In which I refrain

On November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I did not buy anything this Black Friday,(*) not because of any particular moral stand or distaste toward capitalism, but mostly because nothing really crossed my radar that I wanted to buy. I did check lego.com this morning to see if there were any deals I was interested in; there were not.

I did manage to talk myself out of buying something; my wife and I have been talking about how we don’t want to get each other any Useless Crap this Christmas, and we mostly want to avoid getting the boy any Useless Crap as well. I have had my eyes on the odachi in the image above for a couple of weeks now, and I believe that I’ve successfully convinced myself not to buy it, and for the most ridiculous reason imaginable: an odachi is the kind of sword you use if you need to cut a horse in half. They are so big that there is apparently a school of Japanese historians that believe the swords were never actually used in combat at all. This particular one is 78″ long– six and a half feet.

My house has eight foot ceilings. My wingspan, fingertip to fingertip, and yes, I just went and measured, is right about 70″. There is, in other words, virtually nowhere in my house where I could unsheathe this giant bastard without worrying abut breaking things, and resheathing it afterward under any circumstances would be a challenge. Now, none of my little goofy-ass pile of weapons is ever going to see combat, fake or otherwise, so it’s not like I’m going to be doing sword practice in my living room or something like that, but if I’m gonna buy a sword that’s eight inches longer than my actual height, I’d like to be able to take it out of its sheath and swing the fucker around once in a while, and that would be absolutely impossible to do inside my house.

Which would require me to go outside carrying a six and a half foot long sword, and swing it around like a dork in my back yard, and while my lawn is fairly private, that’s not something I’m going to allow even a chance of someone else seeing. So, as sad as it makes me, no odachi for me.

(Given the price point, the sword in question is likely junk anyway, but again: I’m not buying these things for combat.)

Fun fact: the largest odachi ever forged is the fifteen foot long, 165-pound Great Evil-Crushing Blade, probably forged in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century.

I suspect I can’t afford that one.

(*) Upon reflection, not quite true– I impulse-bought my son an inexpensive Christmas present from what I believe is a small business. So I guess I spent, like, $15 on Black Friday, without leaving the house. Or did I do that yesterday? Hell, I don’t remember.

First world problems

On September 6, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy9 Comments

My current phone is an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Apple is a few days away from announcing the iPhone 17, and my phone has reached the point where on most days I have to charge it for a bit while I’m at my desk or doing something else; the battery isn’t getting through a full day reliably any longer. I used to replace my phone almost every year more or less whether I “needed” to or not; I’ve gotten out of that habit with the last few phones as they’ve gotten steadily more expensive.

So here’s my dumb problem: I don’t really want an iPhone 17 of any particular stripe, although it’d be highly unlikely that I would order anything other than another Pro Max. Not because I’m thinking of switching back to Android– I am Apple’s bitch now and forever, and am too thoroughly tied into their ecosystem to even seriously consider switching– but because their foldable phone is rumored to be coming out in 2026.

Rumors for the price of the foldable iPhone have ranged between two thousand and two thousand five hundred dollars, and that’s before whatever tariff fuckery might happen between now and next September.

That’s … a hell of a lot of money. And it’s even more money if I spend the $1200 or whatever I’m going to pay for a 17 in between now and then. And it’s also money that would be spent on a first-generation Apple product in a category that, so far, phone manufacturers have not exactly been covering themselves in glory with. Foldable phones are tricky as hell, and from what I’ve seen so far no one has really nailed the tech yet.

Now, for a sensible person who doesn’t have a spending problem, this isn’t actually a hard decision. I hold onto my current phone until it’s genuinely untenable to keep using it; if that’s before the Fold is released, well, that sucks, but it happened, and if the Fold comes out and I don’t like the price or something else about it (or they delay it, or the rumors are wrong, or or or … ) I just buy whatever the equivalent of my current phone is at that time.

That’s the sensible approach. But the sensible approach ignores the fact that I’ve been fighting off the newshiny for three years already, and I am maybe more sensitive than I should be to being annoyed by my phone– part of the reason I have a Pro Max is that I don’t like having to think about battery charge pretty much ever– and, like, September is the month you buy new phones. I recognize that all of this is stupid; that’s why I titled the post the way I did.

I could, in theory, try a smaller phone for a year, instead of buying the most expensive phone in their lineup. What would that be like? I don’t even know. But it would cut the pain a little bit if I decide to upgrade a year later.

Anyway. I have no common sense, but that’s why I have readers, who I assume are smarter people than me. What say you? Put up with bullshit for another year assuming I’ll want to trade up in 2026, upgrade but with a less expensive model so that it’s not as big of a hit in a year (worth pointing out: the trade-in will get me money back) or assume that I’ll manage to talk myself out of spending laptop money on a phone a year from now and just get the phone I’d be getting if I didn’t know anything about the Fold?

Saturday night quiz

On August 3, 2024August 3, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Before you are three watches. One of those watches retails for $8400. A second costs $4750. The final watch is $236. The watches are all from the same manufacturer and from the same website.

No cheating: which one is which?

Please please please vote, as I’m trying to figure something out here. Feel free to explain your reasoning in comments, but that’s not completely necessary. I’ll reveal the answers in a couple of days, depending on how many votes I get.

In which I’m in trouble

On May 12, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

Allow me, if you will, to show you a picture from a few weeks ago of one of my bookshelves:

Direct your attention to the upper left of that picture. Now look at this:

I’ve made this distinction before: my wife reads a lot too, right? Not as much as I do, but more than most people. My wife and I are both readers, but I have a second hobby, which is that I collect books. My wife distinctly and definitely does not collect books. We would be in desperate trouble if she did. She buys perhaps a couple a year and most of the time exists off of rereads and reading books I’ve bought.

I feel like I’ve crossed a line lately.

I’ve never really liked the covers to the Red Rising books, particularly the specific ones I own. If you look really closely at the dust jackets in the top cover you’ll notice a couple of small tears in Golden Son and a rub mark in the bottom of Iron Gold, both signs that I got the books from Amazon, because I wouldn’t have bought them from a physical store with flaws in them. Those awesome covers are not new books– I actually special-ordered custom dust jackets from Juniper Books to replace the original dust jackets on my hardcovers. Which I’m keeping, of course, although I’m not entirely sure why.

I’ve found myself really tempted by special editions of books I already own lately, too, especially if their original covers annoyed me in some way. For example, I think whoever is responsible for this abomination should be literally pilloried:

…and, as it turns out, there’s site called the Broken Binding that offers these fucking beautiful bastards, at the low low cost of $150 for four books I already own:

And, Goddammit, I’m tempted. Sorely tempted. I just kicked ass at work and I feel like I can justify rewarding myself, but shit, that’s a lot of money, for something just to look better on a shelf, which … feels unreasonable, even to me?

I dunno. My birthday’s July 5?

(I also keep almost ordering this hat, not because I think it would look good on me but because the model in the picture is rocking it, and I feel like maybe ordering clothing I can’t wear because it makes a different human look good is maybe a sign that having a small amount of discretionary money is starting to get to me. Can I just shift into Saves Money Guy for a few years, please? Enough for a decent emergency fund, or at least to pay for the new fucking computer I’m probably going to need soon without putting it on a card?)

(We won’t talk about how much of my money Lego is currently trying, and failing, to take from me.)

Sigh.

In which Taylor Swift did it again

On April 20, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Music1 Comment

I pre-ordered Midnights, Taylor Swift’s last studio album, only to discover when I got up on release day that she’d released a previously-unannounced deluxe “3 AM” edition with several extra tracks three fucking hours after the base version of the album released. She waited three hours and then released an entire new version of the album while I have to assume the vast majority of the people who had preordered were still fucking asleep and hadn’t had time to even listen to Midnights yet.

When The Tortured Poets Department got announced, with a pre-order available, although you could, if you wanted to, spend $1.99 to download something or another that was eight seconds long, I decided there were probably going to be shenanigans afoot again and decided not to pre-order the thing this time. It didn’t look like she was releasing any singles anyway, and she didn’t.

iTunes insisted that the thing was coming out on the 21st, so I was a little surprised when my wife let me know yesterday that it was out already. And that I’d been exactly right– Taylor had pulled the exact same bullshit move again, only worse— that now the new version was a fucking double album, and was clearly the version that she intended to release, for a dollar more than the original pre-order price, and a different cover, and yep, you can still order the original, half-length version if you want to … and every single person who pre-ordered it got the inferior version, because no fucker anywhere knew the “Anthology” version even existed prior to it being released a few hours after the fake-out version.

I have come around on her music after many years of loathing her, but holy shit, is this a bullshit move, and the people it’s hurting the most are her biggest fans. I can’t believe I’m not hearing more about it; maybe it’s a function of the fact that most people stream nowadays. I don’t know what proportion of her fanbase is still buying digital music rather than streaming it. One way or another, I feel like she– and by definition, Apple, as well as whoever else might have been involved in this– owes her fans either a fucking way to get a refund or a way to buy the extra tracks for a dollar. This is an absolute fucking asshole move.

Never, ever, pre-order a Taylor Swift album, kids.

(I haven’t listened to it yet, by the way. The new Pearl Jam album is, after four more listens in addition to the two in the theater, absolutely fucking phenomenal, and it’s absorbed my attention. I’ll give it a spin this weekend sometime.)

Speaking of doing things wrong

On July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Project Buy All The Things continues apace; this one was practically an accident, as we weren’t in the market for a new refrigerator until Lowe’s decided to put them on an absolutely ludicrous sale– this particular fridge was $800 off. This is the second new fridge we bought this week as the first one was too Goddamned big to be brought into the kitchen; they have a “will this fit?” tool on their website to avoid specifically that problem that I didn’t notice until after a very nice and patient delivery man, clearly expecting to get his ass chewed out, apologetically informed me that there was no way that they were going to get the damned thing into my kitchen. Various fuckery ensued and long story short an only slightly inferior refrigerator is now in our kitchen, although there were some scary moments getting this one in as well– I actually had to pull some trim from a doorway last night to ensure we had enough room, and even then it was about literally as tight as it could possibly be; you can see where the missing trim is in the doorway behind the fridge. I’ll put it back tomorrow. We’ll have to repaint a bit but we needed to do that anyway.

Those of you who are either particularly eagle-eyed or have a good memory will note that there is a nook that appears to be for a refrigerator on the left side of the picture there, and yet the New Hotness is rather oddly perched against a wall in the middle of the damn kitchen. The problem is that any fridge that fits into that space has to be smaller than we want it to be and we’re going to reno the kitchen eventually anyway, as soon as we get done paying off the bathroom we did last year. We just decided to jump on the fridge early. Yeah, it’s awkward, fuck it.

Tomorrow, I review a pillow. For at least the second time.

On boycotts, again

On February 13, 2023 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics6 Comments

I am, and have been for many years, boycotting Chick-fil-A.

Why? Well, you probably already know: the company and its ownership are far too mired in anti-LGBTQ bigotry for me to be willing to give them my money. Critically, I would like to give them my money, as their chicken is fucking delicious and I have two Chick-fil-A restaurants within easy dining distance. I am both capable of eating at Chick-fil-A and, were they to recant their bullshit, entirely willing to eat at Chick-fil-A. I miss their Goddamn sandwiches. That is, you see, what makes it a boycott. I’m also not eating at Jack In The Box. They don’t exist in my part of the country, so it’s not a boycott even if they gave all of their proceeds directly to Nazis. I don’t eat at Applebee’s despite their easy availability because by and large I think their food is garbage. That’s not a boycott either.

I am– and this is far from the first time I’ve said this here– not willing to call something a boycott unless I am deliberately withholding my money from a business or other organization, for political reasons, when in the absence of said political beliefs I would be both willing and able to spend my money with that business or organization. And before I wrote this post I actually sat down and spent some time looking into Tesla to see if I could afford one. The surprising answer: under certain circumstances, yes, so the fact that I will never willingly purchase a Tesla because Elon Musk is a shitstain actually takes precedence over the fact that they have that weird habit of catching on fire or running children over. I wouldn’t buy one if they were good cars. Which kinda makes me think I should rework my definition a bit, because there needs to be som room for “This thing sucks and I hate it, but even if it didn’t suck I wouldn’t buy it because politics.” It’s also kind of weird to talk about boycotting something like a car company, where I’ve had the same car since 2018 and have no intention of replacing it anytime soon. I’m not buying another Kia anytime soon either, and I drive one of those right now.

But anyway. That’s actually not the point.

I just today became aware of an app called Goods Unite Us, which purports to allow you to look up companies to find out where they direct their political contributions that you can … well, so that you can do whatever you want with that information, I suppose. And what triggered this post was me thinking about exactly how far the don’t want none won’t be none policy goes, and whether I should be applying it to corporations. That’s always been my policy regarding people; J.K. Rowling and Dan Simmons and Orson Scott Card and insert whoever here have all made it very clear that they are boils on humanity’s collective asshole, so I don’t read their shit any longer. It’s entirely possible that any of the authors I do read torture puppies in their spare time; the deal is, I’m not gonna go looking, but if you make your jackassery clear in public, well, I’m going to respond accordingly.

But what about corporations? Is the line there the same? I mean, the single corporation that I spend the most money with is absolutely Amazon, and it’s not close, and I know Amazon is shady as fuck, beyond a shadow of a damn doubt. Has that altered my behavior? No. The second-highest, at least before I start looking at bills, is my local comic shop, and the owners run the place. I have abandoned a comic shop in the past when the owner turned out to be an asshole, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to turn out to be the case with these folks. Beyond that … Target, maybe? A restaurant of some sort? Verizon? Are we counting the bank that holds my mortgage? My local credit union?

And the thing is, capitalism (and America) being what they are, I know full and Goddamn well that if I look hard enough I’m going to find something shitty about just about everybody sooner or later, or at least “everybody” in the context of large companies or corporations. How much research do I owe it to myself/my ideals/whatever to do, and where’s the line on corporate malfeasance? Like, it’s interesting to me that I dropped Chick-fil-A when on balance Amazon is almost certainly more destructive than they are. But CFA’s evil is specific, and I can point to how what they do harms friends of mine. Amazon is shitty but I’m not sure I can point to a specific policy of theirs that has caused harm to someone I know. They treat their workers like shit and are viciously anti-union; I am myself a literal union member, but the one person I know who worked at Amazon actually liked the job.

There is also the minor detail that part of the reason I use Amazon for nearly everything nowadays is because Amazon has been so destructive and has made it so difficult for brick and mortar businesses to stay alive. I don’t go to a brick and mortar any longer unless I know I can find what I’m looking for there; the notion that I might hit three or four stores looking for something is just no longer a part of my experience.

I dunno. I’m mostly thinking out loud here, and I find it useful to occasionally step back and examine my decisions and thought processes on these things once in a while. What about you? Will you use that app? Under what circumstances?