The other day, the speaker I use for my desktop computer suddenly stopped working. I applied a bit of percussive maintenance to it, reseated the power cable a few times, and then resigned myself to purchasing a new one, because it was still dead. Today I double checked it, and it worked! Why? Who knows! Regardless of the cause, it made me very happy to not have to buy a new one, because the one I’m using looks like this:

It’s an Altec Lansing im600 iPod dock. It was released in 2008, for around $150 (check out this contemporaneous video review by cnet), and I acquired it for free from a roommate when he moved out, in 2014. It’s meant for the dock portion to be able to fold up for travel, but when I got it the hinge was already broken, and no longer folded up or unfolded all the way, meaning that it doesn’t stand up on its own. The volume up button became progressively harder to activate over the years, and within the last year I inadvertently jammed the rubber top of the button into its cavity. Luckily the device remembers the volume setting between power cycles, so I just leave it set to “very loud”.

It has an aux input, which is how I use it with my computer.

Now, I think many people would see that description and say “wtf bro, just buy a new one, that’s garbage.”

But the thing is, the speaker is actually quite good at its job. It gets loud enough for parties, the clarity is decent, and there’s enough bass to make it sound good. I’m not going to buy a new one until this one truly bites the dust. I’m doing it partly out of frugality, and partly in defiance of consumerism. These things are unfixable. They’re meant to be discarded when they start to break down, even if the parts that are breaking are minor and have nothing to do with the object’s primary purpose.

Speaking of things meant to be disposable…

This is my water bottle.

I’ve owned it since 2018. It’s a Essentia brand disposable water bottle. I purchased it for, I don’t know, three or four dollars? As you can see, I did not dispose of it. I have used it every single day since then, and taken it with me on many adventures (you can see a few national park stickers on there).

This was a disposable water bottle. Disposable. That’s certainly what the company wants us to believe. And yet, the proof is right here that these bottle are rugged enough to survive at least four years of daily use, and I assume many more.

There are some people out there that actually buy plastic water bottles every day and just… throw them away. It’s absurd.

The only good thing about this state of affairs is that it gives me something to feel smugly superior about.