> So when they finally closed, there were some people who were sad, but there were also people who were happy to see it go.
Good lord. The nearest Radio Shack (17 miles away) closed, so to get a resistor or cap, it's "order online". That's about as environmentally sound as nuclear testing above ground (perhaps a slight hyperbole there).
But not all that far-fetched. One time, I visited my daughter's place and found a broken wire in the thermostat, so I drove to the Shack, got a cheap iron and solder and fixed it. (When there WAS a Radio Shack)
I replaced my old Nikon F2 with a refurbished FM that cost less than the repairs. Go to buy some color slide or black and white film. Same store (and lucky to have one within 50 miles). "We don't carry those"
> Good lord. The nearest Radio Shack (17 miles away) closed, so to get a resistor or cap, it's "order online". That's about as environmentally sound as nuclear testing above ground (perhaps a slight hyperbole there).
I wonder if this is true?
Let’s say you were to buy the item from a store. Suppose the store is five miles away. You drive to the store, buy the item, and drive home. You used 10 miles worth of gas, plus the wear and tear on the car (meaning it has to be replaced 10 miles earlier than it would have otherwise).
Now, suppose you order it from Amazon. A worker picks it off a shelf in the warehouse, puts it in an envelope, and puts it on a truck. The truck drives to your house to deliver it.
Even if they JUST delivered your package, it should be basically a wash in terms of energy, right? You had to drive from your house to the store, they had to drive from the distribution center to your house. There would be a bit extra packaging, but I am not sure how many gallons of burned fuel an envelope is equivalent to.
However, if you had say, an Amazon delivery, then that delivery truck is not just driving to your house. It is driving to dozens of houses along a route to deliver your goods.
If you imagine the alternative, where each of those deliveries instead has to have the owner drive to a store, that could be hundreds of miles of saved trips because of the delivery drivers only taking one trip.
You do not order electronic parts from Amazon. You order them from Digi-Key or Mouser. They're organized to ship efficiently from a huge inventory of small parts, and they buy directly from manufacturers, so the supply chain is solid. If you order a Panasonic resistor, you will get a Panasonic resistor, not some random floor sweepings.
(This does not apply to DigiKey's "marketplace", which is third party resellers. DigiKey does claim to monitor their resellers, and DigiKey, not the reseller, handles customer complaints.)
I was just using Amazon as an example, mainly because they deliver their own items from local warehouses, usually. Easier to think about comparing that to driving to the store yourself.
* I’m not making a trip downtown for just one item. I’m picking it up on my way somewhere else, usually one of a few errands. That delivery driver might be making rounds too but randomly and likely far less efficient, bouncing around various suburbs. (And the recipients of those packages are still out running errands too)
* most delivery vehicles, aside from the nice rivian EDVs, are gross polluters, noisy, driven like their lives depended on getting there as fast as possible. The drivers are abused workers, stories of pissing in bottles to make a quota. I prefer fewer of those in my neighborhood.
The bottom line though, regardless of delivery efficiency, is that communities have suffered when everyone shops online. The benefactors of that efficiency are the billionares.
I buy from stores that employ my neighbors. Where I can talk to a human when I need to return an item. Where they are treated less like warehouse robots being abused like sweatshop workers. Costco is my model for a good local warehouse, not Amazon or Newegg.
To a close approximation the prices of things are proportional to the "soundness" of the scheme. If Digi-Key can afford to put $20 worth of stuff in a box and send it to me overnight, that's their business, not mine. Someone is putting the fuel into FedEx planes full of Digi-Key boxes and somehow that cost is being amortized over all the boxes in a way that is acceptable to all parties.
Sure, but my point is that EVERYTHING you buy has to end up at your house somehow. If you buy it from a store, it has to be shipped to the store, and then picked up by you. If you you buy it online, it is shipped to a distribution center, and then delivered to you. No matter what, we have to get the item to the person who is buying it.
I am just wondering what the actual carbon footprints of the different methods are.
I get it. My point is it's rational to expect it to all be baked into the price. In your example I suspect that the cost of individuals driving to stores dominates, and this is in fact baked into the cost of driving, but individuals are largely blind to the operating costs of driving.
The various "components, available" of Radio Shack was quite interesting; we still had (have?) one in town long after they mostly went away, and they still had a dusty old collection of various components.
This is all about the benefits of mindfulness, which are well known, and concludes with a discussion of how we construct reality and cling to things in a world which is nothing but change, that is, everything is process. Turning around the usual assumptions leads to a different outlook, which can improve one's quality of life substantially, and relationship with others as well.
This is entirely within the Hinayana tradition (use of Pali and so on) and there is, IMO, zero "spiritual" content in it.
Some Buddhists take on symbolic names. Many if not most western names are derived from previous spiritual, historic and mythological names. Mine is. Is yours?
Power and hierarchy almost always corrupt. My own group has no robes, no priests and no temples. Hypocrisy is rampant in every hierarchy because it's so hard for people to use power to serve others without crossing that "golden rule" line. The rarest substance on earth is humility.
Haven't people done this before? Back in the 80's one of our "team" members (I use the term loosely) would reverse engineer the day's code every evening, rendering it unreadable to everyone else who created it.
Of course, nobody these days asks "why?"
If it ain't broke ...
Banks have tons of money (OPM!) and IMO, could rewrite legacy code, but
Haven't people done this before? Back in the 80's one of our "team" members (I use the term loosely) would reverse engineer the day's code every evening, rendering it unreadable to everyone else who created it.
Of course, nobody these days asks "why?"
If it ain't broke ...
Banks have tons of money (OPM!) and IMO, could rewrite legacy code, but
What is this? It seems to have existed only for a month, and is down some 88.62% YTD (month to date, I guess) with the big hit coming Feb 3-4. Groundhog effect?
1. When I leave the list at home before a long drive to shop, the really important items have to be recalled. This favors short lists in general. Seriously, for most personal tasks, if your list is longer than say, 6 important items, you are overloading both your workload and memory. My opinion.
2. Last night, I noticed that my shopping list disappeared "somewhere" in my trip, despite the fact that I tied a pen to the little notebook with a cord.
Age creeping in? Not really. The damn thing(s) had fallen (as usual) between the car seat and the console, as I discovered after unloading groceries. I am making plans to stuff that space with some foam or bubble wrap to prevent this most noxious (and knuckle-scraping) failure mode.
This has been a problem for how long? 120 years?
Sometimes, I take a phone photo of the list.
I only left the phone home once, but was close enough to home to go get it. Usually there's a bluetooth indicator on the now-ancient 2018 infotainment display.
> Better lists, fewer impulsive decisions
Not really, at least for me. "-)
Generally, psychology doesn't work for me. My daughter has an Honors Psychology degree, and I am advising her to tell me the opposite of what she suggests, in honor of my cantankerous and contrarian nature.
First they came for our crops, to power our cars. Replacing corn ethanol with nearly anything else is a net benefit, corn ethanol is terrible for the environment & costs taxpayers billions in subsidies.
I live in a double-wide 3-bedroom manufactured home in the Sierra Foothills.
It cost me less than half the median CA home price, with 7 acres, most of which I made walkable. I just had a nice morning walk through my "arboretum" of mostly manzanita plants. Real pretty ones, and I took some nice photos.
I could't move the home, nor place a new one in most locations, including the vicinity of my local downtown area. I checked, just for jollies.
Land costs drive CA housing. Look at charts or ask ... you know who.
Good lord. The nearest Radio Shack (17 miles away) closed, so to get a resistor or cap, it's "order online". That's about as environmentally sound as nuclear testing above ground (perhaps a slight hyperbole there).
But not all that far-fetched. One time, I visited my daughter's place and found a broken wire in the thermostat, so I drove to the Shack, got a cheap iron and solder and fixed it. (When there WAS a Radio Shack)
I replaced my old Nikon F2 with a refurbished FM that cost less than the repairs. Go to buy some color slide or black and white film. Same store (and lucky to have one within 50 miles). "We don't carry those"
"America Online" ... indeed.
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