A cast iron laptop would cause an absolute nightmare when BBSers started debating how to season it.
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I wonder if there’s a cuople of billionaires behind the loans that tupperware can’t pay.
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Twitter should buy it, and put a sign pointing the way to Hell Town, Ohio. It would be perfect
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Nope, it sounds like a pretty common story lately. Sold notes to a banking syndicate led by JPMorgan, then pissed that money away on stock buybacks to shore up its flagging stock price.
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Rubbermaid was my go-to brand for transporting scuba diving equipment. Wonderful stuff when your toys are soggy with salt water and you want your car to stay dry and clean.
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I loved that Rubbermaid Drums commercial.
[plays vid]
Yep, I still do.
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Boris Badinov to Natasha. “Shtupper up you mouth!”.
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Restaurant-style “delis”, like you might get your egg-drop-soup in are <$0.50 a set, are BPA-free and will survive a few dozen trips through the washer. And if you’re traveling and it’s a hassle, or they’re too gross after what our 9yo calls “science!” (i.e. mold and worse) there’s little pain in tossing them. Restaurant delis > Tupperware($$) > that crappy-changes-every-year so you have a cabinet of nonmatching crap from the garbage you can get at your local grocery.
On HF tools - they’re actually doing well at upping their game. Yes, it is to me still a place for bungee cords and hammers, but their CEO is really working at getting better stuff. And RIP Craftsman - now nearly as extinct as the candy and slushy counter at the local Sears…
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Glass also doesn’t turn pink the first time that you put something with tomato sauce in it.
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I was under the impression that the lifetime guarantee was one of the liabilities that Sears shed in one of its bankruptcies.
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You joke about heirloom plasticware, but my wife has various bowls and things with her mother’s and grandmother’s initials written on the bottoms in sharpie, so that after the church basement events they all went home with their rightful guardians.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some in our offspring’s home, storing leftover foods for their tiny humans.
If you want things to be passed on to future generations, remember they don’t have your sentiment so it better have utility. Tupperware delivers that.
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Tupperware really should have gotten into the engagement and wedding ring racket!
“Yes, it was my great grandmother’s!”
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I’m currently reading Humble Pi by Matt Parker. He discusses a bit of the nostalgia for the supposed reliability of some of that old equipment, especially combined with the attitude of “they made them better in the old days.” It comes down to a combination of survivorship bias, over engineering, and good old fashioned confirmation bias. I absolutely think when you throw in an added layer of “seldom used” this can explain so much!
My first computer was an Amiga 500 – ridiculously solid construction, heavy for its size, and could probably have survived a moderate drop off my desk. Similar thoughts for my first laptop two decades or so ago. Eventually we learned that these things didn’t need to be built to last decades!
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Yes, exactly! When people marvel at how well 100 year old buildings were built, I always say, “well that’s because the crappy ones all fell down 85 years ago”. 
I will say there is a tiny bit of truth though, when all manufacturing was domestic. In a small national economy, competing on price is much more difficult, so companies competed on quality more. You’ve got ten factories in America making wrenches, and they’re all buying from the same five steel companies, who in turn are getting ore from the same three mines. There’s not a lot of wiggle room in a supply chain that small. Everyone is getting basically the same prices from their vendors for materials, and labour costs are fairly flat as well thanks to unions. That drove companies to compete on quality more since they couldn’t do a lot to move the price. It wasn’t out of some noble ideal about building things to last though (as people often think). It was still cynical capitalism, just on a different vector.
As soon as the economy globalized though, competing on price got very easy indeed, and the Harbor Freights of the world were born. Then, it turned out everyone wanted crap all along if it cost less.
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Okay, but I don’t think that explains disposable appliances, like a toaster or electric kettle that lasts for a year, or dishwashers that last for two or three. And, how hard it can be to find quality appliances, quality in that they just last longer. When my relatively new dishwasher crapped out, dude who came to repair it said (after explaining of course that fixing it would cost more than a new one), “Don’t bother buying a more expensive brand, they don’t really last any longer than the regular ones.” 
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Yah, I hear you. I agree something seems to have changed there. The fridge in my last place was literally 70 years old (it was a Ford Philco, no joke). It still worked, but it was inefficient and not very big so we had to replace it. The one we replaced it with lasted five years. 
You used to get thirty years out of a water heater, now you’re lucky to get ten. I don’t know what’s up with appliances but they are on a bad road.
At least part of this must be down to consolidation. When I was shopping for a new washing machine, I downloaded the manuals for half a dozen brands to compare features in detail. I noticed whole sections of the manuals were word-for-word the same. That seemed suspicious so I googled the companies, and turns out all the major brands in that segment are now owned by the same company. They’re all the same washer, basically. 
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Is it though?
There are plenty of people who try and buy higher quality goods that will last, but there are plenty of people who shop at the wal-marts and Harbor Freights of the world because that’s what they can afford…
Also… obligatory:
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The Boots Theory has a fairly simple explanation: it’s easier to take advantage of the poor, who cannot afford the luxury of an argument. The poor can’t hire lawyers, they can’t take time away from their jobs, and they’re always busy with the next crisis. When something cheaply made breaks, they’ll fix it with duct tape or otherwise make do.
If someone sells a rich person a pig in a poke, the rich person calls their lawyer and says “take them to court.”
The suppliers know this, and don’t want to be sued. They’ll sell quality goods at a premium, attracting the moneyed and discouraging the poor; and cheap goods at lower margins in larger quantities.
TL;DR: Always punch down.
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