I appreciate the writing style, but this article is shockingly naive to me.
Convenient consumer products tend to sell better than less convenient ones, even if the product is worse. That's the entire story. People have finite time, so when they receive more income they will tend to spend it to reduce the time they spend doing things that they don't care about.
I for one hate spending time doing all the things that the products in the article make more convenient, and happily pay more so I can spend my time on other things.
* I don't like shaving, so I optimize for razors that get the job done faster (more blades, easier to swap a new blade)
* I don't like cleaning pans, so I buy pans I can clean faster and don't have to "season"
* I don't like filling bags with tea, so I buy tea bags that are pre-filled
* (nespresso) I actually enjoy the ritual of making espresso, so I use a real espresso machine
* I bike every day to and from work, so I take it a step further and buy an E-bike with no shifter
* I don't want to fiddle with chromecast or fire stick, so I just use my TV's built in smart features
* (inner city shops don't sell individual pieces of fruit) I live in SF, it's very easy to find individual fruits here
* I don't like going to grocery stores, so I pay to have groceries delivered to me
My time is precious to me, so instead of spending money on luxury items I spend money to save time. Evidently so do most other people.
Modern trackball,flexing, etc. multi-blade razors are expensive, but idiot proof. You can copy one of the Gillette commercials and just mash the thing to your face and make one long stroke through the chemical foam. Bam. Done. If you're happy with this, be happy. Read no further.
What this article isn't telling you is that DE razors can be almost as fast, but there's a learning curve. They don't flex, bend, or rotate to the right angle, so you must hold them at the right angle, even when you're going around curves. There's just one blade, so it's easy to apply too much pressure and give yourself razor burn, so you must learn to use minimal pressure. It takes time to learn these skills.
Is learning how to shave with a DE correctly and quickly worth saving money? If money is no concern for you, then no. However, there are other benefits. One pass of a five bladed razor is, you guessed it, five blades being dragged across your face, and likely with more pressure than is necessary given how much pressure is required just to make the flexing, rotating razor engage with your face. If skin irritation, ingrown hairs, etc. are a problem for you, then learning how to properly shave with a DE razor can dramatically reduce those problems. However, things may be worse at first while you're learning technique. This is all even more true if you're the sort who suffers from irritation and reuses cartridges too long to save a little money. Dull blades make skin irritation worse.
Another thing this article isn't mentioning is shaving soap. Most of us are used to chemical gel's or foams. To be blunt, they all smell awful and feel gross. Again, it takes slightly more time and a little technique must be learned, but traditional shave soap with a badger hair brush, lathered on the face, is something everyone should at least try. There are some awesome smelling soaps out there, and lathering on your face with a good badger brush feels amazing. If you hate shaving, this is a switch that might change your mind.
If you hate something, you can spend less time on it, or you can look for ways to make it more enjoyable.
On soap/shaving foam -- absolutely. I asked an old-timey barber what his product of choice was and he answered "soap after a shower", in awe, as if what I was asking him some obvious question. Sure enough, it worked fantastically and I haven't stopped since. I use a DE and beyond that first month of slice and dice and coagulant markers, it's been smooth sailing since.
This is just the audiophile’s “tube amplifiers have a warmer sound” of the shaving world.
I mean, no one is telling you to stop, but I wouldn’t chalk up your recommendations to anything more just preferences.
It’s just another hobby. Some people love scotch, others coffee and some people getting the best shave experience.
If I loved scotch and someone said “yuck, I don’t like it” I wouldn’t somehow assume they were living their life incorrectly or missing out, they just don’t like it.
Much better than these and shaving soap / brush, is Somerset's Shaving Oil[1]. King of Shaves do a shaving oil too, but it's nowhere near as good. Not affiliated, I just love the stuff.
You can use it with shaving soap too, but I just use it on its own.
At one point I was worried the company might go under so I bought a big box of it just in case. It's not a great business model as one little bottle lasts months. You only use 3 drops per shave.
OneBlade type razors are kind of a nice compromise for me. They have a single replaceable blade but also a pivoting style head. The shave if pretty amazing compared to any cartridge razor I've tried and the blade just snaps in and out of place so isn't any more difficult to change out than a cartridge.
I get the convenience part but the waste reduction itself is already worth the switch. Yeah your shaving cartridge or flaking teflon pan might be a drop in the ocean (perhaps literally) but when there are billions of humans around we should think about what inconvenience does it worth to keep our environment lovable.
I throw my cartridges in the trash, and they end up in a landfill forever with no environmental harm. I haven't looked into Teflon but I've disposed of ~1 pan in my entire life and still have the rest, so my impact is probably negligible.
I choose to focus my time and energy minimizing environmental impact more effectively. For example, instead of using a DE razor, I use that time to commute by bike instead of car, This results in overall much less waste and a lifestyle that I prefer.
People don't seem to be aware of this, but most of the dulling of disposable razors are due to it staying wet.
If you dry your disposable razor after use, shaking out the water then drying it on a towel, it can last much much longer. Going down to shaving 2-3 times a week due to WFH, I think I made one disposable razor last about a year. If this pattern keeps up, this pack of razors I bought from Costco is going to last until I retire.
> I don't like filling bags with tea, so I buy tea bags that are pre-filled
Uh, that's not how loose leaf tea is used...
Usually one would use a strainer or a gaiwan. Your point still stands, tea bags are less hassle, you just won't get to drink fine oolong or puerh. I don't mind cleaning the gaiwan - taking out the leaves takes a couple seconds.
Right - putting my loose leaf into a strainer or a gaiwan, and then emptying either of them, takes nearly no longer than grabbing my tea bag, opening it and dropping it into a cup.
Loose leaf for real is just dumping tea in a cup and pouring water over. All but a few leaves will settle, signifying it's ready to drink. You develop skill to not let the few floaters get in the way of drinking it. Whack and rinse cup to get leaves out, don't let it sit long. Easily done on the trail when weight and trash are important to minimize.
I prefer tea bags because it's still easier to clean up, even though taking a dripping wet bag out of the cup is a messier process and is trash. A gaiwan or even teapot is rarely compatible with my normal in-the-moment tea drinking style. I aspire for it to be some day.
I only use bags since strainers leave a bunch of leaves floating in my tea.
Filling a paper tea filter is pretty easy though, just grab one, and shovel in a bit of leaves with a spoon. It's faster to fill a tea bag than it is to boil water for a cup.
That’s the obvious market story but not even the entire story in the post. The lack of available alternatives is a real thing.
Several of the examples in the article feel like real losses to me. Another example: last I looked, I can’t even buy a mouse with the form factor and features I want unless I give up and charge batteries. The thing I want to buy existed under many model names over the last 20 years, apparently now I need to start looking second hand. This is true for lots of wired devices, it’s almost impossible to find many of them or a spiritual successor now. I don’t want all of my secondary devices to be battery powered. I’m clearly a minority in the market, or at least untargeted as one.
I don’t begrudge anyone their preferences or conveniences, but I definitely miss some of the things I used to be able to find which are now just relics.
Same. I was pleased to find a simple wired mouse in my Raspi 400 kit. May buy a couple more of the mice by themselves.
I do not always like wires, but wireless is kind of a mess. Pairing, charging, quality of info transfer problems...
So, I bought a bunch of wired, high quality earbuds, am going to to get some mice too. Those things just work and the quality/consistency of input / output is something I value way more than not having a wire.
Cast iron becomes very low maintenance after the seasoning is started. I don't even usually wash mine. Everything slides right off at the end. Just let it heat up before using it, use a moderately high heat but not too high, and it's a nonstick pan without the carcinogens.
Cast iron is a poor cooking surface because iron (and steel, and stainless steel) has poor thermal conductivity. The consequence is uneven heating (especially on an electric cooktop) and hotspots. The edges are distinctly colder than the center of the pan, and you have to push your food around to ensure even cooking.
Aluminum has much better thermal conductivity, but is a terrible surface to cook on (soft, oxidizes, imparts flavors to acidic foods). The best compromise is a clad pan with aluminum sandwitched between layers of stainless. I switched from cooking on cast iron to cooking on clad and it makes a huge difference.
Strictly speaking, this is false. The seasoning on a cast iron pan is burnt oil. It is without question mildly carcinogenic. Not so much that I've thrown away my cast iron - I still use it occasionally - but I wouldn't tout it as having health benefits (except maybe a tiny increase in iron consumption).
FWIW the newer ceramic nonstick pans are incredible and nearly indestructible. Clad is still my go-to, but I use the henckles granitium pans from costco for anything with egg in it. Two years later they still work like new.
I'll take that trade, I'm not going to spend my 30s sitting around waiting for pans to heat up because there's some very small probability a pan will harm me.
I think it’s the loneliness then. The other thread about why we waste our time on the Internet had that as the top comment.
So you see loneliness makes us waste this part of our time probably in an futile attempt to deal with loneliness, forge a connection, having some kind of reassurance that we have a voice and maybe we matter even though we so don’t.
So this comment isn’t waste of OP’s time if OP likes to do this or wants to do this and gets gratification from it (even if doesn’t last beyond hitting the submit button). OP even mentioned that coffee thing in the similar vein.
So I think you were being snarky. Maybe inadvertently? Or just another knee-jerk comment like most of HN? :)
People would look strange on me if i started shaving while commuting on the train. Here i have ample of time to read.
One could also simply prefer watch junk on the telly to wind down after a long day of work, rather than seasoning my pan again. (Personally, i do have a seasoned skillet, it's a amazing)
Take this thinking too far and one should even give up washing machines and go back to hand laundry?
How much of that have you actually benchmarked, time wise ? I think it’s the point of the article, most of our “benchmarking” is actually marketing. To take an example I’ve been using a cast iron pan for years after having used Teflon all my life, cast iron doesn’t take any more time to use (initial seasoning vs. timely replacement, you can even factor that out)
>so I optimize for razors that get the job done faster (more blades, easier to swap a new blade)
Razors like G. Mach3 or similar are neither really much faster nor better in any way (I compare them against my $25 "classical" metal razor "Timor Solingen 1322"). The fact that so many people think otherwise is a proof that marketing departments of G. or Edgewell (Wilkinson) did a very good job.
I couldn’t avoid cuts even with those gliding-smooth-precision-etc razors so I just use a Philips beard trimmer. As quick as it gets, doesn’t give that weirdly smooth look during the first day after the shave and facial hair remains mostly soft now; during shaving days they would grow to be very hard. No soap, no after whatever splash et al needed. One purchase runs for years literally. I have used them without a mirror. I shaved my head with it once and it was a perfect shave.
On the other extreme, (and due to my personal interest in practicing knife sharpening), I ended up using a pocket knife and a couple quality sharpening stones as my “razor”. Too lazy to calculate whether the long term cost is worth it, but the setup will probably last me a lifetime. If avoiding waste is really the highest priority (over convenience) then I would argue that sharpening your own razor blade is the only rational way to shave.
I wonder what you do with all the 20 minutes total you save a year. Still I don’t blame you but I’m a person who enjoys doing things the “hard” way, that lets you enjoy the results and contemplate things in a different way.
For me, it's about not being late or having to skip tasks (e.g. shaving). I used to also enjoy doing everything the "hard" way (e.g. pourover coffee instead of using a machine, and especially shaving with a double-edged safety razor instead of an electric razor).
However, there were times I had to skip coffee making to start a commute on time. The tipping point was when I was slightly late for a couple of low-stakes meetings because shaving with a safety razor took so long (lather, three passes, rinse), so I had to take an alternative commuting route after missing a train. There were other times when I chose to skip shaving and buy coffee outside to make a meeting on time (taking extra time to walk to the coffee shop, line up, and buy coffee).
I remembered never having these issues of having to skip shaving when using an electric razor. I've now returned to using one for most days, and also usually use a brew machine. It's nicer to have less stress in the morning.
You could say that I could manage my time better in the morning by waking up an extra half hour earlier, but I've found it very nice to make my life a bit easier while other parts of my days are more stressful.
No one ever does or can do “everything” the “hard” way. We all have our own opinionated and preferred lists of easy way and hard way things. e.g for me that’s fountain pens, train journeys instead of flights, paper journals, exclusively reading paper books etc.
Saving time from shaving doesn’t necessarily mean the saved time will be used in something like saving the world. It just means less time was spent on shaving than it would have taken if OP did shaving your so called “hard” way.
Also your 20m shaved annually seems very weird. There are approximately 365 days in a year and one “easy” way shave, imho, definitely saves more than approx 0.055m compared to a hard way shave if one shaves daily without a miss :-P
While I believe that many things stated in this post are correct, this still has that hard 'old man yelling at the internet' odor.
If you are to compare stuff, stuff like modern razor cartridges and double-edged razors, you ought to mention the convenience side of the things. I hate being the devil's advocate, but shaving with 4-blade cartridge designed for easy shaving is still 'miles' ahead compared to shaving with double-edged razor. Miiiles ahead. And I use a double-edged razor 9 out of 10 times, so I would know a thing or two about it.
And that's not to say that are overly pricey. They are. Plus, if you account for different prices in different regions, the price difference is even more concerning.
The same is also true for some other appliances/services mentioned - tea bags and coffee machines are not just 'superficially convenient' they are wildly more convenient.
EDIT: As one person said in the comments down below, "What this article completely misses, is that there are more than two options.". That was my whole point, and I'm sorry if it came out the wrong way. Shaving is a personal preference, and you are free to do it however you like; but saying 'Shaving is too expensive and is a demonstrative example of how most consumer products are designed to extract more money from you rather than to improve your life, or the world, or to be in any way remotely good.' is just incorrect and insane.
I wonder if people know that electric razors last like … ten years. I’ve owned, I think, two electric razors in my life, and I’m in my late thirties. I never have to replace any part of it.
I'm not particular about keeping a specific look so don't shave every day. Some days I'm clean shaven, other days with shadow+ and sometimes with more.
The most convenient thing was a Gillette Styler that would last for I can't count how many months, but was ultimately disposable. I later found a MINISO brand that was less than half the cost that was rechargeable with only minimal paper packaging. Not as close but good enough. Ultimately it's disposable too but I'm still on my first one.
I don't think the article was attempting to say there are only two choices, just that some choices are pretty shitty compared to some alternatives that exist and that it's gotten harder and harder to access some of those alternatives.
I'm in the electric clippers camp personally. A good model can easily last you 10+ years and keeps my dry skill happier. I'm lucky they are still easy to find. Good luck finding a straight razor in your local shops if that's what you're into though.
Straight edge razors are the best when you've gone a bit too long without shaving, bar none. Nothing to clog up. It's a bit interesting and cathartic to basically watch a wall of itchy hair fall off your face.
While I don't think they require as much skill as people think, they are a bit harsh IMO. Some people probably can shave daily with them, but when I tried it was pretty rough on my skin.
I used a double-edge for years. Then I tried Harry's and was amazed.
However, the real trick is to get the eos brand sensitive shaving cream with shea butter and colloidal oatmeal. It might be marketed for ladies, but it's way better than anything you could waste your life whipping up with a brush.
>but shaving with 4-blade cartridge designed for easy shaving is still 'miles' ahead compared to shaving with double-edged razor
What is/are the things you prefer with the cartridge? For me, I switched to the double edge a long time ago, and didn't really notice a whole lot of difference in what it does, but a big difference in price. I keep a cartridge for getting under my nose, but doesn't need to be replaced very often. For everything else I really don't notice a difference in shaving. I don't shave every day, so my razor tends to get clogged, and the double edged can be disassembled and cleaned in a couple of seconds while shaving. The cartridges can't really be cleaned out at all which leads to premature replacement and costing a lot more $$. Even when I did shave every day, I found I would try to suck every dime out of the cartridge, so I'd end up using a worse blade anyway.
I actually tried switching to a straight razor. Found it requires a lot more skill than I'm willing to put in to learning. But it appeals to me as the ultimate in reusability.
The double edged safety razor is amazing for thicker facial hair. Even if I’m shaving every day, cartridge razors all get clogged on me. No amount of hot water gets it out, and the stuck hair roughs up my face like sandpaper.
The double edge safety razor is so much easier to clean out.
The thing is it takes skill and time to get there. Look at the reddit groups with everyone having some favorite brush or soap lather. The first few times you do it will probably go terribly too, maybe even ongoing. Meanwhile, 3 blade gillete can do an OK job with only a splash of water and a dozen strokes if you were in a true pinch. the skinguard is even better than old man mach 3. in a world where a pint of beer at a bar is now $15, i don't mind paying the $35 or whatever for a pile of cartriges that will last me a long long time. maybe i wait too long on changing the cartridge though so ymmv but i find you can be sloppy and get away with a dull head for longer with that skinguard too than the stuff i was using a dozen years ago.
> If you are to compare stuff, stuff like modern razor cartridges and double-edged razors, you ought to mention the convenience side of the things. I hate being the devil's advocate, but shaving with 4-blade cartridge designed for easy shaving is still 'miles' ahead compared to shaving with double-edged razor. Miiiles ahead. And I use a double-edged razor 9 out of 10 times, so I would know a thing or two about it.
For 4-5 months of the year (summer) I shave my head 2x or 3x a week, and I don't understand this comment. How are cartridge razors more convenient than safety razors?
Safety razors are just hands down better, IMO. It's a more comfortable shave (depending on the blade), the blades can be bought in bulk for $0.05 cents each, they take less than 30 seconds to change out, they last longer than cartridges, and there's no plastic waste.
Well, first, I don't shave my head (I understood that as shaving the top of your head), so I will have to take you on that. Secondly, I believe that most people don't shave their head but their facial hair (correct me if I'm wrong). Thirdly, not all double-edged razors are paired with handles with safety guards - there are open blade handles; but even if you amount for safety razors, you still get more accidents compared to a 4-blade cartridge (they are designed precisely to prevent cuts).
Also, I fully agree with the price factor - they are less expensive, and as a bonus there is no plastic waste (at least in most cases, depending on the packaging of your razor blades). But that was not my point.
That said, I don't work for Gillette (or any related company), and don't get commission for saying any of this (this is all just 'IMO' type of comment), and apart from anecdotal evidence (I've had multiple conversations with people with 20+ years of shaving experience, using both 4-blade razors and double-edged razors, and they all, more or less, share my opinion) I can't really provide any data (maybe I could try to find some, but I don't care about this topic 'that' much).
If you shave with a sharp double edge safety you are at 95% of whatever the "4 blade megarazors" do. The only ones I might like a little better are the bendy heads that conform to the face a bit better. But it's not worth destroying the environment or paying 20X as much for the blades.
They make em bendy now? Hmm... back in DE land, the state of the art is holding the blade extremely rigidly with the clamp much closer to the edge. Think a woodworking planer rather than someone holding a floppy knife. Henson Shaving. Very good reviews on the site even in comparison to other DE razors, similar from people I know. https://hensonshaving.com/
I don’t have the same experience. I bought a DE razor from AliExpress 5 years ago for $7 and it shaves just as comfortably and quickly as any multi-blade razor I’ve used.
Everything adds up, but I can't really sum up everything in one comment (or maybe I could, but I haven't), and you are not reading all the other comments (at least I don't expect you to). There are factors other than convenience and price, and lately those factors add up so that a double-edged razor is my choice. There are times I use cartridges and there are times I don't. My main critique is that saying "Shaving is too expensive and is a demonstrative example of how most consumer products are designed to extract more money from you rather than to improve your life, or the world, or to be in any way remotely good." is _just_ incorrect.
>Other examples of products that seem to exhibit a similar trend, where purported convenience leads to higher prices
>Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis. They also seem to be poisonous.
They have their uses. I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil). Also, claiming that they "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
>Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.
Why are they only superficially convenient? They seem pretty convenient to me.
>Televisions moving from being screens which accept input, to self contained 'smart' devices that require software updates and thus have a shortened useful lifespan.
I thought it was the other way around? ie. smart TVs are cheaper than dumb TVs because they're subsidized by ad revenue. Also, the claim itself doesn't really make any sense. Even if you stop getting software updates, that doesn't prevent you from using it as a dumb display.
> Also, claiming that they "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
1. The manufacturing process results in those precursor chemicals entering urban water supplies where they are nearly impossible to filter out (only RO is effective and it's not even 100% effective), and once in the bloodstream of people are powerful endrocrine disruptors which circulate and are filtered slowly by the kidneys... and when peed out go right back into the water supply due to not being able to be removed during treatment. These "forever chemicals" are some of the most health damaging pollutants in the West.
2. Teflon is extremely hazardous when consumed and it flakes off of the pans over time (which is why they must be replaced often) or when incorrect utensils are used (common among unsophisticated users).
3. Teflon can overheat on a standard consumer stove using standard cooking techniques. You actually need different techniques to prevent overheating a Teflon pan.
4. Cast Iron is effectively non-stick after enough use, and you can absolutely fry an egg in it without sticking if you have a smooth-bottom pan (either a vintage cast iron, new vintage-style, or a new style that you've sanded down and seasoned yourself).
> Cast Iron is effectively non-stick after enough use, and you can absolutely fry an egg in it without sticking if you have a smooth-bottom pan (either a vintage cast iron, new vintage-style, or a new style that you've sanded down and seasoned yourself).
I replied to the GP, but I fry eggs in a bog-standard Lodge which is neither vintage nor sanded down. It still has a distinct ”pebbly” appearance to it, though perhaps less than when I first got it.
Works like a charm, and a shake of the pan is usually all that’s needed to release eggs.
>1. The manufacturing process results in those precursor chemicals entering urban water supplies where they are nearly impossible to filter out (only RO is effective and it's not even 100% effective), and once in the bloodstream of people are powerful endrocrine disruptors which circulate and are filtered slowly by the kidneys... and when peed out go right back into the water supply due to not being able to be removed during treatment. These "forever chemicals" are some of the most health damaging pollutants in the West.
That's why I said it was "a little misleading" rather that outright false. "poisonous" sort of implies that the object itself is poisonous or is bad for you. I'm sure manufacturing a smartphone causes a bunch of environmental damage, but you wouldn't call it poisonous (outside of putting in in your mouth).
>2. Teflon is extremely hazardous when consumed and it flakes off of the pans over time (which is why they must be replaced often) or when incorrect utensils are used (common among unsophisticated users).
>3. Teflon can overheat on a standard consumer stove using standard cooking techniques. You actually need different techniques to prevent overheating a Teflon pan.
Like I said in my initial comment, teflon has its uses. I'm not saying it's the best tool for every job. Given that, I highly doubt this applies if I'm just cooking my eggs.
>4. Cast Iron is effectively non-stick after enough use, and you can absolutely fry an egg in it without sticking if you have a smooth-bottom pan (either a vintage cast iron, new vintage-style, or a new style that you've sanded down and seasoned yourself).
Sounds like a lot of work to me. In other words, the teflon pan is actually more convenient.
Teflon flaking off isn't hazardous--the whole point of Teflon is that the chemicals are polymerized into a very inert form. That's why food doesn't stick. They only become dangerous if they depolymerize--which is where the issue with overheating comes from. Heating an empty pan can reach depolymerizing temperature.
The whole "Teflon flakes are hazardous when consumed" thing is totally BS - it's the chemicals produced when it gets too hot that aerosolize which you breathe in during cooking that are so bad for you (and the other stuff you mentioned about it's production process)
> 2. Teflon is extremely hazardous when consumed and it flakes off of the pans over time (which is why they must be replaced often) or when incorrect utensils are used (common among unsophisticated users).
It's very common to use incorrect utensils (metal) because the correct ones (wood, plastic) are are harder to clean and don't last as long, and few people would choose to use such utensils if all else were equal.
cast iron is still not a viable alternative for every day cooking due to leeching of the iron into food - some iron is good, but usually this occurs at extraordinary levels
My wife and I got rid of our TV last year when we moved. It was a nice break, but we want at least one in the house, so we're currently shopping around for a nice 4K 70+ inch. I've come to realize the market is headed toward a TV without any ports. You'll plug it in and immediately prompted to link with wifi so you can log into your streaming services. Fuck that.
I'm hell-bent on getting something with zero smart function- just ports. TVs like that will become gold in the future, when smart tvs will have ad banners that you can't turn off. The cost of media has come full circle. My prediction is:
1. All TVs have smart functions and no input ports
2. TV manufactures will be cutting deals with advertisers to display banner ads. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to pay for ad free.
3. Aggregate streaming services will provide access to multiple services for a flat fee. Welcome back to cable!
4. Total cost of consuming TV media will be eat average income budgets away
I made the switch to a projector a couple years ago and advocate highly for them. The screen can disappear when not in use, and they're "dumb by default". New LED projectors have bulbs rated to last 10k hours or more.
I’m pretty happy with my Spectre that I bought from Walmart.com. I think it is only 75 inches but 4K with 4 hdmi ports and I think it was $5-600 or so.
It seems up on the latest hdmi standards and it turns on and off with the appletv plugged in.
My favorite shopping aggregator found 840 TVs from 70 to 85 inches. 503 of them has 4 HDMI inputs. Seems like it is most popular number of inputs for TV of that size. PC, Xbox, Playstation, media player. Do you need more?
I have somewhat smart TV, though bought couple of years back. It is not getting on the internet, it's only job is to receive signal over HDMI. I don't ever interact with its menus or other buttons expect power and volume, it stays on HDMI and is quite nice dumb TV.
Look for a used signage panel. No commercial smart functions and quality that's barely available in consumer TVs but sometime can be had really cheap if you find the right place, look on govdeals, if your patient.
> I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil).
FWIW it's pretty easy to fry eggs in a cast iron. You do have to oil the pan, but I wouldn't call it absurd. Just a dollop of oil in the pan. And the end result has a crispy, yummy texture that's hard to achieve with Teflon. It just takes a little practice and an open mind.
Not only is it possible with a reasonable amount of oil in any cast iron pan, but with a very thin cast iron pan one can do it without oil even. Eggs start sticking with high heat and the thinner the metal the lower the heat needed to cook.
You can also poach eggs just fine in a cast iron pan.
Fried eggs are just aldehyde cancer hell. There's so much out there you can cook without any oil and it's handy to know for sure. Try cooking stuff in sauces instead for example.
how much is a "dollop"? Based on what I've seen[1][2], it requires significantly more oil than what I use with a non-stick. The first link definitely seems absurd to me.
Of course it's crispy, you are deep-frying your eggs in oil, like McDonalds-style fries. It may feel delicious, like almost anything overcooked with high temperature, but it is not quite healthy.
> I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil).
We fry our eggs every morning on a cast iron skillet with a tiny amount of oil (<1 teaspoon for 6 eggs). The only time I have problems with stuff sticking is if I get impatient and don't wait for the pan to preheat.
This is one of the biggest contributors to teflon's mythology: you can't preheat a teflon pan safely (it ruins the coating), so people learn to not preheat. They then get frustrated when using other pans that things stick that wouldn't have on their teflon.
(Edit: the skillet is a cheap, unaltered Lodge, nothing antique or sanded.)
I have never put the least bit of thought or effort into frying eggs in cast iron over, say, stainless. It is a better non-stick surface overall. Teflon is gross, do you really want to risk breathing the fumes and eating even more plastic?
I always found the plastic argument in teflon vs cast iron a bit weak. Its health risks are well documented at this point. But the seasoning on a cast iron? That is polymerized fats... One might even go so far as to call it plastic. I am told the seasoning is also a carcinogen and in my experience more likely to be ingested than Teflon from a pan (getting a good seasoning that lasts on a pan can be tough!).
> smart TVs are cheaper than dumb TVs because they're subsidized by ad revenue.
What if you count having to view ads, and having the tv spy on you as a cost? RN,for many TVs you can just not connect to wifi, but how long until the TV won't work unless it is connected?
> Also, the claim itself doesn't really make any sense. Even if you stop getting software updates, that doesn't prevent you from using it as a dumb display.
Perhaps a better argument is that a bad software can brick the TV, or the components of the smart functionality break in a way that prevents you from using it as a dumb tv (i.e. it has more "moving parts"), and if you don't use the smart functionality, then it is a waste of the materials to make those components, and probably electricity running through the circuits. And it isn't too hard to imagine a future where the tv just stops working if it can't phone home.
>What if you count having to view ads, and having the tv spy on you as a cost?
I don't connect it to wifi, problem solved.
>for many TVs you can just not connect to wifi, but how long until the TV won't work unless it is connected?
Is there reason to believe that it won't work? The "smart" TV I have hasn't been connected to wifi for years and still works.
>Perhaps a better argument is that a bad software can brick the TV, or the components of the smart functionality break in a way that prevents you from using it as a dumb tv (i.e. it has more "moving parts")
I don't get it, are you trying to have your cake (smart functionality) and eat it too (smart functionality randomly breaking stuff)? If you use it as a dumb TV from day 1 I can't imagine why it would randomly break later.
>and if you don't use the smart functionality, then it is a waste of the materials to make those components, and probably electricity running through the circuits
The nvidia shield TV uses 6W while streaming. Presumably the smart TV component probably uses something similar or less than that. In the grand scheme of things it's nothing.
>And it isn't too hard to imagine a future where the tv just stops working if it can't phone home.
That's seems to be more of a theoretical concern than something that's actually happening right now.
>I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil).
That's because many cast iron pans you can get these days have unpolished bottoms unlike antique ones. If you get a polished one (or polish it yourself - there's plenty of youtube videos on that) it'll be incredible non-stick. You can also just get a carbon steel pan which doesn't need polishing.
Modern mass-market cast iron is garbage. Lodge's marketing department has managed to convince people that their garbage pans are actually better, and that the texture holds on to seasoning, but it's all nonsense. It's vastly cheaper for them to produce pans by skipping the polishing step. You can still get good polished cast iron, but the pans cost hundreds of dollars. Next time an old relative dies, go raid their kitchen for the good stuff.
There is only one conspiracy theory I believe in, it’s /reddit/r/castiron is a troll site created to make people believe ‘seasoning’ is really a thing.
After spending a few weeks trying, I’ve had multiple people tell me they got theirs ‘seasoned’ after three or four months.
That's weird that you believe this, because cast iron was the predominant way of cooking for literally centuries, and it works exactly as described. I have some new pans I've seasoned, and I have some vintage pans I inherited that my grandmother was cooking with for most of her life, and then I cooked with extensively after. Both are effectively nonstick, and I don't need much oil at all to cook with them. Care is also way easier.
There is a /lot/ of bullshit myths around cast iron, like that you cannot use soap for instance, or shouldn't scrub it, both of which are totally fine, but the idea of seasoning and what occurs when it's done properly are entirely true. Most people just want to otherthink it. All you need to do with cast iron is use it and care for it properly, the longer and more often you use it, the better it gets.
Yeah, it's very largely BS. If you cook enough bacon and high-fat foods in it over time.... sure.
But people who say you can easily cook eggs in it or everything else "after its seasoned" are just not to be listened to. Use a nonstick.
EDIT: Or carbon steel I guess. Even then, meh. Remember that the vast majority of professional chefs use nonstick skillets specifically for eggs both at home and in their workplace.
I cook the family breakfast on a cast iron skillet every Dadurday. I like the taste of butter with eggs and use about a 1/2 teaspoon per pan full. It's about the same for pancakes if there's oil in the batter. My best advice is to never wash the pan ...just wipe it down with a paper towel.
Seems to be a real thing[1]. I took you literally at first, but I guess you mean you’re looking for a specific result and not seeing it? This article[2] makes a case for using (pure) flax oil and a special procedure.
It’s definitely a real thing. But some people go nuts and I’ll never understand.
Use the right tool for the job and cast iron is definitely not the right choice a lot of the time. Unless you exclusively cook meals where heat control is never needed, I don’t see why you’d only use cast iron.
Yep, I have a small cast-iron pan that I use for eggs. It's well seasoned and the eggs don't stick. The key is you need to get it hot (not too hot, about 275 degrees F is good) then add a little butter and when that has melted, spread it around and add the eggs.
If you add the eggs with the pan too cool and then heat them up, they will stick.
> I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil)
Which means you need to do a better job at seasoning. Cast iron is used almost exclusively at my place and I use less than 1/2 TSp oil for eggs. Granted my newest skillets are made is 1930s.
A $50 angle grinder and a little time will turn $20 lodge cast iron pans into the kind of quality cast iron pans that I've seen people spend hundreds of dollars on to buy antiques.
> To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
This really bugs me. We have a product, designed to be used over heat, which leaks literal poison into your food when it gets "too hot"... WTF is that? What does "too hot" mean and how can you expect anyone to know which of their burner settings (which often have no guidance at all as to temperature beyond gradients between "low", "medium", and "high") will be hot enough to leak poison into the food they feed themselves and their families. Non-stick coating seem like the kind of thing which should be banned at this point until it's proven to be safe under typical conditions. None of the chemicals which have replaced teflon have been proved safe. They just haven't been shown to be dangerous yet, which isn't saying much considering the decades it took to prove the dangers of teflon and the efforts the manufacturers went to hide those dangers from the public they poisoned.
> smart TVs are cheaper than dumb TVs because they're subsidized by ad revenue.
I've never seen that proved anywhere. Costs have gone down over the years, and the amount of ads and data collection have increased but I haven't seen any evidence at all that there's a 1:1 connection between the two. Companies seem to be perfectly happy to charge you the most they can get away with while still collecting your data and pushing ads in your face. By limiting the availability of dumb TVs you don't even get to vote with your wallet on this one. Currently I'm recommending people replace their TVs with computer monitors, but "smart" computer monitors are the new thing and will push out the dumb models too.
> French press + grinder is straightforward and has little maintenance
And even that comparison is unfair, as with that you're getting fresh ground coffee which is much better. Pod coffees are preground minimum months before you're brewing with them.
That's still much more work than a pod machine. With a pod machine you just pop a pod in, put a cup under, press a button, come back 1 minute later and you're done. With your setup you have to pour out beans, wait for it to grind, start boiling water, wait for it to brew, and then clean everything up.
That is the best price/quality approach. However, if you love frothed milk a good little $200 espresso machine is good. And of course learning to make your own espresso is a fun little hobby, too. I have a strange fetish for Illy capaccino cups. My kids particularly love frothed chocolate milk! (What's really cool is that the chocolate milk can easily triple in volume, so the kids think they're drinking much more hot chocolate than they really are.) Try doing that in a French press!
Or just get a super automatic espresso machine. More convenient than a Nespresso, better taste, essentially zero waste. Higher initial investment (~300 EUR), lower running costs.
>Oh… I dunno, but this seems to be a fairly likely failure mode for a pan.
"too hot" in this context means "higher than smoke points of most oils". Like I said, they have their uses. If you're frying an egg you're likely not heating your pan to the point of smoking, and I'm certainly not going to be searing meats on a non-stick.
> I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil).
Fried eggs were a thing long before before teflon. I dont know what you consider absurd about of oil, some oil is needed, but I would qualify it as "normal"
> To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
Teflon pans kill birds unfortunately. Once you live with a bird, you can’t have any hot teflon in the house because it releases toxic fumes. Fine for a human because we’re large animals, smol birds reach lethal levels within minutes.
There’s stories of people turning on an air fryer and their pet bird dropping dead in another room.
>They have their uses. I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil).
It requires proper seasoning. Once you got that, egg away!
>Also, claiming that they "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
Agreed - they're not poisonous to use, but the manufacturing chemicals used to produce them are, and those chemicals are often dumped into the environment - they're also known as, "forever chemicals", which reek some havoc on well: us.
>Why are they only superficially convenient? They seem pretty convenient to me.
The plastic waste they produce still have the inconvenient problem of what to do with them. Like many conveniences, the problem is just offloaded to someone else.
>The plastic waste they produce still have the inconvenient problem of what to do with them. Like many conveniences, the problem is just offloaded to someone else.
>Some feel microplastics in our blood stream is a worthy compromise to easy-to-make coffee.
If you're in a first world country with proper garbage disposal, those k-cups most certainly aren't contributing to the problem of microplastics. Where I live they basically get landfilled. Kind of hard for that to end up in my veins when they're buried underground.
> The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis.
No.
Like most things in this life, you get what you pay for.
If you cheap out on "newer pans" then sure, they won't last you because the manufacturer will use cheap manufacturing processes in order to achieve your stingy price point.
If you buy decent pans from reputable manufacturers, they will last you a lot longer.
>>*Also, claiming that they "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.*
Watch this documentary, "The Devil We Know" (About the history and toxicity of teflon.
tl;dw - its a cancer causing birth defect, testosterone/endocrine system atomic bmb and there isnt a single person alive today who can be found (according to the doc) who does not have measurable amounts of teflon in their blood.
You seem to be conflating the effects of chemicals previously used in the manufacture of Teflon, such as PFOA which is indeed very dangerous and toxic, and has been banned in the US, with Teflon itself, which appears to be safe.
I mean, if Teflon is so toxic, and there isn't a single person alive today who doesn't have Teflon in their blood, then why aren't there tons of documented cases of Teflon poisoning?
>Watch this documentary, "The Devil We Know" (About the history and toxicity of teflon.
Sorry, but I'm not going to watch a 95 minute documentary on a whim. Based on the wikipedia summary, it doesn't seem to contradict what I said, specifically
>regarding allegations of health hazards from perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8), a key ingredient used in manufacturing Teflon
I specifically mentioned in my last comment that they were "poisonous during manufacturing ".
>Why are they only superficially convenient? They seem pretty convenient to me.
how can anything that produces a worse quality of a productivity enhancing stimulant than you would have using another method ever be truly convenient in comparison to that other method?
I cook eggs on cast iron every morning. I do almost all my cooking on cast iron, including crepes on occasion. Proper seasoning and maintenance makes a huge difference.
I bought the majority of my cast iron 20 years ago for about $25 and it'll likely outlast me.
> Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis. They also seem to be poisonous.
No one should be surprised that people will pay more for the exact same thing over time. People want to get as much as they can as quick as they can. If you spend $100 for a cast iron pan now instead of $30 for a Teflon pan, then you have $70 less money to spend on other stuff. The average person doesn't care that over the long run they could spend $1000 on pans instead of a $100 pan that lasts a lifetime.
Unless you're getting Finex or bidding for sought-after collectors' cast iron on Ebay, you can get a plain cast-iron skillet from any big-box store for $20-$30.
Get a vintage cast iron skillet; before the race to the bottom resulted in unfinished junk like Lodge, manufacturers used to machine polish the surface of the skillet.
I can put a tiny amount of oil in my cast iron and fry eggs without sticking.
Over time, cooking oils polymerize from heat and form a smooth seal in the microsurfaces of the cast iron, resulting in a natural non stick surface which is resilient and replenish-able.
80% of my stovetop cooking is in a 70 year old cast iron skillet, the rest happens in stainless steel or enameled cast iron.
>They have their uses. I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil). Also, claiming that they "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
Nonstick pans contain hormone disrupting chemicals. Just google it and there are numerous resources. Nonstick chemicals are also released into our rivers and waterways and basically impossible to remove (lots of resources for this as well).
>From nonstick pans to food packaging to make-up, hundreds of everyday products are made with PFAS chemicals that have been linked to adverse health effects, including cancer, weakened immunity and low birth weight.
>They are also a persistent pollutant in the environment, with high levels found in many public water systems.
If you don't like cast iron then carbon steel is a similar but easier to maintain alternative. If those don't work, then enameled cast iron (i.e. Le Creuset) works.
>Why are they only superficially convenient? They seem pretty convenient to me.
Because it is absurdly easy to make a pot of coffee, if you want a single cup just adjust the amount of water and coffee.
There is also instant coffee. Which can be better than Keurig.
It's not to say that there is 0 convenience its just barely so and not really worth the added cost and waste. Also if you happen to be the one that has to refill the water or wait on it to heat it's no more convenient than any other option.
> I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil).
I use nothing but cast iron,s on a wood-burning stove. Frying eggs is no problem at all and it does not take "an absurd amount of oil", just a light coat of butter or margarine will do the trick assuming the pan is well-seasoned. I make pancakes for 4 people about once a week, also no problem, using a silicone brush to coat the pan in a light coat of molten butter/oil (I often mix these two) and they slide right out. Just clean the hot pan with water and wipe it clean/dry after use, it will work even better the next time you use it.
PTFE-covered pans are only a thing because people have been told fat is bad. The truth is fat is not bad, just like other foods are not bad per definition. What is bad is too much fat, just like too much carbohydrates or too much salt or... etcetera. Knowing that fat is actually a good ingredient there is no reason to use those flimsy disposable aluminium pans covered in PTFE.
> Also, claiming that [PFAS] "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
It’s a bit difficult to exactly measure the effects of PFAS and how much of it makes it poisonous—when a study sought a control group of people without any in their blood for a study, they were not able to find a single living person on this planet that fits the definition anymore—but even with what we know the author is likely significantly understating that particular point[0].
Even if we ignore the poison released into the environment during manufacturing, I am yet to see a used Teflon pan that has no scratches (and that’s just the ones visible with naked eye). Combine with the fact that non-Teflon pans are becoming nearly impossible to find in many retail stores, and it becomes somewhat concerning.
I have invested in a complete range of cast iron pans. I really don't care if it's convenient or not, at least I can use whatever piece of cutlery which happens to be at hand (while not poisoning my entire family, which is a huge plus)- oh and they'll last forever.
Their point about "smart" TV's having a shorter life than older dumb TV is a valid point. Some models tend to become pretty useless and at least inconvenient when their software gets outdated. Some require internet access to function while others just make it difficult to use streaming dongles and the like.
The real issue is the lack of security in these devices. Updates are rare enough but for something that bridges your home network with the internet this is an agregious failing.
This doesn't even touch on the repairability issues inherent in modern TV design.
>Their point about "smart" TV's having a shorter life than older dumb TV is a valid point. Some models tend to become pretty useless and at least inconvenient when their software gets outdated.
This sounds like a non-issue, in a "broken escalators become stairs" kind of way. If your smart TV doesn't work because it hasn't received software updates for years, and the youtube/netflix app no longer works anymore, can't you just... use it as a dumb TV?
>This doesn't even touch on the repairability issues inherent in modern TV design.
What "repairability issues"? TVs hasn't been repariable for decades now.
> I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil).
You’d be surprised. I have a Lodge cast iron pan I fry eggs in regularly. A tablespoon of butter is enough for three eggs, and only occasionally is there a spot or two that sticks.
The trick is heat. High heat causes them to unstick fairly quickly, to the point where I can typically just shake the pan to release them in their entirety.
That said I haven’t tried to scramble eggs in cast iron. I suspect this would not work nearly as well.
I've done eggs frequently in cast iron and in non stick and I think they turn out a bit better to my tastes in cast iron, but are slightly easier and quicker in nonstick.
>> Even if you stop getting software updates, that doesn't prevent you from using it as a dumb display.
Until a software update on your media player means you need a display with a different DRM. No matter what display you use, the media transfer method to that display (DVD/VGA/HDMI/Wifi etc) will probably be obsolete before the display itself goes dark.
My dad bought me one of these bulky 12 speed razors, 5 years ago. I've used 1 cartridge from it about 6 months ago. I hadn't shaved my face since before they came out. I use a clipper to keep it trimmed. Why use any disposable product whatsoever.
His point on single use plastics is spot on. I know a lot of people that love to lecture me about my moralistic views, the types of people who believe in overpopulation and are sad about the plastic in the ocean, not a single one of them pays any mind to the packaging of anything they buy. I do, and I'm not even one of those people. My "footprint" is probably less than 10% of most peoples, and I don't even care the way they do.
People consume too much disposable crap. People act like they have to buy what's on offer. People are convinced they're helpless in the face of corporations. Start refusing to buy things and stop making excuses and until then you should feel ashamed to lecture anyone about anything.
> Start refusing to buy things and stop making excuses and until then you should feel ashamed to lecture anyone about anything.
This does not make sense to me. The single biggest consumption item is living in a detached single family house with yard space (due to knock on effects of everything you consume having to travel further, including the people in your house).
I know this, and I can advocate for change such that it people are incentivized to live more densely and consume less space (drastically higher fossil fuel taxes). But that does not mean I should give up my enjoyment of resources. If everyone else is going to consume, then so am I. But if the collective decides to sacrifice, then I am signaling I am willing to also. There is no reason for someone to not live it up if the collective is not going to also sacrifice.
> There is no reason for someone to not live it up if the collective is not going to also sacrifice.
If everyone thought as you do saying "Until everyone agrees to sacrifice, I won't either" then no one would ever sacrifice. Leading by example on the other hand is a proven way to help inspire change and can help avoid adding to harms caused by people who choose to live selfishly as long as they can point to anyone else also being selfish.
Housing is a subject full of complications and increased population density causes problems for the environment as well. Personally, I don't care of you live in a McMansion or a shanty town. I don't care of you buy the plastic razor with 47 blades or whatever they are up to now or switch to double bladed razors, but don't blame your selfishness on "the collective". You have no power over what they do, and they have no power over what you do. You alone are responsible for deciding for yourself what you're willing to give up in order to help the environment.
This is circular. If the individual is constantly checking the dysfunctional apparatus of the public, then the public won't change because the individual won't. Gandhi pretty much tackled this in whole. Individuals have to independently strive towards this, of their own volition, to dismantle the heteronomous shitshow that the West has constructed with their virulent socioeconomic modal.
Nobody in their right mind agrees with the state of civilization, probably at all; this is the consequence of heteronomy. So even if you're affine to laissez-faire idealities, their realities with the concentration of wealth and the fundamental aspect necessitates someone ultimately is sacrificed to turn the wheel, typically the "third world". Or any of a huge battery (probably infinite) of other similar moral concerns.
We're all culpable for the continuity of this, myself included. We need exceptional individuals to live exceptional lives more than ever, though. We need to take it upon ourselves to begin dismantling these systems and their fundamental concepts.
Yes, there is. Personal fulfilment. Living up to your own standards.
Why do you want to consume because everyone else is doing so? Is the only reason you're willing to consider doing otherwise to save the world? Is life worse without the disposable products? Why are the decisions you make in your life contingent on some insurmountable, unachievable goal such as "everyone else must do it first"?
Reminds me of George W Bush vs Al Gore in that Bush had a modest ranch house with all the eco friendly features and Gore, the environmentalalist had some 20,000+ foot megamansion.
Yea... it was unfortunate that so many people focused on that instead of the general problem and now we are barreling toward a very bad outcome. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what wealthy people do - they're going to be just fine regardless of what the rest of us do, except that if we kick and scream about their big houses and refuse to do anything we just wind up inheriting the problem and they're still right where they started. I somewhat feel this way about abortion - like I can afford to move my family or fly a family member somewhere to get one. Can you? Might want to think about that.
The other issue is that focusing on something like this megamansion (as grotesque as it is anyway - seriously a lot of these rich people are just tasteless losers) leads down to a never ending condition where you just never do enough to satisfy people who have no interest in changing their habits anyway.
If Gore sold his megamansion they'd say "hey you are still flying", if he stopped flying they'd say "hey you're still driving a car", if he stopped driving a car they say "hey you're not growing your own vegetables", if he started growing his own vegetables they'd say "hey the tools you use come from a carbon emitting supply chain" and if he stopped using tools and made his own they'd just keep on and on and on forever until we get global warming anyway and so many people are screwed. There's no genuine interest in solving the problem, they just want to distract you.
The bad-faith narratives about Al Gore's personal life were hilariously wrong and offensive and irrelevant 25-30 years ago. I guess some people still haven't caught on.
Al Gore was right about, well, basically everything he said on major policy issues.
BTW, that supposed "megamansion"? It's a 5-bedroom home, really quite modest by the standards of today's billionaires. It's basically what you'd assume a former Senator and Vice President might have. Efforts to paint this as somehow offensive are obviously in bad faith.
> until then you should feel ashamed to lecture anyone about anything
I'd take it a step further and say -- just do what you feel is best, what matches your morals, etc, and skip the lecture in any case. 99% of what is wrong with social media has to do with people lecturing the world as if their own personal opinion deserves special consideration. Focus on doing, not talking about it.
I eat the carbon equivalent of about a half pound of plastic a day, the result of which either ends up in the atmosphere or in the ground. Whatever packaging I do use (and I don’t go out of my way to avoid it) is a rounding error compared to what goes through me for basic life.
Most of the resources used are in the supply chain anyway.
The most environmentally friendly thing I’ve done in my life is delay replacing my totaled car.
I started using Braun electric razors about 34 years ago. This turns out to have been a good choice. They are lasting around 16 years each, on average. I recently had to get a new one; only the 3rd one I have had to buy in all that time.
No packaging used up for all kinds of shaving soap or cream or other products, no packaging or plastic or metal used up to buy thousands of blades, etc.
I've been using an electric razor for years, too, and I agree that they are much cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
The only reason I've had to replace them so far is that it becomes impossible to buy replacement blades and foil. So I have to buy a model that is only superficially different, instead of just replacing the expendables.
I've used a straight razor for almost 20 years. Vindicating to read that the price of a Dovo pays for itself. I think my bar of shaving soap is probably the better part of decade old as well. In the interim, a whole peculiar subculture around shaving has developed, but you don't have to be a part of it to just use a razor. Makes you unreachable by corporate marketing as well, which is itself its own reward.
I have a straight razor it's almost a lost art using one. I tried one but I figured I'd end up killing myself by accident. Plus I don't have to patience to sharpen and strop the blade.
A safety razor is also a great investment and cheap. I bought a Wilkinson Sword handle $20 and a pack of five blades $5. It's an old name-brand sold practically everywhere. I can get more than a month out of one double-sided blade. Plus it shaves very close much better than multi-blade razors.
It's better than the two, three, four, five blade monstrosities that always get clogged in days. They also cost far too much literally 5x more than safety razor blades.
I'm also shaving with a safety razor for 6+ years straight. The only problem is that you can't take the blades to the plane (when you're not checking the baggage in), so I have to use my old, unused cartridges on short trips, and use them until they dull when I return. This is good for using the old stock, too!
I've invested to a couple of stainless steel safety razors. An Edwin Jagger 3one6, and a Mühle R94. They're easy to maintain, have infinite life, and shave much better than top of the line cartridge razors from any manufacturer.
I also use a good but not expensive boar brush and shaving soap.
As a result, I either buy a new stick of shaving soap every six months, or a can of foam every year (for emergency morning shaves), and buying 100 blades every 2 years or so, for a much cleaner, comfortable and enjoyable shave for negligible money. Both razors have paid themselves as savings too.
Just want to warn that both razors are in the "efficient" category, which means they need some experience to use without any nicks, but they're not as wild as the open-combed, aggressive razors. If you want a milder, but equally long-living razor, go Mühle R89, Edwin Jagger EJ89, Merkur 34HD or Timor Gentle Butterfly.
+1 on the safety razor. I bought an Edwin Jagger model, a box of 100 Astra superior platinum blades, a nice brush and a tub of Arko soap. That was honestly over 5 years ago and I haven't spent a cent of shaving since then. I think I have 35 blades left. It's amazing how long they last. I'm really close to the end of the soap.
I use a safety razor as well but only because it's easier than getting mad at roommates for destroying my straight razor blades because they're too lazy to find a real knife. Straight razors are waaay quicker and easier to shave with, and I cut and scrape myself way less when using one.
I have a straight razor that uses replaceable blades (they're half-blades, not the double-sided mentioned in the article). I've been using it exclusively for the last 10 years. I'm only just now getting to the bottom of my original box of 100 blades.
I tried straight razor but it was just too much maintenance. Parker safety razor and plain old dove beauty bar have been the sweet spot for me. I like the idea of a straight razor but the maintenance just wasn't worth it. If my safety razor blade gets dull I just toss it and know that it's just iron and carbon and will degrade and not pollute the earth.
I use a safety razor, too. I shave really infrequently, as I’m now bearded, but I do use it regularly to keep the edges trim. I think I’m still on my original pack of razor blades which I bought for a few bucks 5 years ago. Really old bar soap, too. It’s inexpensive, simple, and not really any less convenient than the expensive new razors.
Aside from differences in cost, do you find anything about a straight razor compellingly better than e.g. a Gillette Mach 3?
I go through Mach 3 cartridges pretty slowly, so price isn't a big concern. And I don't notice anything deficient about the quality of my shaves. But one thing I really like about safety razors is that there's zero risk of serious injury.
Safety razors are much better at making a neckline, if you only shave clean partially and trim the remaining beard. Personally I also get less skin irritation from the safety razor compared to the Mach3 I used before. Given I use it correctly. If you move "against" the hair instead of "with" the hair it caused a lot of irritation for me. But that was essentially user error.
In total I would never go back to a Mach3. The safety razor is just the all around superior product at a fraction of the price once you use it correctly.
There's a ritual to straight razor and traditional single-blade safety razor (what I use now) that is compelling in modern times when everything tells you to shave off minutes from every single thing in your life so you can free up your time. Seemingly this means just more time for internet browsing and things that have no impact on your life but I digress. The daily or semi-weekly ritual that takes time, attention and care is relaxing. I stopped using a straight razor since I couldn't get the edge as sharp as I'd like to but I may pick it up again once kids are older. I moved onto purchasing a $20 classic single-blade safety razor about 4 years back and now buy the razors in bulk. Can be very cheap depending on where you buy them. For the ones I buy it's probably $10 a year if that since I only shave every 3 days or so and a carton of 100 blades lasts a year. Does require 2 passes though but doing it right with shaving cream and brush is something I've come to enjoy.
If you clean shave your face, then a safety razor is probably better as it's easier to glide along a large distance across your face. For me, a straight edge razor allows me to shape my beard better. I do cut myself pretty much every time (since the hairs on my neck go in a million different directions), but that's easily addressed by showering right after a shave + after shave cream. The cost benefits over a safety can't be overstated: the razor is a cheap one-time cost ($13 off Amazon at the time, you don't really need a "high quality" razor IMO), blades are single use but super cheap ($15 ish for 100 blades), and since I shave at most weekly I only have to buy blades once every few _years_. As always YMMV depending on your facial hair style.
For me I found that I get much less razor burn with a safety razor. Whenever I shaved with a Mach 3 or another 3 blade cartridge razor, I would always get razor burn on my neck from the two additional blades. Never had that issue with a safety razor.
Aha you can totally cut yourself with a safety razor (unless you mean the Mach 3 and not what this article is calling a double edged razor which has historically been called a "Safety razor" )
> Aside from differences in cost, do you find anything about a straight razor compellingly better than e.g. a Gillette Mach 3?
Quality of shave. If you maintain your straight razor, and mind it, it does require some maintenance, the quality of shave is of no comparison. My wife can instantly make out the difference when I shave in a hurry with Mach 3.
Straight razor here too. Primarily because I wanted to get off the cost and waste wheel. It’s great.
I sharpen my own knife and woodworking tools. So learning to sharpen my razor is no big deal.
Now my only expense is occasionally buying some soap or aftershave once a year or so. And my time I suppose maintaining the razor which isn’t much at all.
>And my time I suppose maintaining the razor which isn’t much at all.
Definitely not the case for me. As someone whose been recently exploring properly sharpening some high quality kitchen knives at home, there's a cost in time for sure to do things correclty both learning and executing. Once you learn, it's not too bad but there's a learning curve and time factor that's difficult to ignore. I need to set aside a good hour or 1.5 hours on a given weekend to sharpen my knives (find and soak my soap stone, gather my knives, get back my angles and motions down pat).
I'm still a novice for sure and an expert may be able to sharpen quickly but that's a big difference from just grabbing a new disposable product ready to use. With a straight razor a certain amount of care also needs to be taken when shaving to reduce cuts -- safety razors aren't a bad invention overall. I suspect if you do a lot of regular shaving (e.g. body hair that's not just your face), it might become time consuming.
I'm not saying reuse and repair are bad investments, I'm a huge fan of these ideals, but the time involved can't be entirely ignored for some consumer products. In many (perhaps most) cases, I agree with the thesis of the article that modern business practices are becoming increasingly misaligned from consumers and societies interests and becoming nothing but wealth extraction optimization factories in various forms. But, I think not all products are so clear cut and some legitimate progresses are not reasonable tradeoffs for everyone, like a safety razor (maybe not cartridge based but similar to the one described in this article). Now a safety razor for a cartridge is a pretty close set of advantages/disadvantages with clear cost savings.
I use safety razors because it is must sharper than a regular disposable razor. As a result, you don't need to do multiple passes over the same area which leads to less razor burn and skin irritation. I buy a couple hundred new blades every few years for $25-$30 and never have to throw money away on a $10 Mach XXX or whatever... I am actually surprised more dermatologists and skin experts haven't recommended safety/straight razors.
ymmv. its interesting reading everyones different techniques and experiences here. I've never felt I had to do two passes with a 3 blade. I let them get dull too before they are swapped out, although these 3 blades are for sensitive skin so they are nicer than your standard mach3. I'm probably paying less than you for blades a year though. I can't remember when I bought the huge $35 pack I have.
That number seems incredibly high to me. The most I've seen blades go for in any kind of volume is around $0.20/blade. Even if you were discarding them every day, that would only account for $70/year. You can admittedly buy some rather nice shave soap, but $180/year still seems aggressive.
I admittedly don't shave every day, but I've been using a safety razor since 2013. I went back and tallied up all of the purchases for materials, including my razor, and I believe I've spent a little over $200 for that entire period, so maybe $25/year.
Shaving is like an Inception-level hierarchy of waste and affectation. It's easy to feel superior because you ditched the biggest brands, and still be wasting your money on unnecessary and crappy products because you were tricked by marketing. Those hipster shave-by-mail clubs are not really better than Gillette. And the safety razor market-disguised-as-a-community is also full of waste disguised by hipster affectations. Specialty soaps, exotic animal hair brushes, elaborate rituals, etc. Underneath it all is the fact that you CAN buy a cheap, adequate, no-name safety razor somewhere, and you can buy cheap adequate blades in bulk with some trial and error, and you can find some combination of products that will work on your skin without going for specialty and prestige. Don't buy these things as tokens of a lifestyle, buy them for utility.
Honestly the wetshaving (safety razor, brush, etc) community is also a wealth of knowledge for bang-for-your-buck shaving. It’s simple enough to get in, soak up the knowledge you need, get out. You don’t have to buy into the acquisition hype, and the community is generous enough that you can often get started for free on some decent basics.
Wet shaving is also a great experience IMO, even with dirt cheap razors and soaps and brushes I prefer it. As the article stated a single safety razor handle will last basically a lifetime too.
But it's not necessary to turn shaving into a hobby with toys and status symbols (look at all the conspicious brand-name-dropping going on in these comments). However, the anti-Gillette marketing zeitgeist makes you think that that is THE alternative. Looking for information about safety/straight razor usage will undoubtedly suck someone into SEO-friendly shaving "enthusiast" traps unless they avoid it. People should be aware that there is a cheap, simple, boring, utilitarian alternative, but the "alternative shaving culture" will try to mislead them, even if from innocent enthusiasm.
I bought my razor a long time ago but I think it was just in an American chain drugstore, which others have mentioned. Amazon is probably the easiest place with the best selection of blades at decent prices. Might take a few tries to find a brand you like, so you'd want to avoid large quantities at first. I've heard there can be counterfeit blades but I've also heard that might be bull.
> Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis.
I fell for this marketing thinking non-stick was the best out of everything always and kept having to buy new pans and trays when the teflon would eventually flake off thinking it was my fault. Stainless steel is fine: works without a lot of food sticking for most things, comes out clean from the dishwasher, doesn't require much care, and there's no easily damaged coating so should last decades.
Related but more because of recipes writers repeating tips without considering waste, but I find there's almost zero need for tinfoil, wax paper or plastic wrap either. A reusable silicone mat works if you need a non-stick surface or to cover a dish or bowl, and you can reuse food plastic containers to store things in the fridge. Most e.g. bread recipes insist on putting plastic wrap over the bowl of dough when proving when you can just use a plate, silicone mat or dish towel.
The plastic waste thing is kind of silly. People commenting here mostly live near well managed landfills and aren't worrying about burning 10 pounds of oil driving to work.
Like fine, feel free to use less plastic, but it really isn't a big portion of most people's resource consumption.
That's true, however we don't have exact control on every aspect of our lives. I'd love to walk, bike or use mass transportation to go to work, however it's very impractical (~2 hours vs. 20 minutes), but I have more control over consumption of other things in my life.
So, I can do my best on areas which I have most control, and do whatever I can on the areas with less control, and if you ask me, it's better than nothing.
Why create waste if you don't need to for no real benefit especially in cases where it's minimal effort to avoid? I'm not saying this tip alone is going to save the planet, but you could use the same reasoning to say it doesn't matter if you litter. Not creating waste and littering when it can be easily avoided should be the sane default.
What the heck are y’all doing that you are flaking off the non-stick coating? We have a nice set we got for our wedding, and even after using them nearly every day for a decade they look brand new and the coating is still flawless.
I've had the same with an expensive set as well as cheaper sets. I know to avoid exposing them to very high heat or metal but they end up flaking anyway. At least with materials like stainless steel you'd have to do something extreme to damage them so it's not likely to happen accidentally.
You can fairly quickly get a temporary non-stick coating on a stainless steel pan by seasoning it as you would a cast iron pan: spread a tiny amount of oil around the pan, heat until just smoking, allow to cool.
Not just temporary. Steel pans can get fantastic non-stick properties if you season them like a cast iron pan. In fact it's even more important to perform a dedicated seasoning on steel, because they don't absorb the fat as easy as cast iron do during normal cooking. It also disappears after a while so in that sense you could say it's temporary.
Once you've done this you should also avoid detergent, dishwasher and acid (tomato sauce). Again - just like a cast iron skillet. Which is a shame because it's easy to believe one of the benefits with a steel pan is that it is convenient to pop into the dishwasher.
Not a new phenomenon: Gillette patented the technique that Wilkinson Sword had invented for making stainless steel blades, and suppressed the production of the much longer lasting stainless steel blades for a while because they "knew that any gain for them in market share would be overwhelmed by the dramatic reduction in the size of the market"[0] (side note: when Wilkinson Sword started producing stainless steel blades using the technique they invented they were "forced to pay royalty to Gillette for each blade it sold"[1]).
Readit News
Convenient consumer products tend to sell better than less convenient ones, even if the product is worse. That's the entire story. People have finite time, so when they receive more income they will tend to spend it to reduce the time they spend doing things that they don't care about.
I for one hate spending time doing all the things that the products in the article make more convenient, and happily pay more so I can spend my time on other things.
My time is precious to me, so instead of spending money on luxury items I spend money to save time. Evidently so do most other people.What this article isn't telling you is that DE razors can be almost as fast, but there's a learning curve. They don't flex, bend, or rotate to the right angle, so you must hold them at the right angle, even when you're going around curves. There's just one blade, so it's easy to apply too much pressure and give yourself razor burn, so you must learn to use minimal pressure. It takes time to learn these skills.
Is learning how to shave with a DE correctly and quickly worth saving money? If money is no concern for you, then no. However, there are other benefits. One pass of a five bladed razor is, you guessed it, five blades being dragged across your face, and likely with more pressure than is necessary given how much pressure is required just to make the flexing, rotating razor engage with your face. If skin irritation, ingrown hairs, etc. are a problem for you, then learning how to properly shave with a DE razor can dramatically reduce those problems. However, things may be worse at first while you're learning technique. This is all even more true if you're the sort who suffers from irritation and reuses cartridges too long to save a little money. Dull blades make skin irritation worse.
Another thing this article isn't mentioning is shaving soap. Most of us are used to chemical gel's or foams. To be blunt, they all smell awful and feel gross. Again, it takes slightly more time and a little technique must be learned, but traditional shave soap with a badger hair brush, lathered on the face, is something everyone should at least try. There are some awesome smelling soaps out there, and lathering on your face with a good badger brush feels amazing. If you hate shaving, this is a switch that might change your mind.
If you hate something, you can spend less time on it, or you can look for ways to make it more enjoyable.
I mean, no one is telling you to stop, but I wouldn’t chalk up your recommendations to anything more just preferences.
It’s just another hobby. Some people love scotch, others coffee and some people getting the best shave experience.
If I loved scotch and someone said “yuck, I don’t like it” I wouldn’t somehow assume they were living their life incorrectly or missing out, they just don’t like it.
Much better than these and shaving soap / brush, is Somerset's Shaving Oil[1]. King of Shaves do a shaving oil too, but it's nowhere near as good. Not affiliated, I just love the stuff.
You can use it with shaving soap too, but I just use it on its own.
At one point I was worried the company might go under so I bought a big box of it just in case. It's not a great business model as one little bottle lasts months. You only use 3 drops per shave.
[1] https://www.somersets.com/(X(1)S(hrhdq4w0o12w1qjoh0myxyml))/...
I shave thrice a week (head and face) and the Proraso brand has been a lifesaver.
Have never managed to learn to use the DE razors :/
I choose to focus my time and energy minimizing environmental impact more effectively. For example, instead of using a DE razor, I use that time to commute by bike instead of car, This results in overall much less waste and a lifestyle that I prefer.
Some people do, and they’re welcome to spend their own time, energy, and money pursuing that feeling.
Uh, that's not how loose leaf tea is used...
Usually one would use a strainer or a gaiwan. Your point still stands, tea bags are less hassle, you just won't get to drink fine oolong or puerh. I don't mind cleaning the gaiwan - taking out the leaves takes a couple seconds.
I prefer tea bags because it's still easier to clean up, even though taking a dripping wet bag out of the cup is a messier process and is trash. A gaiwan or even teapot is rarely compatible with my normal in-the-moment tea drinking style. I aspire for it to be some day.
Filling a paper tea filter is pretty easy though, just grab one, and shovel in a bit of leaves with a spoon. It's faster to fill a tea bag than it is to boil water for a cup.
That’s the obvious market story but not even the entire story in the post. The lack of available alternatives is a real thing.
Several of the examples in the article feel like real losses to me. Another example: last I looked, I can’t even buy a mouse with the form factor and features I want unless I give up and charge batteries. The thing I want to buy existed under many model names over the last 20 years, apparently now I need to start looking second hand. This is true for lots of wired devices, it’s almost impossible to find many of them or a spiritual successor now. I don’t want all of my secondary devices to be battery powered. I’m clearly a minority in the market, or at least untargeted as one.
I don’t begrudge anyone their preferences or conveniences, but I definitely miss some of the things I used to be able to find which are now just relics.
I do not always like wires, but wireless is kind of a mess. Pairing, charging, quality of info transfer problems...
So, I bought a bunch of wired, high quality earbuds, am going to to get some mice too. Those things just work and the quality/consistency of input / output is something I value way more than not having a wire.
Aluminum has much better thermal conductivity, but is a terrible surface to cook on (soft, oxidizes, imparts flavors to acidic foods). The best compromise is a clad pan with aluminum sandwitched between layers of stainless. I switched from cooking on cast iron to cooking on clad and it makes a huge difference.
This guy took a bunch of IR camera shots demonstrating the effect: https://www.centurylife.org/is-all-clad-worth-it-is-it-still...
> it's a nonstick pan without the carcinogens.
Strictly speaking, this is false. The seasoning on a cast iron pan is burnt oil. It is without question mildly carcinogenic. Not so much that I've thrown away my cast iron - I still use it occasionally - but I wouldn't tout it as having health benefits (except maybe a tiny increase in iron consumption).
FWIW the newer ceramic nonstick pans are incredible and nearly indestructible. Clad is still my go-to, but I use the henckles granitium pans from costco for anything with egg in it. Two years later they still work like new.
Isn’t it completely opposite? Teflon is incredibly inert and nobody knows what really happens in cast seasoning other than - it’s burned food!?
No lol that's the whole point
> without the carcinogens.
I'll take that trade, I'm not going to spend my 30s sitting around waiting for pans to heat up because there's some very small probability a pan will harm me.
Not to be snarky, but considering you're leaving comments here then I doubt it
So you see loneliness makes us waste this part of our time probably in an futile attempt to deal with loneliness, forge a connection, having some kind of reassurance that we have a voice and maybe we matter even though we so don’t.
So this comment isn’t waste of OP’s time if OP likes to do this or wants to do this and gets gratification from it (even if doesn’t last beyond hitting the submit button). OP even mentioned that coffee thing in the similar vein.
So I think you were being snarky. Maybe inadvertently? Or just another knee-jerk comment like most of HN? :)
People would look strange on me if i started shaving while commuting on the train. Here i have ample of time to read.
One could also simply prefer watch junk on the telly to wind down after a long day of work, rather than seasoning my pan again. (Personally, i do have a seasoned skillet, it's a amazing)
Take this thinking too far and one should even give up washing machines and go back to hand laundry?
Razors like G. Mach3 or similar are neither really much faster nor better in any way (I compare them against my $25 "classical" metal razor "Timor Solingen 1322"). The fact that so many people think otherwise is a proof that marketing departments of G. or Edgewell (Wilkinson) did a very good job.
On the other extreme, (and due to my personal interest in practicing knife sharpening), I ended up using a pocket knife and a couple quality sharpening stones as my “razor”. Too lazy to calculate whether the long term cost is worth it, but the setup will probably last me a lifetime. If avoiding waste is really the highest priority (over convenience) then I would argue that sharpening your own razor blade is the only rational way to shave.
However, there were times I had to skip coffee making to start a commute on time. The tipping point was when I was slightly late for a couple of low-stakes meetings because shaving with a safety razor took so long (lather, three passes, rinse), so I had to take an alternative commuting route after missing a train. There were other times when I chose to skip shaving and buy coffee outside to make a meeting on time (taking extra time to walk to the coffee shop, line up, and buy coffee).
I remembered never having these issues of having to skip shaving when using an electric razor. I've now returned to using one for most days, and also usually use a brew machine. It's nicer to have less stress in the morning.
You could say that I could manage my time better in the morning by waking up an extra half hour earlier, but I've found it very nice to make my life a bit easier while other parts of my days are more stressful.
Saving time from shaving doesn’t necessarily mean the saved time will be used in something like saving the world. It just means less time was spent on shaving than it would have taken if OP did shaving your so called “hard” way.
Also your 20m shaved annually seems very weird. There are approximately 365 days in a year and one “easy” way shave, imho, definitely saves more than approx 0.055m compared to a hard way shave if one shaves daily without a miss :-P
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If you are to compare stuff, stuff like modern razor cartridges and double-edged razors, you ought to mention the convenience side of the things. I hate being the devil's advocate, but shaving with 4-blade cartridge designed for easy shaving is still 'miles' ahead compared to shaving with double-edged razor. Miiiles ahead. And I use a double-edged razor 9 out of 10 times, so I would know a thing or two about it.
And that's not to say that are overly pricey. They are. Plus, if you account for different prices in different regions, the price difference is even more concerning.
The same is also true for some other appliances/services mentioned - tea bags and coffee machines are not just 'superficially convenient' they are wildly more convenient.
EDIT: As one person said in the comments down below, "What this article completely misses, is that there are more than two options.". That was my whole point, and I'm sorry if it came out the wrong way. Shaving is a personal preference, and you are free to do it however you like; but saying 'Shaving is too expensive and is a demonstrative example of how most consumer products are designed to extract more money from you rather than to improve your life, or the world, or to be in any way remotely good.' is just incorrect and insane.
1. Don't shave. Grow a wild and wooly beard.
2. Electric clippers. For that permanent five o'clock shadow look.
3. Electric shaver. Easy.
4. Cartridge + foam. Smooth.
5. Double edge safety razor. Very smooth. Requires some skill.
6. Straight edge razor. Super smooth? No idea personally.
7. Laser. Also no idea personally.
What this article completely misses, is that there are more than two options.
I personally switch it up depending on what I am doing that day.
There is no right way to shave.
The most convenient thing was a Gillette Styler that would last for I can't count how many months, but was ultimately disposable. I later found a MINISO brand that was less than half the cost that was rechargeable with only minimal paper packaging. Not as close but good enough. Ultimately it's disposable too but I'm still on my first one.
I'm in the electric clippers camp personally. A good model can easily last you 10+ years and keeps my dry skill happier. I'm lucky they are still easy to find. Good luck finding a straight razor in your local shops if that's what you're into though.
While I don't think they require as much skill as people think, they are a bit harsh IMO. Some people probably can shave daily with them, but when I tried it was pretty rough on my skin.
Edit: Well I got the Merkur 34C after 23 minutes of research.
Also protects others from my bad breath, or recycles the chocolate smell. :-D
Depends on where you go. The various DE/SE subreddits it absolutely is.
For me, and many many others who have tried both, eg in the subreddit for DE shaving, DE is much better for a) your skin and b) getting a close shave.
Your hair doesn’t need 4 blades running across it. It just needs one sharp blade over it.
Fair it may take one or two shaves to “get used” to the new way of shaving but that is only because most people start on 4-blade.
However, the real trick is to get the eos brand sensitive shaving cream with shea butter and colloidal oatmeal. It might be marketed for ladies, but it's way better than anything you could waste your life whipping up with a brush.
I simply apply ordinary soap to my face with my hands when I shave with my double-edged razor.
It works just fine.
I actually tried switching to a straight razor. Found it requires a lot more skill than I'm willing to put in to learning. But it appeals to me as the ultimate in reusability.
The double edge safety razor is so much easier to clean out.
For me shaving with DE razor is miles ahead in comfort over cartridge
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For 4-5 months of the year (summer) I shave my head 2x or 3x a week, and I don't understand this comment. How are cartridge razors more convenient than safety razors?
Safety razors are just hands down better, IMO. It's a more comfortable shave (depending on the blade), the blades can be bought in bulk for $0.05 cents each, they take less than 30 seconds to change out, they last longer than cartridges, and there's no plastic waste.
Also, I fully agree with the price factor - they are less expensive, and as a bonus there is no plastic waste (at least in most cases, depending on the packaging of your razor blades). But that was not my point.
That said, I don't work for Gillette (or any related company), and don't get commission for saying any of this (this is all just 'IMO' type of comment), and apart from anecdotal evidence (I've had multiple conversations with people with 20+ years of shaving experience, using both 4-blade razors and double-edged razors, and they all, more or less, share my opinion) I can't really provide any data (maybe I could try to find some, but I don't care about this topic 'that' much).
I hope that this clarifies my previous comment.
Perhaps my hair is just soft, and I suspect it is, but I started out taking 10-15 minutes and now I can do a quick shave in 5.
It lasts longer, it’s cheaper, and easier on my skin — I break out less often.
>Cooking equipment: essentially indestructible Cast Iron skillets transition into teflon pans. The newer pans perform worse, and must be replaced on a shockingly regular basis. They also seem to be poisonous.
They have their uses. I wouldn't try frying eggs in a cast iron, for instance (technically you can, but it requires an absurd amount of oil). Also, claiming that they "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
>Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.
Why are they only superficially convenient? They seem pretty convenient to me.
>Televisions moving from being screens which accept input, to self contained 'smart' devices that require software updates and thus have a shortened useful lifespan.
I thought it was the other way around? ie. smart TVs are cheaper than dumb TVs because they're subsidized by ad revenue. Also, the claim itself doesn't really make any sense. Even if you stop getting software updates, that doesn't prevent you from using it as a dumb display.
1. The manufacturing process results in those precursor chemicals entering urban water supplies where they are nearly impossible to filter out (only RO is effective and it's not even 100% effective), and once in the bloodstream of people are powerful endrocrine disruptors which circulate and are filtered slowly by the kidneys... and when peed out go right back into the water supply due to not being able to be removed during treatment. These "forever chemicals" are some of the most health damaging pollutants in the West.
2. Teflon is extremely hazardous when consumed and it flakes off of the pans over time (which is why they must be replaced often) or when incorrect utensils are used (common among unsophisticated users).
3. Teflon can overheat on a standard consumer stove using standard cooking techniques. You actually need different techniques to prevent overheating a Teflon pan.
4. Cast Iron is effectively non-stick after enough use, and you can absolutely fry an egg in it without sticking if you have a smooth-bottom pan (either a vintage cast iron, new vintage-style, or a new style that you've sanded down and seasoned yourself).
I replied to the GP, but I fry eggs in a bog-standard Lodge which is neither vintage nor sanded down. It still has a distinct ”pebbly” appearance to it, though perhaps less than when I first got it.
Works like a charm, and a shake of the pan is usually all that’s needed to release eggs.
That's why I said it was "a little misleading" rather that outright false. "poisonous" sort of implies that the object itself is poisonous or is bad for you. I'm sure manufacturing a smartphone causes a bunch of environmental damage, but you wouldn't call it poisonous (outside of putting in in your mouth).
>2. Teflon is extremely hazardous when consumed and it flakes off of the pans over time (which is why they must be replaced often) or when incorrect utensils are used (common among unsophisticated users).
source? This is contradicted by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Safety
>3. Teflon can overheat on a standard consumer stove using standard cooking techniques. You actually need different techniques to prevent overheating a Teflon pan.
Like I said in my initial comment, teflon has its uses. I'm not saying it's the best tool for every job. Given that, I highly doubt this applies if I'm just cooking my eggs.
>4. Cast Iron is effectively non-stick after enough use, and you can absolutely fry an egg in it without sticking if you have a smooth-bottom pan (either a vintage cast iron, new vintage-style, or a new style that you've sanded down and seasoned yourself).
Sounds like a lot of work to me. In other words, the teflon pan is actually more convenient.
https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/is-teflon-coating-safe#:~....
This is not to go against your other points, but stop spreading FUD please.
It's very common to use incorrect utensils (metal) because the correct ones (wood, plastic) are are harder to clean and don't last as long, and few people would choose to use such utensils if all else were equal.
I'm hell-bent on getting something with zero smart function- just ports. TVs like that will become gold in the future, when smart tvs will have ad banners that you can't turn off. The cost of media has come full circle. My prediction is: 1. All TVs have smart functions and no input ports 2. TV manufactures will be cutting deals with advertisers to display banner ads. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to pay for ad free. 3. Aggregate streaming services will provide access to multiple services for a flat fee. Welcome back to cable! 4. Total cost of consuming TV media will be eat average income budgets away
It seems up on the latest hdmi standards and it turns on and off with the appletv plugged in.
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Look for a used signage panel. No commercial smart functions and quality that's barely available in consumer TVs but sometime can be had really cheap if you find the right place, look on govdeals, if your patient.
My last two tvs had smart crap built in; I never set any of ot up, not even as far as connecting to wifi.
FWIW it's pretty easy to fry eggs in a cast iron. You do have to oil the pan, but I wouldn't call it absurd. Just a dollop of oil in the pan. And the end result has a crispy, yummy texture that's hard to achieve with Teflon. It just takes a little practice and an open mind.
Fried eggs are just aldehyde cancer hell. There's so much out there you can cook without any oil and it's handy to know for sure. Try cooking stuff in sauces instead for example.
[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/thmb/3KEyHXkLBbmzhHgp5P81odFcIR0...
[2] https://www.seriouseats.com/classic-over-easy-fried-eggs-rec...
Of course it's crispy, you are deep-frying your eggs in oil, like McDonalds-style fries. It may feel delicious, like almost anything overcooked with high temperature, but it is not quite healthy.
We fry our eggs every morning on a cast iron skillet with a tiny amount of oil (<1 teaspoon for 6 eggs). The only time I have problems with stuff sticking is if I get impatient and don't wait for the pan to preheat.
This is one of the biggest contributors to teflon's mythology: you can't preheat a teflon pan safely (it ruins the coating), so people learn to not preheat. They then get frustrated when using other pans that things stick that wouldn't have on their teflon.
(Edit: the skillet is a cheap, unaltered Lodge, nothing antique or sanded.)
FWIW I shrug and use my cast iron.
You just need to let the pan heat up, drop a teaspoon of oil or butter, let if soak in a second then blast it and drop your egg.
More butter more better but that's flavour at that point.
For figuring out if your plans at the right heat, a spalsg of water should bead and float around.
Going that hot with Teflon will give you the Teflon flu.
Only thing I use nonstick for is scrabled eggs and pancakes where a low heat is beneficial.
What if you count having to view ads, and having the tv spy on you as a cost? RN,for many TVs you can just not connect to wifi, but how long until the TV won't work unless it is connected?
> Also, the claim itself doesn't really make any sense. Even if you stop getting software updates, that doesn't prevent you from using it as a dumb display.
Perhaps a better argument is that a bad software can brick the TV, or the components of the smart functionality break in a way that prevents you from using it as a dumb tv (i.e. it has more "moving parts"), and if you don't use the smart functionality, then it is a waste of the materials to make those components, and probably electricity running through the circuits. And it isn't too hard to imagine a future where the tv just stops working if it can't phone home.
I don't connect it to wifi, problem solved.
>for many TVs you can just not connect to wifi, but how long until the TV won't work unless it is connected?
Is there reason to believe that it won't work? The "smart" TV I have hasn't been connected to wifi for years and still works.
>Perhaps a better argument is that a bad software can brick the TV, or the components of the smart functionality break in a way that prevents you from using it as a dumb tv (i.e. it has more "moving parts")
I don't get it, are you trying to have your cake (smart functionality) and eat it too (smart functionality randomly breaking stuff)? If you use it as a dumb TV from day 1 I can't imagine why it would randomly break later.
>and if you don't use the smart functionality, then it is a waste of the materials to make those components, and probably electricity running through the circuits
The nvidia shield TV uses 6W while streaming. Presumably the smart TV component probably uses something similar or less than that. In the grand scheme of things it's nothing.
>And it isn't too hard to imagine a future where the tv just stops working if it can't phone home.
That's seems to be more of a theoretical concern than something that's actually happening right now.
That's because many cast iron pans you can get these days have unpolished bottoms unlike antique ones. If you get a polished one (or polish it yourself - there's plenty of youtube videos on that) it'll be incredible non-stick. You can also just get a carbon steel pan which doesn't need polishing.
Sounds pretty inconvenient to me, which directly opposes author's thesis.
After spending a few weeks trying, I’ve had multiple people tell me they got theirs ‘seasoned’ after three or four months.
Don’t let yourself be sucked in.
There is a /lot/ of bullshit myths around cast iron, like that you cannot use soap for instance, or shouldn't scrub it, both of which are totally fine, but the idea of seasoning and what occurs when it's done properly are entirely true. Most people just want to otherthink it. All you need to do with cast iron is use it and care for it properly, the longer and more often you use it, the better it gets.
But people who say you can easily cook eggs in it or everything else "after its seasoned" are just not to be listened to. Use a nonstick.
EDIT: Or carbon steel I guess. Even then, meh. Remember that the vast majority of professional chefs use nonstick skillets specifically for eggs both at home and in their workplace.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasoning_(cookware)
[2] https://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-t...
Use the right tool for the job and cast iron is definitely not the right choice a lot of the time. Unless you exclusively cook meals where heat control is never needed, I don’t see why you’d only use cast iron.
A seasoned pan is fine for eggs. I just use a little butter.
I switched to aluminum/copper core from Teflon and eggs are easy with a little butter, or oil, or spray. And cleaning is easier with some steel wool.
An all-clad pan was $100 but is going strong 15 years later and should last a few hundred more. My non-stick pans were $20 and lasted a year or two.
If you add the eggs with the pan too cool and then heat them up, they will stick.
Which means you need to do a better job at seasoning. Cast iron is used almost exclusively at my place and I use less than 1/2 TSp oil for eggs. Granted my newest skillets are made is 1930s.
What issue are we even talking about?
This really bugs me. We have a product, designed to be used over heat, which leaks literal poison into your food when it gets "too hot"... WTF is that? What does "too hot" mean and how can you expect anyone to know which of their burner settings (which often have no guidance at all as to temperature beyond gradients between "low", "medium", and "high") will be hot enough to leak poison into the food they feed themselves and their families. Non-stick coating seem like the kind of thing which should be banned at this point until it's proven to be safe under typical conditions. None of the chemicals which have replaced teflon have been proved safe. They just haven't been shown to be dangerous yet, which isn't saying much considering the decades it took to prove the dangers of teflon and the efforts the manufacturers went to hide those dangers from the public they poisoned.
> smart TVs are cheaper than dumb TVs because they're subsidized by ad revenue.
I've never seen that proved anywhere. Costs have gone down over the years, and the amount of ads and data collection have increased but I haven't seen any evidence at all that there's a 1:1 connection between the two. Companies seem to be perfectly happy to charge you the most they can get away with while still collecting your data and pushing ads in your face. By limiting the availability of dumb TVs you don't even get to vote with your wallet on this one. Currently I'm recommending people replace their TVs with computer monitors, but "smart" computer monitors are the new thing and will push out the dumb models too.
And even that comparison is unfair, as with that you're getting fresh ground coffee which is much better. Pod coffees are preground minimum months before you're brewing with them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/well/eat/filtered-coffee-...
Well, alright then.
> and when they get too hot
Oh… I dunno, but this seems to be a fairly likely failure mode for a pan.
"too hot" in this context means "higher than smoke points of most oils". Like I said, they have their uses. If you're frying an egg you're likely not heating your pan to the point of smoking, and I'm certainly not going to be searing meats on a non-stick.
Fried eggs were a thing long before before teflon. I dont know what you consider absurd about of oil, some oil is needed, but I would qualify it as "normal"
Teflon pans kill birds unfortunately. Once you live with a bird, you can’t have any hot teflon in the house because it releases toxic fumes. Fine for a human because we’re large animals, smol birds reach lethal levels within minutes.
There’s stories of people turning on an air fryer and their pet bird dropping dead in another room.
Neither are fine for humans. The dosage is still high enough to cause long term health issues. (Mostly cancer and hormone issues.)
It requires proper seasoning. Once you got that, egg away!
>Also, claiming that they "seem to be poisonous" without any qualifiers is a little misleading. To my knowledge they're only poisonous during manufacturing (ie. the precursor chemicals) and when they get too hot.
Agreed - they're not poisonous to use, but the manufacturing chemicals used to produce them are, and those chemicals are often dumped into the environment - they're also known as, "forever chemicals", which reek some havoc on well: us.
https://www.ewg.org/what-are-pfas-chemicals
>Why are they only superficially convenient? They seem pretty convenient to me.
The plastic waste they produce still have the inconvenient problem of what to do with them. Like many conveniences, the problem is just offloaded to someone else.
https://money.cnn.com/2015/03/04/news/k-cups-keurig-inventor...
Some feel microplastics in our blood stream is a worthy compromise to easy-to-make coffee.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/24/micropla...
I dunno much about TVs (I've never owned one), but sounds like subscription over ownership which, grumbles over Adobe
>https://money.cnn.com/2015/03/04/news/k-cups-keurig-inventor...
>Some feel microplastics in our blood stream is a worthy compromise to easy-to-make coffee.
If you're in a first world country with proper garbage disposal, those k-cups most certainly aren't contributing to the problem of microplastics. Where I live they basically get landfilled. Kind of hard for that to end up in my veins when they're buried underground.
No.
Like most things in this life, you get what you pay for.
If you cheap out on "newer pans" then sure, they won't last you because the manufacturer will use cheap manufacturing processes in order to achieve your stingy price point.
If you buy decent pans from reputable manufacturers, they will last you a lot longer.
Watch this documentary, "The Devil We Know" (About the history and toxicity of teflon.
tl;dw - its a cancer causing birth defect, testosterone/endocrine system atomic bmb and there isnt a single person alive today who can be found (according to the doc) who does not have measurable amounts of teflon in their blood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know
I mean, if Teflon is so toxic, and there isn't a single person alive today who doesn't have Teflon in their blood, then why aren't there tons of documented cases of Teflon poisoning?
Sorry, but I'm not going to watch a 95 minute documentary on a whim. Based on the wikipedia summary, it doesn't seem to contradict what I said, specifically
>regarding allegations of health hazards from perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8), a key ingredient used in manufacturing Teflon
I specifically mentioned in my last comment that they were "poisonous during manufacturing ".
how can anything that produces a worse quality of a productivity enhancing stimulant than you would have using another method ever be truly convenient in comparison to that other method?
I bought the majority of my cast iron 20 years ago for about $25 and it'll likely outlast me.
No one should be surprised that people will pay more for the exact same thing over time. People want to get as much as they can as quick as they can. If you spend $100 for a cast iron pan now instead of $30 for a Teflon pan, then you have $70 less money to spend on other stuff. The average person doesn't care that over the long run they could spend $1000 on pans instead of a $100 pan that lasts a lifetime.
I can put a tiny amount of oil in my cast iron and fry eggs without sticking.
Over time, cooking oils polymerize from heat and form a smooth seal in the microsurfaces of the cast iron, resulting in a natural non stick surface which is resilient and replenish-able.
80% of my stovetop cooking is in a 70 year old cast iron skillet, the rest happens in stainless steel or enameled cast iron.
Nonstick pans contain hormone disrupting chemicals. Just google it and there are numerous resources. Nonstick chemicals are also released into our rivers and waterways and basically impossible to remove (lots of resources for this as well).
>From nonstick pans to food packaging to make-up, hundreds of everyday products are made with PFAS chemicals that have been linked to adverse health effects, including cancer, weakened immunity and low birth weight.
>They are also a persistent pollutant in the environment, with high levels found in many public water systems.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/to...
If you don't like cast iron then carbon steel is a similar but easier to maintain alternative. If those don't work, then enameled cast iron (i.e. Le Creuset) works.
Again, is this during manufacture or in the finished product? In my comment I specifically said it was poisonous during manufacture.
>Just google it and there are numerous resources
I checked on wikipedia and I found no mentions of that in the finished product.
Because it is absurdly easy to make a pot of coffee, if you want a single cup just adjust the amount of water and coffee.
There is also instant coffee. Which can be better than Keurig.
It's not to say that there is 0 convenience its just barely so and not really worth the added cost and waste. Also if you happen to be the one that has to refill the water or wait on it to heat it's no more convenient than any other option.
Also the coffee sucks.
I use nothing but cast iron,s on a wood-burning stove. Frying eggs is no problem at all and it does not take "an absurd amount of oil", just a light coat of butter or margarine will do the trick assuming the pan is well-seasoned. I make pancakes for 4 people about once a week, also no problem, using a silicone brush to coat the pan in a light coat of molten butter/oil (I often mix these two) and they slide right out. Just clean the hot pan with water and wipe it clean/dry after use, it will work even better the next time you use it.
PTFE-covered pans are only a thing because people have been told fat is bad. The truth is fat is not bad, just like other foods are not bad per definition. What is bad is too much fat, just like too much carbohydrates or too much salt or... etcetera. Knowing that fat is actually a good ingredient there is no reason to use those flimsy disposable aluminium pans covered in PTFE.
It’s a bit difficult to exactly measure the effects of PFAS and how much of it makes it poisonous—when a study sought a control group of people without any in their blood for a study, they were not able to find a single living person on this planet that fits the definition anymore—but even with what we know the author is likely significantly understating that particular point[0].
Even if we ignore the poison released into the environment during manufacturing, I am yet to see a used Teflon pan that has no scratches (and that’s just the ones visible with naked eye). Combine with the fact that non-Teflon pans are becoming nearly impossible to find in many retail stores, and it becomes somewhat concerning.
[0] https://youtu.be/9W74aeuqsiU?t=560
You need to learn how to season and care for cast iron. It doesn't take an absurd amount of oil, and the egg should slide out with ease.
So they need more work and skill than other pans. In other words: they are in fact less convenient.
Cast iron also has multiple issues when used with induction ranges, which are by far the most efficient/environmental cookers.
The real issue is the lack of security in these devices. Updates are rare enough but for something that bridges your home network with the internet this is an agregious failing.
This doesn't even touch on the repairability issues inherent in modern TV design.
This sounds like a non-issue, in a "broken escalators become stairs" kind of way. If your smart TV doesn't work because it hasn't received software updates for years, and the youtube/netflix app no longer works anymore, can't you just... use it as a dumb TV?
>This doesn't even touch on the repairability issues inherent in modern TV design.
What "repairability issues"? TVs hasn't been repariable for decades now.
You’d be surprised. I have a Lodge cast iron pan I fry eggs in regularly. A tablespoon of butter is enough for three eggs, and only occasionally is there a spot or two that sticks.
The trick is heat. High heat causes them to unstick fairly quickly, to the point where I can typically just shake the pan to release them in their entirety.
That said I haven’t tried to scramble eggs in cast iron. I suspect this would not work nearly as well.
Until a software update on your media player means you need a display with a different DRM. No matter what display you use, the media transfer method to that display (DVD/VGA/HDMI/Wifi etc) will probably be obsolete before the display itself goes dark.
Check out the Misen ones, their marketing video is literally all about an egg slipping around it like water.
You have to season it, but it's easy to do. Number one mistake most people make is seasoning with too much oil.
You may want to avoid vegetables that lose a lot of water as that will wear your non-stickiness faster.
Nothing than rubbing some oil and putting in the oven won't solve.
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It’s so easy to just say “oh that’s to extract money from you” when you don’t know…
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Because they're a PITA to clean compared to a regular coffee maker.
His point on single use plastics is spot on. I know a lot of people that love to lecture me about my moralistic views, the types of people who believe in overpopulation and are sad about the plastic in the ocean, not a single one of them pays any mind to the packaging of anything they buy. I do, and I'm not even one of those people. My "footprint" is probably less than 10% of most peoples, and I don't even care the way they do.
People consume too much disposable crap. People act like they have to buy what's on offer. People are convinced they're helpless in the face of corporations. Start refusing to buy things and stop making excuses and until then you should feel ashamed to lecture anyone about anything.
This does not make sense to me. The single biggest consumption item is living in a detached single family house with yard space (due to knock on effects of everything you consume having to travel further, including the people in your house).
I know this, and I can advocate for change such that it people are incentivized to live more densely and consume less space (drastically higher fossil fuel taxes). But that does not mean I should give up my enjoyment of resources. If everyone else is going to consume, then so am I. But if the collective decides to sacrifice, then I am signaling I am willing to also. There is no reason for someone to not live it up if the collective is not going to also sacrifice.
If everyone thought as you do saying "Until everyone agrees to sacrifice, I won't either" then no one would ever sacrifice. Leading by example on the other hand is a proven way to help inspire change and can help avoid adding to harms caused by people who choose to live selfishly as long as they can point to anyone else also being selfish.
Housing is a subject full of complications and increased population density causes problems for the environment as well. Personally, I don't care of you live in a McMansion or a shanty town. I don't care of you buy the plastic razor with 47 blades or whatever they are up to now or switch to double bladed razors, but don't blame your selfishness on "the collective". You have no power over what they do, and they have no power over what you do. You alone are responsible for deciding for yourself what you're willing to give up in order to help the environment.
Nobody in their right mind agrees with the state of civilization, probably at all; this is the consequence of heteronomy. So even if you're affine to laissez-faire idealities, their realities with the concentration of wealth and the fundamental aspect necessitates someone ultimately is sacrificed to turn the wheel, typically the "third world". Or any of a huge battery (probably infinite) of other similar moral concerns.
We're all culpable for the continuity of this, myself included. We need exceptional individuals to live exceptional lives more than ever, though. We need to take it upon ourselves to begin dismantling these systems and their fundamental concepts.
Why do you want to consume because everyone else is doing so? Is the only reason you're willing to consider doing otherwise to save the world? Is life worse without the disposable products? Why are the decisions you make in your life contingent on some insurmountable, unachievable goal such as "everyone else must do it first"?
Throwing out 500 lbs of unnecessary plastic packaging has nothing to do with single family houses.
The other issue is that focusing on something like this megamansion (as grotesque as it is anyway - seriously a lot of these rich people are just tasteless losers) leads down to a never ending condition where you just never do enough to satisfy people who have no interest in changing their habits anyway.
If Gore sold his megamansion they'd say "hey you are still flying", if he stopped flying they'd say "hey you're still driving a car", if he stopped driving a car they say "hey you're not growing your own vegetables", if he started growing his own vegetables they'd say "hey the tools you use come from a carbon emitting supply chain" and if he stopped using tools and made his own they'd just keep on and on and on forever until we get global warming anyway and so many people are screwed. There's no genuine interest in solving the problem, they just want to distract you.
Al Gore was right about, well, basically everything he said on major policy issues.
BTW, that supposed "megamansion"? It's a 5-bedroom home, really quite modest by the standards of today's billionaires. It's basically what you'd assume a former Senator and Vice President might have. Efforts to paint this as somehow offensive are obviously in bad faith.
I'd take it a step further and say -- just do what you feel is best, what matches your morals, etc, and skip the lecture in any case. 99% of what is wrong with social media has to do with people lecturing the world as if their own personal opinion deserves special consideration. Focus on doing, not talking about it.
Most of the resources used are in the supply chain anyway.
The most environmentally friendly thing I’ve done in my life is delay replacing my totaled car.
No packaging used up for all kinds of shaving soap or cream or other products, no packaging or plastic or metal used up to buy thousands of blades, etc.
The only reason I've had to replace them so far is that it becomes impossible to buy replacement blades and foil. So I have to buy a model that is only superficially different, instead of just replacing the expendables.
A safety razor is also a great investment and cheap. I bought a Wilkinson Sword handle $20 and a pack of five blades $5. It's an old name-brand sold practically everywhere. I can get more than a month out of one double-sided blade. Plus it shaves very close much better than multi-blade razors.
It's better than the two, three, four, five blade monstrosities that always get clogged in days. They also cost far too much literally 5x more than safety razor blades.
I've invested to a couple of stainless steel safety razors. An Edwin Jagger 3one6, and a Mühle R94. They're easy to maintain, have infinite life, and shave much better than top of the line cartridge razors from any manufacturer.
I also use a good but not expensive boar brush and shaving soap.
As a result, I either buy a new stick of shaving soap every six months, or a can of foam every year (for emergency morning shaves), and buying 100 blades every 2 years or so, for a much cleaner, comfortable and enjoyable shave for negligible money. Both razors have paid themselves as savings too.
Just want to warn that both razors are in the "efficient" category, which means they need some experience to use without any nicks, but they're not as wild as the open-combed, aggressive razors. If you want a milder, but equally long-living razor, go Mühle R89, Edwin Jagger EJ89, Merkur 34HD or Timor Gentle Butterfly.
I go through Mach 3 cartridges pretty slowly, so price isn't a big concern. And I don't notice anything deficient about the quality of my shaves. But one thing I really like about safety razors is that there's zero risk of serious injury.
In total I would never go back to a Mach3. The safety razor is just the all around superior product at a fraction of the price once you use it correctly.
Quality of shave. If you maintain your straight razor, and mind it, it does require some maintenance, the quality of shave is of no comparison. My wife can instantly make out the difference when I shave in a hurry with Mach 3.
I sharpen my own knife and woodworking tools. So learning to sharpen my razor is no big deal.
Now my only expense is occasionally buying some soap or aftershave once a year or so. And my time I suppose maintaining the razor which isn’t much at all.
Definitely not the case for me. As someone whose been recently exploring properly sharpening some high quality kitchen knives at home, there's a cost in time for sure to do things correclty both learning and executing. Once you learn, it's not too bad but there's a learning curve and time factor that's difficult to ignore. I need to set aside a good hour or 1.5 hours on a given weekend to sharpen my knives (find and soak my soap stone, gather my knives, get back my angles and motions down pat).
I'm still a novice for sure and an expert may be able to sharpen quickly but that's a big difference from just grabbing a new disposable product ready to use. With a straight razor a certain amount of care also needs to be taken when shaving to reduce cuts -- safety razors aren't a bad invention overall. I suspect if you do a lot of regular shaving (e.g. body hair that's not just your face), it might become time consuming.
I'm not saying reuse and repair are bad investments, I'm a huge fan of these ideals, but the time involved can't be entirely ignored for some consumer products. In many (perhaps most) cases, I agree with the thesis of the article that modern business practices are becoming increasingly misaligned from consumers and societies interests and becoming nothing but wealth extraction optimization factories in various forms. But, I think not all products are so clear cut and some legitimate progresses are not reasonable tradeoffs for everyone, like a safety razor (maybe not cartridge based but similar to the one described in this article). Now a safety razor for a cartridge is a pretty close set of advantages/disadvantages with clear cost savings.
The only bad thing about it is that it makes flying with just a carry-on impossible.
I still spend a not insignificant ~$250/yr on blades and shaving cream to shave face and head daily.
I admittedly don't shave every day, but I've been using a safety razor since 2013. I went back and tallied up all of the purchases for materials, including my razor, and I believe I've spent a little over $200 for that entire period, so maybe $25/year.
I spent $15 on 200 double-edged safety razor blades a couple of years ago, and have used maybe 50 of them from shaving every-other-day.
At this rate that $15 in blades should last me 4 years.
Lay it on us, jrootabega. Whence comes these?
I fell for this marketing thinking non-stick was the best out of everything always and kept having to buy new pans and trays when the teflon would eventually flake off thinking it was my fault. Stainless steel is fine: works without a lot of food sticking for most things, comes out clean from the dishwasher, doesn't require much care, and there's no easily damaged coating so should last decades.
Related but more because of recipes writers repeating tips without considering waste, but I find there's almost zero need for tinfoil, wax paper or plastic wrap either. A reusable silicone mat works if you need a non-stick surface or to cover a dish or bowl, and you can reuse food plastic containers to store things in the fridge. Most e.g. bread recipes insist on putting plastic wrap over the bowl of dough when proving when you can just use a plate, silicone mat or dish towel.
Like fine, feel free to use less plastic, but it really isn't a big portion of most people's resource consumption.
So, I can do my best on areas which I have most control, and do whatever I can on the areas with less control, and if you ask me, it's better than nothing.
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Once you've done this you should also avoid detergent, dishwasher and acid (tomato sauce). Again - just like a cast iron skillet. Which is a shame because it's easy to believe one of the benefits with a steel pan is that it is convenient to pop into the dishwasher.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkinson_Sword#Stainless_stee...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette#Super_Blue_and_the_Wi...