We Lost Our Ability to Mend - <AUTHOR> https://dieworkwear.com/post/182126040434/how-we-lost-our-ability-to-mend <comment><USER4> A friend was recently complaining about having to buy a new $2000 fridge, how his old one only lasted 8 years, and how everything is junk nowadays. He described the symptoms to me [gradual loss of cooling capability, soft ice cream, then melting ice cubes] and I told him I solved the same problem 2 years ago and his was almost surely a broken defrost heater leading to a totally iced up [therefore no airflow] cooling unit, that troubleshooting would take him 15 minutes to confirm, and if that was it, it was a $20 90-minute repair (most of which is waiting for the freezer to defrost).

He looked at me like I had 3 heads to even consider a fridge repair and a week or so later sent me a pic of his new, $2000 fridge in place. I tried.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, I had a not-too-old fridge with a broken ice maker, which I tried to repair. The replaceable part was "the whole ice maker", which was out of production and not available anywhere. With some knowledge of electronics and 3d printing, I could probably get it working again, but at the cost of multiple hours of my free time, with no guarantee of success. The best intentions can't always defeat planned obsolescence.

<comment><USER6> this!

It's almost my story as well.

My microwave I had for 8 years (and I got it second hand) stopped working. A quick inspection + watching a couple of YouTube videos revealed that a plastic latch inside the door got broken.

It would have been very easy to replace it if only it was still being sold. Extensive search on the internet showed it was not :( :( :(

If only I had some time (well a LOT of time) to reverse engineer the existing latch and 3D-print a new one... But I did not.

So, I had to put the microwave outside on my curb. I attached a note to it saying it works well if the latch is fixed and also attached the broken latch.

I was happy to see it was gone in a few hours. I live in a city (Montreal, Canada) so I guess it helped my microwave to not be wasted.

I wish 3D-printing technologies - or more precisely, a technology that helps to create 3D specs out of an existing object - would be more advanced. Well, I did not do an extensive search about it so I may be well mistaken :)

<comment><USER7> I often find it much faster for me to "widdle" small parts using my "art" skills. Just get a piece of plastic or metal and a dremal and carve it. In 30 min you will have a latch... making a 3d printing model takes forrrrrevvverrr

<comment><USER8> One advantage of 3D printers is that the part you need might already be designed, you can find all sorts of things on thingiverse. Once the design exists any number of people can use it.

<comment><USER6> Good suggestion, I did not think of search _3D printing designs_. The model of my microwave is pretty common. Oh well.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.youmagine.com/](https://www.youmagine.com/) is another one to check on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Five years ago, a friend convinced me to start buying $250+ raw denim jeans instead of $30 regular jeans (which would wear out every 6 months).

I thought it was crazy but he swore by them so I tried it. They were thick, stiff and uncomfortable at first, but after a couple months had transformed themselves into my favorite thing ever as they "wore in".

After a year of everyday wear they start developing holes. But they're far too expensive to throw away, so first I took them to the local "denim surgeon", but then realized I could learn to darn them myself.

I bought myself the cheapest Singer sewing machine, a darning attachment, and specialty denim thread, and in the past 4 years have probably darned 30 holes across 3 pair, also reinforcing button holes and pocket edges. They look great and unique and are completely "me". I have no doubt the jeans will last me for another 10 years at least, and will turn out to have saved me money in the long run (crazy!).

It's very satisfying to have things you care for, that aren't disposable, and are worth the effort of maintaining. But really, the only clothing items for men that seem to be constructed with enough quality in the first place to be _worth_ maintaining are things like raw denim jeans, leather boots (e.g. Red Wings) and quality leather jackets.

<comment><USER10> Speaking of sewing machines, while you can always get an inexpensive Brother, sewing machines today have a lot of plastic gears and other parts that do not last.

Some of the best and affordable machines out there are the Singer 301s, which were made back in the 50s. They're bullet proof and repairable. You can do a lot with a straight stitch machine, and a single use machine like that will outperform any multi-stitch machine by a long way.

It's a shame that a lot of people come across these and think they're junk because they're not computerized.

<comment><USER11> I have two old sewing machines, I picked both up at the local refuse transfer station. One is a 1920s Singer. It's super basic, doesn't even have a reverse, but it's bullet proof. It's cast iron but a portable model, so it's built in to a carry case and weighs 'only' 20ish kg.

The second is a Toyota Jigline. It's from the 70s and is mostly stainless steel. It has multiple stitch patterns but the pattern selector has the only plastic gear in the entire machine and it's cracked. It still works fine but I'll have to replace it at some point. At least I can see and understand the entire mechanism.

The Toyota was cheap but the Singer was around market price. The Toyota was marked as not worked but with a liberal application of machine oil it came free. There are plenty of guides online for fixing up machines.

<comment><USER12> > "One is a 1920s Singer. It's super basic, doesn't even have a reverse, but > it's bullet proof."

That goes for much earlier models too. Recently, during a factory clean-up, I came across a Singer that predates yours by some 50 years—it was made in the early 1870s—1874 to be precise—and it too was built out of cast iron and made to last seemingly for ever (it was still quite functional).

Incidentally, you can tell the date of your Singer easily by by checking the many Singer serial number databases on the Web. Here's a couple to start with:

[http://www.sewingshop.com/dateyourmachine.aspx](http://www.sewingshop.com/dateyourmachine.aspx)

[https://sewalot.com/dating_singer_sewing_machine_by_serial_n...](https://sewalot.com/dating_singer_sewing_machine_by_serial_number.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The other side of the coin is seeing someone identify an "easy fix," have to spend hours reading about it, buying tools to accomplish it and having to do it several times and maybe never get it quite right.

I've seen this many times.

Sometimes the right answer is: get an expert to look at it. You don't need a $2000 fridge, but you may need a $200 repair job to get it done fast and right.

<comment><USER14> Tools have an upfront cost, but they pay for themselves down the line. The first time you start fixing things it might take longer, but as time goes on you get better.

You can learn so much by reading repair manuals & books, watching youtube videos, and being able to recognize patterns in other things you have repaired.

Doing this will save you tens of thousands of dollars over the years. Furnace, A/C, House appliances, Home repairs, Furnitures, Cars, computers, even clothes & shoes...

<comment><USER15> Spending that time on my career will net me more than worrying about or learning about something so infrequent and boring as fridge repair.

A 20min job is 20mins often because it took hundreds - or in the case of professionals, thousands - of hours of learning, practicing, and experimenting.

Of course everyone's utility function is different, but my free time is at a heavy heavy premium. I'm happy to spend money where it gets me time in return.

<comment><USER14> Other things outside of your career can teach you much and help you get better in your career.

My growth today in IT has very little to do with IT, I'm taking much lessons from other industries. Want to learn to build reliable systems, serious study the airline industry, how do they build such reliable systems? Want to learn how to troubleshoot and solve problems fast? How does your typical ER work?

There's much to learn from cross pollinating ideas from other fields. Most of us in IT are not just lovers of computers, but just builders. We are lucky to be born in this time in history, 100 yrs ago, we might be building cars or other sort of mechanical devices.

<comment><USER15> Sure but I choose my hobbies based on my interests.

I truly do not care about repairing fridges. Not even a little bit. Yes I'm an engineer. Still don't care. Don't care about repairing my car either.

Some people feel so righteous about repair for some reason and it just doesn't make sense to me. Why would someone want to impose how they spend their time on other people? If you enjoy it, that's great keep doing it! Doesn't mean I have to spend my time that way.

I'm just going to get the thing fixed (even if it costs more money) and just move on with my life.

To you point though, if I was really into something then I might be up for it! But fridges? Low on my list.

<comment><USER16> I get your point, but have to say I interpreted your previous post as "why would I do something that doesn't maximise profits?" I like messing with electronical/mechanical devices of all kinds, so I'll try to repair most things myself. If you dislike that kind of work, fine, but only caring about money is going to rub many people up the wrong way.

<comment><USER17> > I interpreted your previous post as "why would I do something that doesn't > maximise profits?"

And then people wonder why they are miserable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not every day my worlds collide like this, so I'll plug [https://freesewing.org/](https://freesewing.org/) for those of you who have an interest in making clothes and are looking for a place to start that is a good match for the hackernews crowd.

Full disclosure: I'm the freesewing maintainer

<comment><USER19> That's a cool site!

You might want to redirect [http://](http://) to [https://](https://) right now if I type "freesewing.org" into my browser it heads to a "Apache2 Debian Default Page".

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the heads-up, I had no idea. I'll fix it ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article talks about clothing, but there's so much more that we've lost the ability to fix.

A trick I picked up at my last job was to use Rubber Renue[0] (one bottle will last virtually forever since you need so little) on the pickup rollers on laser printers when they started having paper pickup problems. Works like a charm, but that stuff is nasty. I also learned the delicate art of using a screwdriver to scrape toner deposits off of the fuser. In both cases, these are parts that are easily replaceable because the printers were designed to be maintained, but tight budgets made repairing the parts necessary. Ironically, the deposits on the fuser were due to budgets that necessitated buying cheap knockoff toner.

I still use the Rubber Renue on my 12-year-old printer at home. My girlfriend's reaction to my printer jamming was "It's time to buy a new printer!", which horrified me because the problem is so minor and so easy to fix. We do want a colour printer though, so I've been researching to find one that's maintainable instead of disposable. So far the laser printers from the usual suspects (Brother, HP) look like they haven't been affected by the same disposable mentality that inkjet printers have.

[0] [https://www.mgchemicals.com/products/cleaning-products- for-e...](https://www.mgchemicals.com/products/cleaning-products-for- electronics/cleaners/specialty-cleaners/rubber-renue-408a-408b)

<comment><USER21> For printers I've learned to look beyond the known brands. OKI seems to be focused on the professional market but has some very great value home printers. Big & clunky but can do a lot and look very solid.

<comment><USER20> OKI showed up during my research, but I didn't mention them since they're a relative unknown to me. They have some printers that tick all the boxes though, so they're certainly in the running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm old enough to know how to mend, but surely even younger people could just watch one of countless Youtube tutorials if they suddenly decided they'd like to learn this? Knowledge is more accessible than ever before, nowadays we just "know where to look" whereas previous generations knew what they were taught (or, sometimes, learnt from books).

The real issue seems to be that people are helpless without the Internet - <USER3> that our consumerism has brought a throwaway mentality with it.

<comment><USER23> You're right that YouTube has a lot of helpful videos for repair / disassembly that make it a lot easier than it used to be. I don't know why "being helpless without the internet" would be "the real problem" though, given that we ... have the internet..?

The _real_ problem is that today's technology is generally much more complicated than it used to be. Also manufacturers don't expect things to be repaired (because it isn't cost effective unless you do it yourself) so they don't make things easy to disassemble.

<comment><USER24> _> The real problem is that today's technology is generally much more complicated than it used to be._

I broadly disagree - the proportion of people who can fix a TV is probably no lower now than it was in the 1970s; a modern TV might be more complex, but the accessibility of information, tools and parts is far better.

The wider issue is the broadly positive fact that automation has drastically reduced the cost of goods relative to labour. The range of products and failure modes that are economically repairable is much narrower, because repair is relatively more expensive and replacement is relatively cheaper. Generally speaking, the most expensive part of repairing a TV is simply the labour cost of dismantling and reassembling it. As mentioned in the article, paying a seamstress to patch a jacket or darn a sweater is often more expensive than just buying a new one. There are worse problems in the world than "we've got so good at making stuff cheaply that it isn't worth the effort to fix it".

<comment><USER25> Modern flat screens are much more likely to be glued together in ways that make it nearly impossible to repair them, too.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. Had part of the bottom LED backlighting strip go bad on a monitor recently. I'm no stranger to electronics work, but repairing it proved impossible due to the way the monitor was manufactured, even if I had been able to source proper replacements. Compare that to old CRTs I used to repair in high school by swapping out parts you could often find at radio shack and get to with just a screwdriver.

<comment><USER27> Much higher risk of death with a CRT though.

<comment><USER26> True, but not too much higher if you're careful to ground out the HV circuitry before you touch anything. It's also not nearly as high a risk as people tend to think [1].

[1] [http://lowendmac.com/2007/the-truth-about-crts-and-shock- dan...](http://lowendmac.com/2007/the-truth-about-crts-and-shock-danger/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have a good paying job, yet I 100% will pick up major appliances or lawn mowers from the garbage if they are somewhat recent with no shame. It is very rare that they have some issue that is worth discarding over. I get tons of junk mail and behind a doctor's office they threw out a $1700 heavy duty paper shredder. It turned out to be a dead hall field sensor to detect when it jams. $25 from fellowes.

<comment><USER29> That's cool but watch out for hoarding. While I agree with picking up discarded fixable or like new appliances, there are so many of them out there that one may end up hoarding.

<comment><USER30> My wife learned that youth shelters/foster parenting agencies need suitcases to help the children move their clothing and stuff around. The usual alternative children get: garbage bags.

We collected up suitcases off the curb that in theory need minor mending (no smells, certain problems left behind), and over time the backlog has built up. Time is also an ingredient, here; in the best case it takes fifteen minutes to prep a curb suitcase, in the worst (cleaning stains, etc.) the suitcase might need to sit around in a ventilated area for days over the course of treatment.

<comment><USER31> Do you never wonder about stuff like bed bugs when you pick up stuff like suitcases off the street? I feel like I'm overly paranoid about that.

<comment><USER32> Have a friend who had a habit of picking up furniture etc from the side of the road, and (perhaps related) got bedbugs. I am very very hesitant to do the same.

<comment><USER30> Even I would hesitate to pick up upholstered furniture from the side of the road.

<comment><USER32> Definitely, but I would use a similar amount of caution with used luggage. Luggage is used for visiting many places, left in hotel rooms and overhead bins (high traffic areas), hold clothes, lots of seams and nooks and crannies ... pretty ideal bedbug territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> When I was studying, I used to turn my round neck shirts into V neck by cutting the middle and stitching. Just for fun and it thought me how to stitch, at least to a point.

Today it is not about knowing, it is about time. I can't spend 30 minutes fixing my clothes because my 30 minutes is more valuable than a tshirt's cost. Or I don't want to deal with ordering glue for my shoe and work on fixing it, I take it to a shoe repair and get it fixed for $10.

Things got more convenient than war times. We don't need to turn potato sack burlap into clothing anymore. Although, I also believe a man should know how to stitch a button if they need to. I want people to repair electronics rather than clothing.

<comment><USER34> >I can't spend 30 minutes fixing my clothes because my 30 minutes is more valuable than a tshirt's cost.

I think it's a mistake that we value our own time like this. There's satisfaction that can be derived from spending time mending some of your own clothing, and that contributes to wellbeing. That wellbeing is not something that you can put a dollar value on.

<comment><USER35> Platitudes like that often don't work out in practice. Take my life for example; what do you suggest I substitute in return for time spent mending clothes?

* Time spent with the family / kids? That contributes far more to my wellbeing (and theirs). Sure I could mend my clothes with the kids but that isn't something they'd enjoy (nor me to be quite honest) and there are already enough chores I make them do as a family.

* How about time spent cooking and cleaning? But unfortunately I already pay different people to wash the windows, clean the house, mow the lawn... there isn't much less responsibility I can hand off there.

* I guess I could spend less time tinkering with my own hobby projects - but that amounts to very few hours a week and given it's my own personal time, I think I should do what I find more rewarding and relaxing and that isn't mending old clothes.

I barely get time in the week to do fun things as it is. I mean stuff like going on bike rides with my eldest son (who's 5) and I certainly don't get any time to look after my own personal health (I used to run 5k several times a week - it's not much but it made a difference. These days I'm lucky if I get one 5k run in a week). So if I can outsource stuff I don't enjoy to someone else for a reasonable fee then my time is most certainly worth it.

<comment><USER36> Time on social media? That's what we adults _really_ do most of the time anyway.

<comment><USER35> Speak for yourself. I'm rarely on Facebook, don't do Twitter / Reddit / Instagram / whatever else. HN is my one social media vice and even that isn't something I generally visit on a weekend (usually just during the week if I need to take a mental break from coding). However today is the exception but my family are out of town and I'm in bed with a head cold so don't feel much up to being productive anyway.

This is also true for most adults I'm friends with - in that a couple might occasionally go on Facebook but most of them aren't heavy users of social media.

For context: on average we're late 30s and most of us have young kids. We didn't grow up with social media and we've have better things to fill our adult time with since social media become a "thing". So it's not something we spend a great amount of time on.

I'm sure yours (and a many other peoples) experience will differ but my point is you shouldn't generalise that adults spend a lot of time on social media because that isn't always true.

<comment><USER36> Well I'm 41 and have kids, so your age card is poorly played. Most people of my generation spend their life on social media, I know that for a fact.

Speaking of the milage, I took the liberty to glance at your HN account stats. You appear to be a more prolific poster than I am, even though my account is couple years older.

Not judging mind you. I have my hobbies too, including a nice metalworking shop. But the proportion of time I stand at the lathe to me watching YouTube videos of people machining is tiny.

People in 21st century first world have a lot of disposable time. They also complain most about lack of it.

<comment><USER35> > _Well I 'm 41 and have kids, so your age card is poorly played. Most people > of my generation spend their life on social media, I know that for a fact._

I wasn't playing an "age card" \- I was adding context to why I don't use social media. Also I think you missed the part where I said:

 _I 'm sure yours (and a many other peoples) experience will differ but my point is you shouldn't generalise that adults spend a lot of time on social media because that isn't always true._

> _Speaking of the milage, I took the liberty to glance at your HN account > stats. You appear to be a more prolific poster than I am, even though my > account is couple years older._

I'd already addressed that point in my post: Yes I do spend a lot of time on HN. But only 5 minutes here and there during the week when I need a proverbial cigarette break. I don't generally use HN during the weekend. The fact I post a lot is really more a symptom of how opinionated I am rather than how much time I spend on HN.

> People in 21st century first world have a lot of disposable time. They also > complain most about lack of it.

You cannot generalise like that. Some people need to work multiple jobs just to keep their family fed and housed. Others - like me - have long commutes and busy homes to manage. You want to know my weekly schedule?

        06:00 get up and showered for work
        06:45 drive to train station
        07:00 catch train
        08:15 arrive in office
        16:15 leave for the evening
        18:45 get home, bath kids, read them a story then put them to bed
        20:00 do house work
        20:30 cook dinner
        21:00 eat while chatting to wife or watching some crap on TV
        21:30 down time
        22:00 bed

Granted that 30 minute downtime can be longer and shorter some days depending on how late I go to bed or how much housework we need to do. But I still wouldn't call that "lots of disposable time". The train to work is my disposable time and that's limited by what I can do on the train - which is usually sleeping because my youngest still wakes up _multiple times_ a night (aghhh!)

I wouldn't say I'm unique either nor that I don't have a lucky life (I have a family who love me, a good job, nice house in a good area and enough disposable income to afford a few luxuries). However I don't take kindly to people who assume that I have lots of disposable time. My kids or catching up on sleep is my disposable time and I get very little left after that.

So I suggest you don't make assumptions about other peoples lifestyles based off your own. It's a diverse world out there ;)

<comment><USER37> You could move closer to where you work, so you have a 15 minute bike ride to and from there every day, saving you two and a half hours. Use that time to mend things so that you save money, which you can use to pay for the more expensive house! Problem solved, you can thank me later...

<comment><USER35> I had decided I wasn't going to entertain this conversation anymore (on scarejunba's advice) but you do raise a good point there and that is something my wife and I have considered.

The problem is that would mean we'd either end up in a less desirable area (less greenery, higher crime rates, etc) or have much less disposable income. The closer you move towards London the sharper the rise in house prices - <USER3> it's quite significant too. Plus as I'm just 10 minutes drive from a direct fast line into central London so moving closer wouldn't actually save myself _that_ much in commute time (maybe half an hour each way if I'm lucky). So there just isn't the intensive to do so.

In fact my wife and I actually did the maths and the money we'd save on my season ticket (which is very expensive) wouldn't even come remotely close to the increased cost in housing. So spending that extra hour mending things wouldn't even scratch the surface. And to be honest, I quite like having that hour of relaxation time on the train ride home as it's uninterrupted me time - which means by the time I get home I've recharged my own proverbial batteries a little so are more energized with the kids. So the time with them is of a better quality.

I'm not suggesting this would work for everyone but there's a few other guys in my office that have the same routine and find it works for them too. In fact it's quite common for people who work in London to live a county or two away from the city and thus have long commutes.

Maybe when the kids are older and want to live in more urban areas, my wife and I might reconsider living this far out from the city. But personally I quite like the contrast of quiet village life after spending the day in the noisy capital.

<comment><USER37> Understood - I wasn't really serious! However, when I worked in the City back in the late nineties/early two thousands I lived in Islington (20ish minute walk, one stop on the tube) first, and then EC1 (10 minutes or less walking) and although you're right about paying more, as a contractor for a bank, it was still affordable. Plus, I never needed a season ticket, I could pop home for lunch, and it was an interesting area (near Hoxton, Shoreditch, and so on) to live. Admittedly I was much younger and not married, which would definitely change your priorities...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I recently bought a new backpack — it was a supposedly nice name brand backpack and pricey — 300 dollars or so. I didn't like it — it's dofficult to pack for the loads I carry and just very far from my optimal design.

I randomly came across a backpack in a used gear store in the mountains in Colorado, being sold on consignment — it was ancient, clearly a bag that had seen a lot of use with several patches. It's a huge u-zip backpack with quality padding, good hip/chest straps, three (useful!) fully exterior zip pockets — two clearly well suited for water/coffee, and nothing dangly. Intrigued by this packs design, so different from all the clone backpacking bags on the market now - I bought it used for 20 dollars. This is the best backpack I've ever owned! I use it as a rock climbing day pack and for longer trips with air travel - I can fit everything I need in it for multi month climbing trips to Europe.

But it's clearly very old. I packed too much weight into it and accidentally tried to pick it up once while accidentally standing on the hip strap — putting an enormous strain on the shoulder strap — which broke. This made for an unpleasant train journey in Wales until I arrived at my destination but fortunately I wasn't too far off. And also fortunately would be staying there for several months so didn't really need the bag for awhile.

During that time I went on a long fruitless search across the internet and brick and mortar stores to find a replacement. I searched everywhere and could not find a backpack that offered even a quarter of the joy I get from this old packs design ...

Fortunately — it turns out that mending expertise still exists in some part of the world and smallish town Wales is one such place. A friend suggested I check out a tailor to see if they could fix my broken backpack strap. Long story short — 13 pounds later — they did it!! I also asked them to reinforce the other strap.

Result: I couldn't be happier. The love and admiration I now have for this tailor is substantial. Fixing things is still possible — and fixing that are worth fixing is enormously valuable. Honestly I feel guilty to only have paid 13 pounds for the work of that expert seamstress - in the future I would pay 300 dollars to keep this bag going if I could rather than buying a new bag that is not fit for purpose from day one ...

<comment><USER39> I've had very good luck with cobblers for fixing hiking and camping gear. They have all the heavy needles and so forth needed to do repairs of thick materials. (And I suspect most are not completely overwhelmed with work.)

There are also specialty places that do outdoor equipment repair. Rainy Pass in Seattle was a name given to me for a backpack zipper repair but a friend ended up doing it for me.

<comment><USER40> The nice thing about outdoor gear is that the repairs don't have to be very aesthetic. I repair my own camping gear using my grandmother's old signer sewing machine. It's maybe 100 years old, but unlike modern sewing machines, the frame is cast iron and it can push a thick needle through almost anything.

It can't do the fancy embroidery stitches, but with some chalk, a seam ripper, and some thread you can repair almost anything. I had an old jacket where the outer shell was more empty space than fabric, and I was able to disassemble the coat, trace the pieces that needed to be assembled onto new fabric, and reassemble it again.

The argument that "it isn't worth my time to repair stuff" always grates on me. It makes sense to a certain extent, but there is a lot more to life than pure economic efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The teeth of a zipper on my backpack came detached from the tape material on the side of the zipper and a friend said that it looks like I would have to get a new backpack.

Well... it turned out that the teeth of the zipper are just a plastic string wrapped around a cord (and both still perfectly fine) and that stitching the cord back onto the tape material required not much more than some dexterity and accuracy. It took maybe half an hour from diagnose to the finished fixed zipper.

Bonus: feels empowering to do things that someone else considered impossible.

<comment><USER39> I had a zipper go recently in a way where the whole zipper did need replaced. I was annoyed to learn that at least my local REIs don't do repairs any longer like they did in the past. I'd have sent it out for repair to a company that specializes in outdoor gear repair but a friend of mine was able to do it for me. (I don't have a sewing machine myself and this really needed one.)

<comment><USER26> FYI in the future there might be a "luggage repair" place in your area that could do this work for you. Had the same thing happen to a backpack I really like and paid $50 to get the zipper replaced and a couple seams reinforced instead of buying a new one.

<comment><USER39> Never thought of that and I've even had luggage repaired. As I said in another comment, a cobbler could probably have done it as well though I'd probably have had to order the zipper myself in that case.

I think with outdoor gear, there's actually a certain cachet to gear that's obviously well-used and battle-scarred :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> During undergrad studies I used to wear a jacket with a cross-stitched logo from a game I was playing at the time. It was unbelievable how everyone assumed that it was my mother's doing. What bothered me was not the thing about the gender stereotype but the fact that putting a string in a needle and using it seems so hard for anyone from teenagers to grown up adult. Sometimes the barriers are just in the mind.

</comment><comment><USER43> We haven't lost our ability to mend. What has happened is people used to rely on material way back in the past to teach them how to mend. Today our products are constantly being upgraded / changes in real time. Those tutorials are often for specific types of products and those products now have radically different electronics and people when they see different products don't understand that the patterns in designing them are functionally identical. The circuit boards on the other hand might be slightly different. Long story short, if you want your stuff to last longer, stop buying into features, buy simple stuff. Simple works longer because it has less things to break. When the simple stuff does break, it's easier to figure out how to fix it.

Also I used to have DIY books which would have diagrams to help you fix things. Today all of those diagrams are worthless. Nobody has a rotary telephone anymore. No one has washing machines without circuit boards anymore. Even toilets have different flushing mechanisms, and if you don't know which one you have, you get worried you can't replace the original. Repairing VCR -- give me a break -- or a TV? I think the mending culture needs to start teaching people how electronics work, and then people will start to see the errors of their ways.

<comment><USER44> > _What has happened is people used to rely on material way back in the past > to teach them how to mend. Today our products are constantly being upgraded > / changes in real time._

When I was a kid, my Dad and I rebuilt a 1945 Ford 9N tractor from the ground up, including a complete engine teardown. Pistons, rings, valves, carburetor, distributor, points, plugs, the whole shebang. He'd undertaken a similar project in the 70s with his father, and it had served him well, allowing him to do his own maintenance on his used cars, keeping his TCO extremely low. They never had to worry about a car payment, and considered a lease to be for suckers.

Now, though, my car is somewhat more reliable but also hugely more complex. When something goes wrong, I don't need to remove a casting and clean some passage, I need my oscilloscope and some eBay spelunking for the dealer's computer manual.

It used to be reasonable for a home mechanic to be able to keep up with trends in auto manufacturing and be competent at every task they needed to do. Now I'm not sure a professional can keep up, without specializing.

Likewise, I'm an EE, and could probably repair a VCR -certainly done a few stereo recievers in my day. But when my dad (as mentioned above, of the repair mindset) sent me a picture of the PCB from a $30 kitchen appliance, showing an epoxied flip-chip controller and LCD zebra connector, I walked him through checking the batteries and that was reasonably all we could do to fix it. Knowing how to do electronics manufacturing profitably at scale is at cross paths with repairing those electronics.

<comment><USER45> > _Now I 'm not sure a professional can keep up, without specializing._

Professionals get maintenance manuals from manufacturers. They tell them how to unmount the broken part, and then say "OK, now buy a new one." No oscilloscopes involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Today, all things are too cheap. We need include the cost on the environment within the cost of our goods. Altering the price of goods is an extremely important mechanic to move us towards sustainability. It is ok for us to have fast fashion if it can be done in a non damaging way, if it cannot then we will have to learn to mend again.

<comment><USER47> re: environmentalism & "fast fashion"

There's an opportunity in there somewhere.

What if clothing were made to order locally?

I've been pitching the idea to any one who will listen. Many makerspaces already have stuff for textiles. Kids these are really into cosplay, crafts, homemade. Outside of a few STEM hubs, there's excess warehouse space AND untapped labor.

Etc.

The pendulum swings back.

<comment><USER48> While a child labor force sweating away over textiles in a rundown warehouse may be a classic business model, it could be a difficult idea to pitch nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I bought a used three-zone Weber Summit-series barbecue for a really good price. It was well-used. Many of the screws keeping it together were corroded and falling apart. There were a couple of holes in the main cooking box. I repaired and restored the entire grill to a very workable condition with the help of Weber, who sells replacement parts and offers great customer support. Unfortunately, I don't weld, so my solution to patching holes involved washers, nuts, screws, and custom cut sheet metal.

Restoring this grill required a few hours of labor and lots of patience. The grill retails for a few thousand dollars. I bought it for less than 10% retail, used and requiring repair. The parts cost less than 100.

Many of us value our personal time in a way that rationalizes avoiding a project such as this. However, the cost savings and value created by this project were sufficient to justify the effort.

I like to consider this strategic mending..

<comment><USER50> I know someone who picked up a stainless gas BBQ free from the curb in front of someone's house. It was in great condition, the burners and grills looked like it had hardly been used. New, it would have been in the $1000-2000 range. What was wrong with it? All it needed was a new AA battery for the ignitor!

<comment><USER20> My experience with gas BBQs is that the ignitor is usually the first thing to go. Usually, again in my experience, it happens due to corrosion of the ignitor itself. My solution is usually just to use a match, I find that the ignitor stops working so quickly that it's not worth replacing.

Replacing the grills, heat spreader, and burners however makes a lot of sense and can make an old BBQ virtually new again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's weird. We live in an age where many of us carry a device in our pockets capable of searching a vast store of human knowledge and presenting results to us nigh-instantaneously. If I have a problem with anything, even if I have no idea how it works, I can usually acquire enough knowledge about it under an hour to diagnose and repair it or at least determine that that I'm not going to be able to do that.

I don't know, maybe I just came from a different background. Hacker by nature, grew up poor enough that fixing things was how it was done, have a genetic predisposition against waste, whatever.

<comment><USER51> You have to have a certain mentality to go down this path. Most people don't like messing with things and getting their hands dirty, even it costs them a fortune to replace a device. It's not because they're stupid. They rather think that it's too complicated to try anything and they're afraid they might make things even worse than they already are. Also, quite often they don't have the necessary tools and buying them and learning to use them is a task on its own.

One other thing that strikes me as odd is that most people aren't curious to learn how their everyday devices work. As long as it works it's fine by them. I from the other hand need to know even how the toilette flush works because I find the learning process fascinating.

I guess it all boils down to how curious one is.

<comment><USER52> > they're afraid they might make things even worse than they already are

I get this, but I also think that if you're willing to spend $2000 to replace a refrigerator, per the example, it's not like you can make the situation much worst.

I suppose they might think that they can harm themselves in the process, that's possible. Personally, I might only be okay with futzing around with a refrigerator because I've done it with other (smaller, seemingly less harmful) things in the past.

<comment><USER51> I think they make the correlation between cost and complication, thus assuming that it will be too much of a trouble to fix it. Let's not forget that we live in an era where free time becomes a luxury. Someone may think that spending 20-30 hours to learn a few things about a refrigerator and locating the problem might be a waste of precious time. If you don't have an intrinsic curiosity on how things work then fixing broken devices might seem like too much of a trouble without any clear benefits.

<comment><USER17> Sure, if it really was going to take 30 hours, but that's why we have repair men.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If you wear belts, you might decide you don't need to repair the button because the belt hides it, and duplicates its function of holding the pants up. This will eventually result in the zipper breaking, which cannot be hidden with a belt, and is much more difficult to repair. The button has the additional non-obvious function of reducing load on the zipper, so you should repair it even if it looks unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's not about not being able to mend at all, these things are fairly easy to do (or to learn).

It's unthinkable anyone would come to work in mended clothes. They would be concerned everyone thinks they're poor and can't afford buying new clothes. As long as there is this social stigma, and clothing brands interest in people buying new pieces of clothing continuously, we can forget about mending.

<comment><USER55> The article includes a picture of Prince Charles wearing a mended jacket. If it's acceptable for royalty to appear in public in mended clothing I imagine it's ok for us plebeians.

<comment><USER56> It's usually the opposite; people of status / power are allowed to ignore norms that plague the more common folk.

<comment><USER57> And then six weeks later it's fashionable to have a small patch somewhere prominently placed on your jacket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> > The two biggest blows came in the 1990s. The first was the shift in the US > economy from manufacturing to knowledge-intensive services (a shift that has > been in the making for a long time, but came to a head during the > information technology revolution).

People call it "knowledge based economy," but one of my previous bosses had that phrase about it _" it feels more like it is an ignorance based economy"_

And yes, the service economy is there to accommodate living of very one sided people, in regards to both work and life skills.

The amount of money spent in service economy is seemingly directly proportional to at what cost intellectual ineptness comes to money earning classes of society: branding consulting, financial consulting, management consulting, "change management" \- really all that stuff is available to any able minded person if he can give 5 minutes of serious thought to that. I do believe that most of HN readers have hard time understanding people buying into that stuff too.

I wonder, if I would've been a multibillionaire, would I be also paying millions to random consultants to do 2+2 things for me?

</comment><comment> GuB-42 > No girl graduated high school without knowing how to bake, budget, and sew, > while her male counterpart took classes in autoshop and woodworking

> This all changed in the 1960s. For good reasons, second-wave feminists > fought back against the rigid gender stereotypes of the previous decade and > felt that mandatory home economic classes were pushing women into the > confinement of housewifery

I understand the idea but no, it is not good. Women used to know how to cook and mend clothes while men knew how to fix cars and furniture. It meant that households could do all that. The man/woman distinction was kind of arbitrary but it resulted in useful complementary skills.

Gender roles are officially a thing of the past now, but the way we did it is by reducing to the least common denominator. Women don't learn how to sew and men don't learn how to woodwork, and no one knows how to budget. Instead of removing these classes, why provide them to both boys and girls instead, maybe in a modernized form?

<comment><USER59> > Women used to know cook and mend clothes while men knew how to fix cars and > furniture. It meant that households could do all that.

No, it didn't.

One, because while it may have been required for graduation from high school (most of the described material was not, in most places, anyway, though it was traditional and common, and, even where it was required at one point, it remained traditional and common decades beyond the 1960s), graduation rates have always been substantially below 100% (especially before the change in the 1960s), and second because not all households, even in and before the 1960s, consisted of at least one adult of each gender.

The only way to assure that _households_ have a particular combination of skills is to assure that individuals, regardless of gender, have that combination of skills.

> Gender roles are officially a thing of the past now, but the way we did it > is by reducing to the least common denominator.

No, we didn't; there is a lot more required in high school today than there was in the 1960s; shop and home ec became less common _not_ because gender roles weakened (that just made both more gender mixed, _especially_ the traditionally male classes), but because they were displaced as academic core requirements got more involved.

> Instead of removing these classes, why provide them to both boys and girls > instead, maybe in a modernized form?

The reason is because they are capital intensive, liability intensive, there's less interest in them if offered as electives because the relative economic value of the skills and the relative social status of practitioners of them has declined, and there's no room without displacing something seen as more valuable to fit them in as universal requirements.

<comment><USER60> Households on average certainly seem to outsource more and be capable of less of the core "upkeep" tasks than in the past. Whether it's cooking, cleaning, laundry, plumbing, electrical, auto, etc.

We absolutely lose out on these skills in aggregate, by pulling them from the curriculum, and it's also not obvious at all that there is less overal economic value to providing some hands-on tradecraft skills (which often require critical thinking and creative problem solving) versus another theoretical academic course.

The amount of money an average household can save through doing their own home maintenance and upkeep is substantial, and the opportunity cost is not as high as you might think. These activities often have positive externalities (the additional learning that takes place while doing them, or the opportunity of doing them with the kids), not to mention emotional payback. And the cost of outsourcing these jobs is almost always not tax-deductible, making the true cost of outsourcing nearly double the sticker price.

<comment><USER61> Of course the problem is that at face value those academic classes seem more interesting, seem to have better ROI-for-life, and obviously you are quite right that a lot of people would be better off were they able to do basic upkeep, budgeting, woodwork, plumbing, wiring a socket, or simply knowing how to paint a room, and also you are correct that sometimes these activities lead to insights into problem solving, and some addition to critical thinking skills.

But in reality most of school is about developing interpersonal skills and having time to do whatever really interests you, and teaching applied rationality is hard, and only occasional in every class, be it DIY, physics, debate club, or free form project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I had sewing lessons in primary school in early 90s in Poland. It was compulsory, on "practical technics" lessons. Other subjects covered were: reading 3d schemas, making some wooden toys, basic electric projects (make engine turn both ways with switches), making pancakes, making christmas tree decorations, such stuff. It lasted for 2 years and was pretty fun. The worst thing was learning "technical script" where every letter had to be perfectly written on a milimeter grid. I never understood the point of it, but the rest was pretty useful.

I was awful at it, but I learnt how to do it and I (badly) sewed a lot of things through my life. Mostly buttons :)

</comment><comment><USER63> In this context, it seems worth mentioning Woolfiller, a product I love because I always wear out the elbows in my wool sweaters and it lets me mend them: [https://www.woolfiller.com/](https://www.woolfiller.com/) It's a great example of a company trying to reverse this trend.

I recently ordered a new kit from them, and learned that they are working on a new project to produce a more mendable fabric: [https://madetomend.com/](https://madetomend.com/) I can't wait until I can buy a jacket from them and try it out.

</comment><comment><USER10> "... to legitimize the housework that women were already performing ..."

Yeesh! Is there really something 'illegitimate' about housework? Such a ridiculous tone. All work is important and should be done well and with pride. A person is not less than or "in a ghetto" if their contribution to a family is taking care of most of the housework.

I'm a guy and I remember taking Home Ec and Shop, and then those being phased out. All students were expected to take both, and I remember learning a lot there. I suppose its much more important to learn about "Catcher in the Rye".

<comment><USER64> I don't think the author was implying a value judgment here but stating that the introduction of Home Ec was to help legitimize women's home duties in the eyes of students who may have looked down on them as "not real work".

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> We don't cook, clean, grow our food, educate our children or walk our fat butts to the store either.

Our whole life is optimized for maximum working. Everything else is flensed away.

</comment><comment><USER66> I grew up in NZ where the attitude is one should at least try to do most everything. Every guy needs to learn how to knit, sew, fix a car, grow veggies, cook a meal, and fix/decorate a house. These are so staple one is almost considered less-manly for not having tried to do all of them. One can fail miserably and turn to professionals but no lose of face for saying so.

Decades later I have lived in China 20 years and Hongkong and I still take the attitude of fix before replace. Clothing, shoes, electrical gear, showers....often to the amusement of partner ("you can do that?!") or "that won't work"(and years later is still working).

What ALL kids need to be taught in school is basic principles and skills for repairing things. Its fun, builds new skills, maybe gives them a hobby, and creates more rounded people for the future with more environmentally friendly attitude to possessions.

<comment><USER67> I mentioned to a European friend once that I was planning on building a new coffee table over the weekend. He laughed and commented on how _American_ that was.

Maybe it's something to do with countries that were more recently considered frontiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I got a late '70s blue Singer 20U recently for parachute rigging. But I've become interested in sewing and repairing other things (like work bags) more recently. It's fun to learn. These old sewing machines are amazingly easy to repair and adjust. The manuals are wonderful, too!

It's my prized possession. It will definitely outlive me.

</comment><comment><USER69> About 5 years ago I got very anxious about how specialized I had become. Sure, advancing a career for better pay is great, but it was becoming apparent that a lot would be lost paying other people premium rates to do things I couldn't. So, I've had five years of focus on building my personal capabilities. Or another way to look at it is that I've embarked on the standard middle-class mid-life DIY frenzy. Either way, it struck me recently how much my mindset has shifted:

\- We want/need a kitchen island - So instead of going out to buy one we found someone that wanted rid of an old table and are in the process of resizing, adding shelving, wheels, and re-finishing.

\- The vacuum broke, so instead of throwing it away I tore it down and fault- found until it worked again.

\- The car gets as much maintenance from me as possible before I call the shop.

Today, unlike before, I first considering how much self-help is possible before seeking external assistance/inputs. There's far less anxiety about capability and being able to respond to changing situations. The only down- side is the need to maintain some true down-time, as all the DIY stuff eats into that (it's still, ultimately, work and not relaxation).

</comment><comment><USER70> I was just talking to my wife about this yesterday. My gloves wore out on the index fingers and I had to mend them with a needle and thread. Literally 5 minutes of work and gloves are good to go. I then commented on how as Americans lost our way with mending old things and she said why I just didn't buy new ones. I wonder how future generations will fare while having grown up with disposable material things.

</comment><comment><USER71> Easily my favorite blog/follow of the last couple years is this guy in Montreal who posts all the quality old junk that people throw away:

[https://garbagefinds.com/](https://garbagefinds.com/) [https://www.instagram.com/garbagefinds](https://www.instagram.com/garbagefinds)

</comment><comment><USER72> Well, it's cliched, but since nobody has mentioned it:

 _" But old clothes are beastly," continued the untiring whisper. "We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …"_

 _" Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists. For example, there was the conscription of consumption."_

 _" There, I'm ready," said Lenina, but Fanny remained speechless and averted. "Let's make peace, Fanny darling."_

 _" Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry. The sole result …"_

 _" Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the more stitches …"_

</comment><comment><USER73> So odd how not even a few hours ago my wife went through my closet and made me throw away old clothes. I had this jacket I've worn over 10 years that to me still looked nice, but she insisted it looked worn. The jacket had sentimental value to just from all the places I wore it and the memories I had with it. This wasn't the first time she made me part with an item dear to me. I had a Hollister t-shirt I wore as a teen - the same one the day we met. Some 18 years later the shirt was still in my closet, ripped and washed out, practically a rag but it had so much sentimental value that I thought about keeping it forever. Nope, she insisted it be gone. This article made me think about my shirt and my jacket. I know they are just items but I'm not sure if I'll ever get over losing them.

</comment><comment><USER74> There are opportunities in recycled parts or junkyards for consumer devices. You can pick up a "broken" appliance on the side of the road and test the individual parts and sell them online to people who are looking to repair their own devices.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's a real shame "Home Economics" education has been inherently linked to outdated gender roles in the public consciousness.

As a guy, it would be nice if a class in high school had forced me to learn to sow. Teach it to people of all genders.

<comment><USER75> Just a friendly FYI, "sow" means to plant a seed, or an adult female pig/other animals (pronounced like "now"). "Sew" means to "join, fasten, or repair (something) by making stitches with a needle and thread or a sewing machine."

<comment><USER39> No that a little bit of gardening would be a bad idea either :-)

There are tradeoffs certainly but I've come to believe that high school should have a track that covers, for lack of a better term, "adulting." Cooking, sewing, shop, personal finance, statistics, etc. And most of those can be mixed in with more academic subjects. I've done machine shop stuff at research universities and I've taken a Harvard MOOC on food science.

<comment><USER75> I definitely agree. I learned how to sew as a kid for example from my mom, but I sort of dropped it after I realized it wasn't "something that boys do" at the time. All of those functional skills would be so much more useful than a lot of things I was taught in school. There are "adulting" classes now that demonstrate the obvious gap in our education system. [0]

Fortunately, the generation that was born with YouTube will be a lot better off, because the amount of things you can learn to do from watching YouTube videos by experienced people is astounding.

[0] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adulting-classes-teach- millenni...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adulting-classes-teach-millennials- basic-skills-like-sewing-cooking-and-how-to-deal-with-relationships/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> There isn't a need to mend when clothes are as inexpensive as they are. Especially for children's clothes as they outgrow them before they need mending and it's easier to buy new clothes than find what you need second hand.

<comment><USER77> People in poorer parts of the world are literally dying, so we can buy clothes so cheap.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_industry_in_Bangladesh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_industry_in_Bangladesh#Working_conditions)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse)

<comment><USER78> If we paid more, would the factory owners have built a safer factory? No, they'd pocket the profits. If they didn't have factory jobs, would they be subsisting on coastal fishing and be killed by tsunami?

Poorer parts of the world are poor by default, not because of trade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Somewhat ironic this comes in a day after I sewed a hole in the armpit of a tee shirt I like. Doesn't really vibe with the target audience of a site like 'Hacker News'...

<comment><USER80> Hacking essentially means the exact opposite of buying and throwing away stuff (a cycle known as consumerism i.e. being a sheeple). Fixing and modifying all kind of things to suit your weird imagination is the core idea of hacking. The skill of mending applies to software too, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I grew up on a farm in a communist country.

I still feel my life was much more interesting back then. We were poor but, paradoxically, we ate better than I eat now. The tasks had much more variety to them, there was a lot of interesting stuff happening every day and requiring your attention. There was new thing to be done/fixed all the time and I would never get bored. We would be doing everything for ourselves no matter how unskilled we were in the task, you had to figure it out while you were doing it. There was plenty of variety between seasons and there was plenty of free time to spend with the family.

I like my current job and it pays very well but I feel my daytime consists of only work and entertainment. There is almost no variety to it and during 3-4 weeks of vacation I have annually I feel like I have no idea what to do with the time to truly recharge my batteries.

<comment><USER82> There is a joke popular in communist countries:

> Two old men are talking. "Ah, life was so much better during Stalin's > rule!". "Are you mad? We barely had anything to eat, and they were randomly > killing people, we lived in constant fear!". "Yes, but we were young...."

I feel this is the same - your nostalgia is saying more about you than about the times/the society. I also grew up in a communist country, and I don't feel there's much that we lost by getting rid of them - you could easily choose to live that very same lifestyle now, but (I speculate) you don't because you know deep inside that you and your family would hate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Anyone remember the "bad capacitor epidemic" of the oughts? I've never been Mr. Electronics Guy, but I taught myself how to buy and replace caps and brought back several items from the dead. Got a free computer monitor for the price of bus fare to pick it up from someone offering it on Freecycle, plus whatever, a buck or two for a full set of caps?

This was when I was unemployed and the time/money ratio was worth it...

<comment><USER84> Sometimes it does a weird horseshoe and becomes a time/ hobby ration that is worth it even with your day job.

I fix stuff because its fun and frugal, and currently have an ongoing classic car project which is fun but not so frugal. These things serve as a nice mental break from coding all day, everyday.

<comment><USER83> Definitely - the challenge and variety were always part of the appeal. Maybe it's partly that (and not just the fact that I'm employed now) that explains why I have yet another "bad caps" project sitting within reach of me right now that's been there for 2-3 years and I haven't even touched it! Thanks to previous efforts, I have all the tools & know-how. I've done it several times. It should be a total breeze, and uneventful. But what fun is that? :) Clearly I am mentally ill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Nothing wrong with specialization. It's a waste of my time and potentially a waste of money if I ruin the item. There are many shops in town, some excellent at mending and alterations and at very reasonable cost. For that, I get excellent quality work that will hold up instead of me ruining the garment through inexperience. I'll stick to my soldering iron, they can keep their thread and needle.

</comment><comment><USER86> I think make-do-and-mend kinda comes with the maker ethos, at least to me.

I've repaired the washing machine twice -- once for an open-circuit dryer thermistor (bad batch apparently) and again for bad wiring on the door interlock latch/switch.

The sensor cost £5, the interlock cost about half an hour of cleaning the old switch with Q-tips and fifteen of crimping new Faston spade terminals onto the wiring harness. The IDC connectors Indesit use on their wiring harnesses are truly awful things.

I've seen similar in an AT&T 3B1 (aka UNIX PC), with the same failure mode: the connector gets warm, the IDC contacts loosen, contact resistance increases, the connector gets warmer and eventually it either burns up or shorts out.

Can't say I'm a fan!

I've also lost count of the number of things I've fixed with the 3D printer... I'd rather spend a few hours modelling something in OpenSCAD to fix something else than throw the broken-thing away. It's nice practice for when I'm making new things.

</comment><comment><USER87> I spent my time learning how to mend my computer and the pile of arcane technologies that make it up. Out in the real world, as opposed to here on HN, that is the mending that does not exist. It wasn't even forgotten; it's still simply magic. I can call a repair service and have any mechanical object in my apartment functional in hours. I can call my friends and one of them, or one of their parents, will have a suggestion. But if I walk into a random room, filled with fifty random people off the street, one in four of then will be able to repair a car engine or patch a hole in a shirt, but I will be literally the only person in the room that can get someone's phone back on WiFi after the password changes. That's its own kind of mending, and one that's much more difficult, much more useful, and much more _valuable_ , both directly to an information worker like me and to civilization.

<comment><USER88> It sure has its own merit, but I think you can remove the last sentence and slow down on the "I'd be the only one in a room of 100 people able to connect a phone to a network".

We can boast all day long about how good our tech skills are but out in the real world it's far from "much more useful and valuable to civilization" than a lot of things. It seems like a very narcissistic and simple point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Some manufacturers "get it"

timbuk2 fixed my backpack 2+years into the deal. It was a close to zero paper overhead engagement. If I'd known what their intended fix was, I would have done it myself (it was some simple stitching mainly) but the point is they _did_ repair, not replace. and I'm content.

</comment><comment><USER90> I cracked the screen on my Samsung tablet. The local repair shops wanted more than 200$to fix which is essentially the same price as that tablet brand new. I bought a kit on Ebay and fixed it myself for 30$ and 30 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER91> Fixing things is very common in the third world countries, because repair charge is cheaper than its replacement. That's why you see lots of businesses there that cater to these: tailors to TV repairmen..

</comment><comment><USER92> > "We lost the ability to mend"

No we haven't. If you need to sew on a button and you can't figure out how to do it from looking at a piece of thread, a needle, and the other buttons, then go spend fifteen minutes on a Youtube tutorial. It's _easy_.

If the task is more complicated any you really like the piece, consider the fact that in terms of opportunity cost, it's almost certainly cheaper for you to send the piece across the country (or the globe) and back than having it fixed by yourself.

<comment><USER93> Mentioned this in another reply but for buttons put something like a toothpick between button and garment when sewing it on, so that there is some flex when buttoning up. Otherwise it's too easy to have button fastened tight against the garment and hard to manipulate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I was interested in the discussion of home economics. My mother would not have taken that class but growing up in SE Asia through war and peace was used to fixing things. When I was a kid, even though she was a full time physician, she also made my sister's and my clothes (in 1960s and 70s Australia).

My Dad made our furniture and fixed many things, but sewing? He hadn't the faintest idea.

FWIW, neither of them fixes anything any more.

</comment><comment><USER95> I just finished tuning up a White sewing machine and it blew me away how well built the thing was. Very well used but still works like a charm. 99.9% metal and made in Japan.

</comment><comment><USER96> Every 6 months I used to go to my mother and use her Bernina sewing machine to fix some clothes. The machine is old already but still works good. Recently she bought me a new mechanical one. I really hope it will last all my life. I don't need it much, but it's a pleasure to fix things or make something small. Plus, the use of a powerful machine makes it way more fun than stitching. Also, it still wastes less time than me searching and buying something new.

<comment><USER97> >Recently she bought me a new mechanical one.

As opposed to a non-mechanical sewing machine? What does this mean? Guessing you mean one with metal gears unlike the plastic-geared junk sold new in most stores now?

<comment><USER96> The last "mechanical" one of Bernina: [https://www.bernina.com/en-US/Products- US/BERNINA-products/S...](https://www.bernina.com/en-US/Products-US/BERNINA- products/Sewing-Quilting-and-Embroidery/BERNINA-Classic-Series/BERNINA-1008)

From what I know there is just less logic and software inside. Whenever I change the style of stitching, I can hear some mechanical clicking inside of it. So I assume there is no fancy logic inside. Just pure mechanical switches and an engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> I fixed my refrigerator that came with my new house. The fan that blows cold air from bottom freezer to top of refrigerator was broken (and even missing blades?). I found the part on the Internet and also took the time to by myself a soldering iron. [https://twitter.com/RussellBal/status/650091457303453696](https://twitter.com/RussellBal/status/650091457303453696)

</comment><comment><USER99> I had a Maytag washing machine from 1955 that was finally parted with in 2009. It was actually probably entirely functional, but I just could not source a new belt for it after months of trying. Working around the problem finally got tiresome and it was sold to a prop company and replaced with a new machine. The replacement needed multiple service calls for that one year that I owned it.

</comment><comment><USER100> reminds me of some of my favorite quotable lines from Brave New World

"ending is better than mending" and "the more stitches the less riches"

</comment><comment><USER101> Interesting: I just did laundry, including six long-sleeve shirts. Four of them had spare buttons at the bottom: made by L.L.Bean, Nordstrom, Kirkland, and an old Eddie Bauer denim picked up at a thrift shop. The two with no spare buttons were both from Arrow. The problem is, I can't remember the last time I owned eiter needle or thread.

</comment><comment><USER102> From the title I was hoping it would be about self-healing and mental health recovery in the face of dysfunctional modern workplace environments like open plan offices.

As with many things (like clothing in the article) we've also lost our ability to mentally heal from the damage that repeated exposure to modern workplace cultures inflicts on us.

</comment><comment><USER93> Hmm - I can sew on a button, and mend a seam.

The seam is an emergency repair and looks awful.

Button work is OK. My mom gave me the idea to put something, like a toothpick, between button and garment, so the button has some flexibility when you put it in button hole.

</comment><comment><USER103> This has been one of my favorite things about the 9 months I've spent this last year in western Europe and Asia. Everything is mended and fixed, both in shops and by day-to-day individuals.

Love it.

</comment><comment><USER104> We were taught this at school, I made a shirt as one of my projects.

</comment><comment><USER105> We always forget that jeans were designed for workers. Then they turned into a whole culture. It is not clear why some create a real cult of some things?!

</comment><comment><USER106> I've fixed several appliances by simply replacing a blown fuse. It is an easy fix that costs very little time and money.

</comment><comment><USER107> TV repair used to be a real trade.

I've not seen one in a long time. That tells you a lot.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm very surprised and pleased at both the number of responses and the actual content of those responses (given it was posted on Hacker News). It tells me several things, first that people are actually concerned by the waste created by our throwaway society especially so when the items being thrown away are otherwise serviceable except for minor faults, and second there's still an interest in craft—people (some at least) still want to work with their hands.

Recently, this has come to the fore with movements such as those pushing the Right to Repair hi-tech proprietary items such as iPhones and John Deere tractor electronics, etc. I wholeheartedly support these movements, for as a society I reckon we need to relearn how to get our hands 'dirty' by doing physical tradie-like things from time to time.

No pun intended but there are many threads to this topic so it's hard to know where to begin or how to paraphrase/limit my comments to a reasonable size. Let's start with life skills and a quote from the article: 'There was once a time when every American child was formally taught the basics of living'. Whilst I understand and agree with the reasons given in the article why most of us seem to have lost many basic life skills, I cannot quite fathom how we let the situation degenerate to such an extent.

Surely basic life skills are more than important, they are in fact very important. Why? Well there are many reasons why one should become reasonably proficient at acquiring them and do so at an early age as is possible. Essentially it boils down to one's need to be resourceful, especially so when our modern-day 'crutches' either fail or are otherwise not available and we have to improvise—or just generally (as one can do things much more quickly and efficiently after having acquired them). Secondly, the need to acquire basic skills at an early age is important for learning more advanced skills acquired later on in life, as these build on earlier learning (even when the new skills are quite different from the older ones). The fact is that learning new skills as an adult is considerably easier if one already has the basics fully conquered. For me, this truism is borne out of experience.

Years ago, I came up with the quip: 'Question: can one become a good practical engineer if one cannot sew one's buttons back on?' Answer: probably not!'. It arose after seeing how impractical and inept some qualified engineers were at doing certain normal day-to-day manual tasks that one would have expected them to already know how to do (as well as have an intrinsic feeling for doing it well). For example, I've seen too many who've little or no feeling for tightening up a screw or nut to the right tension without either stripping the thread or having it too loose. As adults, they had not yet developed a feeling for say the strength of everyday materials or how to work them (clearly this puts them at a disadvantage to those who already have (assuming all else being equal that is). The question is why, as for the most part, they were bright people.

When I delved into the matter a little deeper I often found that as kids they had done very little exploration of the mechanical world around them, they had not done things such as building Meccano models, or pulling the lawnmower engine apart, or attempt to fix broken clocks, etc. Seeing how and why things break is an essential skill to learn at a very early age, especially so for engineers, as it fine tunes one's understanding about how things work. As well, one also develops a practical feeling for the strength of various materials and other relevant properties that are not easily learned by simple observation or from just reading textbooks.

It's my experience that really good techies are almost invariably good at most of these simple skills and that they acquired the essence of them at a very young age. It seems manual dexterity and concomitant mental agility (one's overall perception of what needed to achieve the task successfully) continually improved throughout their lives—skills they learned whilst young transferred later on to a newer understanding of how to tackle work that is much more complex. (In his book 'Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman', physicist Richard Feynman beautifully illustrates how skills learned early on are useful in later life. Feynman was not only a theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner of the first order but also he was extremely adept with mechanical things—skills he'd well honed as a kid (for instance, his exploits at safecracking are well known, so also is his analysis of why Challenger's rocket seals failed).

The general loss of craft, trades and various skills in fixing things has had a large negative impact on the population as a whole. It has meant that essentially the workforce has become deskilled in many areas (and consequently so has the whole population). Combine this with the fact that nowadays corporations are making much more use of proprietary (and increasingly secret) technologies and we have the makings of a large social problem. For starters, there is 'new' unemployment amongst once-skilled workers, and given the fact that many workers, especially males, often are much happier when working or creating things with their hands and who now have been deprived from making their living in this way, has meant considerable distress for many of them.

Whilst this may seem contradictory (given what I've already said), it, nevertheless, is all the more reason that we must re-evaluate and upgrade the importance of developing life skills at a very early age (as today workers need to be both nimble and flexible and to do so they need to acquire such capabilities very early on in their lives).

This brings me full circle, as a kid my mother taught me to sew on buttons and do basic repairs to clothes (which I did even though I didn't much care for it). She strongly insisted that boys also needed to know these skills (and I suspect it was also to save her some work). If I had not learned those skills when very young then the army would have insisted I do so under its instruction not to mention learning all those other irksome dress-code-related tasks upon which armies insist in drilling into poor unfortunate recruits such as ironing, shining boots, putting creases in pants in exactly the right places, etc., etc. (As part of ones larger kit was little repair kit that contained some cloth patches, needles and spare buttons, and we were drilled in the use thereof.)

My mother also taught me the basics of knitting, as I was forever getting holes in my sweaters and she expected me to fix them (which I did pretty well because when completed my fixes blended in and weren't very obvious). The important point here is that it doesn't take much skill just to do a reasonable repair. I never got past knitting squares and scarfs but even that meant that I'd acquired sufficient skills to do a decent repair job. Moreover, it's not essential that one has to like leaning such skills nor that of actually doing them. As a male, knitting certainly wasn't my scene but I'm now glad that I've learned the basics (as it's actually turned out to be quite a useful skill).

What my mother didn't teach me was how to use a sewing machine. Nevertheless, I learned the basics anyway on her machine much to her chagrin. It was not long before I was forbidden to use it, as I used it to stitch together cardboard and other strange materials for various projects and models I was working on. (Incidentally, it didn't stop me using it in secret but she had a sixth sense and she always knew and caught me out after me having used it—it seems I could never reset the tension knob exactly to her 'default' settings!) ;-)

Was learning the basics of using a sewing machine a useful skill for a nine/ten year old boy to acquire? In the end it certainly was, as I later learned the hard way, which was by that time the next generation of women had arrived they had become sufficiently emancipated to have essentially given up sewing machines altogether; so whenever I asked women in my life to repair my clothes they simply told me to go take a running jump. 'Do it yourself or get new ones' was the new mantra, so I had no choice but to comply.

Whilst I can say that using a sewing machine is a task that I certainly don't relish, it nonetheless remains a fact that nowadays it's dead easy for me to do simple repairs to torn clothes, or to use the button-hole attachment to replace or renew buttonholes, or for me to take up jeans by a few inches.

</comment><comment><USER108> mending (even attempting) is a great opportunity to learn how things work. there is no downside trying to dismantle anything that you consider broken,

</comment><comment><USER98> We also lost the ability to grow our own food.

</comment><comment><USER109> I can say with certainty that none of my clothes are _talismanic_.

</comment><comment><USER110> What's this "we stuff?

</comment><comment><USER111> I dont know why but it gives you massive pride, to remove planned obsolescence from a very cheap item. Take the water heater of my mum - the toplid did no longer work, because the axis it used was made from cheap plastic, resting on even thinner plastic holders. Solution: Hot screw driven through. Now this cheap item works trouble free since 5 years.

Same thing with a fancy looking scale- the wires internal where glued together with a sort of ducttape. Two solder points later - meet the eternal scale.

I sometimes wonder, why this is not a buisness model. There must be money in making cheap items ever lasting.

<comment><USER112> Thanks to the Internet everyone thinks engineering and manufacturing is all about "planned obsolescence". Consumers want to blame the maker for the cheap product they bought instead of blaming themselves for only wanting cheap products.

<comment><USER113> This has been an issue since before the internet. Growing up in the 80s my parents and grandparents would always be making comments like, "They don't make things like they used to!"

Well I, for one, am extremely glad they don't. I remember cars from the 1960s and 1970s, and they were ####ing _terrible_ : unreliable, unsafe, slow, poor handling. Cars today are _vastly_ better, although I think the accelerating trend for packing them full of complex electronics and gizmos may bite us in the arse. There is simply a _lot_ more to go wrong in a car from 2019 than a car from 1979, even if individual parts and subsystems are much more reliable.

My uncle and my step-dad both have more realistic views. My uncle used to ride motorcycles back in the 60s and 70s and looked at me askance when I'd complained that the problem with doing long distances on a bike with chain rather than shaft drive is that you always needed to carry chain lube with you to oil the chain every 200 - 300 miles. His comment, about an old Norton he'd had, was that he needed to strip down and rebuild the engine every time he'd done 100 miles (he didn't keep it long; even back then this was considered awful).

Likewise, about 15 years ago I'd mentioned some relatively minor part needing replacement after 50,000 miles on my first car, and my step-dad pointed out that with a lot of the cars he'd driven in the 60s, after 50,000 miles you'd need a replacement engine, never mind the odd part.

<comment><USER114> This has been an issue, however, once upon a time durability was actually a marketing term used for regular appliances. Companies sold people on it.

Now durability as a term exists only for things like jeans and trucks where it's not supposed to indicate that you can use the thing for long, but rather, to indicate a macho DIY culture.

I believe marketing has played a large role in moving consumers away from even considering how long a product will last.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Not About Steve - <AUTHOR> http://kickingbear.com/blog/archives/220

<comment><USER2> Guy English is dead on -- Steve Jobs has really redefined the industry by zigging when everyone else was zagging. My fear is that innovation will slow in the industry and be replaced by patent lawsuits (which seems to already be happening). Silicon Valley has been an amazing place to watch since the 80s, but don't think for a minute that it can't turn into Detroit of the 70s.

<comment><USER3> While we may have fewer OSs there are spaces yet to be discovered and exposed to the world - what's going to happen when someone comes out with a smartphone (and accompanying net service) cheap enough for the entire world to use, like cell (dumb) phones are now globally ubiquitous? I look forward to that day. And when Windows 8 bring the WebOS concept mainstream, who knows where this could go on the consumer level. I hope we've only just started the communications/portable experiments.</comment></comment>


Brain in a box (or a petri dish) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pantherhouse.com/newshelton/travoltas-pilot-assistant-almost-ready-to-go/

<comment><USER2> dude, if you post a link with a title like that, you should know it will be edited</comment>


Why are techcrunch commenters so mean? this kid just ran a marathon for charity - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/23/tc-readers-give-gumbal-capital-more-than-10000-make-kiefer-do-some-weird-stuff-tctv/

<comment><USER2> internet (not having to speak face to face) + anonymity + some people are just jerks/trolls/idiots</comment>


Angry Birds: 1 Million Downloads in 1 Day (on Android) - <AUTHOR> http://phandroid.com/2010/10/17/angry-birds-1-million-downloads-in-1-day/

<comment><USER2> I'd be really interested to see how their in-game ads are doing. The ads are a little odd - a rectangular admob box at the bottom right of the screen during the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is rather an odd position to put an ad, though as a user, I like that it's not intrusive, of course.</comment></comment>


Looking for a technical co-founder: Anyone else dislike the recruiting industry? - <AUTHOR> I worked in IT for 10+ years doing Network Admin/DevOps and mostly found recruiters terrible. After years of brainstorming and iteration, I've come up with a product that I think could start to really disrupt the industry. I'm looking for a technical co-founder in/around Philly to help me create and pitch this in the near future.<p>Interested? <comment><USER2> Former tech recruiter, now a web developer here in DC. Email in profile. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I originally tried to build something in this industry. After about 30 customer development interviews of recruiters, I could not find a pattern on what to develop.

<comment><USER4> It is not the recruiters you should have interviewed in my opinion but rather the job seekers. There, you will find the problems and come up with a solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> what exactly is wrong with the recruitment industry, and how can it be solved with a technical solution?

</comment><comment><USER6> Would like to talk. I live close to Philly and have an interest in recruiting industry. Details in profile

</comment><comment><USER7> You've come up with a product or you've come up with an idea for a product?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've come up with the product. Wireframes, mockup, etc all complete.

<comment><USER7> That's an idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh...well...I wouldn't be looking for a technical co-founder if I already built the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What did you find terrible about your recruiting experience?

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's talk email in profile. Im from the area</comment>


FDA approves intranasal esketamine formulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/health/depression-treatment-ketamine-fda.html <comment><USER2> There's an interesting risk to all of this: legitimizing the illegal drug.

Let's say my doctor says to me "you're depressed, I'm prescribing esketamine, go to this clinic and pay them $3000". Well, I do my research and learn that really this stuff has the same antidepressants effect as ketamine. And the same number of doses of ket on the darknet markets are going to cost me a heck of a lot less.

Sure, there's the question of legality. But if I can't afford esketamine but can afford dodgy internet ket, and I'm desperate for something, anything, to help with this nagging constant psychic pain weighing down my life...

Suddenly I appreciate my Canadian single payer health care system a lot more, even with the small problems it has.

<comment><USER3> >single payer health care system

is just a system that forces healthy people to pay for unhealthy people.

<comment><USER4> This is what insurance and health care does, though. Do you think your premiums are really based on how healthy you are currently? Especially when you have insurance through your employer?

In this last case, you might pay more for certain markers (smoking, uncontrolled high blood pressure, and other wellness marks), but not if you have asthma or migraines, for example. Part of your premium is literally paying for folks that are sick. Paying for other people's pregnancies and children and stuff like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm really happy to see this finally happening. I've used ketamine in a homemade emergency nasal spray in times when I have been extremely depressed, and I do believe it has saved my life.

My DIY nasal spray is made from liquid ketamine vials purchased off the dark net. The vials are 1g in 10ml saline and are intended for veterinary use. They come factory sealed with holographic labeling, and I'm confident they are legit. They cost $100-$150 each which is a lot more than powder but I am much more confident in what I'm getting and it's already in liquid form. I use a needle to extract the ketamine from the vial and put it into an amber glass nasal spray bottle after sterilizing it. The solution is already isotonic, no need to add any salt.

I'll do a squirt on each side of my nose against the nasal wall when I'm really depressed / suicidal, which is usually no more than once a month. It's not magic, but it really brings me back to reality about half the time.

I have also tried an IV ketamine clinic, paid about $3k to go 3 times. Unfortunately that is super expensive and the last time I had what amounted to a bad trip and I haven't been back.

If anyone has any questions about these I'm happy to answer them.

To anyone feeling depressed: If you haven't done so already, get the basics out of the way: Get a physical and get your thyroid levels checked. Consider supplementing vitamin D, fish oil, and magnesium. You can find academic evidence that those may help in people who are deficient.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that there doesn't seem to be a therapy component to the treatment...meaning you're just going to a clinic to sort of watch over you as you take it.

The price of $3k for 8 doses is so high compared to regular ketamine. I wonder if there is any real difference or if you're really just paying for the comfort of doing it legally under the guidance of a doctor.

<comment><USER7> You're paying for their patent on the delivery system ;)

Edit: It's a common delusion that pharmaceuticals are sold for therapeutic uses. Actually, they're a mechanism to monetize intellectual property.

Edit: Oops. For having just the active isomer.

Edit: That comment about monetizing intellectual property comes from an expert economist :)

<comment><USER6> Actually I just read that Esketamine is patented while Ketamine is not, even though it's essentially the same thing. So JNJ can charge these ridiculous prices because they changed one small thing about the drug so they could slapped a patent on it.

<comment><USER8> Welcome to pharmaceuticals in general (and many of the biggest biotech companies, come to think of it). I didn't find the exact number in a cursory search, but I've read that a fairly preposterous proportion of the drugs that have ever been produced are (unpatentable) plant molecules that were deliberately reverse-engineered and tweaked for patentability.

<comment><USER9> I'd be interested in seeing data on that, as I have never heard that argument

A cursory look at the top selling drugs of all time doesn't appear to show any plant derived drugs [0]. Obviously this does not disprove your statement but its the quickest heuristic i could think of

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_selling_pharma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_selling_pharmaceutical_products)

<comment><USER10> That list is sorted by price; i.e., it will bias towards recent patents on complicated drugs.

OP's statement was about sheer number of patented drugs. I don't know that OP's statement was accurate, but the wikipedia link doesn't really refute or confirm the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> FTA:

 _F.D.A. approval requires that doses be taken in a doctor's office or clinic, with patients monitored for at least two hours… The safety monitoring will require doctors to find space for treated patients, which could present a logistical challenge, some psychiatrists said._

I can kill a few birds with one stone here. Doctors should offer the 2-hour sessions in the evening, in darkened "clinics" with dance floors and DJ music.

<comment><USER12> Basically every drug that ravers were doing is turning into a breakthrough treatment for various psychological disorders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I posted on the original story about the FDA panel recommending approval a few weeks ago. In that post, I mentioned that Icahn school of medicine holds the patent on the racemic ketamine (instead of S-ketamine) intranasal formulation for treatment of depression.

I heard about the approval on NPR, where they interviewed a doctor from Icahn school of medicine to talk about the benefits of such a formulation, without any mention of this patent. Is there any way to find out if J&J licensed their patent?

Edit: meant racemic instead of non racemic

<comment><USER14> I listened to it on NPR as well and they did mention the patent

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the clarification, so do we know if J&j licensed this patent? I'd assume yes considered Icahn even wished to discuss it.

<comment><USER14> Good question. Honestly not sure, but I would assume yes as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI

[https://www.drugs.com/history/spravato.html](https://www.drugs.com/history/spravato.html)

[https://www.drugs.com/alpha/sp.html](https://www.drugs.com/alpha/sp.html) [not listed yet]

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems interesting, I need to take the time to look further into this one. Hopefully, it will help some people.

</comment><comment><USER16> The original title is "Fast-Acting Depression Drug, Newly Approved, Could Help Millions". Not everyone reading HN lives in the US nor knows what the FDA stands for.

The article reports the experiment, the results, and not only FDA approval.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any idea when this will actually be available for patients?

</comment><comment><USER18> I know a guy who suicided after getting REALLY into ketamine.

Color me doubtful.

<comment><USER19> I know a guy who suicided after getting really into fishing, so now I'm skeptical of fishing. That's how science works, right?

<comment><USER18> Everyone who responded wins the Internet for pointing out my obvious anecdotal fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Having been through chronic suicidal depression, the idea that we're now going to be treating it with yet another psychoactive medication, this time way more powerful and costing significantly more money, doesn't sit right.

<comment><USER10> It's just one more option on the market; theoretically supported as safe and effective by scientific evidence. If you have some personal grudge with the chemical, you're free to tell your doctor you don't want to try it.

<comment><USER20> It is my experience that if you tell a doctor they can't just throw a drug at a problem they get very upset.

<comment><USER21> If you said it that way with a hostile inflection, maybe, but why wouldn't you just say "I want to try [therapy/a non-drug alternative] first."? If your doctor would react negatively to that, it might be time to find a new doctor.

<comment><USER20> Here's the thing, the doctor is supposedly the expert, so why am I the one recommending a course of treatment? If I were confident in my own diagnosis and treatment, why do I need the doctor? They're just useless red tape at that point. I explain the reasons I don't want to do the drugs again, and I just get arguments.

Because this is the US we're talking about, I've had to change doctors pretty frequently in my life and there are only a small handful I would say wouldn't react negatively. I'm pretty sure the proliferation of Epic has made it worse too.

<comment><USER21> If it's your GP, they're really not the expert though when it comes to psychological issues. If you're expecting your GP to do more for that than offer medication or a specialist, you're probably asking too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A whistleblower has pointed out that Janssen is "the same company where 31 children died while taking Risperdal, another 1,207 were permanently injured & 14-year-old boys grew breasts, is bringing a ketamine-like nasal spray for depression to market."

[https://twitter.com/melaynalokosky/status/110311449708494028...](https://twitter.com/melaynalokosky/status/1103114497084940289)

<comment><USER23> "The same company where 31 children died" is incredibly misleading. 31 children died while taking a drug they made, over 15 years, not all of which are necessarily the drug's fault (side effect reporting is very broad). Tylenol kills around 500 people a year, but we don't blame this on the Tylenol manufacturers.

<comment><USER24> Umm to be fair, scale should be accounted for, acetaminophen is probably used hundreds of millions times a year. How many times was that drug used when the 31 people died? A million? Not bad. 32? Not good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why do people get depressed? Break up, lost loved ones, lose a job etc. etc. Why don't they prescribe these people to have some voluntary work at a local charity and take a break from life's stress and enjoy the joy of giving? etc. r understand or fix the reason they got depressed in the first place? Or simply some consoling or support. Why does everything need a chemical cure that messes up the brains natural balance and harmony?

When you give and bond with people, your body releases oxytocin. When you do cold showers, your body releases seretonin. When you laugh or meditate, your body releases endorphin. I can go on and on. All of which helps bring back balance to the mood and get people rid of depression.

You create a chemical/toxic & selfish society,where everything MUST be fixed through chemical drugs backed by greed of pharma companies that does half- dashed studies, you are doing humanity endless harm.

<comment><USER26> >Why do people get depressed? Break up, lost loved ones, lose a job etc. etc.

This is not depression.</comment></comment>