As the only left handed member in my family, I'm now curious if I ever did that to my family. Though for tasks of that nature I may actually use either hand, or maybe I just started using the right hand because I was the weirdo (asking my mother she said she never noticed but assumed I probably just adapted and used my right hand).

As a bachelor I virtually make all my own bread so I don't really notice, but I think I do take time to figure out which way to twist before opening so maybe that is a thing.

This is just to say, the things you never think about, and I enjoyed the irony of your situation from the reverse side.

> As a bachelor I virtually make all my own bread

I so wish that the status of bachelor automatically bestowed the gift of being a baker. Sadly, in my case, it has not done so. I've tried to make all kinds of breads, from flatbreads to sourdoughs to leavened and unleavened to soda breads - all sorts. I would wish consumption of my output on only my worst enemies.

Happily, though, I can buy packets of bread mix in the supermarket and put them in a bread-making machine.

You should check out The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown; it's a masterwork of clear technical writing. The first basic recipe is expanded over 20+ pages, explaining not only what to do but _why_.

OK, I will do that, thank you. I'm a fan of Cooking for Engineers, and particularly like the schematics. Scroll to the bottom of this recipe to see what I mean:

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/36/Meat-Lasagna

I honestly only did it because I was cheap and I wanted to remake a sandwich I had consumed before. I started with a simple foccacia recipe and went from there. But I started baking with my mother years earlier so I had some experience.

I now for better or worse have the Toll House cookie recipe memorized, but I'm terrible at making baked goods look appealing.

For an easy and delicious recipe, try Andy Jones' "quarantine bread" [1]. I was rarely baking bread before, but this recipe changed that completely. As he mentions, it is really really hard to mess up. I once put it in the oven without folding. Thought that this was irrecoverable. It wasn't. Turned out great.

[1] https://andyljones.com/posts/bread.html

Get some spring clips: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VJJWSL9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

I just fold the end of the bag over and use the weight of the bread to weigh it down.

That way I also have an excuse to not eat the last slice.

Come to think of it, I haven't kept bread around for at least a year.

Nice find. Ordering now.

I wouldn't have expected that the CW to tighten things convention was linked to right/lefthandedness. Especially since many people seem to not have a notion about the convention.

But maybe that's my right privilege talking.

Righty tighty, lefty loosey, right? But I don't think there is a convention when it comes to twist ties, because a twist tie isn't something that gets tighter or looser. It's more closely related to spinning.

I'd bet lefties spin tops counterclockwise, too, by and large. Seems to me it comes down to external rotation of the wrist being easier than internal.

> Righty tighty, lefty loosey, right?

This phrase always irked me, because when you're rotating something, it's not moving either left or right. The top of it moves right, the bottom moves left. Is it tightening or loosening?

Further, the only time a phrase might be needed to work out which way to tighten something is when it's unusually-positioned, for example upside down or facing away from you, and in those cases "righty tighty, lefty loosey" gives exactly the wrong answer (to the extent that it gives an answer at all, since "clockwise" and "right" are not the same thing).

I prefer the phrase "clockwise moves the thing you're turning away from you, anti-clockwise moves it towards you", which I'm hoping will catch on.

I'd guess it is related to the conventional way steering wheels work--turn clockwise to steer the vehicle right, counterclockwise to steer it left. Hence, clockwise gets associated with right and counterclockwise with left.

I have no idea why steering wheels work that way. If I had to guess it would because most steering wheels are below eye level so it makes sense that you move the top of the wheel in the direction you want to go.

Note that if you are holding the top half of a steering wheel that follows this convention, then when you turn the vehicle the centriwhatever force on you will tend to oppose the force you are using to turn the wheel. If the steering while used the opposite convention, that force would reinforce your force. That positive feedback would make it a lot easier to lose control during the turn.

Without power steering, holding the steering wheel at the top gives you more leverage than holding it at the bottom. When holding the wheel at the top, turning right is a matter of moving your hands to the right.

ITT people who have never used a wrench.

> Righty tighty, lefty loosey

I remember an old mechanic sarcastically saying this when I was a kid and as as he worked on an old car that had wheel nuts that did up the other way on one side of the car.

It really pissed him off.

A quick search seems to show that this was a thing. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-old-Chrysler-cars-have-lug...

I read the first answer there, but it didn't answer the related question: why don't all cars have that weird setup now? Is there a modern design feature that we have nowadays that allows for normal threading on the left-side wheels that keeps them from coming loose?

I think it's:

> Improvements in metallurgy, changes in brake design, first to finned drums and then to disks, and changes in wheel nut architecture, from flat washer to conical design have effectively reduced the problem.

I feel like this is the sort of thing that actually makes less sense when you develop explicit reasoning skills. as a child, "righty tighty, lefty loosey" made perfect sense. it never occurred to me that right/left could be relative to the bottom (from my perspective) of a jar lid. only when I started learning about math and coordinate systems did I think "right/left relative to what?".

I've adopted the right-hand rule: The screw goes the direction my thumb points when my right hand closes. And if it's something left-handed like a bike pedal, it's easy to just use the other hand.

I prefer "clockwise lockwise".

The phrase is talking about the top surface of the circle as the circle is facing you, since that’s normally where your vantage point is when you’re turning something with your hand. You have to think things through more carefully if the circle is oriented differently (imagine reaching through a broken window to turn a doorknob).

> This phrase always irked me, because when you're rotating something, it's not moving either left or right. The top of it moves right, the bottom moves left. Is it tightening or loosening?

And the answer is "You look at the top, of course, why would it mean the bottom?"

Think of the vantage point of observer standing (& his land under his feet also rotating with circle causing him to always rotate along the rotation.) at the center of that circle. ACW will always be right moving to him, CW will be left.

The other is, follow the fingers not thumb.

When I twist something I prefer to twist the top of my hands out, so I would twist something different if I was holding the tie with my left or right hand. So I absolutely believe that the handedness affects this because it will change which hand holds the bread and which holds the twist tie. If I hold the bread in the left (twist with my right) I would twist it clockwise (righty tighty) and if I held the bread in my right I would use my left and twist counter-clockwise.

As a lefty I visualized myself spinning a top - it's clockwise. That's because I'd use my right hand to spin a top. Do righties not use their left hand to spin a top?

I think it's more natural to twist things thumb-over-index. index-over-thumb is a slightly awkward movement, at least for me. this corresponds with the right-hand rule (relative to your hand).

You get more power pushing with your thumb than pulling with it. My thumb is stronger over one way over the other.

sorry, confused myself with that bit about the "up" direction of the bag. I think we agree.

I'm right handed yet I generally use my left hand for twist ties. I twist them counter-clockwise too. I never put any thought into it beyond wanting bread.

Just use a clothes pin? It’s faster too.