Whumpster Fire

Amazon made their service worse, to force people to pay for Prime.

Nowadays, if you order from Amazon, there is a week long delay before your package is shipped. (on purpose)

I remember when orders would ship out the same day. (I remember - it was real)

YouTube didn't used to have ads. Now, ads play in the middle of videos. (it's worse than TV ever was)

The best can opener I have owned is over 40 years old. Modern ones just don't hold up as well. (The ones I bought new broke ages ago)

The bread machine my mom got for her wedding lasted 30 years. It's been replaced twice in the last 5 years. (How can you fuck this up?)

The cardboard tubes in the middle of toilet paper rolls have gotten larger. (This too?) Companies increasing the price of the product while selling you less. (REALLY?)

It sounds crazy. (it's the truth) When you talk about it, YOU sound crazy. (it's true)

Even when people believe you (do they really), all they can say is "it sucks". (it's too big) Because the problem is so big, so pervasive, what can we even DO about it???

To get the necessary laws written and passed, we need politicians, to get the politicians elected we need information campaigns, to fund campaigns we need money, and all the money is being hoarded by the people profiting from enshittification. (it sounds so fake)

There are a few incandescent light bulbs that have survived for extremely long periods, such as the famous "Centennial Light." However, these are unusual cases. The Centennial Light has survived so long because gradual degradation of its filament has caused it to only consume 4 watts of power compared to its design power of 60 watts, which reduced the stress on the filament because the tiny amount of power still running through it can't get the filament up to anywhere near the normal operation temperature of incandescent bulbs.

The thing is, the way incandescent bulbs work there is a direct tradeoff between lifespan and energy efficiency; thermal radiation becomes more efficient at producing visible light that humans can see at higher temperature, but higher temperature also makes the filament evaporate faster. Modern incandescent bulbs already have pretty terrible energy efficiency compared to anything else, to the point that depending on country they've been banned. A modern 60 Watt incandescent bulb produces about 800 lumens of light. According to this report, the Centennial Light was designed for a lower temperature and longer lifespan and would have only produced about 200 lumens at its design power, so about 4x less efficient than the already extremely bad efficiency of modern incandescent lights. However, in its current state, its light output is estimated at around 0.17 lumens. That's less than a candle. That's about 0.1% of the light output it was designed for, and the light output per watt of electricity consumed would be a little over 1% of when it was new.

Could we design a light bulb to operate at a similar temperature to the Centennial Light on purpose for extremely long lifespans? Yes. Its current filament temperature is around 1450 K (a little under 1200 Celsius); this is slightly hotter than the heating elements in a toaster. It's also a bit colder than the filaments in the lower-temperature kinds of quartz-tungsten infrared heating lamps (around 1500 C, or 1800 K).

1 - the geese in the background show that the fake coyote doesn't deter geese

And you just.

Said no????

Amazon’s super bowl ad where the Alexa mocks Chris Hemsworth for being worried about giving spy software control over his entire life. Waymo’s ad with the intro “the robots are coming!” mocking people who are rightfully extremely concerned about sharing the road with, or riding in, self-driving cars.

i feel like any normal ad would go, for example, “i know you’ve heard that this shaving cream might give you cancer. but it doesn’t! and also it smells nice!”

but THESE ads mock you, and then go “anyway, your concerns are invalid because our self-driving cars that run over children at crosswalks have heated seats!”

And it hit me like a BRICK that I was taking careful care of this little one every day so he didn't get hurt - but! my own memory was of being alone, unsupervised, a ridiculous amount of time. Outside on the farm and alone as a toddler, or literally being looked after by a farm dog.

Memory being fickle, I checked with one of my aunts who I was close to as a child. "Was I left alone, like, a LOT?" I asked her. Her friendly face got serious, and she just nodded. "You raised yourself," she told me, "Then you raised your brother."