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Amazon without the knockoffs

knockoff.shopping

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Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#241

Post by mindslight »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #174
mindslight wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you enjoy eating just rice wrapped in a tortilla or something? Burritos are a harsh illustration of the economy of scale. Doing a quick tally with sale prices, and I'd think buying all the ingredients to make one single burrito would be upwards of $20-25, at least. Never mind the time to cook each ingredient that needs to be cooked. And most of these supplies and prep are going to last what, ~4 days before they sp…

> I'd think buying all the ingredients to make one single burrito would be upwards of $20-25 Sort of yes? But with those ingredients costing $20-25 you would be able to afford to make how many burritos? There's no way your purchases wind up being $20-25 per burrito, right? That would be nuts.

> But with those ingredients costing $20-25 you would be able to afford to make how many burritos?

It doesn't matter. The post I was responding to said that you could create a substitute for a burrito shop burrito with $4 and some work at home. Spending much more money and then amortizing it over multiple burritos is out of the scope of the original comment. It would be nonsensical to say that you can get a burrito for free by making three burritos and selling two, right?

There is obviously an underlying time-money tradeoff here, and my point is that focusing on burritos is the wrong place to start trying to optimize that for saving money.

(Although I do question why someone would go to Chipotle for anything other than "I'm on a road trip and need food". Their food is so bland it was the literal inspiration for the term premium mediocre. Support your local burrito shop!)

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#242

Post by chris-mosley »

bdlowery wrote: post #234
seplox wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Raymond Hill explicitly refuses to accept financial contributions of any sort and directs people to support the list maintainers.

This guy isn’t taking financial contributions, and the Amazon brand list is only one part of the product.

I actually just put in a buymeacoffee link lol.

But also the List is by far the hardest part. It's way more work/time/misery than the addon itself.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#244

Post by Auracle »

mindslight wrote: post #240
Auracle wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you also don't have to freeze anything. When you cook almost every meal, you end up using most ingredients before they go bad. The ingredients for a burrito are pretty basic and can be used to make all sorts of things.

"cook almost every meal" is exactly the type of "expanding the scope" I was talking about. Cooking food yourself is a well-known way of saving money. Starting by trying to reproduce burrito shop burritos is not the way to get there.

To you, that's expanding the scope. To many, many people that's just the way we live, the way our parents lived, etc. We eat food from a restaurant maybe...twice a month? Usually fast food because we're out and about.

If you have the money and you can stay healthy eating that way, go for it. But your original comment seems absolutely ridiculous to anyone that regularly cooks. I sincerely don't mean this in a mean way, but it was quite ignorant, as if making burritos was some herculean task and just what are you going to do with all of the staples foods that can be used in so many other recipes that you don't use?

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#245

Post by brudgers »

BeetleB wrote: post #238
brudgers wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what I typically buy Amazon is about 2x-8x more. Though sometimes for more expensive items it might be a wash. One other factor is that the minimum order for free shipping is often $10 versus $30 or $39 or $49 depending on Amazon’s algorithmic state and below $10, $1.99 is often Ali Express shipping cost. But again, that’s for what I buy.

The example I gave was $10. I suppose it's possible I'll get it cheaper on AliExpress, but how much cheaper? As for shipping - if it's not urgent, I just put it in my Wishlist until I accumulate items beyond the free shipping threshold.

The only way to know how much cheaper is to look on Ali Express. That’s how I wound up there.

I don’t spend mental energy dealing with Amazon’s dark patterns and terrible search that is flooded with sponsored links for something I did not search for…Ali Express search is not great, but it is not adversarial.

But because it works for me doesn’t mean it works for you.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#246

Post by torstenvl »

john_strinlai wrote: post #214
eudamoniac wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are not offering anything worth patronizing. There's no value proposition. The prices are higher, getting the book takes longer, they don't ship it to me, and they never have a good book in stock. Independent book stores exist entirely as a charity-empathy business. They only exist because people feel bad about not shopping there.

im not your dad, so im not going to tell you how to spend your money. if you prefer to support amazon, go for it. save your $1.25 or whatever. but wow, i found this a sad comment to read. i find a lot of value in shopping local.

Don't do this here.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#247

Post by mindslight »

Auracle wrote: post #244
mindslight wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"cook almost every meal" is exactly the type of "expanding the scope" I was talking about. Cooking food yourself is a well-known way of saving money. Starting by trying to reproduce burrito shop burritos is not the way to get there.

To you, that's expanding the scope. To many, many people that's just the way we live, the way our parents lived, etc. We eat food from a restaurant maybe...twice a month? Usually fast food because we're out and about. If you have the money and you can stay healthy eating that way, go for it. But your original comment seems absolutely ridiculous to anyone that regularly cooks. I sincerely don't mean this in a mean way…

> To you, that's expanding the scope

No, I'm not talking about my own life, but rather the scope of the original response - making it out as something simple you can just do, rather than an undertaking in both prep time and resource management.

> We eat food from a restaurant maybe...twice a month?

I'm right there too at this point in my life. But it's still absurd to suggest someone casually cook a number of dishes that would make a decent Thanksgiving dinner. "Skip the burrito and pack a sandwich" would be reasonable advice, but we have no idea how much OP is already doing that! Rather they merely brought up the price of a burrito for a benchmark about price inflation. Rather than accept the point about price inflation, people then shot the messenger with some fantasy of easy frugality.

> what are you going to do with all of the staples foods that can be used in so many other recipes

You've got guac/pico that want to go bad in a day, and rice/beans/protein that want to go bad in ~4 days. So many other recipes like... more burritos or a different Mexicanesque meal that tastes just like burritos?

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#248

Post by beAbU »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #181
chrsw wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice. I wish there was something like this but that filtered out AI books.

Are there any objectively good systems for sussing out AI books? If not, perhaps treating them like "low background steel" wrt their publication date is the way to go (known good up to a point and confidence falls off without human review and confirmation after a specific year).

I'm extremely wary of anything written from 2024 onwards by lesser known authors.

I've spotted a book once in the wild that actually had a ghibli-style piss-tinted cover image, which was a dead giveaway, but it's not always so clear cut.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#249

Post by brudgers »

brudgers wrote: post #245
BeetleB wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example I gave was $10. I suppose it's possible I'll get it cheaper on AliExpress, but how much cheaper? As for shipping - if it's not urgent, I just put it in my Wishlist until I accumulate items beyond the free shipping threshold.

The only way to know how much cheaper is to look on Ali Express. That’s how I wound up there. I don’t spend mental energy dealing with Amazon’s dark patterns and terrible search that is flooded with sponsored links for something I did not search for…Ali Express search is not great, but it is not adversarial. But because it works for me doesn’t mean it works for you.

For example, I need a 74hc245 for a repair I am working on. I just bought 10 chips and three 3m USB C/C cables and 50 velcro wire wraps for $10.61 including shipping.

The best price Amazon showed me for the chips was $9.99. I got $14.99 for two cables. And $6.99 for 60 wire wraps.

Re: Amazon without the knockoffs

#250

Post by alt227 »

jfim wrote: post #155
alt227 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a shame that easily broken and disposable pieces of plastic are shipped around the globe in huge numbers, all in the name of selfish first world comfort. How future generations will look back at our convenience online ordering practices and be absolutely horrified at how we thought it was no issue to get some bit of plastic made in Asia and shipped over to US or Europe, then next or same day delivered just for f…

We do the same for groceries though. Only a few generations ago, oranges or bananas were a luxury if you didn't live in an area where those fruit grow. Now we get avocadoes and berries way out of season, shipped from across the world.

Yep, and it is terrible for the planet. Avocados use disproportionate amount of water to grow, and the boom of their popularity n the west has caused massive water issues in already resource stretched parts of the world.

https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/avocados-sustain...

All for what, so someone in a western cafe can have some smashed avocado on their sourdough toast? I'm pretty sure people could do without out of season berries, and avocados at all. We used to east locally and seasonally for millennia, forcing over production of anything to ship it round the world is a recipe for disaster.

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