As a millennial, at no point did we actually want participation trophies. The feeling of coming in last was not changed in the slightest by receiving a junk trophy.

I seriously doubt that will happen. The current administration has shown zero indication that they give two fucks about what the people want.

I mean, you can. Probably shouldn’t though.

We talking movie Thanos, or comic book Thanos?

I work in a factory making turbine engines, if I worked in a factory making 50k$ watches we would produce just as much CO2.

You absolutely would not. Not even remotely close.

Also, you’re ignoring the emissions over the lifetime of the thing. As soon as the watch is manufactured, it’s emissions contribution is done. That turbine will continue generating emissions over it’s entire existence.

The kind of waste I’m talking about doesn’t give two fucks about proportionality. CO2 in the atmosphere makes no distinction between being emitted by a single person or three million.

Also, fuck living in a world where only things arbitrarily deemed “useful” are considered worthy. Does art have no place in your world? It’s not “useful”. Should people be banned from having hobbies? Those aren’t “useful”.

Good point. Forgot about tires. Tire sizes here are a mix of metric and imperial. My tires are 245 40R19, so 245mm wide, 40% sidewall ratio, on a 19" rim.

I wouldn’t say so in this case. A watch is probably about as close to “good” conspicuous consumption as it’s possible to get. Think about it: it’s generally a “buy once, keep it forever” item, takes essentially 0 resources to keep functioning (generally the expensive ones don’t require batteries), uses very little material to manufacture, and all the price is coming from specialist labour.

It’s a waste of money, but it’s a harmless waste, especially when compared to things like private jets and yachts.

They all did. Everything in the auto industry is metric these days across all brands.

That’s pretty much the theme for most of the responses here.

We already have a definition for this, the Karman line.

In new build stuff, I’ve actually been seeing a lot more torx.

Blame Henry Ford. The superior screw head style was available to him, but he refused to use it.

I wouldn’t say that’s controversial, but it’s really just a matter of choosing which platform you think will enshittify slowest.

I absolutely love that his name is the first thing anyone thinks about when someone so much as mentions a couch.

They would. Just not in the way they’d prefer.

I don’t think you can in good faith compare…

Ooh, that’s just one of my pet peeves. Such a stupid fucking phrase. The only way to know if you “can’t compare” two things is to do a comparison between them and come to the conclusion that the two things are very different. I can compare self checkout to a kumquat if I want to.

Now for some actually useful conversation, let’s compare number of steps for vending machine vs self checkout (since that’s the closer of my two examples).

Vending machine:

• insert payment
• push button to select items
• pick up item
• repeat all steps until you have the number of items desired

Self checkout:

• scan item or place item on scanner/scale and push buttons for item type. This only counts as one step, because you are never doing both to the same item
• repeat first step until you have all items desired
• insert payment
• pick up items

It’s the same steps in a different order.

From what I’ve seen, the slower average time is made up for by having more of the stations. Depending on arrangement, you can fit three self checkouts in the same area as one traditional checkout. In my experience, the self checkout line is always moving faster overall.

I’m also not an employee of the vending machine company. I’m also not an employee of the gas station.

I don’t really see what added value a cashier checking out my items for me has.

I’m 90% sure that would block no actual porn.