<story><title>I Sell Onions on the Internet</title><url>https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-internet/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>Moments of whimsy are some of the most important. It was a moment of whimsy that led to me studying abroad in college, and another moment of whimsy that led me to meet my wife while I was there. Couldn&amp;#x27;t have been more than 5 total minutes of thoughts no more complicated than &amp;quot;yeah, I guess I&amp;#x27;ll give it a go&amp;quot; that shaped my entire life.&lt;p&gt;And yet, I can spend another 5 minutes in the grocery store agonizing over which of two near-identical bags of chips to buy. Funny how that goes.</text></item><item><author>Panino</author><text>&amp;gt; I backordered the domain as a spectator, but for kicks &amp;amp; giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s funny and beautiful how a moment of whimsy ends up being a fulcrum point in his life.&lt;p&gt;It seems there&amp;#x27;s a lot of interest in gardening &amp;#x2F; food production among tech people.  For me, one of the reasons I love gardening is because in many ways it&amp;#x27;s totally different from working inside with machines, but there are important and unexpected overlaps.  For example if you have a solid understanding of the OSI model which informs your method of system design, you can easily move into gardening where knowledge of the layers of a forest plays a similar role.  Having this experience in tech makes it easy to zero in on similar structural principles in gardening, learn about them, and &lt;i&gt;apply&lt;/i&gt; that knowledge whereas many others clearly don&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;Just like a person who doesn&amp;#x27;t understand the value of a proper foundation  in tech (hardware, lower protocols like DNS, etc.), a similar gardener won&amp;#x27;t first seek to build strong healthy soil, and they will constantly fight against nature rather than work with it, doing more work while getting fewer results.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, regarding onions: last year I cut off some green onion bottoms from the store and put them in the ground (including the little roots).  They grew back and gave several more green onion harvests before winter set in, and now they&amp;#x27;re back on their own!  Permanent green onion.  You can do this with a number of plants, btw.  Try it!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>piccolbo</author><text>Check survivorship bias. The name refers to deadly scenarios, but what is fundamental to it is a bias in reporting that depends on the outcome of interest. The concept was first hammered out observing that warplanes never got hit in the engines -- well, the ones that made it back at least. Some people thought the areas with the most damage should be protected. Wald thought otherwise and it&amp;#x27;s him who is remembered to this day. &amp;quot;Moments of whimsy&amp;quot; are like anti-aircraft ammo. They hit everywhere, randomly. But we only report those that are associated with a life change.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Sell Onions on the Internet</title><url>https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-internet/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tvanantwerp</author><text>Moments of whimsy are some of the most important. It was a moment of whimsy that led to me studying abroad in college, and another moment of whimsy that led me to meet my wife while I was there. Couldn&amp;#x27;t have been more than 5 total minutes of thoughts no more complicated than &amp;quot;yeah, I guess I&amp;#x27;ll give it a go&amp;quot; that shaped my entire life.&lt;p&gt;And yet, I can spend another 5 minutes in the grocery store agonizing over which of two near-identical bags of chips to buy. Funny how that goes.</text></item><item><author>Panino</author><text>&amp;gt; I backordered the domain as a spectator, but for kicks &amp;amp; giggles, I dropped in a bid around $2,200 ’cause I was confident I’d be outbid.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s funny and beautiful how a moment of whimsy ends up being a fulcrum point in his life.&lt;p&gt;It seems there&amp;#x27;s a lot of interest in gardening &amp;#x2F; food production among tech people.  For me, one of the reasons I love gardening is because in many ways it&amp;#x27;s totally different from working inside with machines, but there are important and unexpected overlaps.  For example if you have a solid understanding of the OSI model which informs your method of system design, you can easily move into gardening where knowledge of the layers of a forest plays a similar role.  Having this experience in tech makes it easy to zero in on similar structural principles in gardening, learn about them, and &lt;i&gt;apply&lt;/i&gt; that knowledge whereas many others clearly don&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;Just like a person who doesn&amp;#x27;t understand the value of a proper foundation  in tech (hardware, lower protocols like DNS, etc.), a similar gardener won&amp;#x27;t first seek to build strong healthy soil, and they will constantly fight against nature rather than work with it, doing more work while getting fewer results.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, regarding onions: last year I cut off some green onion bottoms from the store and put them in the ground (including the little roots).  They grew back and gave several more green onion harvests before winter set in, and now they&amp;#x27;re back on their own!  Permanent green onion.  You can do this with a number of plants, btw.  Try it!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Retra</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t that just confirmation bias though? If you hadn&amp;#x27;t made those decisions you just as likely could have met someone else  some other way, married them and been just as happy or successful.</text></comment>