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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2024

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  • Probably doesn’t count as I didn’t buy it, so I’m technically not dealing with it. But let’s talk about electric riding lawnmowers. Last year I was looking to replace my 20+ year old riding lawnmower with an electric one. Could not find a single manufacturer who would also provide the parts lists. Digging deeper, seems like they simply do not sell parts, like at all. The mowers just aren’t repairable - straight up, if it breaks, buy a new one. That’s irresponsible when talking about an electric drill, but a full riding mower? WTF?

    To be fair, this might be a chicken & egg problem. Low adoption rates means there’s a very small market for parts, so there’s no aftermarket support. And that aftermarket is where I get parts for my current mower. So maybe it’s not fair to blame the manufacturer? But I think that’s a stretch. From where I’m standing, it sure looks like intentional planned obsolescence.


  • For a unique answer, I’m going to say my model trains from the 1940s & 50s (Lionel, O gauge). They were designed to be taken apart & serviced, and it shows. And they have enough common parts that even though they’re now 75+ years old, you can still get parts.

    I’ll also throw my 1997 Ford F-150 into the mix as a more common answer. Ford made literal millions of these, so not only are parts still available, they will be for decades still to come. Heck, I replaced the motor last year, and was able to get most of the bolt on parts I wanted straight from the dealership. Not bad for 25+ years old.


  • Couple years ago, I finally got off my ass & started making time to actually fix the stuff I said I would fix. It’s been transformational. This year, I made time for the ‘good’ car. I replaced the transmission along with a lot of other little bits that had been bothering me. Took close to 5 months in total, but I’m at the point now where both the good car & the beater truck are both reliable runners. It’s a good feeling.




  • USA, Southeast. In general, you have 1 trashcan for trash and 1 recycling bin for everything that could potentially be recycled. Sometimes it’s just one can for ‘combined recycling’ though. And if you’re in an apartment, it’s usually all just one big dumpster. A service comes around once a week to collect those.

    If recycling is being done, the load gets dumped through an automatic waste separator (a building sized conveyor belt with machines that separate items by density). They find all the metal & recycle that. Particularly nice services will also grab the cardboard/paper. But none of them can really separate the different types of plastic from each other, so all of that goes to the landfill.

    Interesting to me, the most poor/rural areas appear to be the best at recycling, as for them you must bring your trash to a transfer station yourself. And those stations have voluntary bins for each of the recycling waste streams. So if you care enough to separate your plastic into the different types (we number them 1 - 7), there’s a bin for that.


  • Okay, bear with me for just a second. There’s a cartoon called “Hazbin Hotel”, which it told from the point of view of Satan (Lucifer’s) daughter. In her version of their origin story, Lucifer gave humanity free will. But because humans are, well, all over the place, this allowed for evil to exist. Which lead to the creation of hell as a place to put these evil souls.

    As Lucifer’s punishment, he was sent to rule over hell, so that the only outcome he would ever see for giving humans free will was humans turning evil. Over & over again for all eternity.

    Yes it’s a cartoon. But I thought it was very elegant here.






  • I stopped a long time ago. I just prefer interactive entertainment over passive. TV was easy to axe, cut the cable bill & never looked back. Movies went much later, too many shitty movies back to back, eventually stopped going, so stopped seeing previews, which in turn broke the cycle of wanting to see the next one.

    I will say that not watching movies or TV makes it harder to interact with folks. There’s something of a shared culture we have through our entertainment, and not having that makes it harder to connect.

    Oddly, I just started watching movies again this year. I’ve been getting better about getting on the elliptical, and I’m now at the point where my ‘runs’ take about 90 minutes. So been catching up on all the movies I considered watching over the last ~25 years. Turns out I didn’t miss much. lol.