AlexWhat is something society treats as normal that you secretly think is completely insane?
Buy a thing, it stops working, throw the thing away, buy a new thing.
Seems like nobody fixes shit anymore. And yes, I know, companies make things as unfixable as possible. But I’m a weirdo who would rather pay a lot to fix a thing than throw it into the ocean and buy a new thing.
djdarrenMy wife’s 4K monitor died a few months ago. They’d been pondering a new one anyway, so that forced the decision.
So I took the broken one to work and asked my electrician buddy if he could run a multimeter over it.
One 8p capacitor later and now I have a 4K monitor as well.
I have one of those digital measurement calipers. I dropped it and the screen went wonky. I took it apart, one of the zebra connectors had moved a bit. Put it back in place, put the thing back together and I’m back to measuring with it. Didn’t cost anything except maybe 30 minutes of time.
I love the feeling of fixing shit.
I got an old-school caliper with a vernier scale because I was sick and tired of replacing the coin cell batteries in the digital ones.
Yeah I have like 8 different ones. I have a fancy Mitutoyo in a nice wooden box that I use on special occasions and a whole bunch of others that are more or less beat up. I use the digital one’s for quick checks on stuff like brake disc thickness, where it doesnt matter if its off by 0.05mm etc
If you buy a decent digital one, they actually turn off when you press the off button, and the battery lasts a long time. The cheap ones just turn the display off, and the batterty dies like every week.
These days, even if you pay more you still risk getting something that isn’t “decent” a lot of the time anyway, and I’m not willing to pay a lot more for something like Mitutoyo that actually has brand reputation.
Search Amazon for a knife sharpening stone, all the pictures that look the same are the exact same product at vastly differing prices.
I just sharpen my knives in the underside of a shitty ceramic mug or plate. Have been thinking of using a slate roof tile as they are bigger.
Slate shingle is the way
Probably half a generation even. When I was a kid fixing things was normal. I remember when all the small electronic shops started to disappear. Only to be replaced by mobile phone screen switch shops lol.
Haha yup. Either a hobby or a way to make youtube videos. The amount of channels where people just fix things and they have millions of views is a good sign… I just hope it evolves into people starting to think about this whole fixing of things and not just watch youtube videos.
That’s the strange part.
Millions of people watch repair videos, but far fewer actually repair things themselves.
Yup. But if only 10% of those people decide to go fix a thing, instead of buying a new one, I guess that’s a win.
Content consumption unfortunately seems to act more an a replacement than inspiration
BoozillaWhen our clothes washer broke, we paid a local pro to repair it for almost the cost of a new one. It was worth it to us, and I’d rather pay a local worker for their labor than a big box store for a new appliance. This was several years ago, and fortunately it’s still working.
Yeah I do that a lot. Luckily I have tools and some skills so I can do a lot of fixing myself. My current clothes washing machine was given to me, the shock absorbers had let the liquids out. I put some new O-rings in and a bit of hydraulic fluid. Its been working fine for 3 years now lol.
Yeah this. People cuss at the price of repair sometimes being even higher than a new product (which is a valid criticism) but you’re still more likely to be supporting a local worker rather than some faceless megacorp (though probably any spare parts might come from a corp, but at least some of the labor is rewarded as is due)
What I hate is that as much as I try to repair things, I just can’t do it because of companies not giving a fuck.
My monitor has been regularly having major display glitches, and I think it’s due to a cold solder joint, but my monitor is just glued and welded together in such a way where if I tried fixing it, I’d crack the screen and make it even more useless, so now I just have to… get a whole new monitor.
If you don’t mind how it looks, as long as it works, check out James Channel on youtube. Dude cuts circuit boards with a angle grinder etc. Goes to show that you don’t necessarily need to be careful… as long as you know what and how to fix. And if you have a lot of hot glue.
LillyPipA good pair of shoes costs more, but your feet are worth it. And cobblers are still a thing.
Buy good shoes and have them repaired. This costs much less than buying cheap shoes every few years.
Same with tailoring. Buy a nice coat and have it fixed rather than buying a new coat. Slightly higher outlay up front, but it lasts far longer and is far cheaper than having to buy a new one when your shitty coat wears out in a few years.
Most people have never experienced the difference with quality goods. They seem more expensive, but are actually less expensive in the long run.
Buy nice things then use cobblers and tailors to prevent rebuying later.
100% all of that.
I have these winter boots, got them from my dad. My dad bought them in early 1980s. They have a thing that lets you attach them to traditional skis. I use them during the winter for hiking and forest skiing. When the snows melt I take them to a cobbler and tell him to do a service when he has the time. I pick them up during the spring. They are getting on a bit, but I bet I can still get 3-5 years out of them.
High quality clothes can actually look good when they wear a little. Shitty stuff looks immediately shittier the minute it wears just a little. (This actually applies to a lot of other things too, like brick vs concrete.)
Apathy TreeI’ve started buying quality athletic gear rather than regular clothing wherever applicable because of exactly this. I used to blow through socks so that was the first thing I replaced, and since switching to ski socks, not a loss in several years now. Don’t even feel particularly worn in. Shirts lose form more slowly, seams come apart less often, the elastic components don’t disintegrate nearly as quickly because it’s made to withstand frequent washing, etc. and the fabric itself tends to feel better, higher quality, because it is. Plus most of it is stretchy, which is a win for my comfort needs.
It definitely costs more, and limits options, but I don’t have to waste time and money down the line to replace it. That’s worth a lot to me. And because of how they are put together, with a minimal number of seams held flat with elaborate stitching, I just need to find a cute setting for a design on my ancient early 90s embroidery machine, and I can repair them good as new with minimal actual effort.
And then for tears and rips, I’m a big fan of visible repairs, where you embroider or patch over the entire rip and lean into it having obvious use. It reminds me of kintsugi, which I very much like.
Flying across half the globe just to spend two weeks there for holidays.
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]Pledge of allegiance in
That one got to me at a young age. Got in trouble for it. I just one day realized that I wasn’t reciting a song, I was verbalizing a promise and that nobody had explained to me why before they taught me to do it.
Yeah it’s wierd shit. A pagan friend of mine always thought that words that you ritualize daily are the same thing as a spell
morphite88That’s the premise of a lot of spirituality, concentration & recitation. Makes you wonder which god asks for that daily pledge…
He said is was making binding people to an idea that doesn’t exist and making it real. I think that kind of makes sense even if you don’t believe in magic, just like creating a version of Christianity where the point is unquestioning loyalty to the state instead of all that hippie shit Jesus was on.
Talking to computers. With recent LLM craze it really rubs me the wrong way when people try to reason with an autocomplete as if it is another human being. I also am weirded by others talking to voice assistants like Alexa and using text to speech. Could never force myself to do it, and consider it a form of lunacy, to be honest.
DandomRudeWhat I find most absurd about LLMs is the providers’ business model, since it fundamentally cannot function without stealing the work of others.
I don’t remember who it was, some youtube person, who said that he talks to chagpt when he goes to sleep. Like he goes to bed and starts chatting with the bot until he falls asleep. Thats completely bonkers to me.
Owl
NusmHey hey, why is text-to-speech catching a stray?? I can speak way faster than I can type, even if I do occasionally have to fix a couple of typos. It beats the heck out of typing on the iOS keyboard. And text-to-speech while driving is way safer.
And text-to-speech while driving is way safer.
It is saf-er, but still far from safe.
Sincerely,
The Bicyclist You Almost Ran Over Because You Were Distracted By Your Phone
I keep my phone mounted on the air vent right in front of me, and I can say, “Siri, message my wife blah blah blah” she’ll read it back, and I’ll tell her to send it. It’s not 100% safe, but it’s way safer than holding the phone and typing it out. Nothing in a car is 100% safe, people take their eyes off the road to adjust the heat & a/c controls or turn the radio. My point is that text-to-speech is multitudes safer than holding the phone. And trust me, my job has me on the road all day. I pass plenty of people on the interstate with their heads down into their laps for stretches at 80 mph.
Yes, and I’ve locked eyes with people at intersections, who proceed to nearly run me over because they didn’t “see” me while talking to their dash-mounted phone. It’s due to the cognitive effect known as inattention blindness.
Mister NeonIn America it’s gambling and gambling culture. It makes everything trashier and brings out the worst in people.
I agree. Throw in the influx of gambling apps and the commercials that come with them, and what was once a den of degeneracy has become a trending hobby.
And this is coming from someone who pays a lot of online poker (for fake money) and enjoys occasional trips to the casino. I just don’t bring more than I can afford to lose and I walk in assuming I won’t bring any of it home.
Yeah it’s like anything else, majority of people can control themselves and enjoy responsibly but a decent minority cannot and it ruins families, whether it’s gambling, drugs, sex work or something else.
Criminalizing the users makes things worse, but allowing corporations to make billions off of it also makes things worse. They should do something like it’s not illegal but corporations are banned from being involved. Like, if you wanna host poker night with a few buddies, sure why not. Once you start forming an LLC and applying for loans to build a casino, then that shouldn’t be allowed IMHO.
School shootings
Yea, everyone does it…
Not caring about digital privacy.
I get this, most people don’t care about intangible things that don’t have a clear and immediate impact. Like digital privacy or climate change.
If someone is invading their physical privacy it feels more urgent and real. And tbf, most people live their entire lives without noticing consequences of lack of digital privacy.
Capitalism.
Now there are all kinds of things people think of when you say capitalism, the free market, democracy (for some reason), etc.
But I mean the idea that the guy that owns the means of production should get the value produced by labor.
If you boil it down to that, it’s kinda crazy. You want to start a company digging holes, but you don’t have enough money to buy a backhoe.
Fred has plenty of money and can afford a backhoe. He buys it and makes you a deal, you can use his backhoe and he will own the company, you go out and dig holes and he will pay you a couple bucks an hour.
Obviously he has to charge the people that want the holes dug more than he’s paying you to make it worth his while, and he has to recoup the money he spent on the backhoe in the first place.
Fred will never pay you enough to live and save up to buy your own backhoe. After a while he’s made back all the money it cost him to purchase the backhoe.
So now the situation is this. A customer wants a hole dug, you come and dig the hole, and Fred, who has done nothing and already recouped all the money he spent to purchase the backhoe, gets most of the money. And that arrangement just goes on forever. When Fred dies, Fred Jr will inherit that backhoe, Fred Jr will have never spent a dime for that capital, in fact Fred Jr will have had a very comfortable life paid by for the sweat of your labor digging holes.
Fred Jr will get most of the value of your labor for his whole life for doing nothing at all, just because he happened to be Fred’s son.
This is the way we decide who gets the rewards of all the work humanity collectively does (under capitalist systems) and it’s resulted in a hundred or so people so insanely wealthy we can’t even conceptualize how much money they have and everyone else scraping by.
And very serious people (often paid by those billionaires) will be on the news (or replying to this very comment) telling you how this is just the only system that makes sense. But listen closely when they do, they will always say it’s good because of free markets, or competition, or democracy or something that is NOT capitalism. Capitalism rarely defends itself by talking about why it’s good for the rich guy that owns the capital to get all the value, it always misdirects you to something else, a free market or freedom just generally. The freedom to pick between 10 different ultra wealthy companies that own everything and work to make them even more wealthy for your entire life.
archonetit continues to amaze me that we can cure diseases, go to the moon, reflect on all of human history, and still the “best” we can collectively achieve in societal progress is elevating a select few while crushing the majority underfoot. The means of repression differs from feudalism to capitalism to communism, but the underlying failures remains constant: someone benefits, most do not.
LumpyPancakesHmmm.
I’m a self employed IT consultant.
On the plus side, I pay nobody except insurance, fuel, tax etc
On the minus side my earning potential is limited to the hourly rate I earn fixing stuff.
Am I still a capitalist in this case?
No, you’re just an expert. They’ve always existed – a master blacksmith would make a decent living, much better than the common serf. Nobody’s against highly talented hardworking people making more money than average, I think we all agree they deserve it.
The capitalist would be someone like you bribing the state government to create a new regulation that your profession requires a special license and your company is the only one in the state with the license and you hire in all your competitors at a wage 20% what you bill them out at. Then om your deathbed you donate a couple million for the local hospital and you go down in history as an American Hero.
That’s why there are some capitalists hate crony capitalism.