No relevant insights except to ask: Why do Chinese sellers insist on naming themselves a random assortment of capital letters? As you mention, this is true of USB cables as well.
I'd bet there's serious money to be made by a Chinese seller who names himself "Cincinnati Manufacturing" or "Longhorn Products Ltd." or "Maple Valley Co."
That's the Harbor Freight business model in a nutshell: buy (or INVENT, as you suggest) traditional American brands then use them to adorn Chinese products.
If I had to guess the reasons, particularly on Amazon, it would be this: they don't have access to enough legal muscle to make sure their name of choice isn't actually in use somewhere else. It would be a stone-cold bitch to sell a million USB cables as "Cincinnati Manufacturing" then have your bank accounts seized by the grandson of a dude who once made carriage wheels with the name. Think about how cautious and paranoid you'd be doing business in China; that's how they feel about us.
I think with regard to the intelligence angle, dog-eat-dog Third World cultures like China and India equate honesty with naivete. Most likely, there's no precedent in their cultures for people succeeding without lying, cheating or worse.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'd rather hire some honest guy off the street who'd never even heard of the industry I'm in rather than a grizzled "pragmatist," because I can teach a person any skill I might need him to do, but I can't instill in him a conscience.
There was a show when we lived in Japan that followed Japanese women who married foreigners in their husband's country. One of these women married a Chinese and lived in Shanghai and she had all sorts of stories about how you had to stay on whoever you did business with because they would cut every corner and run up any cost they could. Being Japanese, she had a hard time getting the taxi driver to make the right turns (thereby running up the charge to her) and the guys who installed her new lamp left a huge mess and did not haul away their garbage. I meet honest people all the time here, but I would not trust a single person I met there at first sight. (I'm also extremely biased since I lived in Japan, married a Japanese woman, and had all our kids there.)
This is echoed in Poorly Made in China and suggestive of a cultural feature.
While I would describe it as West/Euro v China it might just be high trust v low trust since I was listening to someone in Romania describe how one might not be able to just ask any rando on the street for directions and get help or a "sorry, I don't know."
As I understand it, one HUGE difference between the Chinese and the Japanese is that, as Dave Barry put it, in Japan you're simply not allowed to screw up. Mistakes, failures and errors in judgment carry large social penalties in Japanese culture regardless of who one is, and therefore people are afraid to make them.
Among the Chinese, however, it's more Western in the sense of WHO does wrong is more important than WHAT wrong was done - a powerful man can get away with more than a poor one, and everybody knows it.
I was looking for an HDMI switch recently. One of the brands that came up was PONYBRO. I almost bought it just to be able to say the name over and over.
I get amused by the American companies who name themselves something that sounds like a Chinese knockoff. There's a Utah company Fezzari that sells really nice and affordable mountain and road bikes. Fezzari sounds like a Chinese company that's trying real hard to sound Italian.
When higher end bike racks started becoming a thing for normal people I remember national press folks kept talking about YAKIMA racks, but pronouncing it as "ya-KEE-ma" racks as if they were Japanese. As opposed to "YAK-a-ma" the Washington town were they were made.
They used to use a name very close to an American company and then get a logo designed that looked almost exactly like the American company. S.E. was a company doing this to G.E. And they sold a LOT of stuff that way, because you really had to stop and look at the logo to realize that it was an S and not a G.
Interesting, I didn't know that story about S.E. and G.E.
The real G.E. is publicly traded, so owned by tons of people, but the appliances division (GE Appliances) was sold to Haier (which sounds German but is Chinese).
As far as I know, Whirlpool (still based in Benton Harbor, Michigan and mostly owned by big institutional investors like Vanguard and Blackrock) still makes at least some of its appliances in the U.S.). In addition to the Whirlpool brand, they own the Jenn-Air, Maytag, Amana, Roper, Electrolux and KitchenAid brands. KitchenAid still makes some of their stuff in Ohio, but I was at a wholesale restaurant supply yestereday (looking to buy cheap whiskey tumblers to laser engrave) and while they had some restaurant grade KitchenAid mixers for sale, all of the larger mixers, which decades ago would have carried Hobart brands, were all Chinese. If I'm not mistaken, the KitchenAid mixer was originally a scaled down version of the commercial Hobart. The two brands split in 1986 when Whirlpool bought KitchenAid.
Our washer and dryer are Whirlpools, complete with the "MADE IN USA" stickers on the fronts. I wonder how many pieces inside them can make that claim...
I had to replace a relay in my parents' Whirlpool dryer recently. When I went looking for parts, I found the Chinese knockoff for about $7...and the genuine Whirlpool item, made God knows where unfortunately, for $39.
My hvac guy insists on using US made capacitors for A/C units. I bought three of them at the local supply to have on the shelf. God only knows how much longer they’ll be available.
I made it a point to buy a USA-made Whirlpool set (upright washer for supposed better reliability) when we bought our new "nice" house and the fuckin thing starts screeching the belt on start-up when it was less than a year old. At my old house I had a pair of used 20 year old basic maytags (bought from BIG JONS USED APPLIANCES), the kind without any circuit boards just relays and mechanical timers, the one time the dryer got noisy I took the thing apart in about 15 minutes put some lithium grease on a squeaky bearing surface and buttoned it back up, ran quiet for the four years we had them and sold them with the house.
My single buddy and I were shooting the shit last night about his dating travails and triumphs. His observation is that reasonably attractive women are really good at drawing in orbiters through thirst trap social media posts. So much so that they believe all men should orbit them for a while regardless of their attractiveness, status, or what value they offer for the future. He's become extremely adept at recognizing the motions of these lifeless planets and avoids them like the plague they are. He's got stories, man.
Thanks to the simp economy, some women have valued themselves the way old men do their “1 of 1” Corvettes. Many of these women could easily be mistaken for planets.
Can’t comment on USA made blades, but Feather out of Japan makes the finest blades I’ve used. As a “safety” razor devotee, I can attest to their quality and sharpness, having tested many brands on the calibrated instrument known as my pretty face. Also #dontsimpforthe403s
I've shaved with Feather for years. Those and the "Israel" blades are the only 2 that can shave me without damaging my skin. My whiskers are so coarse, they could be recycled as industrial grit.
I use Personna Lab Blue double edge blades in my MerKur 34C. They’re excellent. Factory is in Verona VA. American Safety Razor co which became Edgewell after Walmart fucked ASR. Only USA made dual edge. I don’t know of any other besides Gillette so I believe you are the first to actually put this new info on the internet. Fantastic research.
I do wonder at times what some of these former 'ladies' in your life looked like. Moreso because of the names you've given them than any other reason.
I'll also never understand rich parents who don't take the time to teach their children the meaning of work. For me, that's a head scratcher and I've seen it far too many times.
Over the past decade, because of my dad's medical problems and my own symptoms of middle age, I've had cause to wonder if maybe the warrior cultures of the world aren't right - that it's best to die on a battlefield when you're 30, quickly and honorably, before you have to suffer the indignities of growing old.
I suspect it was more like dying on the battlefield when they were 35-40, next to their adult sons. You'll find references to grandfathers in every ancient culture, so people had to be living at least slightly past thirty. I hope.
I’ve managed to reverse a little of the cycle with strict diet and exercise but i can see it fighting back harder every day, especially when I backslide. The thing that bothers me the most is hairloss. I turn 40 in March and I don’t expect to survive the next decade without living as George Costanza.
In those regards, you’ll be winning until the end of time...or at least your own. I’ll never enjoy the Sean Connery look that seems to the staple of age.
The first time that I met Vodka was at a big auto show. I may have helped Jack with her creds to get in the media preview as he'd sometimes give me a list of people to get in through my web site. Jack was busy with something and I was talking to her and I guess I assumed she was a writer and she said, "I know Jack from outside the industry," with a perfectly salacious inflection.
I checked, the misspellings are there in the original marketing copy for The Razor Blade Company. You think they’d spend a couple hundred bucks and get someone to look that stuff over.
It's an unfair game to play with the readers because of course I'll refer to things near and dear to my heart. Kind of like how I can play my own guitar solo faster than someone else's.
When I grok a Baruthian reference it’s like finding a quarter on the sidewalk. Happens just often enough to keep me paying attention. Occasionally, it makes me smarter—e.g., I know what lagniappe means.
It’s twu, it’s twu! I looked it up and, in fact, elitedaily.com IS running an article titled, “How to dopamine dress for every 2022 holiday scenario.” You, literally, can not make this stuff up.
Am using a Henson razor that is made in canada, they also sell the double edged safety blades for it, ten cents a blade, shaves good, I have no idea of the origin of the blades, but it seems that they could come from anywhere
I hope the quality control on their blade manufacturing is better than on their advertising copy. Make enough typos and I'll start thinking you might not be a native English speaker.
Disappointed at the lack of direct link to the Dopamine Dress article. I had to read it because I rarely read a title a have so little idea what the subject of the article could even be. I read it and I am still not sure. However the expert they tapped was a Kate Lopez, and ever since a Kate Lopez stepped aside from editing the NRO (although she still contributes) I have wondered how she keeps busy. Furthermore I do think she is regretting nixing what could have been a big click getter during her time in charge.
Like the late Mac Miller, I'm just out here being me, as frustrating as it may be to both my friends and foes!
Lyrics you've heard a thousand times are strange when you read them as prose.
No relevant insights except to ask: Why do Chinese sellers insist on naming themselves a random assortment of capital letters? As you mention, this is true of USB cables as well.
I'd bet there's serious money to be made by a Chinese seller who names himself "Cincinnati Manufacturing" or "Longhorn Products Ltd." or "Maple Valley Co."
It can't be that hard, and they'd make bank.
That's the Harbor Freight business model in a nutshell: buy (or INVENT, as you suggest) traditional American brands then use them to adorn Chinese products.
If I had to guess the reasons, particularly on Amazon, it would be this: they don't have access to enough legal muscle to make sure their name of choice isn't actually in use somewhere else. It would be a stone-cold bitch to sell a million USB cables as "Cincinnati Manufacturing" then have your bank accounts seized by the grandson of a dude who once made carriage wheels with the name. Think about how cautious and paranoid you'd be doing business in China; that's how they feel about us.
Pretty easy to check. https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/search. Also, marks can expire.
Like I said, just imagine you're doing business in the Third World. To the Chinese, we are a land of corruption, bizarre beliefs, and low IQ.
And they're the land of undercutting their competitors on eBay by a penny, also there's a bit of projection in how they see us.
As for IQ, I taught my high IQ offspring that good is good and smart is smart and they're not the same thing.
I think with regard to the intelligence angle, dog-eat-dog Third World cultures like China and India equate honesty with naivete. Most likely, there's no precedent in their cultures for people succeeding without lying, cheating or worse.
If I was hiring, I'd value honesty over raw intelligence. I wonder if there is a way to reliably test honesty.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'd rather hire some honest guy off the street who'd never even heard of the industry I'm in rather than a grizzled "pragmatist," because I can teach a person any skill I might need him to do, but I can't instill in him a conscience.
Hire a white guy raised by married parents.
There was a show when we lived in Japan that followed Japanese women who married foreigners in their husband's country. One of these women married a Chinese and lived in Shanghai and she had all sorts of stories about how you had to stay on whoever you did business with because they would cut every corner and run up any cost they could. Being Japanese, she had a hard time getting the taxi driver to make the right turns (thereby running up the charge to her) and the guys who installed her new lamp left a huge mess and did not haul away their garbage. I meet honest people all the time here, but I would not trust a single person I met there at first sight. (I'm also extremely biased since I lived in Japan, married a Japanese woman, and had all our kids there.)
This is echoed in Poorly Made in China and suggestive of a cultural feature.
While I would describe it as West/Euro v China it might just be high trust v low trust since I was listening to someone in Romania describe how one might not be able to just ask any rando on the street for directions and get help or a "sorry, I don't know."
As I understand it, one HUGE difference between the Chinese and the Japanese is that, as Dave Barry put it, in Japan you're simply not allowed to screw up. Mistakes, failures and errors in judgment carry large social penalties in Japanese culture regardless of who one is, and therefore people are afraid to make them.
Among the Chinese, however, it's more Western in the sense of WHO does wrong is more important than WHAT wrong was done - a powerful man can get away with more than a poor one, and everybody knows it.
I always wondered how insane my company was for putting Indians in validation roles. You couldn’t trust that any of the criteria were met.
"I thought 'Irony' was just a description of how our tap water tasted."
- Red Green.
I was looking for an HDMI switch recently. One of the brands that came up was PONYBRO. I almost bought it just to be able to say the name over and over.
I get amused by the American companies who name themselves something that sounds like a Chinese knockoff. There's a Utah company Fezzari that sells really nice and affordable mountain and road bikes. Fezzari sounds like a Chinese company that's trying real hard to sound Italian.
When higher end bike racks started becoming a thing for normal people I remember national press folks kept talking about YAKIMA racks, but pronouncing it as "ya-KEE-ma" racks as if they were Japanese. As opposed to "YAK-a-ma" the Washington town were they were made.
But how do the Yakima pronounce their own name?
The tribe spells it Yakama.
I've heard it both ways.
I got a splitter from Techole. I don't know if it is Tec-hole, Tech-ole or something else.
Damn funny
I initially read "tec-hole" but "tech-ole" (like a matador) is way better.
They used to use a name very close to an American company and then get a logo designed that looked almost exactly like the American company. S.E. was a company doing this to G.E. And they sold a LOT of stuff that way, because you really had to stop and look at the logo to realize that it was an S and not a G.
Course now I think the Chinese own GE?
Interesting, I didn't know that story about S.E. and G.E.
The real G.E. is publicly traded, so owned by tons of people, but the appliances division (GE Appliances) was sold to Haier (which sounds German but is Chinese).
As far as I know, Whirlpool (still based in Benton Harbor, Michigan and mostly owned by big institutional investors like Vanguard and Blackrock) still makes at least some of its appliances in the U.S.). In addition to the Whirlpool brand, they own the Jenn-Air, Maytag, Amana, Roper, Electrolux and KitchenAid brands. KitchenAid still makes some of their stuff in Ohio, but I was at a wholesale restaurant supply yestereday (looking to buy cheap whiskey tumblers to laser engrave) and while they had some restaurant grade KitchenAid mixers for sale, all of the larger mixers, which decades ago would have carried Hobart brands, were all Chinese. If I'm not mistaken, the KitchenAid mixer was originally a scaled down version of the commercial Hobart. The two brands split in 1986 when Whirlpool bought KitchenAid.
Our washer and dryer are Whirlpools, complete with the "MADE IN USA" stickers on the fronts. I wonder how many pieces inside them can make that claim...
I had to replace a relay in my parents' Whirlpool dryer recently. When I went looking for parts, I found the Chinese knockoff for about $7...and the genuine Whirlpool item, made God knows where unfortunately, for $39.
My hvac guy insists on using US made capacitors for A/C units. I bought three of them at the local supply to have on the shelf. God only knows how much longer they’ll be available.
I made it a point to buy a USA-made Whirlpool set (upright washer for supposed better reliability) when we bought our new "nice" house and the fuckin thing starts screeching the belt on start-up when it was less than a year old. At my old house I had a pair of used 20 year old basic maytags (bought from BIG JONS USED APPLIANCES), the kind without any circuit boards just relays and mechanical timers, the one time the dryer got noisy I took the thing apart in about 15 minutes put some lithium grease on a squeaky bearing surface and buttoned it back up, ran quiet for the four years we had them and sold them with the house.
My single buddy and I were shooting the shit last night about his dating travails and triumphs. His observation is that reasonably attractive women are really good at drawing in orbiters through thirst trap social media posts. So much so that they believe all men should orbit them for a while regardless of their attractiveness, status, or what value they offer for the future. He's become extremely adept at recognizing the motions of these lifeless planets and avoids them like the plague they are. He's got stories, man.
Thanks to the simp economy, some women have valued themselves the way old men do their “1 of 1” Corvettes. Many of these women could easily be mistaken for planets.
Some seem to be big enough to have their own gravitational fields.
Certainly their egos can simulate such a field.
"My fat chick is best fat chick..."
Can’t comment on USA made blades, but Feather out of Japan makes the finest blades I’ve used. As a “safety” razor devotee, I can attest to their quality and sharpness, having tested many brands on the calibrated instrument known as my pretty face. Also #dontsimpforthe403s
I've shaved with Feather for years. Those and the "Israel" blades are the only 2 that can shave me without damaging my skin. My whiskers are so coarse, they could be recycled as industrial grit.
I use Feathers in my OneBlade.
I'll have to check them out, running no name Russian (not a joke) blades in my Merkur at the moment.
They're not great blades and I have to change them every 3rd shave. First is okay, second is sketchy, third feels like it's pulling hair out.
Feathers tore me up, not sure why. I was using Gillette Silver Blue, until they went all woke feminist a few years back. Now I use Personna.
I use Personna Lab Blue double edge blades in my MerKur 34C. They’re excellent. Factory is in Verona VA. American Safety Razor co which became Edgewell after Walmart fucked ASR. Only USA made dual edge. I don’t know of any other besides Gillette so I believe you are the first to actually put this new info on the internet. Fantastic research.
I do wonder at times what some of these former 'ladies' in your life looked like. Moreso because of the names you've given them than any other reason.
I'll also never understand rich parents who don't take the time to teach their children the meaning of work. For me, that's a head scratcher and I've seen it far too many times.
I've posted a lot of photos over the years; just searching Vodka McBigbra brings up a few!
Cut and pasted from when I asked the same question under a different thread:
"Drama is on the left, between me and a Nashville starlet: https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/2022/06/30/8668683/thank-you-and-goodbye-sort-of.jpg?size=720x845&nocrop=1
Vodka is here, with a 370Z: https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/2022/07/17/8993210/ask-the-best-brightest-is-vodkas-future-just-a-mirage.jpg?size=720x845&nocrop=1
Ha ha ha
Thanks it’s nice to put actual faces to my imagination.
Jack was a pretty suave looking guy, no wonder!
Yeah I just fell apart over the last decade. I cannot recommend getting old!
Over the past decade, because of my dad's medical problems and my own symptoms of middle age, I've had cause to wonder if maybe the warrior cultures of the world aren't right - that it's best to die on a battlefield when you're 30, quickly and honorably, before you have to suffer the indignities of growing old.
I suspect it was more like dying on the battlefield when they were 35-40, next to their adult sons. You'll find references to grandfathers in every ancient culture, so people had to be living at least slightly past thirty. I hope.
I’ve managed to reverse a little of the cycle with strict diet and exercise but i can see it fighting back harder every day, especially when I backslide. The thing that bothers me the most is hairloss. I turn 40 in March and I don’t expect to survive the next decade without living as George Costanza.
In those regards, you’ll be winning until the end of time...or at least your own. I’ll never enjoy the Sean Connery look that seems to the staple of age.
Maybe you can't BE Sean Connery, but you CAN slap your woman to keep her in line.
Just remember to use an open hand.
Gator don’t play haha!
The first time that I met Vodka was at a big auto show. I may have helped Jack with her creds to get in the media preview as he'd sometimes give me a list of people to get in through my web site. Jack was busy with something and I was talking to her and I guess I assumed she was a writer and she said, "I know Jack from outside the industry," with a perfectly salacious inflection.
I checked, the misspellings are there in the original marketing copy for The Razor Blade Company. You think they’d spend a couple hundred bucks and get someone to look that stuff over.
Christ! News outlets don't even do this any more.
My local paper had a headline that mentioned “chimpanzees on the lamb” the other day.
It created quite a visual of chimps dressed like cowboys riding sheep.
After a single vehicle highway crash, the local paper here used the headline " Dog Dies In Rollover ".
Sounds like, "Ike Beats Tina To Death."
Nice Eurythmics reference.
Actifed likely saved the Apollo 7 mission:
https://www.history.com/news/apollo-7-near-mutiny-ground-control-astronauts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WxT4BdgX2w
The V McB origin story is as entertaining as it is unsurprising.
I appreciated the Eurythmics reference because it has to be about the first one I got since I started reading Jack's work like 13 years ago.
I have to look most of them up myself. Its also a rare article where I don't have to consult the dictionary once or twice.
I need to buy a used hardcopy dictionary from the 70s or 80s or some less, eh, flexible era.
It's an unfair game to play with the readers because of course I'll refer to things near and dear to my heart. Kind of like how I can play my own guitar solo faster than someone else's.
When I grok a Baruthian reference it’s like finding a quarter on the sidewalk. Happens just often enough to keep me paying attention. Occasionally, it makes me smarter—e.g., I know what lagniappe means.
Additionally, sometimes commenters make me look stuff up. I only just read Stranger in a Strange Land last summer!
It’s twu, it’s twu! I looked it up and, in fact, elitedaily.com IS running an article titled, “How to dopamine dress for every 2022 holiday scenario.” You, literally, can not make this stuff up.
I would like my time reading part of that article back.
What a strange way to describe "wearing clothes you enjoy" - I guess that doesn't fit well in a tiktok.
Modern women don't seem to be able to grasp any concept or phrasing that is more than 36 months old.
Am using a Henson razor that is made in canada, they also sell the double edged safety blades for it, ten cents a blade, shaves good, I have no idea of the origin of the blades, but it seems that they could come from anywhere
"luanched" "baldes"
I hope the quality control on their blade manufacturing is better than on their advertising copy. Make enough typos and I'll start thinking you might not be a native English speaker.
Orbiters. Pathetic. Talk to her or forget about her, but never pine for her.
Or fuck one of her friends, the slutty one who will talk about it . If done well enough she will come around simply out of curiosity.
Talk to her then ignore her that’s magic
You mean ass-tronaut amirite?
"Amirite?"
What is that, Japanese?
Close... Pashto
Disappointed at the lack of direct link to the Dopamine Dress article. I had to read it because I rarely read a title a have so little idea what the subject of the article could even be. I read it and I am still not sure. However the expert they tapped was a Kate Lopez, and ever since a Kate Lopez stepped aside from editing the NRO (although she still contributes) I have wondered how she keeps busy. Furthermore I do think she is regretting nixing what could have been a big click getter during her time in charge.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/make-out-meter-months-issue-national-review-kathryn-jean-lopez/
Not gonna provide a direct link unless they let me be an Elite Daily Affiliate!
ah the stories i could tell...sorry to be a tease. i don't like teases but i do like myself!
This future blade test could be very helpful to those gun-less allies.