mothmanwashere

scramratz

Definite banners and possible bumper stickers for the shop

wolfwillowisp

youngalientype

There's a reason the state starts by going after the people you refuse to respect

danepopfrippery

Fuckin iowa jesus christ. And fucking republicans in general

antiterfbutch

Please notice that the wording they use has shifted from "marriage between one man and one woman" to "marriage between one male and one female". This is not a coincidence. GCs and terfs have no excuse to not see the blood on their hands.

spark-is-tired

deus-ex-aquila

pick the nearest match for your pronunciation, connotation, and definition of "ornery"

1a. ORN-er-ee (negative): mean-tempered, argumentative, stubborn

1b. ORN-er-ee (neutral to positive): cheeky, impish, harmlessly misbehaved

2a. AWN-ree (negative): mean-tempered, argumentative, stubborn

2b. AWN-ree (neutral to positive): cheeky, impish, harmlessly misbehaved

3a. ORN-ree (negative): mean-tempered, argumentative, stubborn

3b. ORN-ree (neutral to positive): cheeky, impish, harmlessly misbehaved

4a. AWN-er-ee (negative): mean-tempered, argumentative, stubborn

4b. AWN-er-ee (neutral to positive): cheeky, impish, harmlessly misbehaved

5. other (tags please!)

if you're from the USA, tag what you chose and what general region you're from (don't dox yourself, I don't need to know your hometown or any other security questions), using this map:

I'd also love to know if you were aware of the opposing connotation/definition or any of the various other pronunciations before reading this. I am not the least bit interested in what anyone thinks is ~correct~, only what they use and what they've heard before.

for non-USAmericans, I'm super curious if this linguistic difference exists outside the USA in any way, so I'd love it if you tagged your country as well.

reblog for sample size, you know the drill.

1a northern according to this map

wolfwillowisp

ithelpstodream

moltenparadox

I think for a lot of people, it's not that they have faith in the police to keep them safe, but that they don't think the police should keep us safe. They think it should be entirely the ~~right~~ responsibility of the individual to protect themself, their family, and their property, by whatever means they feel are justified.

I suspect this may be because deep down (or maybe not very deep at all), they just want to be able to commit an act of violence against another person while feeling morally justified in and avoiding consequences for doing so.

mothmanwashere

beartiexiansheng

Anyone here remember Orange Highschool Post Club.

littlevelvette

dostoyevsky-official

littlevelvette

viridianriver

Sewing Machines & Planned Obsolescence

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.

petermorwood

My Mum had an Singer treadle machine on a wooden stand, inherited from her mum, my Gran. According to Mum, Gran got it "the year old King Edward died", meaning 1910.

Machines like that weren't cheap (up to a couple of months' average wages) so it probably did dual service as a household machine and in my Grandad's saddlery shop.

As @viridianriver mentions about their machine and which I saw done more than once (repairing my leather schoolbag, for instance) it could put a needle and a waxed linen thread through thick leather with no effort at all, and do it fast.

The only update Mum gave it, sometime around 1975-ish, was an electric motor with variable-pressure foot-pedal, though she still preferred the treadle or even the hand-wheel for delicate work.

About that same time Dad bought her a fancy new Brother machine which could do all sorts of tricks, but it was only ever used for fancy work, and not much of that since Mum already had years of practice on the older machine.

The Singer even folded down into its stand, which had its own corner in the living-room and doubled as a table for a flower vase, so was also handier to use.

Like so...