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Scissors. Their value is noticed most when you cannot find them.
You can always use a knife instead.
Yeah, but in most cases it’s far, far harder.
But not as precise.
Dumb TVs. I love the option to turn it into a pseudo-smart TV with just a streaming stick. But, I’m always okay with a TV that just has the ports for basic things.
Sleeping pad shnozzle bags (pump sacks).
door wedge
Ooooh for me, it’s those sexy German windows
I don’t understand this, van you post pictures?
Also this post is a bit weird considering you replied to a post mentioning a door wedge.
There’s also the secret fourth position known only to a select few: try tilting the window, and then pushing it forward.
Only some windows have this special feature.
Or opening it horizontally just a tiny bit, then tilting it.
Or rotating it up out of its hinges, and just dropping it onto a loud neighbour below.
(“Ruhe Zeit!”)
Aha I see, as a neighbor of Germany those are just modern windows or tilt-turn windows
Oh yes replied to a message and not the post itself because I’m a dumb dumb sometimes
Stools
Bicycle
The anvil, can make a lot of stuff with it. You can even use it to make fire, striking a piece of iron until it’s hot enough to light a forge or small fire. Older copies of the Machinery’s handbook(the machinist’s Bible) have a few things on blacksmithing.
Furniture generally, beds specifically
Books
This toaster:
Might as well link the Technology Connections video already.
Yes, it’s an 18 minutes video on a 1950s toaster, you can thank me later.
It’s Technology Connections.
It’s always worth it. Because
✨ E N G I N E E R I N G
W I T H S A S S ✨
His video on the wok induction heater had so much sass
“What was once an impossibility is now a reality”
Same person made me appreciate my can opener
The popping sound is a feature, not a bug. How else can you tell if your toast is ready when you’re doing something else when getting ready in the morning?
We had one of these. It was terrible. Spring force was super weak and slow and there was no lever to manually lift the toast if it got stuck.
I bought one of these toasters because of this video
Rice cookers. It’s super low tech but works great to cook perfect rice.
Praise Zojirushi!
I can do that with a pot just fine;)
Yeah but then you have to watch it and think about it versus I press a button and it comes out perfect every time lol
I suppose this discussion has been had countless times. Also the arguments stay the same. It’s not really that much more work and I’m standing next to it while I cook anyway. Also I have limited space so that’s more pressing…
Key word “that much more”. It is therefore indeed “more” work, and it’s my, and many other people’s, reason for getting one. I also suppose many discussions we’ve both had in our comment history were also had by other people lol
I think it ends up being the same amount of work for me. Rinse rice (optional), figure out correct amount of water for that type of rice, place on heat until done. Rice cookers can effectively detect that there’s no more liquid water, but that isn’t the same as “done” unless you used the right amount of water.
IMO, rice cookers are really handy if you are the type of person who eats rice as a staple food item that you buy in giant sacks and eat the same variety of every day. I have like 6 kinds of rice I rotate through, so I think it wouldn’t save me enough work to justify a separate gadget.
I’ve never used one of the really fancy pressure cooker rice cookers, though, so maybe my feelings would be different.
Ah, yeah, that’s probably it. I eat patna rice pretty much exclusively, and multiple times a week lol. Some rice types (especially whole-grain, brown or wild rice varieties) have different water ratios and indeed kind of defeats the whole set-and-forget thing.
I bet you drain your rice
No. But I am capable of measuring volumes and adapt if needed.
That is not very Asian of you to write.
I’m not very asian.
Cooking
Recently made some jam. Was really impressed by how low tech the process was. Just cook some fruits, separate the roughage and branches and seeds, etc. Add sugar and cook it again. I believe you also have to add pectin if the fruit you’re turning into jam doesn’t have a lot of it.
Then bottle the stuff and enjoy it with bread for a long long time!
Knives.
About as low tech as it gets, even for modern knives that are pretty high tech in how they’re made.
But it’s entirely possible for a person to make a knife with nothing but tools they can make by hand, with no need for anything other than rocks as tools. I’ve done it, and it isn’t like I’m some kind of super genius.
You can make slightly more high tech tools if you want, and make metal knives. The caveat to that is that you have to know how to identify sources for the metal in the first place, unlike stone tools where you can figure it out by banging rocks together until you find some that make sharp edges. But making an oven that can turn out low-grade materials is realistic for a single person to do.
But a knife, in its essence is just an inclined plane done to a very fine degree. Doesn’t get any more low tech than that. Mind you, there’s plenty of complexity involved in all of the basic machines like inclined planes, but that’s more about understanding them than using them or making them.
Knives are mankind’s most important tool. They were among our first tools, and it can be argued that they were our first manufactured tools. And we still use them regularly. Some of us use them every day, multiple times a day.
That’s a lasting technology in every degree of refinement.
Also knives and woodworking. Blades are what made the great Japanese temples. Lots of sharp steel and a dream. It is amazing what Japanese blacksmiths can do with steel, and the excellent performance they can achieve with them.
You know what always weirds me out:
The knife is a technology. It was invented by a person. And that person was not the same species as us. The knife has been around longer than Homo Sapiens.
I’ve commented on this before, but it reminds me of the mortise and tenon joint. The oldest intact wooden structure on Earth is held together with mortise and tenon joints. The man who built it never wrote his name down, because writing hadn’t been invented yet. He never rode a horse, because animal husbandry hadn’t been invented yet. He used stone tools, because copper smelting hadn’t been invented yet. In the present day, Festool sells a tool to make mortises called the Domino which they still hold a patent on. We’re still actively developing this technology which has been with us slightly longer than civilization has.
Honestly, kind of mind blowing even thinking of them as a technology, they’re so ubiquitous. I use a knife a minimum of 10 times a day, and that’s just in the kitchen, not including opening mail, packages, small medical stuff, and a ton more uses. Holy shit, where would we be without those inclined edges?
Awesome comment to read at 430 in the morning. Thank you
Submerged deep sea internet cables that connect the continents.
They’re fiber optic these days, and often include rebroadcasters and signal boosters. That cannot be considered low-tech.
Physically low, as in deep
You got me, I admit it
This confuses me.
Physically low… as in deep
I don’t see how the whole world Internet could rely on cable under the ocean when my phone cable might last barely a year and it just sits in my car, not under water. It’s like computers that control airplanes or NASA, but i constantly have to restart in order to get an email attachment.
