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The great junk transfer is coming

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Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#451

Post by tmn »

CydeWeys wrote: post #295
brazzy wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, no. What's unbelievably crass is the idea that children are obliged to respect and sift through gigantic heaps of stuff just because their parents had some emotional connection to some small parts of it - because most of it is guaranteed to be absolutely useless junk they did not actually value but merely couldn't bring themselves to throw away because of hoarding instincts. The idea that this obligation is som…

> The idea that this obligation is some kind of way to repay for what the parents did for the children is completely absurd and idiotic. It does nothing for your parents. Thank you for saying this. I can't believe the points people are making here. Your parents are already dead at this point. Of course it does nothing for them. Taking care of them while they're still alive does something for them, but once they're de…

I think the 'what is being done for the old parents' is them not having to confront and part with their stuff while they're old but alive. By doing this after they have passed, they get to bypass this possibly mentally taxing task. The value add is debatable. I personally love to get rid of stuff, so it's hard for me to imagine how much of a burden it is. But the point makes sense.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#452

Post by QuercusMax »

Damogran6 wrote: post #376
starkd wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The banging fix was also useful for getting better reception on the tv set. Surprising how often it actually worked!

Chip creep was the behavior for chips to walk out of their packages due to temperature cycling, percussive maintenance helped reseat things, sometimes enough to make them work again. (The Apple III was a beneficiary https://www.techjunkie.com/apple-iii-drop/ )

My dad always talked about lifting the front edge of a component up 2 inches and then letting it drop - he called it the "2-inch test". He said that either it would reseat whatever was flaky, or make it super obvious that it needed to be reseated.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#453

Post by jodrellblank »

wonderbore wrote: post #116
vulcan1964 wrote: post #92

What will happen to the heaps of digital junk stored on flash drives, hard drives, forgotten online accounts? I get overwhelmed thinking about organizing my own electronics files… wonder what my kids will do with it all.

> wonder what my kids will do with it all. The good part about digital content is that you don't have to do absolutely anything with it. Keep documents and photos accessible, forget the rest. As we approach multi-generational widespread digital content "cloud" services, we'll see more and more companies allowing content to be easily passed over to the next generation — but just for reference. I don't need my father’s…

You won't need grandma's YouTube either, but one of these days the videos from your ancestors' early lives will still be there in the hundreds of hours of high quality full colour. The idea that old people's lives were small black and white portraits once or twice per decade and that the past is a long way away, will totally collapse in the next 25-100 years. I keep wondering if that's going to be a big change to society or not.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#454

Post by ThinkBeat »

This is also about a change from living in houses with some real estate to living in small boxes stacked on top of each other in a dense city.

Depending on your family history and where you live maybe this transition was done a generation before, or even longer, but for many who have parents and grand parents this is the shift from houses in more rural areas, or houses with a garden and some space to dense urban living.

People in small, stacked boxes do not like stuff because there is little space for stuff.

They are trained to rent everything. Box, music, movies, games, car, bike, scooter, sports equipment, tools, a space for parties, coffee, cooking, books, photo albums, Less common: furniture, clothing

Perhaps in a few decades what a new generation will leave behind is nothing.

Some will say that is great. People in small, stacked boxes more than others.

I think it is a tragedy.

There is real wealth that is transferred, but there is so much more. A mosaic of how your parents lived, their culture, what they learned, and what they treasured.

My father's rich record collection.

From a different time and place. A time capsule.

Books, some have been handed down in generations. Most now impossible to buy.

Tools of all sorts. Some have old and well used and still working and great to own if you have a house with some property.

All is stuff and stuff is junk now.

Your grandchildren will have no idea about how you lived and what you experienced. There will be no record collection, books, tools.

I do live in a small, stacked box myself and these things I find tragic.

Others will find freedom.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#455

Post by ggm »

pfdietz wrote: post #281
ggm wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too with a sad twist: no matter how often I put a sign on my council kerbside collection e-waste saying "works" some metal scavenger on a copper hunt cuts the powercord and moves on. They're trashing value to extract the one bit they care about.

If it were actually valuable they wouldn't do that.

Value is a word which is used in two senses. One is yours: what $ can I get for it. The other is use-value: the object can be used to perform it's role.

What they do, to extract $ value, is destroy use-value. The use-value didn't interest them, but waking at 4am and driving round before anyone ELSE sees the copper and takes it, interests them mightily. Consequently, anyone who is interested in finding things, finds broken things, not useful things.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#456

Post by lbschenkel »

I think that emigrating killed any hoarding tendencies I may have had. I went to live in another country with two suitcases as my possessions, and left everything else behind. Although scary, I don't miss any of those things and it was one of the most liberating things I have ever done because it thought me that the objects we accumulate are not really that important.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#457

Post by accountofme »

bontaq wrote: post #215
accountofme wrote: post #152

I'm just curious how boomers lived through the great depression.....

The article says, "The parents of baby boomers, the oldest generation alive today, were savers, having learned in the lean times of war and the Great Depression to treasure what they owned."

Now I see it. I misead.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#458

Post by buzzert »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #277

Recently had this experience. It helped me to consider it this way: An old stage theatre has finally closed, after nearly a century in operation. I had the task of emptying the prop room. Going through it, I found very recognizable things from shows I knew and loved. Also some things I maybe remembered, but not sure what script it supported. And lots of stuff, no idea why it was there or what show it was in. Anyway,…

Very beautifully said!

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#459

Post by sixstringtheory »

thakoppno wrote: post #105
sixstringtheory wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to draw them or write about them in my journal. I find that the intense focus required helps remember them very well.

how do you archive your journals?

Nothing beyond just keeping them around, currently. Maybe one day I’ll try to digitize/ocr them.

Re: The great junk transfer is coming

#460

Post by bityard »

eropple wrote: post #329
bityard wrote: post #300

Why is everyone acting like this is not already a solved problem? Heirs are not forced to spend hundreds of hours sifting through their parents stuff... If that is too much of a burden, just call up the nearest estate sale company. They will do it all for you.

Some people feel obligations that you do not. Empathy matters.

They feel obligated to suffer?

Regarding the empathy jab, nice try, but I went through all of this myself when my father died. His affairs were relatively simple and still took almost a full year to resolve. I took a week off from work to drive way up north and go through all of his property and belongings followed by a weekend-long estate sale. It was one of the most physically and emotionally draining things I have ever done.

What I am pointing out is that it doesn't _have_ to be that way, especially if the deceased has lots of belongings. You can go in and keep the things that have sentimental or monetary value and then let the estate liquidation company take care of the rest and keep your sanity. And it just seems like everyone in the thread forgot about this option.

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