to 100,000 years.
I would have liked to find life in mars/the moon. At this point I think we should be tying to spread life everywhere.
I think if we do not first figure out how to cooperate on this planet, the division will only grow. IMO the Expanse is more or less what I would expect if we began colonizing the solar system right now.
We’re going to be able to potentially make “perfect” humans through genetic engineering less than a 100 years from now, we are not stuck with our current state forever is something I never see sci-fi tackle, probably because it would take away most things in a story humans find interesting.
Why does this guy keep using Tanpopo as a synonym for Japanese? Am I missing a subtlety here or what?
For you, life cannot wait. Please go out and make contacts. Be welcoming to people. Fall in love.
I wonder how my life would have turned out differently. I am a nerd. I am an introvert. I am single. Mostly, I am enjoying it. Sometimes - and increasingly more often - I am questioning it. I have baggage. Was visiting my (younger) sister's grave today. She had baggage with a sad outcome. I am thinking more about my existence.
I wish this world would be a more kind place. And I am praising anyone who is contributing to that. Try to be a contributor.
Did we read the same article? This was about microbes and space exploration.
Maybe OP didn’t read the article, but often the title of the article is more interesting to HN than the article itself, which may be the case in this instance given it’s (currently) the top-voted comment.
(As a side note, I wish titles were more fitting to the article, vs. trying to bait clicks with catchy titles that often suggest a different topic.)
Perhaps a good solution in this case would be to add something to the HN title, say (to borrow a suggestion from the author): "How long can life wait? (microbe survival times in salt, permafrost, and open space)".
I'm not thrilled with this kind of clickbait-y title, but when you're subscribed to the blog, you know what it's likely to be about and ignore that, and the problem only appears here when this context is lost.
What would a better title have been, on a substack that is exclusively about space exploration?
"Hey lonely HN nerds, wipe the tear from your eye and come read about microbe survival times in salt, permafrost, and open space"? Something else? I'm open to suggestions.
I wish there were a handbook for single introverts in their 30s who feel like that ship sailed a long time ago.
Besides activity, another advice would be mindset.
As in, are you ready to meet your dream partner today and invite him to your home?
No? Not ready? Place is a mess and you are not really comfortable opening up in the first place right now?
Then this would be something one can work on.
Does not mean your place needs to be always perfect and a date does not have to start by inviting someone in. But are you actually ready for it?
What is it, that you really want?
While I was single for a long time, I was neither clear nor prepared for a partner, yet yearning for one. That did not work. I had some growing up to do first.
Everyday is a new day. Start today. Thank your previous self for getting you here. For making you question past decisions. Change. Take a risk.
I believe there are millions of them?
But not sure how helpful they are.
My advice is, go dancing. Learn to enjoy your body and how to move it freely for fun, then you will find a likeminded body to enjoy together. But depending where you life, finding a good place to dance with nice people and not just drunk idiots can be a bit harder unfortunately.
Triathlon clubs are another great place to meet people. My club has has 8 weddings this year from people who met training. Turns out chatting over an 80 mile bike ride is a great way to get to know someone.
LOL, this obsession people have with dancing. This is horrible advice. Find a club or social scene doing something you like, don't pick up a random hobby you don't like just to "meet people".
Dancing is good advice because you have a good mix of genders and it's something you can grow to love over time. It's also a great community that's fairly welcoming once you start going regularly. Take a class and you automatically have a social group of other beginners.
The problem with nerds finding a social scene for what they already enjoy doing already is that there's a very good chance it's going to be a male-dominated activity. Going to a tech meetup or a board game night is a decent way to make friends, but not so much a mate.
I just share how I successfully meet and connect with women.
Dancing is the language of the body. I don't like small talk and am probably a introvert, but by dancing - connection comes easy and natural to me (at the right place).
Besides, the village dance was the traditional way for couples to hook up. And before that, there was the tribal drum.
I met my wife during climbing. Many girlfriends before due to organizing climbing sessions for various folks. Go climbing. Its just natural movement, sort of like vertical ballet on the wall, feels absolutely great, one does semi-continuously builds massive mental resilience to everything in life, since looking in the face of your death and coming out on top, multiple times an evening, many evenings, builds character like very few other endeavors. People you meet in community are often very inspiring. Its also high intensity interval training for upper body.
And then you try climbing outdoors on rocks big and small and thats it, people quit their careers and do vans/camping for rest of their lives just to do climbing (plus connected sports, there are many).
Can be many other activities, dancing ain't more special than many others. I'll stick with my climbing, you with your dance. Everybody wins.
Oh, dancing with rocks is advisable as well and I also enjoy it very much.
That's great, I met my partner at the gym, doing something I like and consequently became good at.
Sounds like you like dancing. Congratulations and I'm happy you met someone doing something you like. That's a good strategy.
As far as village dance blah blah, people absolutely meet at parties, lots of people also dance at parties, correlation is not causation.
"As far as village dance blah blah, people absolutely meet at parties, lots of people also dance at parties, correlation is not causation."
Maybe do some more casual science on social history?
But you surely can meet partners however you like and not everyone needs to love dancing, but the "obsession" people have with it simply goes back a looong way.
And aside, I actually do claim anyone who is not physically handycapped, very likely enjoys dancing if introduced to it in a easy way (look at how most children behave if you give them a rhytm), most grownups nowdays just associate it with awkward social situations, which I think is sad. I know some fellow nerds of mine, forever single, forever avoiding all situations where they would meed potential partners.
If you can walk, you can dance, despite having other major malfunctions with one's body. Just look at that contestant on "Dancing with the Stars" who has only one leg.
Lifting weights is a way to show physical dominance. Physically dominant men provide security and safety to women meaning they will be seen as the best mates. Throughout history the most physically dominant men had the most sexual success. Therefore I recommend you don't dance and lift weights instead.
See how fucking annoying and dumb this bro science is. Dancing is nothing special, just happens to be a social activity YOU like and I agree a lot of women like it. But the advice to "learn to like dancing" if you don't is bad.
Not sure how open you are challenging your perspective. Because in some ways, yes lifting weights does work for a certain subset of women.
But if you take the dominance angle, dancing works better here. Because it shows dexterty, moving along with other people .. and self confidence in a social setting. Knowing how to dance through life. Not awkwardly stand aside. And lifting weights (on its own) is just a indicator of muscle mass, not muscles in combination with brain, which is evolutionary much better. Otherwise we all would have evolved as big bulls.
Unfortunately, to get to where dancing becomes enjoyable you have to go through the "two left feet" stage. That filters out most people. Moving around the floor in perfect harmony with the music and your partner is wonderful.
I recommend being entombed in salt
In all ernest honesty, ChatGPT's not the worst at that.
handbook for single introverts in their 30s who feel like that ship sailed a long time ago.
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6aefa63600608191ba730f78533db177
Here's the most important thing (if I may say so myself :) ):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50408802
The ship hasn't sailed at all. You're mid-20s are gone, of course, but don't waste your 30s worrying about your 20s; fully embrace this moment and this phase of life (not that phases are so tightly tied to age), even the sad parts.
Here's a handbook excerpt...
Time seems to go faster, the older you are. When 5, a day lasts enormously, a month forever away.
When 30, a day is still noticeable. When 50, a day flies past. When 70? A week vanishes so very quickly.
A bitter truth of age, is the older you get, the less time you have left? Well, the faster that time seems to move to you. It's as if the more you try to hold on, the faster it goes away.
There are ways to improve this. New experience is one. Doing the same thing every day, with no challenge or change, just makes life fly by.
You can be an introvert and still experience loads of new and of change. Trust me on this. And as a geeky introvert, you have a mind to learn daily, and more importantly, learn different things, not just tech.
But I guess what I'm saying is, do indeed "live more", but do it as you. Don't let these weirdo extroverts make you dance to their tune.
To use the language of relativity, each person's internal "clock" seems to slow down as they get older.
It seems to me that my mental model of how long I've lived is it's a fixed amount of time. Hence, the longer I live, the more perceived time is compressed.
So, yes, relativity.
I'm something of the opposite. Very introverted, moved to a very extroverted American city (which one isn't) in my 20s for work and excitement. I pushed myself - dates, meetups, social stuff. Never cold approaches but now if you'd met me you'd think me an extrovert. I'm not, because people stress and exhaust me, but I hide it.
In my 20s and early 30s whenever I left the city sometimes on the weekends, I'd feel this FOMO like I'm missing something fun.
Something changed as I got older. I think around the pandemic. When I was in the city on a beautiful day, I felt this sad feeling like I should be in nature instead.
I eventually got a place in the country. Now that I'm not single, I couldn't give two craps about going out, meeting people, and I hate crowds and noise. There's no greater pleasure than sitting and listening to water sounds outside, reading and studying.
People are overrated, but you need them sometimes. Don't feel bad about being an introvert.
I suppose the equation is different for someone who is perpetually single. That one person makes a big difference.
There's a point when it feels it's over, there's no point. Some people think more about the end rather than the existence and realise there's no point – as in, there's really no point to any of this. This feeling doesn't necessarily mean the person is heading to the sad outcome. I mean that could have been a relief, at least to the person. But the saddest outcome is that there's really no recovery for some people and evolution keeps them going.
haa... you really don't need others to justify your life you know... it's annoying how that's always the default, and how often i'm pushed to conform to it.
The best comment of the day; thank you. For those comments wondering how to do it, the first step is to see, know, and love yourself. Nobody else can know you if you don't; nobody else can love you if you don't. And once you do know and love yourself, you'll find the other people are not threatening - they can't really hurt you; you'll want to know and love them.
And if you think you know yourself, this is silly, it's easy, you don't know even what you're missing. I once thought that. Now I see that nobody really knows themself completely.
Did you read the article?
Yes, but I took advantage of the article. My sister would have been a year older today.
Please don't take up discussion space for something else like that. You can write about that in plenty of other places where it's germane to the topic at hand.
Your comment is far outside the culture here. If you don't like someone's comment, read something else; click the minus sign (collapse thread) if you like. HN pages are not paper; we're not running out of space, and this thread has only 64 comments.
Also, have some empathy. You're talking to a human being.
I think their comment is the most beautiful thing I've seen today; I'm so glad they left it here.
you are also taking up discussion space here, no? or do you think youre special?
This feels very “I notice you’re not tolerating the intolerant, very intolerant of you don’t you think?”
It is not the gotcha you think it is.
You have a point, that the comment isn't actually about the article. And yet, einrealist also has a point that is worth hearing. It's OT, but it's worth hearing.
For a brief moment there, seeing just the headline, I thought this was going to be about Pinboard.
Use Pinboard
I thought this was going to be about my poor work-life balance from the title!?
It's a great metaphor though, suspended animation.
Me too, and my heart sank. I guess I don’t need an article to know what to do.
Same
Maybe you can be salty and bitter, as if you too were trapped in potassium chloride for millions of years...
Life doesn’t wait.
The exhortation carpe diem (seize the day) is very old. So it should be well known that life will not wait.
I really hate these articles that come out with these deep philosophical questions and then you open it up and it’s something stupid about microbes in a meteor or whatever. I was expecting a much more relatable read.
To answer the question, you should really not “wait” for anything in life anymore past 30. At some point between 35-45 you will likely cross the halfway point of your life and will begin the journey of being on your way out. Life has a cadence, and it’s not fun to be past that point still “waiting” for things you thought you’d have.
Obviously this advice will hit differently for people past a certain age, I’m mostly talking to people in their 20s. They can be saved, but others it may be too late.
You must actualize the person you want to be as early as you can, so you can maximize your time in life being that person. That’s when you will have “arrived” to your life, and can focus on just living instead of constantly chasing who you want to be. If you don’t, you might never get there, and then in the end if you think too much you’ll realize your life will have been a waste. That is a private hell.
At some point, if you wait too long, there may no longer be enough time or resources to actually live the life destined for you, and then it’s all over. Your chance at life expires: dreams unfinished, like cutting off in the middle of sente
Well that was the ambiguity in the title, but if you follow the blog, it was always about space and microbes. I'm not sure care about microbe aliens, but i do enjoy the read.
I hate the website. Why? Because when I scroll down, I get blocked, that is, I can not easily copy/paste via a selection anymore; the selection simply does not work, and is connected to the slow-fade out and pop-in of an irrelevant widget I can not want to be bothered to even look at.
Any author who uses such a website strategy gets insta-perma-banned by me.
It is not worth my time "reading" anything that is made useless by really horrible UI choices, be it infinite scrolling or fafe-out-scrolling-click-to-continue. No, I do not want to click on anything to continue. I don't even want to see accept-cookies. Whenever such a question comes up I'd auto-say no, no pester-widget. Thankfully for the latter there are extensions available, but I have not found a strategy against the slow-fade-in-pester-strategy.
Why can I not easily select the text I wish to copy/paste here, from that horrible website? I have no clue, but I can not invest time to investigate this. Hopefully more and more people realise that any strategy to pester people means you devalue YOUR OWN CONTENT as-is. The same applies to medium.com too - it is one reason I do not read anything from there anymore. People need to stop putting up barriers if they want people to read anything.
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
> Any author who uses such a website strategy gets insta-perma-banned by me.
can we make this into a copypasta? lol