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Slack Fill

We’re all familiar with bags of potato chips, having cried out in irritation upon opening a large puffy bag of salty cholesterol, only to find a lackluster final count of individual product settled in oily mylar at the bottom of the false abyss.

Boo! Hiss!

And we accuse Lay’s of shrinkflation, and they say “Nuh uh! We didn’t do that.”

And we post pictures of historical trends in product reduction, and they say “We didn’t decrease the percentage of product to packaging ratio.”

And then we say “Nuh uh! You totally did!”. And while not experts, none of us buy into 1.034569 ounces being a standard serving size, to which Lay’s replies “Okay, we reduced size but it was to be more aligned with healthy serving size diets. See, we’re actually looking out for your wellbeing. You’re welcome.” And we might almost believe that, were it not for the price increase alongside product size reduction.

But potato chips are just the most obvious example, because the size reduction also made slack fill more obvious. When a bag was big and product content was 50%, we didn’t notice as much because faces could still be stuffed. When bags shrunk 30%, it didn’t matter if product content may have actually remained at 50%, because faces couldn’t be as effectively stuffed. And then we noticed!

Surely some government agency is out there to protect us from these shenanigans!

And indeed there is: the FDA:

So presumably, while shrinkflation is totally legal, slack fill isn’t necessarily, so if indeed the percentage of potato chips has remained constant, then Lay’s is in the right, despite the public’s resentment on limited face-stuffing. But they’re still jerks.

Anyway, on to the next point. One might notice that nowhere in this document is the word “medicine” used. Obviously prescriptions wouldn’t fall under this, but one might assume that OTC medications – a consumer retail product – would. And yet, it doesn’t.

Even ignoring the packaging waste, it’s rather egregious that everything in the left highlighted box easily fit into the bottle on the right. And there were already prior pills still in that bottle!

So why don’t these anti-consumer rules apply to medicine? Why did the FDA, whose very name has “Drug” in it, make this decision? I don’t know, because I can’t find any such explanation on their website. Someone tell me if you find out. Until then:

Fuck you, FDA

Fuck you, Lay’s (Frito-Lay/Pepsico)

And fuck you, Astra AB/AstraZeneca

And maybe Costco too, because they might have had a hand in it.

–Simon

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EDC

How much thought do you give to the contents of your pockets on a daily basis? Probably not much, because most normal people organically adapt to a practical loadout without much consideration. If I leave the house, I have my phone, keys, and wallet as minimums. Because I’m likely to need those items. I don’t need a schematic.

But prepping has now infiltrated our pants. I need to carry, at a minimum apparently, a small version of every possible tool I might need in the remotest of circumstances. I might need to break a window, bandage a gunshot wound, and set off a visual SOS beacon…on my adventure to Home Depot to buy a 2×4. Suburbia is a jungle!

I mock these dweebs and the EDC community. Being prepared is one thing, but obsession only leads to anxiety. Why do people post pictures of the items they regularly carry? How starved are we for acknowledgment as to solicit feedback from an anonymous public on my Swiss Army knife?

After leading a comfortable life there appears to be a need for street cred. So you completed medical school, and that required sacrificing a particular lifestyle – one that demanded some ruggedness and the potential for violence, so you’re not a real man. So you buy a gun and carry a knife. You know you’re a poser, so you overthink what this missing lifestyle entails and emulate it, but because you know you’re not genuine you need the validation. It’s compensation.

This is why normal product searches have turned into exercises of lexiconical stupidity. I wanted to buy a pocket flashlight because, as a homeowner, I always seem to need one on hand. There’s always a dark crevasse that something rolled into, or that contains a screw I need to tighten, or a deer that needs to be scared out of my vegetable garden at night. But could I find a pocket flashlight that met my desired specs? Not at first. Because I had to search for “tactical” flashlight. As if I’m going to whack a Taliban in the skull with it. Again, suburbia is indeed quite the jungle! Or, sandy battlefield.

So let’s all just stop with the nonsense please. I carry a folding pocket knife, not because of those marauding Taliban. And it doesn’t need to be named “The Stabinator 3000” or some other retarded name. It needs to cut boxes and packaging and garden produce. It doesn’t need to be a self-defense tool, and neither does my flashlight. Sigh.

Anyway, here’s what I got:

To its credit, it was not marketed as tactical, though it was the marketing term I used to find it.

Sigh again.

And it fits nicely against my tactical keychain in my tactical cargo pants.

EDC! Sigh.

–Simon

Posted on

Self-Inflicted Decadence

Here’s a rhetorical hypothetical. If you needed to buy a product, would you choose between:

  1. A more powerful and easier to use appliance that requires minimal maintenance and doesn’t leak fluids, stink, or require constant repurchasing of other fluids to keep it running, or…
  2. A less powerful and less easy to use appliance that requires constant maintenance and leaks fluids, stinks, and requires constant repurchasing of fluids to keep it running.

I phrase the question this way because it removes all emotion from the decision. Of course you would choose the first option. But if we add emotion to the equation, well then things get a little more complicated.

The scenario in question of course, which I did not intend to camouflage, is whether or not to buy an electric appliance or one that is gas-powered. See, now emotion is involved. Because, would I rather have a Tesla Model S or a Ford Mustang Mach 1? Yeah, the Tesla would certainly suit my lifestyle better, but they’re driven by colossal douchbags, and the Mach 1 is super badass.

So it was that I stupidly bought a 2-cycle Craftsman chainsaw. This POS:

The need arose from the Helene disaster in my backyard. But really – fuck this thing. It got maybe 2 hours of combined use and then refused to start. Premixed expensive fuel be damned. I even wasted money on a chain upgrade.

So why did I buy this? Because, even despite my growing collection of electric yard work appliances, I still maintained an inaccurate mental prejudice against battery power. I didn’t think anything but gas power could offer the performance I needed, or the length operational time. In my defense, however, batteries have come a long way since I started using lawn equipment in the 90s.

Lesson learned, I returned it and bought this instead:

Granted, it was 3x the price, but it has not disappointed. In fact, it has more power than the gas, and while top-end professional lumberjack models still probably run on gas and out-perform electric, for my less intense residential needs, electric is the way to go. And as outlined in my hypothetical, it maintains all the perks therein.

There are really only two logical reasons to buy gas equipment anymore: if you need the highest-power of applications (gas still seems to hold the advantage, even in cars, but we’re talking cars that need speeds I’ll never drive myself), and total power per price point (gas is cheaper for now in terms of upfront cost).

And there are two emotional reasons to buy gas equipment: some mental hangup on their coolness or traditional value, and political brainwashing (the people who still believe EVs are more harmful to the environment than ICEs).

My final thoughts here are to consider electric first. Chances are the upfront cost premium will more than make up for the frustrations and maintenance costs down the road for gas-powered alternatives. And if you’re at the age where you can afford these appliances, you should be past worrying about the coolness factor. And if you buy in to anti-electric political agendas, that’s only forestalling the inevitable technology shift anyway.

These are lessons that I had to learn again for some reason.

Gas is antiquated technology. You’re almost always better off buying electric.

–Simon