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WONDERS_OF_THE_MODERN_WORLD

                                                           February 24, 2017
                                                           January  17, 2019
My general thesis is that consumer
crap keeps getting crappier.                     With the exception of
                                                 *Japanese* consumer
                                                 products.
I can come up with a few counter-
examples:                                                    ANIMISTS

  o  Flashlights:

     The Maglite was a huge improvement
     over those old plastic casing jobs.

     And the newer LED flashlights have
     quite low power consumption.             But then, the cheap ones
                                              keep developing problems
                                              with their switches and
                                              other electrical contacts.

                                              I don't want to underestimate
                                              the technical problems of
                                              getting electrical switches to
                                              work right, but you would
                                              think if it's not quite a
                                              solved problem, it's a problem
                                              that's been settled better
                                              than this in the past--

                                              There's a clear regression here.



     o  Coffee makers.

     We have a Cuisenart with a built-in coffee
     grinder that fires off of a timer.  These work,      An annoyance, though:
     solving what a friend of my calls the world's        you've got to clean
     worst bootstraping problem: making coffee before     the grinder parts
     you've had coffee.                                   every day.



Then there's that whizzy mobile phone technology
everyone is all excited about-- it doesn't grab
me personally, but it seems to have driven some
strong improvements in display technology and low
power processors.



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