The anti-gun crowd is also ignorant of the practicalities of automatic vs semiautomatic. What they mean is “civilians shouldn’t have mostly unrestricted access to firearms, especially ones with no use for hunting” and getting hung up on technical minutia misses the point entirely.

Like you said, 99.9 % of people wouldn’t recognize a Patek Philippe if it hit them upside the head. By definition it’s not ostentatious. Rolexes are ostentatious (it’s the only luxury brand most people know), but also incredibly cheap as far as mechanical watches go.

A Patek Philippe is a status symbol, but only to those very select few already in-the-know. And that is not mutually exclusive with those movements being incredible art. Is a Van Gogh ugly or evil just because some asshole bought the painting for $100.000.000? Art doesn’t have to be collateral damage to your class consciousness just because rich people have more access to it.

If all you care about is functionality, a $50 casio with a resin casing will have more complications than most expensive watches, be hundreds of times more precise, will last you decades and you will spend less time and money in maintenance over your lifetime than you would for one revision of a mechanical watch. They’re practically superior in literally every way to a $30,000 watch.

But that’s not my point, I’m specifically talking about art. $200+ watches are art for its own sake, arguing on the basis of quality/reliability is nonsensical. The only things that matter is esthetics and even more importantly for mechanical watches, the appreciation for the incredible history and intricacy of a well-built movement. There is a lot of craftsmanship to be appreciated there.

And it’s fine if you don’t care or can’t justify the expense (I don’t own a mechanical watch myself though I probably will at some point), but the original meme completely disregards the artistry and craftsmanship going into expensive watches and I am trying to expose the glaring cognitive dissonance of the consensus that “quartz watches better” but “AI PFP evil”. Both are responsible for the collapse of an industry, so if you think there is a meaningful moral difference there please tell me.

Here’s my take: the mechanical watch industry already collapsed, and the “small commission PFP art” hasn’t fully yet. We should preserve as much of these artists’ livelihoods as we can to soften the blow until a new equilibrium is reached where – just like with mechanical watches – only those with a real appreciation for art or a want for a status symbol will commission a real artist for their PFP. But that’s a very different discourse from what I hear which is typically “AI PFP poopoo evil, if you get one you’re worse than Hitler”.

Casio is my default for cheap and durable. I have a HDD-600 still running on its original battery for at least 15 years (it outlived the original strap which had rubber rot). And when I do change the battery it will be 4 screws and a gasket.

Solar-powered as far as I understand is a gimmick since the solar cell won’t necessarily even work well after 10-15 years. Not worth avoiding such a small amount of maintenance.

Someone please tell me what the difference is between this sentiment and “I’ll get an AI-generated PFP because it’s cheaper”. As far as I’m concerned either way it’s " expensive traditional art" vs “mass-manufactured knockoff”.

Do people have no respect for jewelers or not understand the work that goes into a good timepiece? Or is it that art is contempt-worthy when is used as a status symbol (in which case what about a $500 timepiece?)

My country made it illegal to sell at a loss (for that exact reason) and IIRC wish and/or temu got in some kind of legal trouble for it. So did IKEA when they tried to use their restaurant as a loss leader - illegal here!

Then there’s the matter of shipping subsidies from the PRC, ain’t no way cross-continent shipping is 0.02 € on a 5 € item for which the last mile is handled by the national postal service which I know for a fact charges anyone more than one euro for delivering a damn envelope.

The children yearn for the mines, for only the mines make them worthy of a hearty meal.

Also thank you for addressing the “but the bible is progressive akshully” bullshit. No it’s not. Never has been. The new testament is less backwards, but to dismiss the old testament entirely is hypocritical and maybe even heretical. The bible is problematic if you look at it objectively, as is any form of moral prescriptivism from millennia ago.

Yep, it’s basically the best environment for them. Presumably relatively few writes compared to the uptime, in a case with few vibrations (!), very few power cycles (!!!). Basically all it does is spin on a highly precise bearing.

Anyway drive lisepans only matter for cost projections, when it comes to data integrity you should ALWAYS assume that a drive ia about to fail. Because sometimes it fails after 2 years and sometimes it runs for 20, that’s just the luck of the draw.

Reddit has had extremely spotty reliability forever. It got better in recent years, but still came down every few weeks, or would just randomly say “you broke reddit!”. Circa 2015 every evening it would just randomly return 50x errors a good chunk of the time because it was always overloaded.

Backend reliability mustn’t be very high up their priority list. Well, neither is UX (old OR new reddit), and let’s not pretend that they’ve been masterminds when it comes to ad placement either, so the real question is what do the higher ups want, and why can’t they achieve it?