I did this, and thought I was alone. Around this time last year, picked up woodworking and jumped in the deep end. Metabo saws and nailes, building mini A-frames for my pet rabbit, shelves, shoecase, you name it. It's gratifying and provides a sense of control and completion - which sometimes doesn't happen in the real world.
FWIK public school systems create workers. Private school systems create employers. Courtesy General Education Board / JD Rockefeller / a time when labor advantages in America were in demand.
I wonder if there's an AI wrapper startup working on making fonts. The prompts would be interesting, like "design me a Christmas font that's heavily influenced by the Balkans but also Soviet Brutalism, and make it friendly for Children" or something of that sort.
Culturally it needs to be ok to have exotic fonts used commercially. I understand why Helvetica, Roboto, Noto Sans and the more modern fonts are used, but it makes the world a tad dull TBH
Planned obsolescence is horrible, no doubt. It's what keeps consumers in debt and military spending higher than it should be, all while hurting the planet. The landline in my grandmother's house is 40 years old and still works. We keep it for when the power goes out, which happens more times than we'd like in California.
One of the problems with repairability in the US is cost of labor. It's why there's a casual attitude among many South Asian families to take it back to India etc and have someone fix it.
On a larger scale, it's what they do with Toyotas - buy well built but heavily used Toyotas in the west, and ship them to East Asia and Africa where they can be repaired and last another 100,000 miles.
I think there's a YC company working on a recyclables marketplace.
Getting authors to voice their own books could be an incredible use of voice AI only if the author has a good voice, which many don't. Which is why the voiceover industry exists.
Tolkien is very much an exception. He can read greeting cards and I'd be pumped.
