631–640 of 703 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're living post-scarcity. Let's hope everyone will be able to, at some point.
Everyone who pays $100/year to get free two-day shipping for Amazon products lives post-scarcity.
This makes me envious of you Americans. Here in Norway online shopping involves finding an online store that sells what you need (there's no site that sells everything, like Amazon, here), going through a cumbersome sign-up/payment process, paying a lot of money for the shipping costs, waiting several days and having to go to the post office unless the package is really small (or if you're willing to pay even more fo…
I've recently signed up for Amazon Prime (in Canada). I "Subscribe and Save" for a few items. Two of those items being paper towel and toilet paper. My wife does most of the shopping and carrying out 36 rolls of toilet paper to the car doesn't make sense when she's also carrying a baby. So I figure what's the harm in having it delivered to my door every month? I love Subscribe and Save.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've recently signed up for Amazon Prime (in Canada). I "Subscribe and Save" for a few items. Two of those items being paper towel and toilet paper. My wife does most of the shopping and carrying out 36 rolls of toilet paper to the car doesn't make sense when she's also carrying a baby. So I figure what's the harm in having it delivered to my door every month? I love Subscribe and Save.
I've just started taking advantage of Subscribe & Save. The products are cheaper than what I pay for them at the local grocery store, plus I've made sure to include at least 5 items in each order so I get the 15% discount (instead of 5%). Subscribe & Save is really great for items that are hard to carry when coming back from the store and that don't degrade quickly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a neat quote. I read it in Harper's back in 1996 and it has really stuck with me. I feel like it describes some of my days pretty well. But another part of me thinks he's writing from a very privileged position, and doesn't (want to) recognize it.
Did I miss some huge event when going out to buy an enveloped is being in a privileged position?
This fact works counter to the studied "just a dude out observing the fullness of humanity" vibe of the paragraph.
So for me the piece is very unstable, tilting back and forth between these two poles. Perhaps that's why I remembered it across 20 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Why don't we have more free time? Than we did historically? We do. Things that I am forced to do, I do not consider "free time", although for some reason anti-technologists like to consider at-home labor to be "free time", so they can make it look like pre-industrialization people had less work than we do today. That said, with every passing year there is measurably less stuff that I have to waste time doing, mostly…
The question I'm trying to raise is why we consider all the little things necessary for living to be a "waste of time." There's a sad irony in the image of first world citizen who can't waste time cooking so they consume large amounts highly processed ready-made food from places like trader joe's and sits down to watch Game of Thrones for three hours and browse pinterest.
Alternatively, I don't waste time cooking and instead spend that time eating with friends at a restaurant and not having anyone burdened by the cleanup afterwards (well except for the staff paid to do so).
strictly speaking, the only thing that's necessary is for me to have food in my stomach. A lot of people enjoy cooking (and I have the luxury of being able to do so with close friends sometimes), but there's little point in romanticizing me heating some water and pouring in pasta in a bowl when I'm by myself. As others have said, a lot of people don't have the luxury of being able to make i.e. cooking and cleaning a social activity.
Beyond the whole socio-economic "guy/gal working 2 jobs" thing (Why do we think working 2 full-time jobs solely to survive is OK?!) , there's even the "person who doesn't really have many friends at the moment". I know some people who find themselves in such situations after moving to a different country for example.
As for things like cleaning, I think the meta-solution to that is to live in a small place and not own many things. Gives me more time to watch game of thrones (or browse HN ;))
It's not just a physical button — it's an API. If you develop a hardware product you can apparently integrate with Dash to order supplies from the embedded controller. Information is here: https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-replenishment-service Apparently, Whirlpool washing machines and Brita water filters will be using it. This doesn't help for basics like paper towels, but it would work for paper towel holders (if it'…
I'd worry about an appliance too quickly re-ordering. My printer refused to print because it thought the toner was all gone. A black marker to the sensor on the side of the toner and I'm back and printing. It's been almost a month now and still going strong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. Dash removes any type of "shopping" from the conversation. Platform lock in for consumables. My bet is they'll just give them away on the containers themselves to get you to use it.
Or just start mailing them at random a la AOL.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In reality, this man of privilege bounds into the store on a cloud of positivity, only to be met by the sullen face behind the counter, 12 hours into a double shift on a day that she wasn't even supposed to be here. At the Postal Convenience Center, the object of his affection barely registers his presence because she is fears going home to her abusive boyfriend who is probably halfway in the bag already. When the le…
Why don't we have more free time? It is precisely the post-industrialized culture of consumption, and economy of progress that is robbing individuals of our free time. When did laundry and cooking and doing work at home cease to be a social function and instead move into the sphere of "work"? http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society