This reminds me of the surprise which I felt upon discovering that a highly-intelligent acquaintance, who considers eggs to be among their favorite foods, was unaware that you can test whether an egg is still good by floating it in a vessel of water. Eggs which float have started decomposing and built up some gas inside; eggs which touch the bottom of the vessel are fresh.
In areas where I’ve self-taught or the field has progressed since those who taught me studied it, I find that skimming “how to do the thing” articles online offers a treasure trove of handy tricks in this category.
Oddly, those “lifehack” videos that circulate wherever small clips of video are found tend to try to aggregate the home economics side of these insights as well. There’s a broad overlap between “lifehacks”, infomercial products, and assistive technologies designed for people with various minor disabilities. Tricks like using a rubber band to increase your grip on a jar lid, or rolling a citrus fruit on the counter before opening it to make it easier to peel or juice, or interlocking two wrenches together to increase leverage, cater to those who for whatever reason can’t do a task the usual brute-force way and, in doing so, also help those who can normally do a task the usual way but encounter a harder version of the task that the ordinary technique doesn’t work on.
This reminds me of the surprise which I felt upon discovering that a highly-intelligent acquaintance, who considers eggs to be among their favorite foods, was unaware that you can test whether an egg is still good by floating it in a vessel of water. Eggs which float have started decomposing and built up some gas inside; eggs which touch the bottom of the vessel are fresh.
In areas where I’ve self-taught or the field has progressed since those who taught me studied it, I find that skimming “how to do the thing” articles online offers a treasure trove of handy tricks in this category.
Oddly, those “lifehack” videos that circulate wherever small clips of video are found tend to try to aggregate the home economics side of these insights as well. There’s a broad overlap between “lifehacks”, infomercial products, and assistive technologies designed for people with various minor disabilities. Tricks like using a rubber band to increase your grip on a jar lid, or rolling a citrus fruit on the counter before opening it to make it easier to peel or juice, or interlocking two wrenches together to increase leverage, cater to those who for whatever reason can’t do a task the usual brute-force way and, in doing so, also help those who can normally do a task the usual way but encounter a harder version of the task that the ordinary technique doesn’t work on.