I remember 10-15 years ago, there was some sort of plastic ball you were supposed to put in the washing machine with your clothes that claimed it could wash your laundry for you without running out. It claimed it was “ionic” or some such woo. Consumer Reports did an article on them explaining how they were a scam. They only seemed to work because most people used too much detergent anyway, and you could wash your clothes a few times just with water and the laundry soap residue that was left on your clothes from the last time you washed them.
Ever since then I make sure to use a lot less detergent, and also occasionally wash a load or two without any detergent at all. In fact, all but the worst stains can probably be cleaned with just hot water and agitation, no detergent (or even leftover residue) needed.
Englis prof here. I tell my students to buy used textbooks from Amazon, not our for-profit bookstore.
Don’t get me started on the racket of putting out new editions every two years and cheaper “portable” anthologies getting longer and more expensive. Yeah, W.W. Norton, I’m looking at you.
I’m working toward not requiring textbooks anymore and using (legal) Internet material.
I use liquid detergent. A few years ago, I determined that it takes three seconds to fill the cup to the lowest line. I haven’t used the cup since, I press the button to release the detergent directly into the washer and count to three.
One year, I was very poor. Somehow I had a huge commercial sized box of baking soda. With that and a single bar of Fels Naptha soap, I washed my clothes for a year. The Fels was for stain treatment.
If your clothes are just sweaty, Baking soda works fine. Washing soda, too.
I know, my blood boils when I think about it. How many advances in basic algebra have there been in the last two years that justifies putting out a new version of a textbook? Or in the last ten years? The last hundred years?
Hint for students: the answer is the same to all three questions.
Anyone buy regular #2 pencils in the last decade or so?
There seem to be two kinds available in stores: ( 1 ) Dirt-cheap budget pencils which seem to make up 95% of the market and shelf space, and ( 2 ) Expensive-by-comparison good pencils.
A pencil’s a pencil, you say? Why look around for a “good pencil”? Because pencils in anything but the upper few percent will have their graphite annoyingly shatter and break any time you sharpen them. Novelty themed pencils are especially egregious. Best to buy the biggest box of Ticonderogas you can find and use those.
The sad thing is that Ticonderoga pencils are a Dixon product. Dixon’s lower-rent line of pencils, with the Dixon brand name, are just as plagued with the too-brittle graphite issue as the dirt-cheap dollar-store fare.
And why buy Poe and Hawthorne stories that are public domain?
There is a superb and free writing/grammar/etc website from Purdue U (Owl.edu) that I link to in my online course. Last year a MacMillan rep tried to sell me “access” to Owl for students. Apparently this means that McM facilitates a “portal” to the site. WTF?? I know how to paste URL links, thanks.
Textbook publishers are in a death knell and desperate to monetize anything they can get their slimy paws on.
As for the white-on-white markings that bibliophage mentioned, the marking isn’t printed on the inside of the cap but instead is just a slight ridge on it, so of course it’s the same color as the cap.
The incredible shrinking tuna can! You used to get six ounces (undrained), which could make two sandwiches. Now they’re five ounces undrained, which too much for one sandwich by not enough for two.
Yogurt is even worse. Used to be (before 2003), a single-serving yogurt was 8 oz. Then it shrunk down to 6 oz. Nowadays, it’s 5.3 ounces. A cup of yogurt made a satisfying lunch. Now, not really.
Next time you buy a non-dairy product in a Tetra Pak, look at how many ounces it actually holds. A half-gallon (64 oz) now holds 55 oz. And you’re still paying the 64 oz price, too.
You know, I used to work with people who were so diligent with that name-brand detergent that I could fucking smell it on their clothes. To me (the definitive fragrance-averse person) it was as though a thousand infants had barfed upon them. But I guess once you get used to the “clean” smell you stop noticing how vile it is.
Nathan’s hot dogs - each hot dog has gone from 2 ounces to 1 1/2, and the package of “dinner franks” has gone from 4 x 4 ounces to 5 x 2.4 ounces. The only reference to any change is that their “bigger than the bun” hot dogs are now “bun-length.”
Preach on! I hate laundry detergent smells. I hate when I’m out walking and that vile smell is being pumped out of the houses as they do laundry. It is one of the strongest, most sickening smells. And yes, I have coworkers that are obvious to how bad they smell. It doesn’t smell “clean”…it smells disgusting.
I do that, too. Don’t like the dried out gummy bits I got the other way. Just made a mess.
I tried one of those enamel-building pastes one time for about a week. After about that time, my gums looked sort of like the picture Colgate had of gingivitis on the box (redder next to the teeth). And I looked at the ingredient list and the enamel-building one didn’t have the anti gingivitis ingredient. Still don’t know if that was actually the problem, but I switched back.
Though I do think on this thread we really need to make distinction between actual rip-offs, and things just getting more expensive as time passes, due to inflation, etc. Just because 6 oz. now costs what 8 oz. did 10 years ago doesn’t make it a ripoff. Deceptively sized/labeled packages, on the other hand…
