Exploitation for profit, a needful read on masks/mandates, and in the "It's just slumlord culture" department...
Pretty much every day someone sends me something about a new bit of boat bling that I should buy. Today it was an integrated modular instrumentation solution that would, if the included material is believed, will make my life all warm and fuzzy.
The thing is I already have a semi-integrated instrument system that works just fine. That the idea of replacing it with a newer, hipper, and more stylish system that actually costs more than the boat I'd be installing it in sorta/kinda appeals to me has me questioning my sanity.
Such is the power of consumerism and its attached hype that even I feel the siren call of buying new stuff I don't need and can't afford on a regular basis.
I keep having to remind myself that I already have excellent gear that would have cost an unattainable fortune back when I was crossing oceans with a compass, trailing log, and plastic sextant. Gear that worked then and will, if needful work just as well today. While I now have GPS, chart plotters (yes plural!) an incredible depth sounder/fishfinder, and AIS I still consider them luxuries and depend on the basic compass/log/sextant as the fail-safe core of getting from one place to the next.
That being the case, I don't feel like the seductive lure of consumerist boat bling is a problem I can't resist... Well, at least until they come up with a modular instrument system that include an espresso machine and bacon fryer as part of the integrated package.
A man can only be so strong.
Listening to Bedouin Burger
So it goes...
