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What are you learning right now?
Whether it be for school, work, a hobby, or personal interest, what are you learning right now? How are you learning it and what prompted you to start learning? What are some things that surprised you about what you are learning? What advice would you give to someone who just started to learn about it?
The thing I'm getting most practice in day-to-day would probably be coffee. I've watched every single video that James Hoffman has released since I've found him back in the beginning of the pandemic. Following his advice and experimenting has had a marked improvement in the coffee that I'm making. (V60 for the win -maybe forever- but I still have to compare against the Aeropress)
Apart from that, I've also started down a generalized cooking path. Mostly driven by the book that I got for my birthday: "Salt, Fat, Acic, Heat" and supplementary knowledge from Alex, Joshua Weissman, and Adam Ragusea. I've fried my own chicken thighs, fried chicken nuggets, made bread and noodles from scratch, and cooked my first ever sirloin steak. I'm planning on making my own mayonnaise, cultured butter, chili oil, roasting my own coffee, and brewing my own beer in the future!
Cooking is so much fun! Over the last few years I've tried a bunch of things and learned a lot of small techniques that help make a lot of food better. You've mentioned a few of my favorite YouTube chefs, here's a few more:
Kenji's scrambled eggs recipe are my partners favorite breakfast, bar-none. I'll check out the other two channels for sure, they both seem interesting and pretty informative!
I'd add Chef John from Food Wishes to that list. He, Kenji, and Sohla are great. Maybe I'm overly picky but those three are pretty much the only cooking personalities on youtube that I can stand. Although I hadn't heard of Adam Liaw before and might start watching him, too, based on the first few minutes of one of his videos I just pulled up.
Oh man, I forgot about Sohla. Sohla is amazingly talented and eminently watchable. She seems to be doing a lot of things in a bunch of different places so I can't link a single channel, but I'll link one of her Babish guest spots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zDZV-jGJ6w
Yeah, Sohla is kinda all over the place these days, but thankfully she is still a regular on Food52, at least:
Off-Script with Sohla playlist
As is Rick, another BA alumni:
Sweet Heat with Rick Martinez playlist
p.s. Another channel I would highly recommend is fellow Canadians, Glen & Friends Cooking.
Adam Liaw was the winner of one of the better seasons of Masterchef Australia. He's a great chef and more importantly, a smart guy and interesting presenter.
Mastechef Australia is a show which I heartily recommend btw, although it's a huge time commitment. Normally I don't like 'reality' TV but something about MCAU really works for me. My cooking is noticeably more interesting while Masterchef is on and given it runs for some 60+ episodes a season, that can often be almost half a year because I don't have time to watch every day so it takes me a whlie.
If your only experience of the Masterchef format is the American version (which is awful), don't worry, the Aussie one could hardly be more different. It's the only on-TV cooking show I watch any more.
Kenji annoys the hell out of me. He's a great cook and I have a lot of respect for what he does, I just can't watch the guy (see also David Chang, Jamie Oliver). I once really annoyed Kenji on reddit by suggesting that serving stuff in Mason jars was perhaps a little dreadfully hipster and passe and perhaps getting some grown-up glassware might be better. He got quite cross.
On youtube I quite like Sorted Food who are less annoying than their video titles and thumbnails might suggest. They're nice lads.
What a silly thing to gatekeep.
Are you talking to me, or him?
Because food has fashion and trends just like everything else, and appearance does matter. Good looking food tastes better, tests prove that time and time again. If you're making amazing food but serving it like you're in an early 2000s coffee shop full of bearded check shirt wankers on fixed gear bikes, it really detracts from the important bit - the food. If you're trying to teach people, it has to be relevant, not outdated or you just turn people off. This wasn't very long ago. Mason jars for eating/drinking from were awful and childish the first time around but they're solidly in "sad Dad food" territory these days. No credible modern chef would do such a thing. Imagine Gordon Ramsey's face if someone served him noodles in a fuckin' jar.
Regardless of how stupid the mason jar trend always was, it's definitely not in "sad Dad" territory yet. I'm pretty young, and a large number of my friends and acquaintances continue to use them for drinkware, storage containers, etc.
Yea I dunno trends, but mason jars are just a practical thing. Any house that has someone who cans stuff, has mason jars. They're just always around, so why not use them for stuff?
All of my daily drinking glasses are jars from a very specific brand of salsa that is in a tall skinny jar that I enjoy. The salsa itself is "meh", I just buy them whenever I need some more glasses.
The nice glasses are the pint glasses, which are reserved for actual beer!
Why not use mason jars for non-canning things? because things are built for their roles. I hate drinking out of a mason jar. My nose always hits the other side of the mouth, there's only one spot on the lip that doesn't have a ridge getting in the way, and they're usually too wide to comfortably hold for a long period of time. They're often too tall to comfortably sip from, which is exacerbated by the unpleasantly narrow mouth. They're a little tricky to clean compared to most general-purpose drinkware. As general food storage, they work well for pasta, salads, and dry goods, but not much else.
Obviously, if you disagree, I'm not gonna say you're wrong to enjoy your salsa jar drinking glasses, and there's something to be said for the versatility. If none of that stuff bugs you, buying bulk jars or reusing the ones you already have is a lot cheaper than purpose-built drinkware. However, if I'm invited to your house and the only sign of frugality is the jar you've served me water in, I'm going to assume a certain degree of humblebraggy hipsterness.
So then the real food punks are using mason jars. ;)
Some friends introduced me to MCAU via Plex a few years ago, and my wife and I really enjoy it. It's about food, and not stupid fabricated inter personal conflict. We watched season 10, then went back and watched 9, then watched 11 as it premiered. Watching them all enact COVID protocols and not be able to hug each other was rough.
I love Kenji's channel specifically because the POV let's me see exactly what he's doing, and his videos are good they most part unedited. Which means if the video is about X minutes long, and I'm thinking about making the dish he made, I know it will take approximately as long (usually a little longer, but not much). I also really enjoy his commentary, specifically the parts where he's taking through what he's doing and will mention things like "this recipe calls for X, but I don't have it. The purpose of X is to do Y, which in this case we can achieve with Z instead". That's the kind of information that allows me to improv in the kitchen and still have things come out good.
Agreed. Jess's elimination was particularly tough. She just needed a hug so much. I was in bits.
I find it very unusual how much I care about the contestants. It's probably because they all seem like such nice people, as well as the hours and hours of exposure we get to them. But on the rare occasions I watch this sort of TV I generally don't care either way about the people in it. It's very odd. But not unpleasant.
New season starts very soonNew season started tuesday and I didn't notice. Two episodes to catch up on already, but being behind on MCAU is very much par for the course for me...So, kinda relatedly, I think I just made the best meal that I've ever made.
I made some mashed potatoes with just russet potatoes, salted butter, some clarified butter, and salt in the boiling water. I made baked green beans with salt, cayenne pepper and the remaining solidified pork fat from bacon earlier in the day. And then, I cooked a filet mignon I'm my cast iron skillet using the rest of the clarified butter, the liquified pork fat left over from the green beans and some seasoned salt. All of that together plus a Cab Sav from "Joel Gott" (Godt?) made for easily the best meal that I personally have ever made, and one of the top five meals of my life.
I'm learning to open up emotionally. I thought I knew how to do that, but it turns out I always kept myself on a safe position while talking about my issues from an analytical standpoint.
I'm learning to truly trust someone.
I'm learning to worry less, and think less about possible complications. It's okay to anticipate problems but if you do that too much you never take any real risk.
I'm learning to see with my eyes closed.
I'm learning to dream with my eyes open.
After falling down a rabbit hole during a bout of insomnia last week, I've decided to try lockpicking. I've heard a number of computer science folks like it for a number of reasons - including the puzzle-like aspect. So I ended up watching several tutorial videos and now have a basic set of lockpicks on the way. I'm hoping to have some fun with it and exercise that part of my brain. It always looks easy when you see someone like the LockPickingLawyer pop open a lock within seconds - I'm sure that theres years of experience behind that, so I'm trying to brace myself for failure and a slow start. But we'll see.
I'm also trying to avoid falling into the "buy the good quality equipment for a hobby you haven't started yet" trap. There are apparently a lot of good lockpicks that are quite expensive, but highly recommended. And apparently there are a lot of bad lockpocks - including anything on amazon. So trying to find something to get started at a reasonable price is interesting. And then of course - you need locks to pick. So now I'm trying to find locks without really knowing what I'm doing. Should be fun - and all things considered its a cheap hobby compared to many.
I finally have a good answer to this question!
I’m learning about global financial derivatives and the different approaches to regulation of eu vs us. A key difference is member states of the eu implement eu law and so retain some autonomy, but individual us states have very limited authority to regulate derivatives.
Dodd franks biggest attempted innovation was to give the cftc latitude to include undefined (and as yet undeveloped) financial products within its regulatory framework, with lots of potential hassle for crypto users. Already cftc considers cryptocoins to be regulatable commodities.
I'm learning how to build what I think of as "Level 2" buildings. Level 1 is simple wood structures like sheds, greenhouses and so on. Level 2 is blocks/bricks and mortar, external render, internal plaster, that sort of thing. It's jolly fun. I'm not very good at it - if you put a level on the wall I've so far completed there's a good few mm of not-levelness over a 4x2m wall - but I'm good enough and getting better.
i've picked up a lot of stuff from this Youtube channel where I started off watching his basic bricklaying tutorials and ended up watching his entire 130-ish solo housebuilding video series. I don't need to know most of that for the project I'm doing, it was just really interesting and I like the guy's style. He seems like a nice person.
I was learning Common Lisp, but right now .. not much actually. Maybe a little about my self ?
Tensegrity. It's structural magic.
That got me into artificial muscles and kumihimo braiding and modular origami and ..... well, it's an exciting space to me.
So I've started diving back into making music, as I've mentioned in other threads. I downloaded a bunch of classic analog synth emulators and am learning how they work.
I've also been learning Logic Pro. It's been many years since I was seriously producing my own music, so my skills are a little behind. I'm watching videos on Mac Pro Video. I watched the Intro to Logic class taught by The Atlanta Logic Trainer and it was very informative. It's just the basics of how to use the app, but I learned some stuff I probably wouldn't have otherwise. I'm interested to see what their more advanced classes have in store.
I also started watching one of their short courses on creating mood in composition for film, games, and video. It's interesting, but really basic. I'm hoping they have some other better composition-related courses, but they're mostly a technical site, so I probably shouldn't hold my breath.
I’m teaching myself Spanish and have been surprised to find how much I already know from casual exposure. Right now, my methodology consists mainly in making and memorizing lists (verbs in present tense and vocabulary). There’s an easy to follow, but pretty lame, educational telenovela from Annenberg called Destinos that I’ve been watching for pronunciation and rhythm. There are a few, meager practice/cultural exercises that accompany each video, and I’ve been writing episode summaries and reading them to my husband, who already speaks Spanish. We tried watching La casa de papel until the story line became too ridiculous to stomach. I did pick up some swear words along the way—always useful!
I’ve been learning more about convex optimization in some of my spare time for a few months now, particularly semidefinite programs. I would recommend Convex Optimization by Boyd and Vandenberghe for anyone interested in the subject.
Throwing all my lost passions at the wall and seeing what sticks
I've got my Topology, Real Analysis, and Complex Analysis textbooks out and I finally managed to get Haskell to install on an m1 mac (not using Rosetta, but by using a mostly-supported official installer for Apple Silicon). Might dabble with Golang again if I decide I want to learn something "productive"
I've been trying to get more into JIRA; we have some custom workflows that we're trying to finalize, and we have a custom billing component that ties into JIRA, so we've been delving into the JIRA cloud API a bit more, working to move all of our ticketing / project planning into JIRA.
JIRA is really massive.
Generally what the school curriculum has for me to do, alongside me watching educational YouTube videos.
The new things I have been shown are:
In math:
How to do 2nd degree equations for which the quadratic equation (called Bhaskara's formula here for some reason) applies
In Software engineering (well, the share I took, because this is a group project):
What's Requirements engineering? (What are requirements?)
What's the difference between a functional and non-functional requirement?
What's a Framework?
In Computers and operating systems (Again, the part I took, which in hindsight was not what I would have done given the rest was mostly computer and other similar tech's history, which I found more interesting):
How to convert:
From base 2 to base 10 and vice-versa
From base 10 to base 8
From base 10 to 16
From base 8 to 16
From base 2 to 8 and vice-versa
In Languages/Algorithms of programming:
Describe an algorithm (for now, just a series of steps) to do some basic tasks
What are the rules for naming variables? What about constants?
Since we're starting from nothing in the general technology field, they've shown us introductory stuff.