What is something you don't like, that you wish you did like? and why

I'm totally the same. Last night a coworker text me to let me know they would be back in the office tomorrow after taking a couple days off. It took me almost 10 minutes to come up with "ok, see you tomorrow then". I rewrote that text at least a dozen times. Why the hell is something so simple a monumental effort for me?

The key difference between introverts and extroverts is that for introverts social interactions drain our mental energy while extroverts are energized by interactions.

Often. But more often not. It's nice to be alone, because a lot of human interaction involves unnecessary drama. Maybe it's just our brains protecting us.

hiking is basically running but better

try roller skates. saves your knees and not boring.

I'll admit running is difficult at first because it requires your active thoughts to keep going. Depending on fitness level (mainly regarding weight, not musculature or cardiovascular), after a month or so of a 3xWk plan, you can start to get into a point where it starts getting more sexond nature and you get more of your mind to yourself and the distraction from running becomes more related to your ability to regularly distract yourself with just your thoughts and/or audio (music, books, podcasts, etc).

But yeah, the beginning is really hard. I used to run, got pretty good at it (would go on 8mi runs with a sub-9 minute pace on the weekend) but then stopped for like... 7 years. Just started again a month or two ago. I can only run for about 25 minutes at like a 12 minute pace. I'm also overweight and over 40 which isn't helping anything. But when I started (or restarted as it were) I couldn't run for 5 minutes straight. I do get shin splints, I was getting sore muscles all over, but slowly I'm getting better at it. At even just the 20ish minute mark though, I need something to distract me. Right now it's music, but I've been considering podcasts as I feel they generally get me more distracted.

Same for swimming. I don't actually dislike the activity itself, but I'm not at ease in the sea and I despise the swimming pool.

Try low intensity while listening to a podcast. 80% of runs are best done at a pace where you can easily hold a conversation and breath through your nose (5/10 effort).

I'm listening to history podcasts now and it feels incredibly relaxing and makes my whole day better. Now I don't even like rest days anymore. 🙃

@eyy @MisterHavoc as someone who might be mistaken as being active, I loathe running and wish I didn't. Every other exercise (most of which I love) is just less convenient. Biking, swimming, hiking, sports - all require extra steps (equipment or environment or other people). If I liked running even a little more it would be so practical to just throw on shoes and go whenever.

But the moment my legs are pumping and my lungs are aching there's nothing to distract me from feeling like I'm DYING.

Do you like audioboks or podcasts? Listening to something while running really helped me to find more interest in running/walking more. You do need a good pair of headphones so that they don't fall out of your ears, though.

It’s all about the activity. My younger kid is extremely athletic: he did a 5k on a whim and kept up with the runners club without preparation. However he hates running, and gives similar reasons. His activity is soccer. Soccer gives a point to running. That kid will run the entire game if he’s playing soccer, but even he can’t stand running

If like me you also didn't know what "Cilantro" is, it's Coriander.

Never got a soapy taste from cilantro, but as a kid, a suicidal stink bug landed on a PB&J I was eating.

At first I was pissed off at my brother, cuz that bastard put cilantro on a fucking PB&J!!! I spit the bite out. Wad of partially chewed sandwich, mixed with insect legs and broken shell lands on my plate: no cilantro. Brother is now looking up at me with a genuine expression of concern: not a prank.

Lesson 1: look before you bite.

Lesson 2: Stink bugs taste exactly like cilantro.

Lesson 3: ...cilantro tastes exactly like stink bugs.

The tiniest little flek of that shit can ruin an otherwise delicious bite of food.

This for sure. I have the soap gene as well. I love Mexican food, and it's nigh impossible to find much traditional Mexican without cilantro.

Is parsley related to Cilantro?

I really really cannot stand parsley in anything, it is bitter and disgusting and mu workplace puts it in everything.

For most of my life I always hated the idea of exercise just for the sake of exercise. I would try to find activities where exercise was an associated benefit. Hiking, skateboarding, rock climbing etc. Eventually being an adult slowly killed all of my recreational fitness outlets and I ended up teetering on the edge of overweight.

With the goal of getting back in shape, I tried a few gyms but I never got into it. It always felt like a chore. Turns out the problem for me was that I am a cheap bastard, and I was only considering the least expensive discount shitty gyms. One of my friends convinced me to try out a pricier more fully featured gym and it made a huge difference. Well maintained equipment, group classes, child care while you work out, showers that didn't scare me. It was a lot less intimidating, and it switched the gym experience from feeling like a chore to feeling like a break.

It's been a couple years now, and I'll say, having once thought I'd never be a gym person, I'm now definitely a gym person.

Not saying it'd be the same for everyone, just what ended up working for me.

I'm the same and as someone who's worked remotely for 10 years, my life was way too sedentary. I got a dog which helped as the guilt of not walking her is plenty of motivation to get out daily, but whilst it helps, it wasn't exactly making me fit and healthy, just a bit LESS unhealthy.

I discovered rock climbing 3 months ago though and my life is completely changed, all exercise and diet is done with my current project route in mind and after 3 months I'm already far healthier and stronger than I've ever been before.

Phenomenal sport, as someone who HATES the gym I really recommend everyone tries it at least once. It's as intense as any workout and 100x more fun.

For most of my life I always hated the idea of exercise just for the sake of exercise. I would try to find activities where exercise was an associated benefit. Hiking, skateboarding, rock climbing etc. Eventually being an adult slowly killed all of my recreational fitness outlets and I ended up teetering on the edge of overweight.

With the goal of getting back in shape, I tried a few gyms but I never got into it. It always felt like a chore. Turns out the problem for me was that I am a cheap bastard, and I was only considering the least expensive discount shitty gyms. One of my friends convinced me to try out a pricier more fully featured gym and it made a huge difference. Well maintained equipment, group classes, child care while you work out, showers that didn't scare me. It was a lot less intimidating, and it switched the gym experience from feeling like a chore to feeling like a break.

Not saying it'd be the same for everyone, just what ended up working for me.

The trick is to do it regularly and develop an addiction. I worked in an care home one summer and after that I promised myself to exercise until I die.

I'm the same way. It usually makes me uncomfortable and I don't want to watch it.

Something similar with reality TV. I start to get irritated. I know the situations are fabricated and edited but it gets me worked up and I hate it.

I tend to just feel bad for the characters involved, I don't understand the appeal.

God I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I thought everyone likes embarrassment humor and maybe I was getting a little cynical about "how bad taste is getting" or something. So good to know that others call it "cringe" (in one way, not in the other) and can't watch it either.

I was the same way and then I found American Family. I also only started watching it to have something on in the background which is actually probably the reason why I "adapted" to embarrassment humor.

I looked up from the computer/phone/chores to appreciate funny moments bit by bit, started appreciating the characters in wholesome moments, tune out when cringy things were going on... Eventually I got invested into the story of some of the episodes to the point where I started to tolerate cringe and even laugh at it.

“I Think You Should Leave” is like if 8 year olds are suddenly thrust into adulthood but didn’t mature on the short trip there.

I adore dogs but no one really loves dogs barking. Even dogs with a relatively discrete or non-annoying bark pitch will tire any ear if they go into a barking ceremony.

It did make me suffer a lot of nights. I'm new stepmother of 7 dogs. They bark and sing a lot. After a while of suffering I just tried to learn to understand what they are saying, and how their music works. As I gradually get better at that I have now many situations where I immediately know if something's wrong on the farm, or a neighbors dog has come for a visit. But if they are not your dogs the noise can be awful. Especially poor dogs locked up in city apartments or tied to chains as many people do here can be tough to listen to.

god same, everyone else loves stuff like salmon and shrimp and it just makes me vomit, it's absolutely terrible.

the only things i can eat are smoked roe paste (kaviar), and fish sauce.

I feel this. This probably stems from childhood issues and a string of failed relationships but I just can't be comfortable around really any social groups I've had for very long. Functionally I'm great, people seem to like talking to me and want my company. So we'll do a few get together sessions and then my fatigue will make me slowly fizzle out. It really sucks.

On the brightside though, I do love my own company and have made peace with having a lot of holidays and special occasions on my own or with the cat.

Ok listen, if you want to get into bananas, you might wanna try banana and Nutella.

While I love bananas so can’t relate, maybe my hatred of tomatoes is similar. I can’t stand the things. However I love tomato sauce and soup and juice. I love salsa, and stews, etc. I love things that tomatoes make. Presumably it’s a texture thing.

Have you tried things with bananas in them, to separate the taste from the texture? Someone else mentioned smoothies, which is a great choice for taste but no banana texture

Depending on what your level of experience is, it might just take more time and practice. When I was doing my degree, it took two years, an internship, and multiple serious programming courses before I truly felt comfortable programming.

Look up UC Berkeley's CS61A, B, and C, then start looking deeper into the CS curriculum to find the pieces you are missing. For me, it took trying to optimise the CPU scheduler for single threaded processes in Linux, specifically complex assemblies in FreeCAD. That lead me to a few lectures about the scheduler in the OS principals course. I've done a bunch of little embedded projects but struggle with complexity. The concepts around a scheduler are what I was missing. There are a lot of things like this that are readily available for free online if you just go searching for them specifically.

If you want to really free yourself, I run a offline Llama2 70B with GGML 4bit to code. It works well for snippets and can do better than 3 tokens a second on a 12th gen i7/64GB and 16GBV 3080Ti. It can run at around 2 tokens a second on just the CPU, but you'll need a Linux machine with an additional 8GB swap partition just to initially load the model. It takes around 43GB to run after init.

That's completely normal, and a large portion of people here in Europe would do the same as you do. There is this saying where "people in North America life to work, people in Europe work to life". Because who cares if you make more money if you barely have the time to actually enjoy it?

Not trying to say one continent is better than the other, but it is a very clear difference in work-life balance mentality.

You can negotiate your hours, just like you can negotiate the pay.

Lots of people do that.

Nothing wrong with that

I see people I've known that are in higher roles and they're overworked and put in like 50% more hours than I do. They probably make 20% more but I make enough to be very happy. So what's the point?

Maybe find a way to define “career growth” for you, instead of the company’s version? I’ve been pretty happy with increased freedom, increased decision-making, without the extra hours and without having to deal with people.

Trust me, it's overrated. Besides, you're avoiding COVID naturally. That's a perk.

There are specific learning disabilities around math. If you think your issue might be something fundamental about how your brain works, you should look into dyscalculia

I'm the same way. I just had to keep trying to figure it out, and eventually something clicked. I'm still bad at doing math in my head, and I found out that different types of math math more sense than others. Like I'm really bat at algebra and calculus, but I can get geometry and trigonometry. It just took WAY more practice for me than other people I know.

I want to be alone, I just don't want to be lonely. Which makes it hard to find friends, since most of the time I'm great just being on my own.

The problem might be the coffee itself. The stuff you buy at the store is often the cheaper robusta variety, which is known for its bitter taste. It's why it's cheap. Arabica coffee is smoother, and much less bitter in some cases. But anything from the store is also from multiple sources, meaning they take crops from all over the world and mix them together. Single source coffee is more expensive, but you can find varieties that are more delicate than store coffee and taste more fruity. Chances are you could find a kind you would be happy drinking with no added cream or sugar.

But then again, don't push yourself to try it. It's really no big deal if you don't like coffee. And honestly, it's not really good for you anyway, as caffeine is addictive and weaning yourself off of it can be a quite literal headache. Plus it raises your blood pressure, so depending on your health conditions, it might be really bad for you. You're not missing anything to be sad over. And I say that as a coffee lover.

If you're interested in trying to like it, there are a few technique changes I've made over the years that have made me enjoy it. If you're not interested, stop reading and enjoy your coffee free life. 😊

I used to only enjoy it from coffee shops and tolerate it when I made it at home, but I've learned a few tricks that helped.

1. a pinch of salt in the grounds. Yes, a pinch. 1/16 to 1/8 tsp per pot of coffee. If you can taste the salt, it's too much. Got this tip from Alton Brown on Good Eats.
2. preheat your water. The standard American drip coffee maker cannot heat the first cup or 2 of water to boiling. It comes out around 160-180. Got this from James Hoffman on his YouTube.
3. lighter roasts. Dark roasts are like anything burned more.
4. grind fresh beans with a burr mill. Bladed coffee grinders make inconsistent chunks and dust. Burr mills don't. Fresh beans have better and less bitter flavor.

The water and the salt tricks are easy. The lighter roast is more tricky bc grocery stores sell darker roasts. The burr grinder is harder bc they're not super popular, so you may have to look for one.

First off, do not do it if you don't want to, King. But I have found I enjoy light roasts with cream, and yes, that's a very far departure from what macho men call coffee, but who cares. A light roast will be less bitter and more acidic and sweet instead. Also something I've learned is that most people use far too many grounds in their coffee, so you get what amounts to over-steeped coffee that again has bad taste.

Yes, we can't trust you if you don't like coffee. :(

@GeekKing @MisterHavoc ironically, I feel like I form half my personality on being one of the few people who Don't drink coffee.

Own it! 😜 We're better than them! We don't need any weird brown bean water to become functioning human beings, much less be elitists about it. Psshht losers /s.

Jk y'all bean juice lovers are an alright bunch, I guess...

Enjoy what you enjoy, and enjoy that you enjoy it. Doesn't matter what other people like

You might be a super taster like me, do you also hate wine, beer, and most fermented things?

Same. I play RPG video games because I want to "be" the protagonist, live in that world for a while, and get swept away in a satisfying story I can experience from within in the way that only a video game can do.

I never liked MMORPGs, because A) hearing some squeaky child from across the country tell me how much sex he has with my mom does not help my immersion into the fantasy world, and 2) the fact that they are designed to keep you playing forever means there's not ever going to be a satisfying end to the story by design.

What turned me off of ESO was the class system. I just wanted to be an orc warrior or rogue, not a "dragon knight" or "night blade." While I would normally applaud the creativity, it seems out of place in an mmo. When I'm the legendary world-saving hero in the single player games, I get normal skills. When I'm one face in the crowd, I get these grandiose titles and flamboyant costumes that everyone else gets. Seems backwards.

Old WoW player, hit Guild Wars, EVE Online and ESO. Had fun in them... but I had a lot of the same problems you're talking about. EVE was fun because it was screw the story, the fights are on, but any of the others, there's story and your character is off to the side.

Few months ago a friend got me into Final Fantasy 14. Note, it's the first FF game I've played so I didn't go in with the love like so many but holy lord it scratches that RPG itch I've been looking for for years in an mmo setting... like straight up the story is at a point where I say my character is really not in a good place. Frankly it's story is better than some of the single player games I've gotten to recently.

I was in the same boat until about a month ago. Feel like I’ve figured out a brain hack for myself and I’ve been looking for someone to share this with!

Here’s what I’ve done; Kindle app on my phone, set to infinite scroll, white text on black background and the Kindle app widget on the home screen, displaying current book I’m reading.

Infinite scroll makes it feel like I’m just reading a really long article, something I’ve never had trouble with. White text on black background is easier on the eyes. The widget is 4 times the size of other app icons so drawn to it over Lemmy or Mastodon.

I’ve gone from reading nothing in about 5 years to about 200 pages a week!

How do you feel about audiobooks?

Same. I'll sit and veg out to shows or a movie occasionally but I get obsessed with nonfiction, mainly news (which isn't necessarily nonfiction I'll grant you). It'd be nice to get absorbed in a good story once and a while but I usually find it hard to just "push through" some books when the setting is rather alien (i.e. fantasy and sci-fi). That's the kind of stuff I like to watch but maybe I'd do better reading stuff in a more real-world setting.

When you cut a tomato and that semi-slimy juice pours out along with pits - DISGUSTING!

The trick is narrowing down what is so repugnant. I also can’t stand tomatoes, even preparing them. They feel like some sci-fi horror fleshy grenade thing about to explode and cover us all, and the smell is just rotten food

But realistically for me it’s the texture. I’m fine with tomatoes being gross because I can enjoy tomato juice, tomato sauce, marinara, etc. I get all the benefits and someone else deals with the gross parts. Enough cooking and adding spices, and they can add a lot to a meal

To me, the skits tend to go on about 10% too long.

The first thing I ever saw of his was a YouTube clip of the faux lawyer advertisement for homeowners that gets increasingly deranged, and the clip cuts short the ending, which tightens up the humor and makes it better.

I like absurdist humor, but there’s an element more than “wow wacky guy in normal situation” that needs to elevate it for me. Some of his skits have it, and some don’t.

I didn't like it until I watched Detroiters.

I'm curious, why beer? I love beer and its many varieties, but not liking it seems like an overall win. It's awful for your body, we (Americans at least) tend to consume way too much of it at a time, and if your aim is to get drunk there are far more effective ways to accomplish it.

I don't know what it is but onions just overpower everything for me. I love the flavor onions give to other foods so I use onion powder when cooking, but anything that has actual onions, it's all I can taste.

And yet it is in India you'll find Jain food that is free of Onion/Garlic/Ginger.

@OceanSoap @MisterHavoc so unfortunate as I feel like onions are one of the few nearly-universal components of food culture.

Wheat you can get away from in Asian countries where rice or other grains predominate
Same with dairy and most vegetables. Even meat isn't as ubiquitous, and you can always choose your species (chicken v pork v beef v fish etc).

Now you got me wondering where onions originated.... 🤔

Do less lol.

That doesn't mean go out and do it, but next time you might, cut way back on the amount. If one puff makes you feel that way, do 1/4 of one.

is it legal where you are? because I found out I like certain types that don't do well on the black market.

Fascinating. How do you feel about soups? Is it something about liquid food?

Nah, sports people need to learn how to have conversations about particle physics, error correcting code, stress-strain curves, preoteomic or epistemology.

My wife introduced me to natto and I guess my reaction is the complete opposite of yours.

I agree with the gym. I hate being in the environment of the gym, way too many people and I hate working out but if I could do it, it would solve so many problems.

Try a combat sport instead. I got bored of the gym, so I started BJJ. It's fun, and it basically gives me a skill I've learned.

Get a garden instead. You get to workout, time outdoors for some vitamin d, and grow some food. Triple win. The light-, smell- and soundscape in most gyms is horrible.

I hate the gym too. But I need to exercise. So I joined a soccer training thing. So happy.

@Presi300 @MisterHavoc it's tough - I find that I dislike exercising just for the sake of exercising. Going on a bike ride or hike feels like exploring, seeing nice scenery. Playing sports is FUN, and the objective is to get the goal/do the thing, not make pain in body to make it healthier.

For me the key was to find something I liked doing where being active was a side effect. (Like someone mentioned, gardening! I hadn't thought of that one)

Oh man lol