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The Shut-In Economy

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Re: The Shut-In Economy

#271

Post by unimportant »

normloman wrote: post #250

"Mallon is a 26-year-old in New York City who works as a branding sales consultant to tech companies, regularly working from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. " What? Who the hell thinks this is healthy? This person is literally filling all their waking life with work. Even if you love the shit out of your job, you're neglecting your mental and physical health by working that long. (And in all likelihood, she doesn't love the shit ou…

Welcome to NY, where everybody outside of Brooklyn is a high achiever who thinks it's necessary to fill his life with as much work as possible, as otherwise someone else might get his job / he might miss out on a promotion.

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#272

Post by JohnBooty »

sthreet wrote: post #159
JohnBooty wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Volunteering is great. You meet really good people doing it. Because people who volunteer tend to be people with big hearts, of course.

Having done a small amount of required volunteering for school I would disagree. Of course, I live in the middle of nowhere, and it was mostly my classmates volunteering with me who are also required to volunteer for so many hours.

  > required volunteering
So, uh, not volunteering, then? :)

I know what you mean; my school had that too. It's compulsory but you at least get to pick where you work, right?

Anyway, yeah. I'm talking about actual volunteer work. The kind where you volunteer.

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#273

Post by JohnBooty »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #200
JohnBooty wrote: post #91

I don't feel like ordering things online makes me a shut-in at all - just the opposite. I work a lot, and by spending less time on the drudgery of brick-and-mortar shopping, I have more time to spend on the things that matter to me. Including socializing. Yeah, maybe I leave the house less, but are those trips to the store really "quality time?" Making a run to Wal-Mart or the supermarket to buy toilet paper is time…

Regarding your aside about frozen meals, I'm sure I read a comment on this site from a food scientist who claimed that very high quality frozen meals were technically possible, but no one could overcome the consumer perception that it wasn't worth spending money on frozen food.

I think you're right. There's a small place (co-op?) in Seattle that sells frozen meals that are quite healthy and delicious. I wish I could remember the name.

I mean, heck, anybody who's ever cooked extra food and frozen it themselves has proved this... right? :)

What we like about the non-frozen meals, though, is that preparing the meals together is a lot of fun. Of course you could do this without a meal delivery service too (and we have) but we found that we didn't do it very often. The meal delivery service kind of "forces" (in the nicest possible way) us to do it.

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#274

Post by roguecoder »

hoboon wrote: post #24

This is how I feel. I don't watch TV for hours like I did as a child. What I do now is worse; stay in doors programming, browsing the web aimlessly, or staring at the ceiling. I don't blame my internet lifestyle for this really, but I literally don't know what else to do and the internet is so accommodating to me being a shut-in. I know I'm wasting my life but I don't know how to stop. San Francisco is a beautiful ci…

Have you considered volunteering? We can make our lives so safe, so sufficient, that there is no reason to do more, but that doesn't mean that there are no wants in the world. When we substitute someone else's needs for our own (which we've already taken care of), we can both make the world a better place and find a reason for trying again. So many organizations can benefit from someone who knows how to use Excel or set up a wireless router or help optimize some workflow, and you can have an enormous impact while getting to see the broader world.

Either that, or get some good shrooms.

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#275

Post by roguecoder »

gress wrote: post #145
tedks wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not science. Science is sometimes harder than a single test. For example, there's no blood test for autism. There's no blood test for PTSD. But my best friend's brother took years to talk to me, and sometimes still goes into rages; one of my partners would wake up in the middle of the night convinced I was trying to kill her. Brains, minds, reinforcement learning systems, are complicated. By entirely abstrac…

All this is not relevant to the fact that there is no evidence for depression being caused by a chemical imbalance.

That we can fix it by changing the chemical balance is certainly evidence in support of it being caused by a chemical balance.

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#276

Post by JohnBooty »

agentultra wrote: post #257
JohnBooty wrote: post #91

I don't feel like ordering things online makes me a shut-in at all - just the opposite. I work a lot, and by spending less time on the drudgery of brick-and-mortar shopping, I have more time to spend on the things that matter to me. Including socializing. Yeah, maybe I leave the house less, but are those trips to the store really "quality time?" Making a run to Wal-Mart or the supermarket to buy toilet paper is time…

One thing I've noticed is the missing "friendly strangers" in my life -- the people you recognize by being visible in your community at all of the places people regularly frequent (or used to at least). Seeing the same people again and even just recognizing they are there reinforces a sense of place for me. I moved out of the big city to a smaller one and was instantly fascinated by people who would say, "Hi," as I p…

Yeah it's weird. In the city, you can meet all these people, but actual neighbors treat each other like strangers.

In the suburbs, neighbors are often (not always!) super friendly. My neighbors and I have watched each others' pets and helped each other in a lot of ways.

I think it's just the "buying" versus "renting" thing. In the city most people are renting. There's less incentive to make friends with your neighbors when in the medium-term future one or both of you will probably be somewhere else. Your rented property is truly often just a place to keep your stuff. I think rental neighbors should still try to be friends for a variety of reasons (why wouldn't you want to get along with and help your neighbors?) but this is a minority opinion.

On the other hand, when you and your neighbors are all in the midst of 30-year mortgages, people often put more effort into getting along and forging bonds. More of a "we're all in this together, let's try to get along" thing. One of our next-door neighbors is actually kind of unfriendly.

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#277

Post by JohnBooty »

sthreet wrote: post #237
mooreds wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the volunteering experience is, like so many other things, dependent on who else is participating as well as what you are doing. I hope you explore/are able to explore other opportunities in the future that resonate more profoundly with you.

Maybe. I lost my signed sheet. So I have to do like 20 hours again. You wouldn't happen to know a good place to find things to volunteer for in general?

My wife's charity organization has gotten some new members by publicizing their events on Meetup.com! I haven't used it but in general that seems like a good place to find things to do.

If not, try your local government or church, or just see if big-name charities or service organizations have any groups in your area.

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#278

Post by JohnBooty »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #143
lfowles wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the last Soylent discussion here, I reevaluated my diet and ended up going with emeals to do breakfast/lunch/dinner plans. Food went from $300/mo to $450/mo. It go to show that there's a lot of variance!. I don't feel like the old meal plan was worse, it certainly felt adequate. (But I am getting 2 more good meals a day.) Edit: I just realized that's your per-person figure. Mine is for two. That is quite expens…

> Edit: I just realized that's your per-person figure. Mine is for two. That is quite expensive :( $450 a month is definitely a lot by my standards, where/what do you tend to buy? But comparing it to his $60/w, $240/m, isn't quite fair. His meal plan is for 6 meals at $10 a meal. Considering you'll want a meal everyday, that's $300 a month and that's just for dinner. If you add breakfast and lunch he's either paying…

  > $10 a meal is just crazy expensive for a cooked meal.
Yes. I have to be clear that Blue Apron only makes economic sense for us in the sense that it has replaced dining out to a large extent. A sit-down dinner for two usually winds up being at least $50 including the tip. If you use it to replace restaurants, it's a win.

If you use it to replace groceries... well, kudos to you if you can afford it. :)

(Another caveat is that Blue Apron's prepare-it-yourself meals generate a lot of packaging waste, since every ingredient is individually packaged. This is actually my least-favorite aspect of it. It's all recyclable, which helps tremendously although still incurs an environmental cost obviously)

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#279

Post by andylei »

onion2k wrote: post #214
JohnBooty wrote: post #91

I don't feel like ordering things online makes me a shut-in at all - just the opposite. I work a lot, and by spending less time on the drudgery of brick-and-mortar shopping, I have more time to spend on the things that matter to me. Including socializing. Yeah, maybe I leave the house less, but are those trips to the store really "quality time?" Making a run to Wal-Mart or the supermarket to buy toilet paper is time…

If you use the extra time to do those quality things like playing with your dog or reading then you're benefiting from the on-demand economy. You've figured out how to make it work for you. That's great. But... Lots of other people don't use that time well. They 'save' lots of time by having things brought to them, and spend that time watching TV or browsing the net despite not really enjoying those things. They're e…

its sounds like you're suggesting that what people like to spend their time on is independent of how convenient their shopping experiences are

Re: The Shut-In Economy

#280

Post by lnlyplnt »

blackguardx wrote: post #8
lnlyplnt wrote: post #6

As a Current Alfred customer in NYC I can say that the service has been a huge help, and not in the "shut in" way suggested by this article. Having my laundry, groceries and packages taken care of for me allows me to maximize my weekends. I think one of the other reasons Alfred is so useful is that it removes 100% of the cognitive load of chores. Services like flycleaners and instacart are actually only marginally he…

This is such a glowing review that it almost seems like an advertisement. If/when I get customers, I hope they are this positive about my business.

I can assure you that I am no shill. One thing I will say is that it took a few weeks to get everything "in the flow" (socks go in this drawer, wash this but not that etc) , but once they know your routine it's quite incredible to watch everything happen on autopilot.
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