I have this condition called a recurrent corneal abrasion. Basically, my eyelid occasionally adheres to the skin on my eyeball and rips it open when I open them too quickly after waking up. It is very painful. The only thing that helps is an ointment that I put in my eye before I go to sleep. It comes in a tiny little tube, costs $40, lasts about a month. The last few tubes, I've kept even though they were "empty"; thank the hoarder in me. This turned out to be a saving grace, as the ointment is often sold out at nearby pharmacies, and I can't afford a new tube a month, anyhow. There tends to be enough left in each, if I spend a while squeezing the shit out of it, to get a small drop (1/10th of the recommended dose) into each eye for a couple of weeks. That's a few more weeks of not waking up feeling like someone has taken a razor blade to my cornea. I'll take it.Also something about Cuba. I think my point is that we're a bit too cavalier with used electronics these days. The embodied energy and materials are huge, and we just... throw them out, in many cases. I'd like us to get used to repurposing these resources before scarcity forces us to. Really squeezing every bit of use out of them that we can. Bonus: because it's not the Hot New Thing Someone Is Trying To Sell You, you'll likely be less subject to the Hot New Trend Of Actually Being The Product.
And, for what it's worth: an original Apple I just sold for almost $450k at auction. Someone wanted that.
ISL|2 years ago