I got to the point where if I really liked a pair of shoes, I'd buy a second pair and throw them in the closet for nine months, and cross my fingers that I like the shoes in the second refresh more than I liked the ones in the first one.

And lets talk about ya'll motherfuckers wearing jeans that make your eyes pop out. Stores I used to shop at, some of them don't even have regular jeans anymore. I was the first person off the tight jeans bandwagon the last time that went around, and I'm not jumping on this one, even if that means I have to shop at thrift stores until you all wake up on your own, or until your doctor tells you to stop wearing those if you want kids.

Full leather sports sandals, with strong but easy-to-operate magnetic clasp, and no seams on inner surfaces. Joy to wear. Practically immune to chafing and blisters. Exceptionally good for walking (or cycling!) for even long periods of time.

Discontinued since ~2009 or so. While they've brought back some of their other pretty good sandals, the perfection reached more than 15 years ago is nowhere to be seen.

The difference between the old ones that those pictured above are that the old ones were (I think this is the right word) almost suede leather. Really easy on skin. And the sandals in the image show seams on the inside, whereas the ones I had two pairs of had their seams on the insides of the strap structure. But on the bright side, the magnetic clasp looks familiar; the new clasp is bulkier and can't be easily opened with a toe from your other foot.

And no, it's not these either: https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/255580935375_/Clarks... - but they do demonstrate how to construct sandals with the seams off of skin contact, so this might give you an idea what the things looked like.

So no, sadly I can only provide reasonable excuses.

These shoes are particularly durable and will last through absurd amounts of use and sweat and rain and mud with just some sink-washing, but eventually break down and need replacing. For me it's about every 4-5 years with them getting worn most days of spring/summer/fall.

Shopping for these shoes is a huge hassle because, outside of large cities / cycling destinations, most shops only carry a single brand and model, making them pretty much mail order only. A shoe that fits fine can feel problematic after a couple hours, so it takes a bunch of trial and error (and often purchasing multiple pairs and selling the others off as barely-used) to find what works.

Last time I had to replace my shoes I went and bought the same brand, same model, same size. But they didn't fit right. Turns out the new version was 5mm narrower at the ball of the foot, which was enough to make my left foot hurt after an hour of wearing them.

So, I had to go shop around for something that fit better, try them, then be sure they worked right. I went through three pair before finding something that works, but I'm loathing when it comes time to replace them again. The coloring on them was recently changed and while I don't really like it (it's now a silver toe on black shoe, previous was all black), I guess it'll be fine so long as the fit matches?

I'm wishing I'd bought a second pair, but that too bothers me knowing they'll sit on the shelf for years taking up space before getting used. And who knows, maybe some new buckle/latch/whatever will come out in the mean time that'll make switching brand worthwhile?

https://www.hoka.com/en/us/hoka-shoe-finder.html

I’m very unhappy.

The struggle is real.

While part of it might be that my body and running style have changed slightly over time, most of it is that shoes change regularly. I experienced a first recently thought: my feet actually significantly prefer the newer SpeedGoat design to the previous revision (though I fear the heal design might encourage more little stones & bits into the shoe, it is more comfortable for me). Just watch them revert those changes, so in future when I need to replace this design will be hard or impossible to find at a good price...

Are those a scarce resource or something?

And presumably as your weight changes you would need new models.

Heck I'm surprised there aren't more "smart shoes" that track weight changes and mobility.

They completely changed the shoe this last year.

I’ve adjusted but… it’s not the same shoe anymore.

If you just buy classic old-fashioned stuff, then you won't have this problem. I have a pair of old-fashioned leather boots, and when they were worn out after 5 years or so, I just bought exactly the same boots again. Those type of boots have been available for decades, and I really doubt they'll stop making them anytime soon.

For jeans, I've been wearing plain Levis 501 for years, and when they break I just buy another pair. They might be making slight changes, but for the most part it's the same pair of jeans and it's always available in plain styles.

Same for the plain T-shirts I wear. Sure, colors change a bit every year, but I won't have trouble finding a replacement a few years.

This problem only exists for people who buck fashion trends in areas (like clothes) that are highly subject to fashion. I just want to keep buying the same type of clothes, but they keep going in and out of fashion without me having any say in it.

For jeans, for example, I would love to be able to buy black 527s. That shouldn't be too much to ask, should it? But they don't exist, because they're flares, which are currently out of fashion for men, so tough luck.

But even for the most reliably unchanging style of boots I have bad luck: army boots. Used to wear them all the time. Always great fit, comfortable under all circumstances. Bought a new pair a few years ago, and suddenly they suck. I'm forced to wear sneakers these days. I haven't really find a nice model yet.

I used old spice anti-perspiring deodorant for like 20 years. It had never changed. It was like $1-2 and I liked it fine.

One day they started advertising and added like 20 new flavors and had super handsome spokesmodels. I couldn’t find my boring old flavor any more.

So even old and boring things can get the ax

We see what you did there.

Wearing jeans at all is a trend. People have been wearing something other than jeans for far longer than they've been wearing them.

  > Shoes are this way for a lot of people, in that some of us can keep a
  > pair of shoes long enough that the next fashion cycle has happened and
  > you can't find anything like that again.

And take a gander at the shoes they're wearing? ))

My experience as a man on the other hand... I bought a tuxedo recently, and the tailor said Ok here's this one, it has these weird lapels that are in right now, and it'll be great if you're going on the red carpet tomorrow but will be out of fashion pretty soon, otherwise here is the standard tux that will always look good, and come back and buy a vest or cummerbund if they ever come back in style and you'll still look great.

Sanuk is a west-coast US sandals brand which had been around for decades and used to make some of the best most-comfortable flip flops. These are not the sandals that fall apart in the middle of a vacation or give you blisters.

In the last few years they lost their soul and started using "yoga mat" -- an open-cell foam -- for most their sandals.

I spent over an hour on the phone trying to explain to them why sandals which get wet and STAY WET all day were such a problem. Born in surf culture, and honestly couldn't care less.

At least for the trails I can so far reliably get shoes that fit, although even there there's none to be had in town, they have to be ordered.

It probably depends on the material of the sole, though.

Try working from home. It's guaranteed that by the time you need new shoes nothing resembling your current shoes that you know and love is available any more.

Same for a lot of other clothing items that you only wear outside.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adidas_Samba

https://www.adidas.com/us/samba

If you look further you can find high-quality denim and t-shirts in a variety of cuts. Even bespoke. But they differentiate on quality and things that matter to enthusiasts, so a brain poisoned by mass-produced fast-fashion will wince.

Take a look at Duluth Trading Co. for a similar trend, if a bit more upmarket.

Laggards: Laggards are consumers who avoid change and do not adopt new technologies until all traditional alternatives are no longer available. The group is mostly concerned with reliability, low cost, and easy to use.

As I remember the premise, vendors squeeze profit out of the earlier adopters, in particular the early majority and the late majority. By the time the laggards are buying, the vendor has lost interest in the product and all of the profit has already been extracted. Therefore they don't give a shit about you and are likely to discontinue the product or provide terrible support.

I need a Laggard t-shirt.

Sounds about right. These days it's all about things lasting about 2 minutes so they're cheap to manufacture, as pricey as possible to seem designer or premium, and hardly any time spent on making good UX at all.

Worse is when some UX designers decide to improve a product that works well as it is only to make it worse and convoluted. This has been my experience more often than not, and my solution is to simply stop using such products. It sucks.

I'm often a power user. I know all the features and shortcuts of the tools I use. All too often, these get removed. I recall being on a feedback call with a UX study, and complaining about a feature I use, and many friend use, that was recently deleted from the product. "Oh, no one uses that" was the response from the UX/PM.

Skin care companies are the worst. After ages of comparing products and finally finding the right one, they just "improve" the formulas to the point that the product just does not work anymore for us. Even the expensive ones like Vichy. I started to look more seriously into home-made cosmetics because of reproducibility, but haven't found the right formula yet unfortunately.

However, I try to use primary products (for example pure hyaluronic acid instead of a product that contains HA) as much as possible, because I feel this lowers the risk to run out of that product,

I don't remember any of the names or percentages ("they're all just rows in a database to me"), but perhaps I should have paid attention a bit more closely. I am assuming that all of these substances are available for public purchase, and the people behind the RnD lab weren't eminently qualified in their field.

Good luck to you!

While finding person or team that will consistently pick winners is basically impossible due to viral nature of big wins, I consistently pick losers . I assume it's because I consistently use criteria which differ radically from average consumer. I'll go into detailed list of pros and cons while my cousins will simply say "I like it" or "it's cool".

I thought Penny arcade had a strip or blog about it but I could never find it...

Tbh, lots of non-overpriced products that I really like tend to disappear or be hard to find, so I just learned to settle for (a) a healthy enough cheap enough alternative that is never close to being as enjoyable but "whatever, it works", or (b) an X times more expensive quasi-luxury-class equivalent that has similar qualities and is from a common enough quasi-luxury-class producer with big market presence.

But there's a second avenue of though to explore: some people care for the qualities of the product itself, and some might argue that these kinds of people (we?) are a minority, most follow trends, either marketing phabricated or grass-roots word-of-mouth trends, so if a good quality products fails to be trendy, it will have horrible economical performance at least compared to the expectations set for such a product (R&D spent and all), so has higher chances to get pulled off than a bad performing low end products, that will stick around for more, and might by sheer luck "catch a trend" at some point.

Personalized production is what will save us in the end I guess, but when it reaches mainstream will also coincide with most people becoming jobless, so I don't know how the quality of goods and life will look like overall then, can't find my crystal ball :) (I guess the utopian scenario would be that anything mass-produced even decent quality is dirt cheap by then and affordable on UBI, and all the made-to-order-by-robots will be the various degrees of luxury - white sneakers? 0.01$ same model but factory made with dotted texture on violet gradient and printed with the face of your cat? 1000.00$, and hand-customized post-factory might be the new mid-class as human labour could become cheap again?)

> [A breakfast cereal containing] whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour, sugar (maltose), salt, dried yeast, and the following added vitamins and minerals: iron, vitamin B3, zinc oxide, vitamin B6, vitamin B1, and folic acid.

> According to the Grape-Nuts website, Grape-Nuts "actually contains neither grapes nor nuts". The name may have come from the cereal's resemblance to grape seeds, or from its nutty flavor; C. W. Post may also have intended it to refer to its content of glucose, which Post called "grape sugar."

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape-Nuts

I kid, but it's rather unlike any other breakfast cereal in its texture.

It was fashionable decades ago as a healthy cereal and promoted by the famous Euell Gibbons, who would eat just about anything from nature. He is the reason that I have never shied away from sampling wild berries or leaves once I understand which plants grow in my area. There really are a lot of edible things that are overlooked since processed food is so easily obtained here in the US.

The experience of eating Grape Nuts can really be elevated by adding fresh or dried fruit and nuts like roasted pecans, roasted almonds, roasted walnuts, or similar nuts or you could substitute candied nuts coated with honey, cinnamon sugar, praline, etc.

Personally, if I ever eat Grape Nuts again they will be used as a topping on ice cream combined with dark chocolate syrup or fudge, some nuts, and a little dried fruit. This gives the ice cream an awesome texture boost and the melding of the flavors is fantastic.

I currently use home-made granola base as a breakfast and spruce it up with various things every morning so the flavor experience doesn't get old. My wife makes excellent granola and it is super simple. Oats are one of my favorite grains.

I have used piloncillo in Tex-Mex cooking - moles and other spicy sauces to add a little sweetness. I never thought about using it somewhere else.

I'm down for honey on just about anything. I usually make a wash for my baby-back ribs with a honey base and some chile spices like ancho or gaujillo or chipotle. It really elevates the ribs when you brush it on when you are nearly at the end of smoking.

The first one that really stuck in my mind is BetaMax and I suppose the collapse of Be, makers of the BeBox and BeOS, was the most discouraging... though I've seen a lot of other brands & companies I liked fail.

Maybe your particular issue is with products starting with "be"

I just wish I could figure out how to monetize my prescience

I view the collapse of Be as story about the many failings of the broader tech industry and the irrationality of the dot com bubble and not in any way an indication of the technical merits of the BeBox or BeOS.

Anyway, Haiku as it is today is kinda like what BeOS was back then but obviously incomplete in several really important ways. Meanwhile the world has moved on and I do everything I used to do in BeOS (and more) with Linux. Though I do wonder what BeOS might look like now had they not collapsed back then.

https://www.epaderm.com/products/epaderm-ointment/

I initially got this as an eczema ointment - it's a thick, waxy ointment intended to treat dry and irritated skin. But somehow, you can mix it with a bit of water and form a rich lather (their "cleanser" use case). It doesn't form tall, stiff piles like canned shaving foam, but it's more than adequate to lather your face with. And it works fantastically: the razor glides over my skin, and there is absolutely no irritation. In fact, my skin is in better shape after i've shaved than before.

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/37805/foun...

Now our burgers are flavoured with a tinge of sadness and regret.

If they've stopped selling a product, what choice do you have if your burgers are tasting like sadness?

Also: 11" MacBook Air. Strawberry Shortcake SkinnyCow ice cream sandwiches. McCormick Perfect Pinch Tuscan Seasoning with Sun Dried Tomato.

I used to care about such things. Then I just embraced the inescapable endless change, and started using soap.

If you wet your hair first, then put on the soap, I find it not too bad.

Just embrace it. Because they just keep changing stuff.

Here’s hoping for a revival of the 12” MacBook with an M series chip. That’d be so good.

Actually come to think of it. If I love a product it's rare I can ever find it again.

The 16" was first released in 2019, and has always had both integrated and discrete GPUs. I do think the connectivity configuration is a little restrictive and one dimensional, but there's no way you could convince me to use a 17" 2011, what with it being limited to USB 2.0 and FW800 (no thunderbolt!). Thankfully this point is moot, because the 2021 16" MBP has really great connectivity.

I'm confused by your comment about weight -- you actually want a heavier computer? The 2021 16" is 30% lighter than the 17" and smaller in all three dimensions. The 2021 16" MBP GPU is light years ahead of even the previous generation 16", let alone the 17" from 2011.

I'm pretty happy to just continue with the old.

But Heinz roast garlic deli mayo, you will be missed. And freschetta pizza, and eatemans carrot cake, and pop with sugar in, and small phones with decent battery life.

Because I travel a lot I favour carry-on only, which means small quantities of toiletries and I wet shave with foam. At one point it was easy to buy small shaving foam cans for travel and at some point they got replaced with gel. I dislike the gel.

One day in the Coop in Davos I saw a whole section of travel stuff and there they had Nivea Shaving Foam (https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Sensitive-shaving-practical-trave...). This seems to be available in German-speaking countries. That day I bought the entire stock on the shelf (something like 10 of them).

Please don't jinx us like this!

You can just squirt some straight onto the (wet) brush and get latherin' - straight onto your face.

Having to shave those last remnants of hair off my head is bad enough without it taking up half the prep time I grant myself each morning :)

Since I was young, I always loved spicy vegetable sandwich spread, but for many years I thought it had been discontinued, because this giant chain sold all the other flavours, but not my favourite. Until I discovered it at a different chain, and became aware of their betrayal. Then they introduced their home brand organic vanilla ice cream which I loved, so they quickly discontinued it. They did have same home brand organic chocolate ice cream which tasted far better than home brand ice cream has any reason to (it reminded me more of Australian), so a bit later they discontinued that too. A popular A-brand desert had a lemon-variety with a particularly addictive taste, and while they didn't discontinue it entirely, they did stop selling it online and in most of their supermarkets (only the very largest still had it).

But none of that has anything to do with me; it's just the supermarket chain that clearly has some grudge against me.

Good news: they recently started stocking my favourite sandwich spread flavour again.

Our store would continually run out of the particular baby food we wanted and the cashier noticed me buying it all when it was in stock and asked if I wanted them to just order another box for me.

This doesn't help when the suppliers have discontinued it, and some of the larger chains are all automated, but it can be a useful trick. The computers try to notice what sells and order more (I've bought all of a certain item and noticed they stocked twice as much the next week, for example) but sometimes it can be assisted.

You can also email the company/distributor and ask for retail locations in your area, they'll usually know.

Dear God. Never, I hope. There was even a Grape-Nuts shortage in 2020 [0], but thankfully it's over and I think Post understands how much the cereal means to its consumers.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2021/03/24/gra...