lostphilosopher

Blue Apron customer here, family of two, three meals a week for the past two years.

I like BA a lot, but I don't see anything about BA that is unique to them. There's probably 5 other options in my area. I stick with BA largely due to momentum.

For those curious:

Pros:

- No food waste. Grocery shopping inevitably resulted in large amounts of food getting tossed due to expiration (or even space concerns).

- "Forced" variety. I have had a _ton_ of meals and ingredients I would have never gotten if I wasn't doing BA. Things I've never heard of and wouldn't know to ask for. Now that I know of them, I bring them into some of my non-BA cooking too. Part of this is just just breaking habits. Before BA there were about 10 meals I was making a lot - I liked them I know how, etc., this meant I was only eating the ingredients in these meals which was probably not "complete nutrition."

- Learning a few "tricks." While the actual BA meals are cook by numbers, the specific steps often contain general purpose info. Random example: Before BA I never cooked with garlic, just never thought of it, but most BA meals use it. Now I use more garlic when I cook non-BA meals.

- Portion control. If I cook from a supermarket (and buy in super market portions) I inevitably make more than a meal, and inevitably _eat_ more than a meal. BA means I make and eat the suggested amount.

- No grocery shopping. I'm not a big fan of shopping and my wife hates grocery shopping, not having to do it is a plus.

- Less eating out. BA isn't cheap, but it's cheaper than most restaurants I'd go to. Having already paid for BA meals encourages eating them at home.

- Fast. The food isn't easier to prepare and certainly doesn't cook faster, but having exactly the right ingredients all together means I don't have to spend time assembling (or googling alternatives when I realize I forgot something).

- Fun. I look cooking, and I like BA cooking. Probably not for everyone, but there you have it.

Cons:

- Not cheap.

- Bummer when you don't like the meal. (Rare, but it happens.) Worse when you _know you're not going to like it_ but it was you're only option. Example: The texture of kale bugs me and sometimes you can't get a meal without it.

- Doesn't scale for guests.

Note: I don't buy the argument that BA packaging is bad. It's almost all recyclable. But I live in an area that makes recycling pretty easy so that might not be generalizable.

> If something or someone is causing a problem for me one method to rectify it is to simply ask them to help.

I'd go further, as someone who makes products used by people I'd be thrilled if a user shared their experience with my product in such a fashion! Even if the experience is bad, at least I'd know about and have the chance to fix it. Worst case is people having bad experiences with my product and me being clueless.

I understand that in this case this particular issue is probably known and ignored, but still, inferring "entitlement" from people who share feedback seems like a step in the wrong direction.

Kevin Kelly has an interesting take on this in _What Technology Wants_ [1]. Essentially - that these sort of works were inevitable. If Kubrick, Gates, or Bezos hadn't made 2001, MS, or AMZ - someone else would have. Not _exactly_ the same thing of course, but something so similar as to fill the same spot in history. 2001 happened because 1968 was, in a sense, "ripe" for it. The book undoubtably explains it better. :-)

(Weird. This is the second book recommendation I've made on HN today... I swear I'm not a bot!)

1. https://www.amazon.com/What-Technology-Wants-Kevin-Kelly/dp/...

Chris Anderson wrote a book on these sort of "pricing" systems: _Free: The Future of a Radical Price_ [1].

Worth a read if you're into this idea. It includes some interesting historical examples of creative selling.

Can't say I _agree_ with the book, but glad I read it.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp....

I'm not dogmatic about MVC (or any similar acronym), but I think MVC serves as a good reminder to (follow the more agreed upon maxim to) separate your concerns. Your application logic, data, and presentation layers need not be intertwined.

Any book recommendations out there on this subject?

I suspect the underlying bias is, "have I heard of this before?" If not, it's more likely the entry gets rejected. The more homogeneous the population of editors, the more narrow their experience scope. This is amplified by external biases that make women's contributions less visible - it's harder for new awareness to be built.

Just a theory.

Re: backwards compatibility - Kevin Kelly writes in _What Technology Wants_[0] that Romans impacted the space shuttle - Roman roads were the model for most European roads, and were themselves based on the width of two horses walking next to each other, per "lane" (main use case of the time). Europeans brought this notion of roads with them to the US and built similar roads. Early cars had to fit on these roads, and early car roads were built on top of these horse roads. Eventually, when the space shuttle was designed, shipping its parts from factories across the company (on roads) had to be factored in. Therefore there were size/shape constraints on the shuttle that have their origins in Roman horse drawn carts.

(I'm recalling from memory, Kelly's explanation was probably better. Not something I've researched beyond finding that anecdote interesting.)

0. https://www.amazon.com/What-Technology-Wants-Kevin-Kelly/dp/...

When I start at a new company I create the "Onboading Guide" I wish I would have had. I take notes on all the things I had to do and where (and sometimes how) to do them. I include a "Link Bank" of all the random URLs that no one knows because they all have them in their history or bookmarks, and all the IT requests / installs that need to happen. As I continue with the company I update this doc as things change or new things come up and refer back to it myself when I need to remember how to do a rare but important task. This is the third company I've done this at and each time I get a bit better at creating it, and the feedback I get from new team members I send it to is really positive. Crucial - This doc is online in a format that others can contribute to and I encourage new team members (and interested current team members) to update it themselves.

While I'm at it, 2nd best: _Managing Humans_ by Michael Lopp (aka Rands).

https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Eng...

(New-ish manager here.)

_Peopleware_ by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister is the best management resource I've encountered.

https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-De...

It also helped to keep careful track of things I really valued (and hated) about people I've worked for.

Just one example:

Depending on team size and culture it can concerning if your manager schedules a 1:1 meeting with you out of the blue and outside of your normal cadence. I had a manager that did this, on a Friday, with the meeting scheduled for Monday. Worrying about it would have bugged me over the weekend. Not a ton, but some. He followed the invite up with a Slack (team chat app) message explaining what the meeting was and what he wanted to talk about, turns out it was nothing to worry about. Him taking the time to clarify made a difference in my morale and it stuck with me.

Super small thing, but it matters.

I haven't, but I'll give it a go. :-)

I've done similar experiments with tweaking my media diet. I haven't found something that seems right, but I have determined a couple things that I want.

My ideal news source would: 1. Not be speculative. I want to know what happened and what it meant/means, not what it might mean, or what might happen next. 2. Not involve PR people. I already know exactly what they're going to say, and why they're going to say it, they've brought me no value. Bring me either the newsmaker themselves, or someone who has at least the _possibility_ of being neutral-ish. 3. Never auto-play anything or force me to dismiss an add. Yay print on that front. :-)

Faithful NPR (specifically my local branch) listener here. I agree with your general point, though I notice it most with immigration related stories. The thing I appreciate about how NPR covers things though is that their commentators are almost never spokespeople/PR reps. They are legit professionals in the field, elected officials, or people who seriously study this subject matter. Of course they still have bias, but not _nearly_ as much as what I hear / see in other media which is "person whose literal/only job is to promote political stance X."

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. You're working in a specific context that affords you a set of options different from the sets of options available in different contexts. My read of Stimulus is that it's geared for contexts other than yours. However, it could still be one of your options.

Which brings us to - "scaleability, reliability, Security, etc." - valid concerns! Depending on your context's risk tolerance brand new technology might not be an option at all, ever. You've already pointed out elsewhere the reasons to give Stimulus "the benefit of the doubt." So maybe it's within your context's tolerance? Maybe not.

But here's two distinctions I think are important. First, for many businesses and applications the biggest risk vector isn't scalability, or reliability, or even security - it's existence and viability. Can this be made (within X constraints) and do people want it? Will they pay for it? Will it turn a profit? If the answers are "no" no amount of technology will help. Rails (and Turbolinks and Stimulus, etc.) should certainly allow your app to be scalable (etc), but are optimized for the productivity needed to answer those questions - including on limited time with a tight budget. My freelance rep depends just as much on my abilities in that domain as it does on my more technical chops (a somewhat unintuitive realization for a developer). The second distinction is most important, and the piece I often think is missing - just because X technology is scalable, reliable, and secure doesn't mean any implementation of it is. What's cool about the "Rails/Basecamp way" is that it puts scalability, reliability, security, performance, etc. within reach for a wider range of people/teams. Stimulus seems like another step in that direction.

> "You can read that and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. Even without knowing anything about Stimulus or looking at the controller code itself. It’s almost like pseudocode. That’s very different from reading a slice of HTML that has an external JavaScript file apply event handlers to it. It also maintains the separation of concerns that has been lost in many contemporary JavaScript frameworks." [source](https://github.com/stimulusjs/stimulus/blob/master/ORIGIN.md)

This might be a subjective matter of taste, but I find the React solution much uglier, harder to read, and less intuitive despite the fact that I've been writing React for a while now, and have never written Stimulus.

Here's my guess on why: React syntax has to be able to simultaneously account for JS syntax, HTML syntax, and its own API - all within one syntax that can't be optimized for any one of those use cases. Stimulus allows (forces?) you to leverage more focused HTML syntax where applicable, and javascript syntax where applicable while also letting you leverage your preferred flavors as you see fit (say HAML and CoffeeScript).

> "It allows us to party with productivity like days of yore. A throwback to when a single programmer could make rapacious progress without getting stuck in layers of indirection or distributed systems. [source](https://github.com/stimulusjs/stimulus/blob/master/ORIGIN.md...

I suspect if you're in a situation where you need bureaucratic approval or "CYA" you don't have one of the main problems stimulus is trying to solve - helping small teams or single developers create apps that can keep up with apps written by larger teams with more specialities/ists.

Doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't use it, but it does mean you've got options others might not. I do freelance development from time to time by myself. There's a limit to how big/complex of a stack I can be responsible for. Rails has been a great tool for me even though in my "real" job we use a much more robust toolset - in my real job I work with a team. I'm pretty excited about what I (by myself) could do with stimulus. :-)

I've mentioned this on HN before, but: calorie and nutrition intake monitoring.

Imagine an app that tells you how many calories you've consumed and the nutrition you've consumed in real time, with reasonable accuracy, without you having to manually input the food you've consumed. Like hands free MyFitnessPal. Couple that with what's already available in activity monitoring...

It's "no win" right? Whomever the news source is financially dependent on they at the mercy of that funding source's interest in neutrality. And since journalism costs money it will always be financially dependent on someone/thing. While a business may be wary about weighing in on a politically charged issue just to attempt to foster supporters good will (for exactly the reasons you discuss) the calculus is different when that issue directly affects their business. I'm not concerned about advertisers biasing news about unrelated hot button political issues. I'm worried about advertisers biasing news in favor of their business interests: corporate tax rates, trade agreements, consumer and environmental safety concerns - etc. Things that could be good for making the business money, but not good for people. I don't have those same concerns about individuals, but I'd have the (similar) concerns you bring up. The question then is what bias are you more comfortable with?

I've said this on HN before. But this is what I love about Trello - they resisted the urge to do more than just reproduce the sticky note/whiteboard experience digitally. I've used other products that could be described as "copies" that tried to "enhance" that experience, even slightly, with additional functionality that ended up detracting from the core product. It seems like that was a harder balance to hit than it might look.

"Is Everything Wrestling?"

> With each passing year, more and more facets of popular culture become something like wrestling: a stage-managed “reality” in which scripted stories bleed freely into real events, with the blurry line between truth and untruth seeming to heighten, not lessen, the audience’s addiction to the melodrama.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/magazine/is-everything-wr...

"Amazon seems to think my recent purchase of an air conditioner was just the gateway to an air conditioner collecting hobby."

That's probably not exact and I don't remember where in my social feeds it came from, but I loved this.

This was really interesting. Thanks for posting it. Does anyone know of a place to find similar content? (Analysis of web trends and practices from a data driven perspective.)

What's the shelf life of homemade bitters? Do they need to be refrigerated?

This sounds like an example of "pseudo-x" book. Where the "x" is science, philosophy, anthropology, or something like that. Not a book I would read expecting fact, or any pragmatic insight into the mechanics of the world or the self, but useful in accessing new perspective. An experience something like Kant's aesthetic theory of "free play" between the imagination and understanding. I find being in that "free play" mind state can boost my creativity and productivity (YMMV). In that sense I can appreciate a book like this and find it valuable. But there's certainly a dangerous line between 'outside the box thinking' and 'outside of reason thinking'. The first is useful and creative, the later can be genuinely harmful.

I wish so many people wouldn't try to force things they like into the categories of science or truth, and would be ok with having subjective appreciation for them and getting personal satisfaction from them. I also wish people wouldn't feel the need to try to bash someone's appreciation/satisfaction of a thing with it's scientific incongruity. As long as that thing isn't harming others - meh, live your life.

If you thought the scientist A and scientist B discovering X at the same time phenomenon was neat you'll probably like Kevin Kelly's take on it (https://www.amazon.com/What-Technology-Wants-Kevin-Kelly/dp/...). More or less he claims that not only does that sort of pattern occur, but that that's the norm, and that all human advancement, biological, social, technical etc. is a part of evolution.

I'll be reading Illuminatus! since you've related it to Pendulum. I came to Pendulum after seeing it related to Labyrinths (https://www.amazon.com/Labyrinths-Directions-Paperbook-Jorge...) if by any chance you haven't read that you should check it out.

Cool idea, I like seeing book related projects on HN.

Small suggestion: Slow down the image carousel on the homepage it moves to quickly to process what it's showing you. Also it would be neat to able integrate this into other projects, for example I like https://momentumdash.com/ (unaffiliated user) and I'd rather have this than a quote of the day or what not.

Wow. I would love a news media product that covered _exactly_ those topics.

(The closest I've found is MPR, Minnesota's local branch of NPR.)

Neat. Installed via Homebrew, I'll share thoughts if anything comes up.