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Vanity activities
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: Vanity activities
#32To call reading the news “vanity” exposes the true vanity of this kind of post. What is the logic of assigning the word “vanity” to my interest to know what’s going on in the world? It’s vanity because I have no important decisions to make about the war in Ukraine, or the perfidy of my government? It’s not vanity, it’s a desire to understand my world and my place within it. What IS vanity is imagining that one’s own…
More like a desire for dopamine.
Re: Vanity activities
#33Author really should have figured out a better word than "vanity."
Feels like a pretty tidy parallel to luxury beliefs. Luxury activities would fit, especially since some of these are the activity equivalent to the belief.
Re: Vanity activities
#34Author really should have figured out a better word than "vanity."
Why?
Re: Vanity activities
#35“The number of pageviews on your website and the number of likes on your tweets are fun to look at and sound impressive, but optimizing for them completely misses the point if they don’t lead to something more important (e.g. profit).” Profit is fun to look at and sounds impressive, but optimizing for it completely misses the point if it doesn't lead to something more important (e.g. human flourishing, or net societa…
Profit is useful. Views, likes and comments have zero value. That's why e-celebs with millions and millions of "followers" can't sell more than a dozen coffee mugs when they try to make money from it.
Re: Vanity activities
#36It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both ethical consumption and going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact, and they're independent of one another. So, while someone "truly" optimizing for environmental impact would better spend their time avoiding meat, someone who enjoys meat can still reduce their environmental impact without becoming miserable. Variables like "income" and "environment" are just parts…
> going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact
Mmm, yes and no.
It depends where your meat comes from. If you buy meat the way it's produced in the US where you have great big sheds full of cattle in the desert with everything trucked in, then yes.
If you want permaculture, you absolutely must have livestock.
If you want arable farming of any sort, you absolutely must have livestock.
The whole thing breaks down very quickly if you don't have grass and clovers growing in fields, and ruminants eating them, breaking down the tough cellulose, and then shitting it out and trampling it in.
Re: Vanity activities
#37I enjoyed the article. Many comments here on HN seem to be missing the point. The author isn't bashing on "hobbies" and is not even bashing on "vanity activities". S/he is merely challenging us to acknowledge them for what they are. Stop kidding yourself. If you churn credit cards (for example) and are one of the 10% that can make it truly profitable, then good for you. The other 90% are probably kidding themselves.…
I feel like it's hobbies with an element of virtue-signalling.
Re: Vanity activities
#38There's something horribly broken about the styling on this site. Attempting to scale the page (Ctrl-+) doesn't change the font size. I have no idea how the page managed that, but whatever mechanism allowed that, browsers should kill it with fire.
This page - a bit of barely styled text on a plain background - also doesn't work without JS at all. Even though this is not a SPA, the essay text is just there in HTML response. I know I'm yelling at the clouds here, but I find this slightly annoying (why do I need to run code to read this?).
Re: Vanity activities
#39Some good points in here, but with respect to networking, the author misses the forest for the trees. Sure, when you go to networking events, you aren't certain you are going to get a job from the folks you meet. What you are doing is increasing your luck surface area. Hiring is not an entirely rational process, but if someone doesn't know you exist, they won't hire you (how could they?). From there, it follows that…
Why not just cold-message people from a potential employer when you’re applying there? Works way better than it should, and is more targeted than talking to people 99% of who you‘ll never see again, at an event.
Re: Vanity activities
#40It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both ethical consumption and going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact, and they're independent of one another. So, while someone "truly" optimizing for environmental impact would better spend their time avoiding meat, someone who enjoys meat can still reduce their environmental impact without becoming miserable. Variables like "income" and "environment" are just parts…
> going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact Mmm, yes and no. It depends where your meat comes from. If you buy meat the way it's produced in the US where you have great big sheds full of cattle in the desert with everything trucked in, then yes. If you want permaculture, you absolutely must have livestock. If you want arable farming of any sort, you absolutely must have livestock. The whole thing breaks down…
Won’t that work better without killing & eating them young?