In a recent newsletter, “The Shopping Cure,” Anne Helen Petersen explored the compulsion to buy and accumulate stuff that’s been fostered by technologies of frictionless consumption. Every conceivable activity or hobby one sets out to enjoy becomes an occasion to buy stuff: “They transform from sites of actual pleasure and diversion to means of sel

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After a decade of trying all these things—crazy shopping sprees, sports cars, mansions, and ridiculously expensive boats—I came to a fundamental realization. My ultimate goal was freedom of time and freedom from worry. And, ironically, spending and tending to my expensive toys actually ate into my time and stoked my worries. It was a pyrrhic victor

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