281–290 of 396 posts
Seven years ago I bought a Jansport backpack for 50 usd, for daily use. After a year, its zipper broke. Shipping it to Jansport required to pay 15 usd for shipping. So instead, I bought in Walmart a generic backpack for 15 usd, that I still use seven years later. Never bought Jansport again.
> I'll be writing about those next. I doubt it, you didn't write about this! You prompted it and signed your name to it.
I missed this but now that you point it out, seems plausible. Pretty ironic on an article about quality products being replaced by cheaper ones.
Don't you find it incredibly grating that every paragraph grinds to a halt while 3 sentence fragments are repeated? Same rhetorical devices. Same tone. Same pointless constructions.
That's not good writing. It's cheap parlour tricks.
The rhythm continues almost as though the writing is in verse—with the effect of hypnotizing the reader so they don't notice nothing is being said at all. The result? Skimmable prose. Digestible reading. Shareable content.
It's not just bad style. It's actually rotting your brain. And if you can't notice that, maybe you weren't reading at all.
While I personally find this kind of thing extremely annoying, to me, the main problem is the _difficulty_ of determining quality. The Donut media guys did a (relatively unscientific) video comparing a whole bunch of products from the 50s to modern day across several price points. What they found was that the things that "looked" the same now were simultaneously worse and also much cheaper. They also found that, if i…
I find that the cheaper option is often so much cheaper that buying several replacements is better than buying the better one. Ninja blenders vs Vitamix for example. Adding in the fact that I have no trusted evidence that Vitamix is actually better, I’d be fine replacing my Ninja every year vs amortizing the Vitamix over five or more years. And for the record my Ninja has been great so far.
The vitamix has been thoughtless for me in 6 years of daily use other than sharpening the blade every so often and replacing the bearing for the blade once (both easily done by me at home). I wake up bleary eyed, throw my stuff in there, and let it eat for a minute while I get my coffee going. The ninja on the other hand did a consistently worse job, required me to remove it and shake the contents of the blender, and then randomly fried itself one day in a way that I had no chance at fixing and scrambled my breakfast plans for multiple days. What's daily frustration worth for a half decade of my life? At least to me, a lot more than the premium to get the better tool.
JanSport was always a budget-ish / not great brand from what I remember. I used them, but high quality was never their thing.
OTOH, I haven't thought of Jansport as a go-to brand for a serious backpack in 30+ years ...
While I personally find this kind of thing extremely annoying, to me, the main problem is the _difficulty_ of determining quality. The Donut media guys did a (relatively unscientific) video comparing a whole bunch of products from the 50s to modern day across several price points. What they found was that the things that "looked" the same now were simultaneously worse and also much cheaper. They also found that, if i…
There was a brief window in time where price would be a useful signal. Among all cheap crap, good quality did cost but also deliver. Then someone figured they can leverage branding to sell crap for the price of good quality items, and now even if you're willing to spend money you can't be sure you're actually getting the good stuff.
Buying not maybe the cheapest but the second cheapest is more expensive overall but unfortunately also more manageable.
While I personally find this kind of thing extremely annoying, to me, the main problem is the _difficulty_ of determining quality. The Donut media guys did a (relatively unscientific) video comparing a whole bunch of products from the 50s to modern day across several price points. What they found was that the things that "looked" the same now were simultaneously worse and also much cheaper. They also found that, if i…
> The main issue is that _determining_ which products actually are quality has also gotten harder in many cases. And there's a perverse effect to that difficulty: even if you really want high quality, it can be so hard to be sure you're getting it that you give up and just by the cheapest thing, because at least then you know you're not getting taken advantage of (by buying crappy for premium prices).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its got this ... cadence: > Same earnings call. Same margin targets. Same quarterly pressure. The sense that you were choosing between competitors was a fiction that VF Corp had no incentive to correct. > That threat disciplined every material choice, every stitch count, every zipper spec. Once they all report to the same parent, the discipline evaporates. Nobody needs to outbuild anybody. The only pressure left is t…
I don’t see why that would be proof of being written by a LLM. It quite well can be (and I think it is) stylistic writing, hammering the message home by repetition of blows.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdotally my experience is the opposite. I bought an angle grinder from Harbor Freight for something like $10 on sale. It's not something a pro could use every day but it has absolutely been fine for what I do with it: cutting the occasional piece of metal stock, sharpening the lawn mower blade once a year, etc.
be careful in promoting that strategy. HF is pretty bad, I had a friend go through 3 them in a day because he didn't have one on the job site and HF wasn't too far away. the next step up is about 2x the price and will last a good year with professional use and maybe more if you can be bothered to replace the brushes. so I'm glad that's working out for you, but there is more bottom to be found. I bought an attachment…
The point is you only need the expensive stuff rarely. You don’t triple down on cheap crap you actually use and abuse.
I’ve yet to see anyone lose money (including accounting for time) with this strategy. Going for stuff that costs 4-12x more right off the bat - unless for professional “mission critical” work - is going to average out to be a poor use of money for the vast majority of tool buyers.
There is of course an absolute floor here. No name brand tools on Amazon are going to perhaps be zero use, but they seem rather trivial to spot to me most of the time. Buying that Gearwrench socket set vs the Snap-on is almost always going to be a win for 99% of people unless you are a professional mechanic that relies on 100% uptime to make a living.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Median purchasing power has increased by 12% since 1979 (data doesn't go back to 1975) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Real wages were down ~15-20% from 1970 to 1979... so, not a good year to anchor on.
If you're looking for a backpack, I can't recommend Osprey enough. They are still a independent US company with a lifetime warranty they actually stand by. I had to call their customer service just last week after I ordered the wrong size bag. I was connected to an actual human immediately, and he sent me a prepaid return label, even though it was my fault and I was fully expecting to pay for return shipping myself.…
My favorite bags I've had are from Mystery Ranch, but they're from before the Yeti acquisition, and I haven't tried any since, so I don't know how quality has held up. I do know they've eliminated a ton of their catalog.
I'm also a Red Oxx guy. Love my Sky Train backpack when I'm flying out. They quote a "no bull" warranty, and their CEO suggests to "be sure to include them in your will."
https://www.redoxx.com/products/sky-train-convertible-backpa...