I remember when I could smoke a good cigar after a good steak in a good steakhouse. Or smoke my pipe at the park.
You bring up another good point and that is that we spend about 15% more if we pay by card vs cash. The feeling of cash in our hand leaving it is much more tactile and emotional than swiping (ohh I'm old. inserting, tapping) the card. No wonder they want to go cash less and of course the side affect is that they would know all that you buy.
If you are buying a larger item. Say a sofa or a washing machine and you go to a non-chain store. Cash can give you quite a bit of negotiation power whereas card does not because the store does not have to pay the fees associated with the card transaction.Paying with data can definitely save you money. Take store loyalty cards for example. In my local supermarket, there are a myriad of products which will come with 50% savings if you have a loyalty card (and make a personal data payment, so they can track your spending as an individual).
I try to avoid those blue ticket (in my supermarket) prices altogether. I don't want to pay with data, nor pay the privacy tax/penalty (full price) for not letting them stalk me. As such, I will either buy an completely different product instead, or buy that item elsewhere. If they'd just knock 25% off for everyone instead, then I would be more likely to buy it.
Likewise, I do expect to pay a little more for in person shopping, than buying from Amazon (et al) and having it delivered. Once I have factored in the data costs, I consider the higher cash price to be cheaper overall. Not all goods have a local cash option though, and so sometimes your options are to pay with both cash and data, or to go without. Most shaving goods discussed here would be in that category, for example.
Oh no. Has it really come to this, that you look foolish if you go into a hifi store with CDs? When did they send out the email saying CD was over? I don’t think I got it, but I’ve just started to notice that everyone else knows.Dear dear @Mr. Shavington , your post is one giant feast of recognition. I purchased a new stereo a couple of years ago and the guy looked as if I was from Mars when I said I wanted to play my CDs I brought along to check the sound. Obviously my set has a CD player. No longer in my car and there are times that annoys me. I can still remember the moment I plugged my office into a different USB port in my car only to find out that my car had Apple Car - had no idea!
We have Spotify mainly for the offspring, but I will admit that it’s fun for in the car and I have had new music sources. I mainly listen to the radio to a metal station.
Why my washing machine wants connection to the internet I have no idea and I certainly did not download the app. Same goes for my living room thermostat. No reason to have that connected either.
I love books - have way too many of them. I like my Kindle too especially when travelling or for management books (which tend to be appallingly expensive in print - but these end up cheap at the thrift shop later on!).
I still wear a suit and tie to the office even though less and less people are doing so. I like it anyway. Makes me feel good and representative.
Doesn’t make us Luddites as far as I am concerned. Makes us experienced people who still can think for themselves. Who change when change is progress and otherwise ask a question.
Kind of why I like DM Shavers signature from Vin Diesel:
“Being male is a matter of birth. Being a man is a matter of age. But being a gentleman is a matter of choice.”
I like to think we are those gentlemen. And I certainly think you are a perfect gentleman so you just keep being you.
Cheers!
Guido
Yeah. I lost all my digital photos and music twice. Once when my PC hard drive got x-rayed during a move from Singapore to UK, and once more when Apple deployed an OS update that destroyed my iPad.I posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating:
Yes, streaming is convenient, but it is fraught with peril.
In February of 2024, Steven Van Zandt lost 650 movies he had purchased from streaming services. Gone.
If it can happen to a famous musician, do you think they care about peons such as you and I?
We have seen books, films, and music pulled from public viewing.
We have witnessed in our lifetime Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl having their books edited by the printer to remove "offensive" language or terms.
Disney limited the distribution and marketing of Martin Scorsese's film Kundun due to pressure from the Chinese Government.
You don't own anything you don't have a physical copy of. It could be gone with a change of the wind. Even if it isn't "disappeared", it can be slowly and subtly changed so that it does not reflect the words or the intent of the original authpr/artist.
It's serious enough that Filmmakers Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk, Oppenheimer, Interstellar) and Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan's Labyrinth, Blade) recently discussed it on Xwitter:
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Or am I just a luddite, pushing back against change that I should embrace, and gradually excluding myself from the modern world? What about you?
I would, but I haven’t paid for a subscription to read your link.Check out these Luddites.
Every film, TV show, photo, and piece of music I own is digitally copied, and is in two different media backup locations.Yeah. I lost all my digital photos and music twice. Once when my PC hard drive got x-rayed during a move from Singapore to UK, and once more when Apple deployed an OS update that destroyed my iPad.
But, hey, no worries now. Just buy a cloud storage subscription and they’ll store it all for you, until they stop doing that or they have a data issue. They make Apple devices with nearly no memory now to try and force you onto the cloud and make you pay a monthly fee for access to your own personal photos. What was the original title to Philip K Dick’s story Total Recall? We can remember it for you, wholesale?
So much for the dystopian future - we’re living in the dystopian present.
Because people in intel will tell you cell phones are essentially "listening devices".I had a former colleague who was in sigint in UK and he refused to have a cell phone as well.
Not just listening devices these days friends. Our SigInt friends in the military understand the plethora of information that an enemy can obtain from it. It can be used to triangulate your location, and geotagging can pinpoint precisely where a digital photograph was taken (remember in 2014 when Russia pinky-promised it had not troops in Eastern Ukraine, only for geo-tagged photos of Russian troops that were taken in Eastern Ukraine popped up?). Especially in the form of troop movements, you could likely deduce the size of an enemy force using their cell signals. Couple this with all the Chinese spyware that essentially influences America's youth, add in a sprinkle of the libertarian belief that even teenagers deserve privacy from parents ala snapchat, and yeah... cell phones are kinda dangerous to be honest.Because people in intel will tell you cell phones are essentially "listening devices".
I'm not against technology. I absolutely love my (reasonably) large HD TV. The picture quality is stunning, it's much lighter than the old cathode ray type, costs less when adjusted for inflation and has held up for 10 years now. I also prefer fuel injection to carburetors, semiautomatic handguns to revolvers and, in most cases, GPS to paper maps. That doesn't mean those older designs don't work. They do, and in some cases quite well, but by and large there are serious advantages to the newer technology.
I don't consider 5- and 6-blade cartridges with a lube strip and articulated head an improvement over a 70-year-old Gillette Super Speed, let alone a modern DE safety razor. I can say this because I've used both and the DE razor simply provides a better shave, IMHO. Sometimes marketing and expiring patents don't make for the best or most cost effective products.
My understanding is a Luddite is someone who not only abjures technology beyond a certain level, but actively participates in efforts to destroy it.