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.

Which of these would you rather see on your dash?

Hey @staff. This is a perfect example of why collapsed reblogs is such a bad idea. Seeing the full thread, you go like this:

😮 ooh, that's cool
😀 "they're free," hehe!
🤣 "16 cents," perfection!!

I have achieved joy, I feel positive feelings toward Tumblr, I want to engage, I want to stay, my eyeballs land on more ads, you make more money, everyone wins! 🎉

Seeing the collapsed thread, you go like this:

😮 ooh, that's cool
😐 "16 cents"? yes, that's literally what the pic shows, not sure why you felt the need to say that

There is no motivation for me to uncollapse the reblog chain—it looks like a boring conversation about the denominations of coins. And even if I do uncollapse it, you've ruined the joke by showing me the punchline before the setup. I am sad, Tumblr is boring, I go elsewhere to entertain myself, I see less ads, you make less money, everyone loses. 😥

Reblog chains are the best thing about Tumblr. They are your unique super power. They are the thing that makes people screenshot Tumblr and share it around. Why on earth would you kneecap them??

I don't know exactly how you plan to implement this. Give people the option to keep them collapsed if there truly are people who are annoyed by how long they can get (you already have a version of this feature), but don't collapse them for everyone or new users by default. Please. It will make Tumblr so much more boring.

Anybody else got that Evergiven sized writers block

“Where’s the next chapter?!” Well buddy you’re never gonna guess

What’s the comic sans trick?

#i feel like someone just asked me to eat dirt for my health

wingdings’ true purpose as a font

Wingdings holy shit some of y'all are on a whole different level of galaxy wizard brain batshittery and I am in awe.

Exciting. When I don’t want to see what I’m writing I just make the font color almost indistinguishable from the background color. (Do not do this.)

(I don’t think the secret to the comic sans hack is comic sans itself; I think it’s any deflation of being intimidated by your canvas.)

Hold on I need to go look something up immediately.

EXACTLY. And that is why he declared so far in advance. He thought it could thwart an indictment. 

He knew he'd be indicted because he deliberately ignored a request from the National Archives, refused to return all the documents required, did not secure the documents in his possession, told his lawyers to remove some documents before returning others, and lie to law enforcement about what was kept/returned. This goes above and beyond what Trumpsters accused Hillary Clinton of doing.

I encourage everybody to read the actual indictment document.

It's deliberately written as a narrative story and very easy to understand. The DOJ wanted us to see with our own eyes what the former guy did, when he did it, and why it was wrong.

Yes, it's 49 pages, but it's double-spaced with huge margins, crammed with photographs & tables. It only took me a few minutes, even accounting for the times I stopped to re-read some things because they are so batshit insane.

I guarantee you most people defending him haven't read it.

Just because facts don’t matter to Repuglicans doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know them.

Click and read.

Note: this is in environments mangroves are native to. In places like Hawaiʻi where mangroves are invasive, of course mangroves are not desired and are (and should) being removed when present.

poor things, well we should definitely make this easier on them by never repeatedly mentioning their name and deeds on the "reblog things forever" website

Daily fish fact #497

Tripod fish!

Their name comes from their tendency to rest completely still on their elongated fins, giving them the appearance of a tripod! When they’re still, their fins appear stiff, but interestingly, when the fish are actually swimming they seem flexible; this had lead to some theories that the fish may pump their fins full of fluids to make them stiff but they’re otherwise quite bendy.

Thank you very much to the person who recommended the Sault Tribe's Anishinaabemowin lesson videos on youtube, I'm watching them now.

It's really easy to recognize my grandma's accent in this language, the sort of? Softness? To her words? I don't know how to explain it, but it's definitely a very distinct accent and it makes me wonder if she spoke Anishinaabemowin as a child.

A bit of a bummer to think about all the questions I'll never get to ask her.

So so so grateful to my tribe for this gift but also why am I getting this lesson before basics like introducing myself??