I’ve not seen the movie or read the book but I do know the plot. While the two had different endings I don’t think either of them were happy were they?
Temu isn’t a new idea. There have been many international shopping apps before. Temu is just currently popular.
Intellectual property law is quite different in China. Some might say it’s non-existent, but I think that’s an oversimplification and I don’t want to get bogged down in an argument over international economic law. Point is, China has a lot of manufacturing facilities, and make a lot of the products you know and love.
It’s no secret that once a product is made in China, the designs and details become available to other manufacturers in China (and in other countries, but Temu is a Chinese company). Temu works with manufacturers directly to sell product directly without the markup, marketing, warehousing, etc that come with normal e-commerce.
Benchmade needs to let you know they make knives, they need to create designs that are high quality and people like, and then they have to stand by their product. They also need to turn a profit. Temu just needs to profit, and they are probably willing to take less of a markup in exchange for volume. The low cost is their marketing.
Now when it comes to a knock-off, and this goes for anything, but we’ll use Benchmade knives as the example, the results depend on what sort of knock-off you’re getting.
The best case scenario is that it’s the same design, same materials, possibly even the same manifacturing plant that makes real Benchmade knives. Then you get a high quality knife at close to factory direct prices. Congratulations, you’ve scored a steal, and I do mean that you’ve purchased a product that has been stolen. The ethics of that are on you, I’m not here to judge.
The next best possible knock-off is the same design, same materials, and maybe the same manufacturer, but it’s a knife that didn’t pass qualtiy control standards. It would have become a Benchmade knife, but for some reason it was not made to spec. Maybe the printing was off and you get an otherwise impeccable Bonchmude knife. Or maybe the steel was improperly hardened and the blade will snap when you apply pressure. Provided you don’t hurt yourself or get eaten by the bear you were trying to stab, worst case is you’re out the price of the knife. Temu isn’t going to stand by their product, because it’s not actually theirs.
The third possible knock-off is a generic version of the knife design. Seeing the sales of quality knives, the manufacturer decides to copy the design to make something that looks like a quality knife, but make it as cheaply as possible. Plastic replaces metal parts wherever possible, glue replaces welds, and the metal used is referred to as “steel-adjacent.” This is going to be a piece of crap for sure, and won’t actually be worth the price you pay for it, even if it’s free.
Here’s the big problem with Temu, there’s no telling which is which from the product postings. You see the same generic photo from four different item listings, and the knife you buy today won’t be there tomorrow. Even if you order two of the same product from the same manufacturer, you could get two wildly different quality levels. And you’re far more likely to get the third kind than either of the first two.
Think of the Temu stuff as disposable. “I’ll probably throw this away evetually.” It’s worth it if you use the thing and don’t throw it away immediately. Now, I said I wasn’t going to judge, hut the last thing I’ll say is that we could all do with a little less waste. Let’s all of us think twice before shipping disposable products halfway across the world.
But other than that, if it’s “worth it” is really up to you.
Remember: narcissists are psychologically incapable of imagining themselves no longer existing. He thinks he’ll live forever because he literally can’t conceive of any other possibility.
There is many more people in the states that would be a Union Army, the fools that would wage war on the United States would be defeated and most Americans wouldn’t even need to do anything but watch
The real problem is that they cut us up along crazy lines and lump the second and third groups together, so that the nice bluish-purple i see out my window looks bright red from space.
I’m not in favor of celebrity moving to politics. Even ones that I think are intelligent. Stewart has long been involved in political mockery and has actual experience in helping a bill get passed, but I think he wouldn’t survive the frustration of being forced to work in DC as President.
There’s a video out there that I can’t find where Stewart is talking to (political science students?) who ask him about his time in DC trying to get the 9/11 First Responders Bill passed and what he thought of politics there. His disgust for real politics and how politicians operate is vividly apparent and borders on revulsion.
I think he’s a good man, but I don’t know that he would be a successful president.
not particularly invested in this comment but isn’t the concept of “politician” essentially just “celebrity” nowadays anyway?
That someone has access to money and influence, can use those to set policy and maintain/secure both in-party and general-public votes. What’s the difference between politician and celebrity there? One could argue that experience in setting policy and/or studying law, but that doesn’t apply to a whole range of politicians anyway.
I think the lines are blurred, sure. However there are plenty of politicians that really just kind of do their job and stay out of the limelight, whereas celebrities are by default in the public eye. Also, the biggest difference is the part where you vote for a politician and they set policy. I don’t vote for celebs, and I don’t call them telling me what to wear or watch “policy”. We’ve had 2 legit celebrity presidents and they’ve both been disastrous.
You have a Circle-of-Concern: all the things you attach your awareness on,
and you also have a Circle-of-Influence: all the things you actually can alter.
Since the bigger your Circle-of-Concern, the LESS life-energy you have for your Circle-of-Influence, therefore you need to deliberately reduce your Circle-of-Concern, in order to expand your Circle-of-influence.
That’s it: it’s that simple.
Deny awareness-vampire processes your lifeblood.
Own your own self, more, & use that self-owning in order to make your portion of the world more-healthy.
Just because mass-media did all it could to make one boundaryless, helplessly stuck in consuming-trance, bedazzled & led-along like steers the industry is bringing into the abbatoir, doesn’t mean that you or I agreed to our lives doing/being only that, does it?
We never agreed.
It is our right to break the “agreement” that our childhoods were signed-into, before we could do any considered-reasoning.
Either we have the guts & gall to do it, or our-lives are consumed by the “machine” that exists only for sake of its own transient profit-sensations.
Don’t forget about cloudflare. With their free caching and cdn a well optimized site can run for barely anything. With GitHub actions and pages you can have a fully static site hosted completely for free.
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