Programming was my hobby, now it’s my job so instead of having a hobby I just work too much
Yeah it was a fun hobby too when I was in school. But when I started working as a programmer, I don’t want anything to do with it after work hours, or else I get terrible burnout. I’ve tried a couple of hobbies but now I just do video games and learning guitar.
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Studying rhetoric. It’s hella fun sometimes and hella depressing others times.
The paradigm shift that studying rhetoric has caused for me will probably influence me for the rest of my life. I’m now agnostic about the truth and barely interpret rhetoric in terms of truth/lies. Like I feel this paragraph from Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition:
…post-truth signifies a state in which language lacks any reference to facts, truths, and realities. When language has no reference to facts, truths, or realities, it becomes a purely strategic medium. In a post-truth communication landscape, people (especially politicians) say whatever might work in a given situation, whatever might generate the desired result, without any regard to the truth value or facticity of statements. If a statement works, results in the desired effect, it is good; if it fails, it is bad (or at least not worth trying again).
Everything about political rhetoric makes more sense to me when I think in terms of post-truth.
But also, rhetorical figures are cool af. The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read about how to turn a phrase. Plus, being able to name why a sentence like “The liberal arts are the arts of liberty necessary to the exercise of citizenship in a free republic” has a particular rhetorical effect is fascinating. And that sentence is a kind of chiasmus, my favorite rhetorical figure.
This was interesting, thanks for sharing.
I’m not sure if this is good news or bad but it’s the same damn problem since 380BCE
Then the case is the same in all the other arts for the orator and his rhetoric; there is no need to know the truth of the actual matters, but one merely needs to have discovered some device of persuasion which will make one appear to those who do not know to know better than those who know.
- Plato
More power to you. I feel like I understand this well enough just from following politics over the last 8 years, and I kinda hate how I have to break my brain to understand what politicians are actually saying. I do it as a necessity to remain an engaged citizen, not for fun 😂
The Elements of Eloquence is a fantastic read.
I enjoy programming. However this opinion varies wildly if my code works or not.
It brang me to develop photon!
I sew. Specifically, I love sewing stuffed animals.
As a kid, I always wanted those giant stuffed animals, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Now I can make pretty much whatever I want!
I love the colors, the feel of the fabrics… but my favorite part is seeing my 2D drawings get turning into a tangible 3D object! Plus, it makes kids go “WHOOOOAAA” or smile or laugh when they see what I make. That really can’t be beat!
I like to just browse Wikipedia. It’s an endless wealth of knowledge that never ceases to impress me. It’s like the modern library of Alexandria.
I also make cocktails for fun, target shoot, fish, ride trails (not trials), make pens, collect knives, play skyrim, and i cook too.
I bounce between what i focus on often.
you make pens? Like ink pens?
Yeah like ballpoint pens
That’s really cool! Do you have to buy specific materials, or do you buy other pens and take them apart to make new ones?
Yeah i buy internal kits. It has the transmission, tube, pen cartridge, and some other pieces. I usually pour my own acrilic blanks, and cut my own wood blanks.
Mostly i just turn down wood or acrylics into the exterior handle piece of the pen. Its pretty cathartic because you end up with a product that reflects your effort and each one will be completely unique.
what’s the transmission on a pen?
Its the piece that clicks and moves the ballpoint in or out of the housing. On some pens it clicks and on others it twists. Its just the moving part.
oh! I can’t tell you enough how cool I think this is. I have always loved pens though and have a hard time not spending too much when I go to art stores cause I want to buy all the pens/markers.
Maybe the clicky bit?
I am not in the tech field but I love coding and learning new languages. I have for the last 25 years. When my actual (blue collar) profession starts feeling drab or boring my mind naturally starts drifting to find some problem to solve or some way of automating things just to keep me happy and engaged.
Batch scripts on MS/DOS, my first (floppy disk installed) Slackware box. REXX in OS/2. I worked through the animal books and played with Java, Perl, C - actually building tools that work and accomplish things.
Diving in to a new language or project is like discovering a new author you didn’t know about and the hours of joy it will bring me are fantastic and fulfilling. I guess you could say my hobby is learning.
I wrote a great iOS app to help me with things in my job and I use it all the time which saves me literally hours, making my work happier and more profitable. Best hobby ever and totally cheap too!
Over the pandemic I picked up a hobby of digging really deep into the history of the Bible.
It’s so much more interesting than I would have ever thought, and so opposite what everyone (on both sides of the topic) tends to think.
An early history of powerful women peeking through a patriarchal rewrite.
A likely foreign introduction of an Exodus tale from the sea peoples.
A famine story turned into a flood from Babylonian influence.
A generic ‘adversary’ term (‘Satan’) during conversion from a polytheistic story to monotheism leading to the most extensive fanfiction in history.
A version of Jesus referring to contemporary ideas around evolution and atomism in Leucretius being declared false heresy by the group that goes on to be canonized.
Yet again empowered women having their history rewritten by patriarchal opposition.
For someone who has always enjoyed solving little puzzles, it’s been a gift that keeps on giving.
I’ve watched a couple videos from Esoterica. His videos are wild. Who could have expected that the biblical God came from a storm-warrior god?
Sort of. One of the things I see as a common mistake in analyzing the Bible is the attempt to harmonize the different books of the Bible into a single picture of the origin and nature of a figure in it.
So yes, the storm god that shows up in Job is almost certainly coming from the ANE storm god stories which had that god defending a sea monster.
But that isn’t necessarily where ‘Yahweh’ was originating, as much as perhaps a later syncretism with local mythos.
And ultimately, I’d argue for a case that the significance of Yahweh was mostly as consort, potentially mirroring the Shasu (the only bronze age association with Yahweh) having had a real world political marriage to a high priestess of the Queen of Heaven, which was typically Yahweh’s wife in early archeology and was elsewhere in the ANE married to the storm god who slayed the sea beast.
That marriage is later overwritten and regarded as a corruption of an earlier monotheistic tradition, but such monotheism is anachronistic for that earlier period when it is archeologically evidenced as widely polytheistic.
So while I do think it’s helpful with videos like that broadening people’s horizons from what they might hear by modern believers in the texts, the actual picture is potentially far more complicated than a direct transmission of ANE parallels.
Even a story like Noah’s Ark, which fits with a storm god, appears to be a later incorporation of Babylonian flood mythos on top of an earlier Noah story as the hero of a famine story, not a flood story (Idan Dershowitz has a compelling paper on this).
I’ve gotten into gaslands, which is a tabletop game you play with modified hot wheels cars.
I like taking things apart, putting them back together, and generally working with my hands so taking apart a bunch of little cars and gluing spikey bits and rocket launchers and stuff to them is up my alley.
And because it’s a post apocalyptic setting, it doesn’t really matter how good you are at painting and such, dirty, dinged up, messy, etc. is a totally valid aesthetic. That’s kind of what you’d expect from some wastelanders slapping weapons onto whatever car they can get their hands on.
Gardening. And … yes!
I get up in the morning and the first thing on my mind is to go out and tend to the various veggies. The beans are flowering and the tomatoes are ripening and the herbs keep on herbing. Gonna pull out more potatoes in a week or so. Some rodent got to some of the lettuce recently, but not all of it. The fruit trees are having some trouble because they didn’t get enough nutrients for a while, but they’re getting better now and having new growth.
There’s always stuff to do. The kitchen compost turns into healthy soil for the plants. A neighbor shares fruits they’ve been growing; I hope to give them a big pile of tomatoes in return in a few weeks. It’s all good.
Sorry about your lettuce. Do you have a problem with rabbits and tomatoes? Every time I’ve tried to grow tomatoes they end up with one bite out of each one on the day they ripen.
I haven’t seen any rabbits near here. We’ve got squirrels and occasional rats. Someone in the neighborhood feeds cooked peanuts (in the shell) to the squirrels, and they bury them in the garden where they become worm food.
I build loudspeakers, both home and car. But, mostly car subwoofers, amplifiers, head units etc. But also home speakers for home theaters.
I absolutely love it. Music is a big passion of mine (despite never learning to play an instrument). I love it because every project has so many challenges. I love electrical work and designing a system from scratch and then getting to see it actually work iis awesome. It’s like little engineering challenges all throughout. Very engaging for me.
There’s also a lot of wood working involved. Making a functional piece of furniture and getting to expirement with different techniques is a lot of fun.
My dad used to do this as a side hustle. It’s how I learned to solder.
This is neat af
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Shaving with a safety razor is kinda a hobby for me. Its just feels like I’m treating myself.
Buying one has been on my mind for a long time, I think you just sold me on it haha
Wont regret it. I do recommend picking up a blade sample kit though just so you can find what you like and doing some research on the material of the razor body. Zamak tends to be too brittle and often snaps. Also maggardrazors has many deals so keep your eyes peeled. Think I picked up my first razor for like 20$ at the time it was a fatip classic
Nice thanks for the tips. I’m good waiting for a deal while I use up my disposables.
I still use an old 20s-era Gem that I got at an antique shop for $10. Once you get the shaving technique down it’s a nice soothing ritual that ends with a great shave.
Thats awesome did you get it refinished? Be the perfect heirloom to pass down
I’m childless but I hope someone will keep using it. I haven’t refinished it, but a small part of the nickel plating has worn away on one side, so I might look into getting it plated. It has a nice size & balance!
I started selfhosting just before the pandemic. I don’t know that I’d say it’s fun so much as sometimes satisfying.
Building custom ROMs, it’s satisfying AF.
What hardware do you have for this endeavor?
240GB SSD 1TB HDD, 16GB RAM and 40GB ZRAM
Programming was my hobby like the other person, I also now work as a software developer so my hobby now is walking. I don’t want to look at a screen after work.
I’ve had countless hobbies though (ADHD) and to name a few:
- Minecraft
- Walking
- Photography
- Baking
- Cooking
- 3D Printing
- Factorio
- Chess
- Spanish
- Running
- Gym
- Flying drones
- Drugs
I guess what i enjoy is learning new things and sinking money into them haha
The biggest thing I don’t like about working in the tech industry is that you’re expected to make your job your hobby. If you’re not developing yourself in your free time, you can feel like you’re falling behind. And jobs expect you to keep up with all the monthly trends that come out.
I can only speak from personal experience and that is limited as I’ve only been at one company, which is less than 10 employees where we take on clients as needed.
Here there is no expectation to be studying at home, unless you’re not progressing as you would expect. In fact my boss told me that it’s good that I don’t have the brain power at home as it means I am using it at work which I am being paid for.
The same for the technologies too. Current tech stack is C# .net with GraphQL, and React Typescript for the client. They take the approach that we won’t try every new shiny framework that comes out and we will offer long term support to our clients and thus we will work consistently across all our projects and they get refined over time.
So if my first project utilises a useful hook or component that would be carried through to the next project. So each new project starts as a copy of our last project.
That way I could go and work on an app they made before I started but I would be able to pick it up quickly as everything is consistent.
Not sure if I explained that well.
