My Treadwater Desk | Hacker News Reader

My Treadwater Desk

doublestealth.blogspot.com

168 pointsjgrahamc62 comments

In the same vein: "More Office Workers Switching To Fetal Position Desks" http://www.theonion.com/video/more-office-workers-switching-...

That was hilarious! Good ol' Onion.

Reality Surpasses Fiction and this was close enough.

Inside the Paleo movement there is a "cold therapy" trend. Its main contributor is Ray Cronise. You can watch a TED talk [1] and visit his web site [2]. His latest contribution is a scientific paper, co-authored with David Sinclair (yes, the resveratrol guy). It is titled "Metabolic Winter Hypothesis" [3] and it is quite interesting.

In simple terms, the rationale is the same as for the food leg of the paleo movement: Food availability is hurting us badly; warm "availability" is doing the same, so we better get some time in a colder environment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQ_ldCwKUQ [2] http://hypothermics.com/home/ [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24918620

Ha. I didn't know about that. Interesting.

Part of the problem of parodying some of this stuff is that it's self-parodying. I keep thinking about what would happen if "Brad Bradstone" tries Soylent.

He seems like the kind of guy that would have a farm-to-table-to-farm system set up for the whole company.

(Stolen from https://medium.com/message/new-york-city-after-global-warmin... )

I actually start every day with an ice cold shower and find that it helps to wake me up and put me in the right frame of mind for the day. I don't claim it's anything more than psychological, but it's been a big help for me.

What is the temperature where you live?

I bet it's not in Siberia.

Maybe it is [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ihMP-I3l8

Screaming/not very dressed kid warning

It's near Toronto, so it depends. -25C in the winter, 35C in the summer. Around 30C right now.

Oh. Here in south of Brazil its 10C those days and I use hot water even to wash my face in the morning.

I enjoy cold showers from time to time. But as someone who just moved in to a new home and forgot to schedule gas turn on in advance leaving us without hot water, a true "ice cold" shower leaves you literally breathless.

I've never felt my body react in such a way.

I can second this. I spent 2 weeks in an apartment with no hot water. The first 30 seconds or so in the shower left me struggling for air. After that, it's a lot better. Not good, but better.

If you stay in it for a while, you still acclimate. Just don't try it during a cold winter.

FWIW, a friend of mine suggested doing that and threw a study at me when I made disbelieving noises: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17993252

It's called shivering. Your body does it in response to early hypothermia. It requires energy to shiver, which burns fat.

This guy is a nut. Just exercise more.

Read the site. He suggests water temperatures that aren't cold enough to make you shiver. In fact, if you're shivering, you're way past the 80/20 point. This isn't woo woo crazy shit, he's done his research.

It's called cold thermogensis [1]. Fat burning could be one benefit, but apparently it can help your body get more adapted to changes in temperature. Some people who do cold plunges or cold showers feel that they can handle temperature fluctuations better, although most of that evidence is anecdotal. I personally switch to a cold shower after a hot shower and it makes me feel amazing afterwards. People have experimented with hot and cold temperature variations for years, like the Finnish with their saunas, and native Americans with sweat lodges.

[1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22cold+thermogenes...

Makes sense. We are 70% water like the earth's surface. So we should lead an organic lifestyle spending 70% of each day in water (17 hrs) and the rest on land sleeping in a fetal position.

You see, this is another reason why the waterfall development method failed. (No actual water used!)

"We reduced downtime by 37% by wiring our CI build status direct to the building sprinkler system above the dev team"

True waterfall mode.

LOL, double stealth. That gets me every time. Is this blog actually written by jgc, or just inspired by his original post on here? I see he submitted this item, so presumably he wrote it.

EDIT: here's the original: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166183

It's written by me.

I wrote if for a while and then stopped. I figured that there were plenty of things in the 'startup culture' worth lampooning so I brought him back. I can't promise to write as "Brad Bradstone" often because it requires inspiration, but I suddenly had the silly idea of a 'treadwater' desk last night and figured I'd run with it.

More please! Have you thought of going freemium?

I'll write more when I have time/inspiration.

What would freemium look like?

You could start lean and then scale up. At first, do things that don't scale [1]. You could hand deliver the stories (which are handwritten) to some paid customers.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Brilliant:

Currently we're in double stealth mode (the public doesn't know what we're building and neither do we).

We have introduced our own line of these desks, branded as the Koi Desk.

Not only are you more productive because your body isn't contorted into a sitting or standing position, you get the calmness and tranquility that watching Koi fish bring to your day as they swim around your legs.

Looking forward to the co-location treehouse hanging desk, because you know... we all came down from the trees (o;

Hilarious post, I wish there was more on the blog.

I assume that this treehouse will be complete with a "No gurlz allowed" sign?

I can't tell whether this is a childish joke or a scathing indictment of silicon valley "boys club" culture. (inclined to assume the latter given that it's posted on HN). :)

It's a reference to a series of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/08/05#.U7QAoo1d...

It's great when someone links the comic that I didn't even know I was referencing.

So, what were you referencing?

I tried to come up with the mental map of how I came up with that, but I think I was just subconsciously channeling Calvin and Hobbes. (Nothing wrong with that, I guess...)

And Tinder rebrands to Timber (o;

[I'll let myself out, thanks]

I ignored the heading that points out this is parody, and while i found it bizarre, it seemed believable. I guess I've encountered enough wacky stuff that this didn't strike me as too "out there."

Yesterday on Reddit someone posted their pet sweet potato. Today I'll believe anything.

Hah! Same - I got to the end of it and was like this has to be a joke, but honestly maybe it isn't... then scrolled back up top and saw that it was. But I definitely could have been convinced that it was serious.

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1329/

Not exactly as described but close :) :

http://imgur.com/6jxS7aU

needs a bigger monitor instead of the small display :)

Also it would be good for a "walking on the beach" simulator with Oculus Rift (filling up the water as you walk in the ocean :D )

I created an artists rendition of this last year: http://www.actsofvolition.com/archive/2013/september/swimmin...

Don't forget to enjoy your water paleo diet while treading. Since humans evolved from the sea it's only natural for our bodies to eat a sea plants like kelp and sea weed. A strict diet of sea plants is the only natural diet.

/sarcasm

I'd love to see a picture of this, or even better - a video! :-D

Here's a Treadwater Interview which might give a flavour of how those Skype sessions go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGDkcLT8IqM

> At Yellow Yellow we like to blaze our own trail and in NoSitting we're no exception

I read this in Cave Johnson's voice.

I'm actually going to switch to a Ski jumping desk.

> Sure, they don't see much of me because I'm building Yellow Yellow, but I want to be there when we can all enjoy the fruits of my labors.

Parody it may be but this is the way a lot of start up types seem to think

You mean this is a parody? but I have an identical set up and my productivity some days is infinitely higher when I use it.

OK, I may only use it on Mondays, my body needs the whole week to recuperate, and I don't work on Sundays but still, can you claim infinite gains in productivity by using a different desk? thought not.

> And all the evidence points to sitting being a disaster health-wise.

What's the status of this? I've seen claims that standing at a desk is worse than sitting, and vice versa, and both groups like to point to scientific consensus. At the minimum, it seems to be like there would at least be some tradeoffs.

Makes me wonder what a sense deprivation tank workstation would be like. Insane productivity? Or just insanity?

Coming up next on HN: Parkour desks! Work while wallrunning!

Double Stealth - No one knows what we're up to and we are not to sure either.

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