Hobbies, Free Time, and All That Bull...
I have a few things I do which I’d consider hobbies. But I don’t know why I do them.
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Culture Clash
Most people in the United States are taught, at least in general, about the poor treatment of Native Americans by European settlers. I’m originally from Massachusetts, which takes its name from the tribe living in the area when the English first arrived. Many of the towns near where I grew up were derived from the Massachusett tribe’s names for those areas. As a result, we were reminded every day of the culture which existed once, that no longer does.
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Consumer Products
Look, I don’t want to sound ungrateful towards capitalism, but sometimes, we’ve got too many choices in consumer products. A few years ago, my girlfriend introduced me to a Neutrogena moisturizer that was so much better in every respect than any moisturizer I’d ever used, including within their own brand. Instead of elation, all I could feel was anger. If you put 10,000 options on the shelves of CVS, it will take me until I’m 24 to discover the best option! And there is one best option - anyone I’ve introduced this moisturizer to has immediately switched to this product. It’s not a question of taste - this shit has mass appeal, but it’s hidden in plain sight!
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Operating Systems
I’ve been struggling to get Ubuntu up and running on my computer well enough that I don’t long for Windows 7. I thought I almost had it, but then I realized that DarkTable, the open-source alternative to Adobe’s Lightroom, is fairly limited in the spot/local edits it can do. This means in order to process photographs in the way I prefer, I would have to use both DarkTable and Gimp, whereas Adobe has included enough in Lightroom that I usually don’t need to send the file to Photoshop.
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False Black-White
I knew a woman in my graduate studies who would phrase her questions, “well, between choice A and choice B…. which one is better?” This was a class on the legal issues in the life cycle of a business, and it gave a broad overview of common issues. Of course the answer to every question was the same: it depends. In some circumstances, A. In others, B. Without knowing a specific situation (and usually, without the benefit of hindsight) it will be impossible to tell. If choice A was always correct, do you think choice B would even exist - or would our professor teach it? It’s safe to say, probably not.
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