In introductory texts and beyond, but short of the really nitpicky scholarly stuff, there's a neat and tidy dichotomy between "rationalism" and "empiricism" in early modern philosophy, and you even get the impression that there are exactly three (!) major figures representing each position: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. "Rationalism" might be defined as the belief in knowledge independent of experience, and "empiricism" the belief that knowledge depends on experience.

But the full story on these is much less straightforward.

First, the definitions need more details and qualifications. For example, knowledge can be experience-independent by being innate (roughly, "inborn") or by being the product of deductive (roughly, "armchair") reasoning from prior knowledge; and, because knowledge itself has a complex structure, knowledge can be experience-independent in some ways rather than others - so, a whole articulate proposition might be known innately ("Nothing can be in many places at once"), or we might merely be innately equipped with the "vocabulary" involved in that proposition ("no," "thing," "many," "place," "at once"), without necessarily realizing how the terms relate to one another to form that proposition.

And second, with these elaborations in mind, both the "rationalist" and the "empiricist" labels can be applied in some cases to a single figure. Locke, traditionally considered the father of early modern empiricism, claims that we know of "something" - a mind-independent material substance - that underlies all our sensory experience; but this claim is at odds with the above definition of empiricism. To avoid the inconsistency, we can redescribe Locke as someone who "emphasizes" (or, more weakly, "acknowledges") the role that experience "frequently" (but not always) plays in knowledge - but then, there's nothing to prevent a rationalist from doing the same; Descartes was interested in biology, for example, which is hardly an armchair endeavor. Also, later empiricists like A.J. Ayer admit that there is knowledge attained through deductive reasoning, which would sound like rationalism if not for the disclaimer that this knowledge is actually tautological and uninformative, as in "All bachelors are unmarried."

1. Work blows.
I do email marketing and I constantly get screwed by the ignorance/attitude of people I need to rely on.

example one: We create a contest for a big trade show happening mid-October - the contest ends on Oct 1st. To promote it, I create a sign-up thingie that should be deployed on the website in MID-AUGUST and send the script to the developers so that we can start promoting early-to-mid September. After me asking about the status a few times (and getting the reply that "It's being developed right now"), they finally make it go live two days after the contest ends. And it was not tested, so there is a bug. Funnily enough, we have three teams of developers and a team of testers in-house.

example two: I create a tablet sign-up form for the newsletter to be used at said trade show. Last time, we got a few hundred new sign-ups. This time, a colleague who coordinated the staff on-site told me that "it was too busy and hectic, so nobody handed out the tablet to the customers." So here I am with nothing, although I did MY part.

2. My stand-up stuff
I became a member of the biggest comedy club in the country recently, and just in time, because the club now has a show on TV. There was a shooting this week - live audience and everything. I was getting ready backstage when I hear the host calling me on stage. He messed up the running order, and I made the mistake of not stopping the shooting. So I went on stage and did my thing (it was not ideal because I was a bit startled). And now, he complained in a FB post that I did a joke that is "too edgy for TV", saying that "I know you want to look tough on stage, but think whether it's suitable". He has full control over what is cut out of the footage and what is not, by the way.

It is SO FRUSTRATING to see other people doing jokes they stole from the Internet (and admit it) or people who actually have other people write their jokes (and admit it) get a free pass, but I do a joke that uses "Armenian genocide" as a somewhat surreal punchline and suddenly I get shit. Fuck that - I am not compromising anything.