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  1. tonyb

    Old gas stations

    Fort Wayne, Indiana At least the structure is still there, but it’s current trim doesn’t do it justice.
  2. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    The lovely missus insists the van wears an “Adopt a Shelter Pet” affinity plate. It costs an extra 30 or 40 bucks or something like that on renewing the registration every year, with the additional proceeds allegedly going to animal shelters, etc. I wouldn’t do that if it were left up to me...
  3. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Are pencil sharpeners still commonly seen in primary school classrooms? Like the kind we knew? Mounted to the wall? I suppose the retronym would be “manual pencil sharpener.”
  4. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    ^^^^ A friend presented me with a vintage screw-it-to-the-wall pencil sharpener several years ago. I still have it. I have yet to screw it to the wall. It’s on a shelf in “the blue room,” a 100-square-foot bedroom lined with groaning bookcases. I use pencils, though, and I have a little AA...
  5. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Embossed motor vehicle license plates. They haven’t gone away yet, but printed plates are becoming more common.
  7. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Of late there have been reminders of then-President William Jefferson Clinton’s prediction that the Internet would be the bane of totalitarians. He likened attempts to control the available information online to “nailing Jello to the wall.” How wrong he was, which points to my greatest concern...
  8. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Among Charles Eames’s maxims was “Never delegate understanding.” The decidedly modern furniture for which he and his company are known started as handcrafted prototypes, most extensively reworked and reworked until a high quality, good-looking, comfortable, mass-producible design emerged...
  9. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    “Disruptive technologies,” was the buzz phrase from a few years back. I suppose it’s an accurate enough description. But most of the occupations made obsolete were their own sorts of drudgery. It sucks for the people being thrown out of a job, but new jobs are created. Or so we hope. I and...
  10. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    ^^^^^^ At sea level? And here I thought it was just the oxygen deprived up here in the thin air.
  11. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    ^^^^^^ I trust those are rhetorical questions. This forum couldn’t exist without these newfangled technologies. Does it “bring nothing new to the table”? Yes, as I’ve already noted, something is lost. But something is gained, too. My little enterprise couldn’t exist without digital...
  13. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Taken a commercial airline flight lately? It appears that digital boarding passes are rapidly supplanting the paper version. And it also appears that the people using the digital pass have it ready to scan without holding up the process at all.
  14. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    It’s true that with each new technology some older skills fall by the wayside. My handwriting sucks, but that’s of little consequence anymore. There remain people, all these centuries after the development of the printing press, who have committed to memory every word of the Bible or Koran, but...
  15. tonyb

    China Clipper Model Plane

    I’m having a heckuva time trying to learn if any Boeing 377 Stratocruisers still exist. There were only 56 built, and I believe there were 13 hull losses.
  16. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    More than once I’ve thought that people on cell phone conversations were addressing me, until I turned around and saw that, no, they were just being boorish and treating every person within earshot to what we’d rather not be hearing.
  17. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    ^^^^^^^ Yeah, I, too, find that annoying.
  19. tonyb

    Knockoffs?

    This is becoming tedious.
  20. tonyb

    Knockoffs?

    As to shiny new things … The new wears off quickly. It does for me, anyway. It’s knowing this that keeps my coveting of such things in check.
  21. tonyb

    Knockoffs?

    Is happiness all it’s cracked up to be? Some (most?) people’s idea of happiness is little more than the mother of complacency. I find a hearty meal much more satisfying if I’ve first worked up a healthy appetite. “Success” has been the ruin of many a once-dynamic person.
  22. tonyb

    Knockoffs?

    People like their material comforts, and people prefer better looking things over less good looking things. If anything is universal, it is that. And thank the god(s) of your choice for it. It’s the pursuit of that for which we have no immediate “need” that has fueled all human progress.
  23. tonyb

    Knockoffs?

    If you can’t beat ‘em? https://businessofhome.com/articles/the-best-way-to-fight-knockoffs-dupe-yourself A couple three or four years ago at a McDonald‘s there were chairs that appeared to be of the same form and dimensions as Eames shell chairs, but in plastic rather than the fiberglass of...

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