asciilifeform: here we sorta have the opposite - as you cut, you liberate mosquitoes and earth wasps (or what are they called?) and they go straight for your flesh.
asciilifeform: and the thing was cheap, lunch money. let go for pennies by the last fella who tried to get the battery.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: cord is a bitch on this hilly terrain. tends to get run over.
asciilifeform: i went today to a specialist who deals in rare batteries, and he just gave me a pitying look.
asciilifeform: perhaps BingoBoingo has encountered such items, in his work.☟︎
asciilifeform: ed with chinese SPECIFICALLY to make this.
asciilifeform: the 'enforced obsolescence' thing is sop even in something as boring as yard tools. not long ago, i bought an electric grass-cutter thing. works great, but battery holds a charge for perhaps 10 min! vendor used to sell the 36v battery pack for ~200 usd. extortionate, in there are 3 12v lead acid cells. which are 50mm wide, precisely, and no replacement sold anywhere in the world fits in the container! they, turns out, contract
asciilifeform: incidentally all this was, afaik, ~before~ self-destructing printer cartridges and other mundane implementations of this crud became common
asciilifeform: 'In ROUGHING IT there is an interesting account of a bandit named Slade, who, among countless other outrages, had committed twenty-eight murders. It is perfectly clear that Mark Twain admires this disgusting scoundrel. Slade was successful; therefore he was admirable. This outlook, no less common today, is summed up in the significant American expression 'to MAKE GOOD'. '
asciilifeform: recall how orwell pissed his panties over it?
asciilifeform: it is interesting to note the extent to which the 'code' folks succeeded. 19th c. usa was a place where rogues, bandits, brigands of every conceivable sort - were popular heroes
asciilifeform: almost as if the 'hollywood code' never died..
