Made in Japan: Gangy 300 can opener. No moving parts, just a handle of heavy stamped steel, with a stainless claw blade riveted on. Last opener I'll ever need. $12 online from the usual suspect.
Recall that they're tax-deductible now -- so tips are the most efficient way to compensate employees. You're feeling the second-order effects of the inevitable business model change.
The great revelation of Google Street View for me has been that such is more or less the world norm. Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent.
The tragedy is that so few, at least here in the US, see the liberating value in them.
That's the monumental social question going unconsidered -- why has governmental regulation not somehow adapted to the new economic reality, so that all that real physical capital is put to at least some productive use?
An unexpected challenge being that our sense of smell requires continual readjustment: Heavy use of em-dashes was formerly a "tell", but the AI-masters retrained them, and now they do the opposite. Indeed, there's a general scarcity of any punctuation other than the period.
Her coming-of-age short story or perhaps memoir of a few years ago in The New Yorker has stayed with me. Only after finishing and contemplating it does the tragedy of the young woman's experience really make itself felt.
- Isaac Newton