Parry Hotnerd
Harry potnerd?
Most things. Hype is usually just marketing, at least nowadays. I’ve seen a lot of hypes come and go, and it’s always the same playbook.
Products don’t blow up unless they’re profitable to sell in the first place. So when I hear everyone going crazy over a new product or concept, I try to analyze what’s in it for the businesses.
If it’s a general concept that a bunch of different vendors suddenly all start selling online, usually they can be found on alibaba for a fraction of the price by a bunch of niche Chinese companies who’s been making them in relatively small volumes for years and only recently did a bunch of “entrepreneurs” discover them and set up their dropshipping operations with associated viral marketing tactics. Fidget spinners were a good example of this.
Or if the product is a food, it usually has a ton of sugar which has been shown to be extremely addictive and subconsciously gets your brain to want not just sugar in general, but the other flavours associated with it so you’ll keep wanting more of the same product. Crumble cookies and “Dubai” chocolate come to mind.
I agree, they all appear rather insincere now. But maybe that’s just because we’ve grown older?
I bet parents knew the pokemon card thing was selling cardboard for an insane price based on mostly marketing.
Agree. Made a real effort in recent years to question the crap what I really need, and what’s a want vrs a need.
I feel a lot happier not buy stuff upon stuff. I’m trying to buy as much used/second hand as possible.
I don’t understand many of the product hypes. Why would you pay more to endorse someone’s brand. The cups. Like $50 for a cup. That’s crazy, you still drink the same water out of it.
Game of Thrones
I enjoyed it when the author was in charge of the TV series. I watched until the end of the initial series, but after that I never looked back.
Spoilers/explanation below:
Too many things didn’t make sense, like how the dragon queen suddenly became a completely different person. How the Lannister siblings made up after hating each others guts, only for the tower to collapse on top of them the same instant. That everyone met their nemesis at the very end. Why anyone would vote for Bran to become the new king when he barely spoke to anyone since he was like 13 years old, and many other inconsistencies like that. The last couple of seasons barely had any story at all, it was mostly about fighting… It was bad.
Those hunky water bottles. In general why are there so many water bottle trends?
A good water bottle is a friend for life. We have a dozen in the cupboard:
- several are plastic, mostly swag but a couple that are for bikes. They’re cheap, and one leaks from the lid, but I’m not going to buy another little, metal water bottle just for the bike. Plastic is mostly useless as they don’t keep liquids cool.
- there are a few workout ones that are just tall cups with lids. Again, plastic; their one use is working out, because they don’t break or break things if they get dropped on the treadmill. I hate the lid mechanism.
- there are a few metal ones; again, mostly swag. Two are actual thermoses with great insulation, but they’re relatively small (16 oz), and their sippy lids are clearly optimized for hot liquids the other metal ones have screw tops and are a PITA to use. In fact, one is my second most recent one, which I replaced because unscrewing the top in the middle of the night was fussy so I’d just leave the top off, except I kept knocking it over by fumbling for it in the dark, spoiling water all over the nightstand and carpet.
- we have two glass ones, and one with an electric mixer base that I got for my wife for when she travels, so she can more easily have protein shakes in the morning. The glass ones are insulated and nice, but the tops don’t seal and you don’t want you drop them, so they just live in the cupboard.
And then there’s my prize, the black widow. Isn’t she lovely? Oh, wait, sorry, wrong song.
The one I have now, that has taken me decades to refine, is 1 liter - not too large, so it’s easy to carry around, but enough so a couple of refills a day are enough. It has a little handle to facilitate carrying. It’s metal, and robust. It’s vacuum insulated, so it keeps ice water cold all night. And it has a little sippy spout with a sprung button orifice so that when I knock it over it doesn’t leak. It’s the perfect water bottle, and it took me a couple decades of trial and error to refine my requirements for a water bottle: the size, the mechanism, the material.
A water bottle that meets all of your specific use case needs really is wonderful; it’s a pleasure to use, is convenient, and by its nature encourages you to hydrate. Honestly, it’s one is those weirdly and unexpectedly useful things that you’d never expect to have as big an impact as it does, that you find yourself using more than any other single gadget you own.
Since you have so many plastic water bottles, I’m gonna ask you, a week ago I didn’t wash my bottle right away after mixing a protein shake in it (I left it for 5 hours) and now it smells foul. And no matter how many times I wash it, the smell won’t go away. Is there something that would help?
Maybe! There’s a product that’s like alka-selzer for bottles. It works well for metal; I don’t know about plastic.
However, if it were me, I’d start with putting some baking soda in it and add some vinegar. That stuff will clean clogged drains, and I don’t think it’ll harm plastic. Vinegar is sold in plastic bottles, and maybe the baking soda interaction would damage it but I doubt it.
If you don’t want to take that risk, just try vinegar. It’s a pretty good cleanser all by itself.
Good luck!
Thanks! Will try that
I can count very few things I use as much a my water bottle on a daily basis. It comes with me everywhere I go.
Low hanging fruit, but AI. I don’t need to explain why, do I?
It’s just the latest technological breakthrough that should for all intents and purposes been a niche and served just a few specific purposes really well, but because the people in charge of tech companies don’t actually understand technology and just jump at the most advanced looking thing they see, all the developers are forced to integrate AI into all their products.
“Internet of things” was another one that really pissed me off because it ruined smart devices and home automation as concepts. Things like smart thermostats and light bulbs that should absolutely have used the local network to communicate ended up connected to the internet and using it as their only means of control, which is inferior to local network control in every possible way and is the reason why everyone hates home automation now, and what was once a very promising concept became the symbol of everything wrong with technology. But because IOT was a flashy term that could be jingled like keys in front if a CEO, every product needed to be internet enabled for the devs to not get fired.
I’ve heard several different reasons, which one is it for you?
- Copyright
- Water usage
- Appeal to tradition
- Lack of creativity
- Something else?
Also, are you against all AI (such as NPC AI, chess robots, intelligent vacuum cleaners, etc) or specifically LLMs/generative AI?
I don’t buy a lot of the negative hype either, but you didn’t list one of the main ones. Their use in spam.
Lately there have been issues with people submitting AI generated bug reports to bug bounty programs and wasting everyone’s time. For this reason a lot of projects are considering shuttering their bug bounty programs entirely. It’s just one example of the many that AI-spam has caused.
1, 2, 4, power wastage, the hype, the low returns for all the time, energy, and resources spent on a technology that has its uses but is no more a panacea than bitcoin, web4 or any of the other bullshit bubbles that have been ubiquitous since people worked out that venture capitalists will spunk unlimited amounts of money at the latest shiny thing.
Sounds like you dislike LLMs, not AI. Many medical breakthroughs have come from AI/ML. Car safety features, drone flight assistance, weather prediction, etc, are all examples of good AI.
AI is a catch all term, and I’m using it as such. I’m not saying that none of the technology has any use, but the hype saying it’s a panacea is just that - hype. The same as Blockchain, which has its uses but was hyped out of all proportion.
You are right that LLMs are particularly bad when it comes to value for energy/water/hardware etc.
Watching sports
Driving a pickup truck as your commute vehicle. The mileage is terrible, and you have reduced visibility in front of the hood. Get a safer and more efficient vehicle. It’ll be cheaper!
There is some guy who lives somewhat close to me, with a big lifted truck. It’s super duper uncommon here. He has the matching stickers like: only gay cops pull me over and how much he enjoys destroying the planet and shit. Every time i see him i can only just point and laugh, because he can’t really park anywhere and you can always tell how he struggles with visability.
The way to restrict them to industrial purposes is to require a CDL or at least a higher level license to drive them. It would make sense too, they’re objectively more dangerous so why shouldn’t the licensing for them be more strict?
I think this might be a potential disconnected between rural and urban folks. A lot of trucks are big and stupid; and unsafe. But an old style reasonable pick up doesn’t need a CDL. It’s very useful for moving things that you don’t want to mess up your interior. During the summer my family takes one with a small motorcycle and inflatable kayaks to raft rivers in Colorado; quite useful. But I get it in the cities; even our reasonable sized sedan felt big having the parallel park when I’ve visited them.
I wouldn’t want one myself, but I don’t understand trying to ban something just because I don’t like it.
Not ban, but make the licensing process more rigorous for a vehicle that takes more skill to operate safely. Anyone can get a higher class drivers license if they pass the test, but the majority of people won’t bother so you end up with less trucks driven by people who just want to look cool.
If people want to look cool, why not let them enjoy life?
Because trucks have been proven to be more dangerous and make any accident more likely to be fatal? They also present unique safety challenges not present in smaller cars, namely they have a huge blind spot in front of them like any other tall commercial vehicle. If you’re going to drive a more dangerous vehicle, you’d better actually know how to drive it safely.
If someone runs you over with their small pp truck, at least you look really cool under it.
I think you’re confused. It’s the driver that’s supposed to look cool so they say
Because the rest of us have a right to life, too. Ever heard the saying, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”? That’s colorful, but it’s not even true; people have an expectation of a certain reasonable amount of space around their bodies, and even entering it with your fist might be considered assault. The concept that one’s actions and choices affect other people is what’s important here.
That’s the problem with giant pickup trucks: They affect other people on the road, and the problem with giant pickup truck drivers is that they either refuse to recognize this fact, or they enjoy infringing on the rights of other people to enjoy life. Either way, it’s bad for society, where we all have to live together somehow. Mullets and man-buns, by contrast, don’t materially affect anybody else in the slightest.
do cool haircuts kill thousands of people per year?
There’s indeed many people that claim it’s very dangerous, and women should cover their hair in public!
In both cases I’d rather see people happy and just enjoy their lives
Hard to enjoy life spread across the pavement like a crayon by a truck.
Believe it or not, some lifestyle choices have consequences external to the person making the decision
There’s indeed many people that claim it’s very dangerous, and women should cover their hair in public!
that is barely even tangentially related to the question
2/10, must try harder
Yes, but otherwise, how will you pose as a tough salt-of-the-earth guy while driving to your HR job?
I agree, 90%. That being said, some people can’t afford a car that isn’t provided by their construction employer. Some people have hobbies that involve moving things (motorcycles, mountain bikes, wood, etc) and can only afford one car. And I’m sure there are reasons I’m not thinking of.
Most people with pickups around me do not need them, but having owned a small S10 years ago for a similar to above reason, I try to see why they exist, and try not to judge if it’s not obvious.
All that being said, Why oh why are they so big now?
Mountain bikes can easily be carried with a car, motorcycles are normally self propelled and don’t need to a pick up truck to move them and they make trailers for moving them that can be towed by a normal sedan, wood is another thing that’s not normally transported unless you are using the truck for work and can be easily transported by a trailer or a rental truck for infrequent use
A family of mountain bikes is not great on the back/top of a car. Not all motorcycles are for the road. And wood is very normally transported if that is your hobby.
You can usually tell the difference, because the tradesperson’s truck is full of crap all the time and probably worn out, while the parking lot princess in empty and pristine.
Lifting is also a strong hint, since it makes the bed very hard to reach. I have seen a lifted pickup with a full bed exactly once since I started paying attention.
Also, the people actually using their trucks don’t get the ones with 5 “genuine leather” seats and a bed barely bigger than the compartment on a compact hatchback.
I see mostly two door trucks at construction sites. Never seen one of those luxury ones with the huge cabin.
I rented a Hybrid Toyota Camry over the weekend, that thing was awesome. 18 dollars to refuel for the return.
My support worker has a hybrid. She puts in fuel, and a full tank lasts for like 900km. Crazy
Any of the vapid and shallow trends. From tiktok “challenges” to the Stanley mug craze. All designed to separate the individual from their money and sense.
YouTube, celebrities, influencers.
Pretty much everything.
NFTs
Anime profile pictures and wallpapers
Daft Punk.
What do you mean you don’t like listening to the same line a hundred times over a funky beat?
I like Daft Punk but I totally get people why people may find them overrated.
Labubus.
Kids wanting them I get, but the craze among adults for them is baffling to me. And the blind bag mechanic is just a bullshit way to get people to buy way more than they actually want in an attempt to collect a full set.
You know something is worth your money when they deliberately obfuscate what you’re actually buying.
I still don’t know what labubus are and I’m thankful
Pokemon Go
