5 ms·

Did I miss some huge event when going out to buy an enveloped is being in a privileged position?

tedks 12y ago
Having copious free time has always been a privileged position. The extent to which you can waste time is a direct expressino of privilege.
- shanselman 12y ago
  "expressino"
  - carbocation 12y ago
    If a neutrino is a little neutral one, I'd like to think that an expressino is a tiny expression, in this case of privilege.
  - leavinit 12y ago
    Its the fundamental sub-particle of privledge; might not have any mass but it still smells and looks like overpriced coffee and arrogance.
  - tedks 12y ago
    Congrats, you caught a transposed character in an HN comment. Sometimes, I don't care enough about these comments to exhaustivley spell check them. I guess I don't have the time. Maybe you should chekc your privilege.
    - shanselman 12y ago
      LOL, not at all. It's a great thing. It's a new word as far as I'm concerned and I'm dedicating my life to making it A Thing (TM).
    - Intermernet 12y ago
      I wouldn't worry too much about chekcing anything. You've possibly started a meme with "expressino". I shall be using it. Oh, and it's also remarkably close to this [1], which I didn't know about until now, and now want to try. Thanks for your accidental character transposition. It has led to good things. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espressino http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espressino
- RodericDay 12y ago
  >> One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night. >> These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...
  - icebraining 12y ago
    I don't see any discussion vis-a-vis the whole decades that we know spend not working, ie., childhood and retirement. My grandmothers haven't worked a single day (barring small chores) for the last 20+ years. I only started really working 23 years after I was born. I doubt any of this was true during the middle ages.
- alttab 12y ago
  Or welfare. Don't forget about welfare.
mturmon 12y ago
Structuring your whole afternoon as make-work so you can continue to mail pages to a typist is, yes, privileged. 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.

tedks 12y ago

Having copious free time has always been a privileged position. The extent to which you can waste time is a direct expressino of privilege.

shanselman 12y ago
"expressino"
- carbocation 12y ago
  If a neutrino is a little neutral one, I'd like to think that an expressino is a tiny expression, in this case of privilege.
- leavinit 12y ago
  Its the fundamental sub-particle of privledge; might not have any mass but it still smells and looks like overpriced coffee and arrogance.
- tedks 12y ago
  Congrats, you caught a transposed character in an HN comment. Sometimes, I don't care enough about these comments to exhaustivley spell check them. I guess I don't have the time. Maybe you should chekc your privilege.
  - shanselman 12y ago
    LOL, not at all. It's a great thing. It's a new word as far as I'm concerned and I'm dedicating my life to making it A Thing (TM).
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    I wouldn't worry too much about chekcing anything. You've possibly started a meme with "expressino". I shall be using it. Oh, and it's also remarkably close to this [1], which I didn't know about until now, and now want to try. Thanks for your accidental character transposition. It has led to good things. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espressino http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espressino
RodericDay 12y ago
>> One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night. >> These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...
- icebraining 12y ago
  I don't see any discussion vis-a-vis the whole decades that we know spend not working, ie., childhood and retirement. My grandmothers haven't worked a single day (barring small chores) for the last 20+ years. I only started really working 23 years after I was born. I doubt any of this was true during the middle ages.
alttab 12y ago
Or welfare. Don't forget about welfare.

mturmon 12y ago

Structuring your whole afternoon as make-work so you can continue to mail pages to a typist is, yes, privileged. 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.