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Tedder130's avatar

I worked in a sugar factory in my youth and I remember the ten minute smoke breaks every two hours. The breaks made the mind-numbing work tolerable and then at the end of the week came the paycheck reward, which made the work week tolerable. It was all part of the system.

I researched tobacco once and discovered that the industrial process that made packs of cigarettes possible co-evolved with industrialism itself. In order to obtain the factory friendly texture, it was necessary to ‘toast’ the tobacco, which raised the nicotine level making cigarettes more addictive. The makers also adjusted the burn time of the cigarettes to align with the ten minutes of breaks.

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Johan Zijlstra's avatar

I like the fact that this essay doesn’t have a solution. :)

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