251–260 of 278 posts
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Analog watches let you glance at the time more subtly while in a meeting. Numberless watches are instantly readable after you own one for a little bit.
> " Analog watches let you glance at the time more subtly while in a meeting. " ... how?
This is seriously impressive engineering. As far as I know a new achievement in watch making. UX is dreadful. The one function a watch is expected to have is unreadable at a distance.
The whole purpose of this watch is to show off and brag to the rich friends how they got it etc. Not for common folk like us.
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Imagine thinking that there's 150 of a watch means its mass produced.
> Imagine thinking You don't have to mock me for using the wrong word. I hope you realize it's my vocabulary having a slight issue here, and not my understanding of the world, right?
William Gibson wrote a piece for Wired back in the day about his obsession with mechanical watches.[1] He puts it thus: ``` Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary. Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; t…
They're beautiful and impressive, but I find the amount of money that flows into "high horology" to be an sum with an egregious opportunity cost to society, made even worse by the fact that all that complexity goes towards a movement that is worse at keeping time than a rudimentary quartz. If people want Tamagotchis, they can get a Tamagotchi. I wish people would flex their donations to effective charities instead an…
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> The pity of it is that the jobs are not oriented towards public works Except for the National Guard and the Coast Guard (which, as I understand it, gets some military money).
Yeah, fair enough. Coasties seem to do a lot of drug enforcement which is a shame (because The War on Drugs is a lost cause at best).
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This strikes me as a product that the Chinese could copy and mass-produce for -- I dunno -- $500? And it would work 75% as well. I don't see a huge barrier to entry here except for IP, which never stops the Chinese.
From what I understand the Chinese are still working on duplicating far more common movements from the likes of Omega and Rolex. They have certainly mastered the external components, but the giveaway for fake chinese watches is always the movement. I could be wrong, but I have yet to see a teardown of a superfake where the movement held up to even amateur scrutiny.
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Assuming further that the taxes accurately measure the benefit that comes from the interaction of luck, privilege and society. Assuming even further that taxes effectively redistribute wealth to workers, educators, and nurturers. These are together three assumptions, none of which I think are true.
Taxes are the price we pay for society. Quite! Well, a price never fully captures the value to the buyer of what they're acquiring. Otherwise they'd be worse off for making the exchange. We cooperate because we both gain more than we lose from said cooperation. That's a great and beautiful thing.
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> Imagine thinking You don't have to mock me for using the wrong word. I hope you realize it's my vocabulary having a slight issue here, and not my understanding of the world, right?
Your vocabulary isn't at fault, nothing to do with that at all, it's that you think 150 of a watch is in some way mass produced.
William Gibson wrote a piece for Wired back in the day about his obsession with mechanical watches.[1] He puts it thus: ``` Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary. Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're pointless in a peculiarly needful way; t…
Citation needed (as in measurement report). AFAIK some years ago electronic watches had some problems with the time reference.
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Sure, but this sidetrack were started from the fact that there are many hobbies where people devote hours of craftsmanship and effort into creating something that's not considered nearly as valuable. So "hours of craftsmanship and effort" is not what makes something valuable. It takes something else -- in this case that it's a status symbol. A long time ago it would have been certain tulips. Now it's watches.
It's demand that makes it valuable. And it's demanded because some people appreciate it. That's it. If people want it, it has value. Period.
Owning an actual luxury item is pointless if there's nobody to brag about it to.