Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/23/these-home-office-essentials-w.html
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Is it moral to buy junk in a time of isolation?
I keep seeing posts everywhere about being stuck at home, but there are all these people going to work in order to supply all those needed things, not just medical supplies but food and takeout and amazon orders.
In some cases, theycan’t afford to stay home. But whether or not they have a choice, they are there at work while you are not.
Itdoesn’t seem quite right to order non-essentials at a time like this. Sure, I’d like some things, but I keep putting it off because I’m not sure it’s right.
There will be plenty of time later to spend money.
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@beschizza @xeni @doctorow @frauenfelder @pesco
Don’t you guys think that now is the time to put the lid on this ‘buy a load of junk you don’t really need but which our marketing algorithms detect may be tangentially related to real-world needs right now’ activity?
It is starting to get offensive given that tens, probably hundreds of thousands of people ARE going to die of this. Including some of your active followers and commenters.
It is not a good look for a ‘directory of wonderful things’ aimed at a community such as this one.
ETA in case there is any lack of understanding of my point - this post came over to me like ‘yeah it’s the end of days and what better time to spend some money and make us some profit by making the end of days a bit more bearable ’.
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I completely see what you are saying and meaning and agree with you.
For me and my ethics, the line is that buying stuff that you need is OK. Buying stuff that you don’t need is less OK, since we still have a lot of people who are needing right now, and the delivery systems are jammed. I guess make do if you can and only order if you can’t?
As an aside, for serious, long term use, those desks look nearly unusable. So they are perfect for the BoingBoing store!
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C’mon Boing Boing - these CVS-receipt-long affiliate posts are really getting to be a bit much. I get the need to monetize, but at least clip them after the first couple products.
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How many thinly disguised adverts do we need on BB? They’re outnumbering actual articles on https://boingboing.net/blog at the moment, and certainly taking up most of the space on the page.
This is a time we should be avoiding meeting other people unneccesarily. So remain indoors, go out to buy essential supplies, but it’s not a holiday to redecorate your house or build the perfect home office - if you can even use that office later, once this emergency is over.
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Well, literally everyone in Europe is working from home right now when they have a job that allows them to do so.
Many people don’t have good desks or chairs that are adequate for a full work day.
The more people work from home, the less people are going to die, right?
It won’t really be a home office unless you can replicate the crushing existential despair of office work. Very hard to do at home, though not impossible. If you must complete the whole package, I recommend a multi-hour teleconference with a vague agenda and a lot of loosely connected participants.
For bonus existential misery schedule one or two of those every day or so.
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Maybe the store has an app for that.
Or maybe some accessories to make the home more like a workplace.
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