[HN Gopher] 'He passed the bee baton on to me': people who inher...
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'He passed the bee baton on to me': people who inherit hobbies
Author : pseudolus
Score : 38 points
Date : 2023-03-18 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| unxdfa wrote:
| I had ham radio passed down to me. This turned out, ironically
| considering it's a communications hobby, to be isolating and a
| rather nasty bubble. Sort of like an aether 4chan full of bigots,
| racists and status chasing money spenders. Explained my father
| entirely.
|
| There are some niches in it which are still manageable (QRP,
| SOTA) but I don't want to become associated with the rest of
| them.
|
| YMMV but I would encourage people to find their own interests and
| try and look for more progressive ones without a perpetually
| ageing demographic.
|
| I found photography, hiking, travelling to be a better social
| outcome.
| gnaritas99 wrote:
| [dead]
| enkid wrote:
| Why do you think that ham radio is that way? Is it that a large
| number of the hobbyists are trying to be outside the system?
| naavis wrote:
| There is a saying about radio amateurs here: 99% of radio
| amateurs ruin the reputation of the rest.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Every hobby has this though. I felt fortunate to have
| discovered SWL, GMRS, Amateur Radio, etc. long after learning
| the same lesson with everything from Trail maintenance work to
| Disc Golf to Drones to Pickleball.
|
| If association and its ah...trappings are important to you,
| it's far easier to manage down your inner critic by exploring a
| nuanced approach to association in context than it is to find a
| hobby that's more/less immune to such problems.
|
| (This is doubly true if you are interested in the broader topic
| of interests and hobbies)
| unxdfa wrote:
| The ratio of cranks and weirdos to normal people is 9:1 with
| ham radio. It's usually the other way round with other
| hobbies.
|
| The thing that gets me with ham radio is some see it as a
| social responsibility even here in the UK where its totally
| unnecessary from an emergency comms perspective.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > The ratio of cranks and weirdos to normal people is 9:1
| with ham radio.
|
| Not sure what "weirdos" is meant to mean in context but
| with regard to disagreeable people, this has not been my
| experience at all unless I go looking for it. YouTube
| comments, specific freqs in 80m band come to mind, but
| again, not where I typically go to look for anything
| interesting.
|
| Local friends and meetups, classes, and even the academic
| side of the hobby are pretty amazing. Emergency drills at
| the local hospital are fun and I've connected with really
| nice people in and out of the hobby that way.
|
| > totally unnecessary from an emergency comms perspective.
|
| Completely different over here I guess. I've assisted
| people in wildfire emergencies and cell outages due to
| fiber optic cuts.
|
| I've also had some close calls while hiking in e.g. sudden
| lightning storms in remote areas and had people on the
| radio asking how I was doing, if I needed assist, etc.
|
| Seems what you shared is more about your local and family
| experience though? If so, don't let my take on the
| situation yum your yucks...
| srge wrote:
| I took chess from my father and passed it to my son...
| dustymcp wrote:
| Gardening is my new thing after moving to the country side, i
| started growing all sorts of things now on the 3rd year we have 4
| different gardens producing 80% of what we eat in the summer, its
| super rewarding and it gives me a break from those harder
| problems and suddenly after a few hours in the sun i can figure
| out what my issue was.
| chrsstrm wrote:
| I'm currently in the middle of maple syrup season. I've got 75
| taps in on my property with room for maybe another 25 more if I
| wanted to add to the workload. There's no chance at profit on
| this scale but it's a nice relaxing hobby and keeps you and your
| friends and family stocked with the best syrup you can find all
| year long. Last year I planted about 50 more sugar maples and I
| intend to plant about 100 more this year. It takes 30-40 years
| for a tree to mature to the point that it can be tapped, so it's
| not likely I'll ever tap those trees myself, but hopefully I'm
| setting up my descendants with a potential maple syrup kingdom.
| ISL wrote:
| Are your descendants interested in a syrup-kingdom?
| chrsstrm wrote:
| Only time will tell.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| What's the scale at which you could turn a reasonable profit
| for the work involved?
| chrsstrm wrote:
| The tricky answer is, it depends.
|
| Making maple syrup is interesting in that getting started is
| easy. You can typically use inexpensive or homemade equipment
| and if you have access to lots of firewood, then boiling is
| easy. The reduction of sap to syrup is 40:1, so collecting
| about 40 gallons of sap will leave you with a personal supply
| of syrup for the year. Beyond that is where the variables
| come in.
|
| The cost of spiles, hosing, and collection containers for
| tapping is cheap. Stainless evaporation pans are expensive
| (roughly $1K new). My goal for this year is to collect about
| 400 gallons of sap, which means I'll burn through about 2
| cords of firewood (that's a significant amount but you would
| never use propane because of the sheer cost). So do you buy
| your firewood or cut it yourself? That alone is a lot of
| work. Many (no, all) large operations use reverse osmosis
| filtering systems to concentrate the sugar content of the sap
| before boiling. This can cut your evaporation time (and fuel
| needed) in half, which is also significant. You can buy a
| ready-to-go RO system for drinking water off Amazon for a
| couple hundred dollars but the membrane capacity will be
| small and slow you down. An ideal RO system for my current
| scale is in the $3K range.
|
| The weather plays a huge role in sap collection as you need
| below freezing temps at night and above freezing temps during
| the day for the sap to flow. This limits the season to just
| about a month. Today I'm doing absolutely nothing as the high
| for the past two days has been 25F and all my taps are
| frozen. Non-cooperative weather can shorten the season and
| limit how much sap you can collect.
|
| So my 400 gallon goal should yield me about 10 gallons of
| syrup under ideal conditions. I bottle the syrup into 12oz
| bottles that could sell for about $15 each. Roughly 100
| bottles means a potential gross revenue of ~$1500; not great
| considering the cost of the bottles and my labor alone have
| nearly wiped that out.
|
| I would estimate that a sugarbush of at least 150 trees, a
| professional RO system and evaporator, plus no additional
| labor costs could start to see a small profit if you either
| acquired your equipment for free or amortized the cost over
| at least 5 seasons. The requirements for bottling for retail
| are relatively easy where I'm located so you would just need
| to find a viable market for sale. The alternative is to
| collect and RO sap which you can then sell to an industrial
| processor for a reasonable price, which could move your
| profitability timetable up as your equipment and labor costs
| would be roughly cut in half.
|
| But that's just some back of the envelope calculations. I
| don't know any local producers who do it for profit. The real
| key to turning this into a business is owning a viable and
| mature sugarbush. Anyone who has 50 or more sugar maple trees
| on their property in close proximity to one another and is
| not tapping them has no idea what a fantastic resource they
| are sitting on.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| _How we spend our free time matters: research suggests that
| having hobbies can enhance mental and physical wellbeing and
| offer greater life satisfaction. From team sports to crafts
| classes, they can also be a means to meaningfully connect with
| others._
| themodelplumber wrote:
| IMO to take this benefit to a bit of a higher level, it also
| helps to have enough interests to bounce around between them.
| Especially when one interest may become annoyingl or irritating
| with too much focus.
|
| I also noticed there's a very risky delay in the subjective
| monitoring/signaling loop which maintains conscious interest in
| a hobby.
|
| If the original, reliable interest signal isn't really there
| anymore, but one acts as if it still is, the result can be a
| burnout/workaholic effect with hobbies, and it can be more
| devastating there than at work.
|
| The mind will additionally tend to try to switch between
| blaming self and blaming hobby, as it reconciles precious
| identity and social signals and so on.
|
| This in spite of the fact that it could just be that the person
| who previously enjoyed the hobby didn't take enough breaks.
| siva7 wrote:
| That's news like breathing can extend your life expectancy.
| naavis wrote:
| Yet we have people who don't really have anything you could
| call a hobby.
| zihotki wrote:
| That's their choice, isn't it?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Not if it's not entirely freely made.
| pstanger wrote:
| Maybe, or maybe they're overworked and overstressed and
| don't have the time or mental capacity to pursue a hobby
| they would otherwise enjoy
| waynesonfire wrote:
| It seems to me there are numerous distractions that
| compete for our time and attention. hackernews, social
| media, television, sports, and even drugs can all draw us
| away from pursuing our hobbies. Moreover, the limited
| time we have available to devote to our hobbies is
| further challenged by the prevalence of sophisticated,
| A/B tested platforms that are designed to capture and
| hold our attention.
| siva7 wrote:
| We HN folks are basically selling crack and making people
| unhappier in exchange for their time and money.
| t-3 wrote:
| > hackernews, social media, television, sports, and even
| drugs
|
| Aren't these also hobbies, just not very esteemed ones?
| waynesonfire wrote:
| great point! and.. you can be addicted to a hobby to a
| point where it becomes detrimental.
|
| seems there are some similarities between the two. both
| hobbies and addictions involve engaging in an activity,
| seems a key differences lie in the level of control,
| balance, and well-being.
| paxys wrote:
| Not always. Hobbies generally require one or more of
| money, equipment, space and most of all free time, all
| luxuries that a large chunk of people around the world
| cannot afford.
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