17 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
  2. Jul 2024
    1. Considerations for buying a typewriter:

      1. Where will you use it? Is weight a consideration? (Standard, portable, ultra portable)
      2. What Kind of Work will you do? (Do you need tabs, bichrome?)
      3. How does the Typewriter Feel?
      4. What type of keyboard will you need? (language, characters, diacritics)
      5. What is the typeface? You should like/enjoy it and it should be big enough to be easily readable to you.
      6. Do you like the typewriter's look/style?
  3. Mar 2024
    1. Card Each drawer should be provided with a catchDrawers

      Given this date, he's potentially either giving advice to consumers about what to buy or manufacturers about how to design and improve their systems.

    1. My quick typewriter purchasing crash course: <br /> Most typewriters are solid beasts and can take a serious beating and still work really well. I've got 5 now that I bought for $10-50 and mostly really only needed small tweaks to work perfectly. One has an issue that will require some more heavy work, but having gotten it for $10, it's not really much of an issue. Several of them worked incredibly well right out of the box with no work at all. Occasionally kids will pound on the keys which can cause the linkages to come undone, but a pair of needle nose pliers and some patience to look at the mechanics of what's not working underneath can usually get them repaired without any real work. Beyond this there's a wealth of online videos and help that can get you pretty far without paying for a repair shop. Some are just old and dusty and need a quick cleaning with compressed air and/or a toothbrush.

      Ebay can tend to have heavily overinflated prices because a lot of folks think that all typewriters are rare. A very small percentage of some of the oldest are, but generally as a group they're not. If you don't want to fool around with repair issues you can purchase machines from repair shops serviced in full working condition from $75-200, but at least you can expect that they're nearly perfect beyond some small blemishes due to age. Sadly, a lot of places will list broken machines in questionable shape for this much because they see others listing (great machines) for the same amount. Don't fall prey to this. Some of the best places to look for functional machines are donation shops (Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc.) as well as yard sales or estate sales. Online sites like Facebook marketplace, https://shopgoodwill.com, or https://offerup.com can have inexpensive listings, but most are listed as untested because most folks don't know how to test them fully and are scared of them, but this is usually where you can find some great deals. You can also ask for typewriters on https://buynothingproject.org/ or a Facebook group for your particular area.

      If you're able to test things in person, it can help to have some blank paper or index cards and even a universal ribbon ($5-15, in case the old ribbon is missing or too old and dry to work) with you. Then you can put in paper, try out each key (with/without shift), and all the other buttons, knobs, and switches as well as the margin stops, and the bell. Most folks listing them are well aware they're not actually selling for prices over $50 and will be open for 10-25% discounts off of what they're listing them for. I will mention that I bought one machine as dirt cheap because someone had it on the stencil setting (rather than the usual black or red ribbon settings) and they didn't know that this meant it wouldn't type anything visible. A quick flip of the switch after purchase and I was on my way.

      r/typewriters is a wealth of information as are https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/index.html and https://typewriterdatabase.com/. Usually, you can't go too far wrong with one of the most popular models which are generally ranked at https://typewriterdatabase.com/popular.0.typewriter-models.

      Good luck!

  4. Jan 2023
    1. Using a modified version of Köhler’s method, recent research has found that in 2015 drain from the South through unequal exchange amounted to $2.1 trillion (constant 2011 dollars), represented in Northern prices (Hickel et al., 2021). Köhler’s proxy approach is limited in several respects, however. It relies on PPP figures that do not adequately account for the comparatively high prices of Northern exports; it relies on GDP figures that are affected by the low prices of imports from the South; and it compares Southern exports to prices across whole economies, rather than to those of only traded goods. All of this leads to underestimating the scale of drain (see Hickel et al., 2021).

      !- comment : recent history of calculating unequal exchange - The authors, particularly Hickel have tried to estimate the drain in the past using other techniques but the recent technique of EORA I/O tables proves to be the most accurate to date, revealing a true and larger figure that previous estimates

    1. I've seen a bunch of people sharing this and repeating the conclusion: that the success is because the CEO loves books t/f you need passionate leaders and... while I think that's true, I don't think that's the conclusion to draw here. The winning strategy wasn't love, it was delegation and local, on the ground, knowledge.

      This win comes from a leader who acknowledges people in the stores know their communities and can see and react faster to sales trends in store... <br /> —Aram Zucker-Scharff (@Chronotope@indieweb.social) https://indieweb.social/@Chronotope/109597430733908319 Dec 29, 2022, 06:27 · Mastodon for Android

      Also heavily at play here in their decentralization of control is regression toward the mean (Galton, 1886) by spreading out buying decisions over a more diverse group which is more likely to reflect the buying population than one or two corporate buyers whose individual bad decisions can destroy a company.

      How is one to balance these sorts of decisions at the center of a company? What role do examples of tastemakers and creatives have in spaces like fashion for this? How about the control exerted by Steve Jobs at Apple in shaping the purchasing decisions of the users vis-a-vis auteur theory? (Or more broadly, how does one retain the idea of a central vision or voice with the creative or business inputs of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of others?)

      How can you balance the regression to the mean with potentially cutting edge internal ideas which may give the company a more competitive edge versus the mean?

  5. Jul 2020
  6. Jun 2020
    1. anchoring products - stating what products would otherwise sell for, while advocating that purchasers buy sooner than later such that they receive the products for cheap

      -> creation of urgency

    2. particularization and discrete-formation of activity - activity is reduced from an ambiguous relationship of activities to singular "do this" or "do that" activities for ambiguous "success"

    3. "People buy off emotion and not logic."

  7. Mar 2017
    1. Furthermore, you don’t really need to keep the boxes for new but cheap products.
    2. Most return periods are anywhere from 14-90 days, and if there’s even the slightest inkling that you might return the item within that time window, you’ll want to keep the box and any paperwork that came with it. Most stores require that you include everything that came with the item when you return it, including the box, so be sure to check the store’s return policy before throwing everything away.
    3. depends on a number of different factors, including what the item is, how old it is, how much it’s worth, and whether or not you care about the resale value in the first place.