I’ve got these two sewing machines, made about 100 years apart. An old treadle machine from around 1920-1930, that I pulled out of the trash on a rainy day, and a new Brother sewing machine from around 2020.
I’ve always known planned obsolescence was a thing, but I never knew just how insidious it was till I started looking at these two side by side.
I wasn’t feeling hopeful at first that I’d actually be able to fix the old one, I found it in the trash at 2 am in a thunderstorm. It was rusty, dusty, soggy, squeaky, missing parts, and 100 years old.
How do you even find specialized parts 100 years later? Well, easily, it turns out. The manufacturers at the time didn’t just make parts backwards compatible to be consistent across the years, but also interchangeable across brands! Imagine that today, being able to grab a part from an old iPhone to fix your Android.
Anyway, 6 months into having them both, I can confidently say that my busted up trash machine is far better than my new one, or any consumer-grade sewing machine on the market.
Old Machine Guts
The old machine? Can sew through a pile of leather thicker than my fingers like it’s nothing. (it’s actually terrifying and I treat it like a power tool - I’ll never sew drunk on that thing because I’m genuinely afraid it’d sew through a finger!) At high speeds, it’s well balanced and doesn’t shake. The parts are all metal, attached by standard flathead screws, designed to be simple and strong, and easily reachable behind large access doors. The tools I need to work on it? A screwdriver and oil. Lost my screwdriver? That’s OK, a knife works too.
New Machine Guts
The new machine’s skipping stitches now that the plastic parts are starting to wear out. It’s always throwing software errors, and it damn near shakes itself apart at top speed. Look at it’s innards - I could barely fit a boriscope camera that’s about as thick as spaghetti in there let alone my fingers. Very little is attached with standard screws.
And it’s infuriating. I’m an engineer - there’s no damn reason to make high-wear parts out of plastic. Or put them in places they can’t be reached to replace. There’s no reason to make your mechanism so unbalanced it’s reaching the point of failure before reaching it’s own design speed. (Oh yeah there is, it’s corporate greed)
100 years, and your standard home sewing machine has gone from a beast of a machine that can be pulled out of the literal waterlogged trash and repaired - to a machine that eats itself if you sew anything but delicate fast-fashion fabrics that are also designed to fall apart in a few years.
Looking for something modern built to the standard that was set 100 years ago? I’d be looking at industrial machines that are going for thousands of dollars… Used on craigslist. I don’t even want to know what they’d cost new.
We have the technology and knowledge to manufacture “old” sewing machines still. Hell, even better, sewing machines with the mechanical design quality of the old ones, but with more modern features. It would be so easy - at a technical level to start building things well again. Hell, it’s easier to fabricate something sturdy than engineer something to fail at just the right time. (I have half a mind to see if any of my meche friends with machine shops want to help me fabricate an actually good modern machine lol)
We need to push for right-to-repair laws, and legislation against planned obsolescence. Because it’s honestly shocking how corporate greed has downright sabotaged good design. They’re selling us utter shit, and expecting us to come back for more every financial quarter? I’m over it.
I typed out multiple response trying to convey how much I agree with you. But nothing comes across as well as you put it. Infinite growth on a finite planet just does not work. Fuck end stage capitalism and its destruction of our only home in the pursuit of investor happiness.
I was gifted a 1964 Singer 327K. After a good oiling and a new light bulb, it ran so well that I could not f****** believe all the time I had wasted on modern plastic machines that fell apart when you looked at them. I named my machine Proud Mary, because her big wheel just keeps on turning. Not a single plastic part in my girl. She’s not fancy, but hot damn, is she a workhorse.
This is a map of the range of all giraffe species. By my count that puts them in just 16 countries out of the 54 in Africa (of which 5 are island countries with no territory on the continental mainland). That’s 30%, quite a long way shy of all, and as you can see many of those countries that do have giraffes only have a tiny portion of their territory within giraffes’ habitats
Wow, I knew they weren’t in “every African country”, but I didn’t realize just how restricted their range was
Good teachers don’t mind saying “I don’t know” or that they need to look it up and will get back to you.
Not only that but giraffes in different areas have different patterns and it’s so cool
Don’t get sucked into the “if they really cared I wouldn’t have to say something” spiral. No matter how close you are with someone, it’s unfair to expect them to know things you haven’t actually communicated.
i want to sit in the quiet. i want to smile at kids and tell them they’re loved. i want to smell the air. i want to touch the floor. i want to look at peoples hands. i want to close my eyes and feel my surroundings. i want ask big questions. i want to scream. i want to smile. i want to solve the world problems. i want an easy way out. i want to say i love u more often. i want to call out people. i want to be me
The other day on my walk I saw a mockingbird diving and wheeling over and over into a little bush, very agitated. Eventually I saw there was a big crow in among the bush twigs, presumably trying to get at what must be her nest. Feeling it my duty as the human observer to side with the smaller bird/distressed mom on this I strode over and said to the crow “Hey bud, go eat something else.” The crow flapped off, seeming peeved, and the mockingbird flew after it and did not thank me. I walked home feeling virtuous but also a little doubtful, because I love crows, and the world of eating and being eaten is not congruent with human morality. Plus a lot of the time mockingbirds are just being dicks. I didn’t actually even see a nest. Maybe that crow was just hiding in the bushes from being fucking hassled. In general I wondered if it had been my place to take sides.
Anyway so the last couple of days, a bunch of crows have been gathering closer and closer to my apartment. They don’t do anything, they just peer in the window and make the cats frantic. “It was one nest,” I told them. “There’s all kinds of stuff to eat in those woods. There’s berries and bugs. You had to follow me home about this?” Crows didn’t say shit. Just ruffled at me and looked at the cats in a disdainful, snacky way.
Finally I said aloud “Crow, I’m very sorry I got high and mighty with you about that mockingbird. I didn’t even see you eating any eggs, and it was none of my business.” I put out some seeds and peanuts, and now they have all left. They’re not even eating the peanuts! They just wanted an apology.
If you want to write a dumb little story with a dumb little plot and ridiculously silly characters. No one’s stopping you. Genuinely, no one should be allowed to stop you. Write that dumb story with your whole heart and don’t hold back.
ok the dumb little story turned into a lot of work why does this always happen
the reason you’re meant to read from a bunch of different sources and attempt to interpret and discuss them in school btw is bc your reading comprehension is based on your ability to discern different and varied meanings in a text
like some ppl on socmed wilfully misinterpret text and so many others entirely lack this critical skill and rely on tiktokers and youtubers to explain sentences to them and in the absence of someone to explain they just entirely go off their own projected vibes and make shit up
like it’s. honestly frightening and bizarre, the takes i regularly see, that are so far beyond a “bad faith reading” and are literally not a reading. someone just saw three words they recognised, imagined a scenario they might be used in instead of reading the post, then got MAD
