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I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

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Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#291

Post by creer »

const_cast wrote: post #290
creer wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing. > You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there. Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously? > Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10] Well duh? Price lower? Obviously? Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-n…

Thrift store pricing is pretty good IMO. At least real thrift stores - those more curated vintage stores are, obviously, going to be higher priced. But if you know how to check for quality materials and craftsmanship you can find really, really good clothes and furniture for unbelievably cheap. The thing about fast fashion is, well, the clothes suck. They're more plastic than fabric, they fall apart, they look awful,…

Oh, there are still good finds to be found, no doubt. Some people have fun searching for designer pieces - and they can still do that. My objection is more to crude pricing - which ends up alienating plenty of people it doesn't need to.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#292

Post by pembrook »

dafelst wrote: post #240
pembrook wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s a “solution” to a nonexistent problem. The vast majority of stuff people own sits unused for decades but gets moved around to whatever home you’re living in out of irrational loss aversion. This is human, and fine. But I’m 100% certain this author is grossly overestimating the value of the junk they believe they are “saving” and how much of it they will actually use. This is the rationalizing of a budding ho…

The problem here is that a good amount of perfectly serviceable items went into the trash instead of being donated. That is just straight up wasteful.

What's more wasteful, throwing away mass produced items that still have 50% of their life left that you won't actually use (but are rationalizing that you will because 'free')?

Or heating a 4,000 sq foot home for 60 years to store said items in unused piles and then having your children eventually throw those items away anyways when you die?

Realistically it's going to be 1 of those 2 scenarios.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#293

Post by distances »

anal_reactor wrote: post #239
monocasa wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? At my wife's alma mater, the way move out in the dorms worked was that you had 24hrs after your last final and then had to be gone. That didn't really leave a lot of time for a lot of people that had maybe two checked bags and a carry on to work with, and had spent the previous time focused on study…

> 24hrs after your last fina Generous. When I was taking part in student exchange I had to be gone from the dorms a week before one of my finals.

How does that even work, you just travel back for the exam?

I could stay I think up to 12 months after graduating. And it was entirely up to you when you wanted to graduate after fulfilling the criteria. I myself took the papers half a year after finishing my master's thesis, and then left the student apartment half a year after that.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#294

Post by corkybeta »

cgio wrote: post #276
paulcole wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live near Ladds Addition and the free piles are the worst. 90% of it is pure crap that just sits out for weeks. People put it out to feel good about themselves. Once I saw a bunch of random wires with a label, “FREE - great for art projects.” It’s like thanks for letting me know I was going to knock on doors until I found the right person to make an offer to.

When I put out any electrical/electronic device here in Australia, the only thing that gets picked up, is the wires, snipped from the devices; I still don’t know why. Recycling would not make sense at this scale I think. And in the process, they destroy the device for anyone who might have a use for it.

Maybe there are plenty of art projects going on nearby.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#295

Post by newccount »

susiecambria wrote: post #201
MisterTea wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are people far disconnected from reality and honestly dont give a damn about anything but projecting their wealth. Why else would they spend $400 on something as mundane as slippers? They are shallow and careless.

The $395 Balenciaga slides really stood out to me, too.

[flagged]

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#297

Post by ykl »

foobarian wrote: post #156
madcaptenor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Penn grad student I definitely looked at the piles of stuff the undergrads threw out hoping I could get something good from them. (I don't recall if I ever did.)

As undergrad students in the 90s we couldn't forage after moveout day, but we did get tons of cool stuff from the CS building loading dock outbound trash heap. My God they were getting rid of some really strange 70s gear. One time we grabbed an old rackmount tape drive - it was enormous. We disassembled it for fun and the thing I remember the most was the cooling fan. It was a squirrel cage blower driven straight fro…

About 15 years ago at this point a bunch of my friends/labmates and I salvaged enough discard PCs from the Levine Hall (Penn CS building) loading dock to assemble an entire small renderfarm, which we squirreled away in a corner of the graphics lab and used for learning and playing with RenderMan.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#298

Post by creer »

yallpendantools wrote: post #280
pembrook wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s a “solution” to a nonexistent problem. The vast majority of stuff people own sits unused for decades but gets moved around to whatever home you’re living in out of irrational loss aversion. This is human, and fine. But I’m 100% certain this author is grossly overestimating the value of the junk they believe they are “saving” and how much of it they will actually use. This is the rationalizing of a budding ho…

What really bothers me with the article---something I think I share with top-level commenter dpkga---is throwing away perfectly fine articles of clothing (i.e., "tennis shoes"). Not to mention, expensive . These, presumably wouldn't cost a fortune to transport even overseas. I get it that maybe the student had to make a choice between, say, bulky books/notebooks/school work which may come in handy for the future but…

But then, having a dorm "thrift store" is not a bad solution. Let some curated amount of stuff stay behind and be available to other students. Some stuff needs to be just trashed by responsible adults but otherwise, a university or dorm can find some space.

It just seems that some such organization never get to this.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#299

Post by [deleted] »

thephyber wrote: post #155
dkga wrote: post #150

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…

College students (undergrads) aren’t full adults yet. They are transitioning from living under the protection of their parents to living on their own. Throwing away things that could be sold could be a matter of (1) frustration/exhaustion with the end of the semester, (2) no place in their car / plane luggage for extra items, (3) indifference of kids who don’t know the value of a dollar (the Ballenciaga slides are li…

[deleted]

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#300

Post by scotty79 »

neom wrote: post #221
dkga wrote: post #150

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…

The missing part is... those are Valentino's, those are not "Tennis shoes". Now, why did someone throw out those Valentino's? Because nobody who goes to college and wears Valentino would wear those Valentino's, those particular Valentino's pictured, to someone who likes Valentino: are garbage. To your second point, why not give them to someone with less? I would suspect that a young person who is attending Duke Unive…

You said the word "Valentino", which is meaningless, way too many times for it to be healthy.
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