shaving (and the ubiquity of disposable goods).
right now i own four (four!) razors that i switch between based on mood and goal. ostensibly my "ideal" razor would be a traditional straight razor--the kind where the blade is part of the razor itself and not a detachable piece. the reason for that is mostly for long-term cost and ecological reasons. having a single blade integrated into the overall device means that the only costs over time are for shaving soap/brushes, and sharpening and stropping tools. it also has less points of failure, so should in theory last a lifetime with minimal investment of resources. however, having now used two different single-bladed razors and having to shave my entire head, i can say that a single-bladed razor is not adequate for me. below are the razors that i own, why i own them, and how i feel about them.supply single edge se
this was my newest purchase, and one that i made partially on impulse. it has several things going for it, namely that it uses a non-proprietary blade that is replaced individually (no cartridge) and it has no moving parts aside from the spring-loaded screw used to attach the handle to the housing. it also feels good to hold -- it's solid metal, and it's heavy. for my face, i would rate its shave as adequate; for my head, terrible. the lack of a pivoting head means that you have to constantly adjust the angle of attack as it moves over the contours of your body to prevent cutting yourself (or to ensure that you're actually shaving and not just dragging it over your skin). that's fine and dandy when you're doing it on your face and can see everything; for the back of the head, forget it. i ended up getting some pretty deep gouges on my head. i ended up returning it.generic shavette (no branding, gifted to me)
when i expressed an interest in shaving, one of my exes bought me a shavette, which is a folding razor that looks like a traditional straight razor but has a sliding cassette that will take a disposable razor blade. like the supply razor, i found the shave adequate on my face but unacceptable on my head, for largely the same reasons. unfortunately, i also found that i cut and nick myself a lot more often without some sort of a guard or guide, even when using it on my face. that problem definitely got better with practice, but even after a few months i still occasionally cut myself. if it was a traditional razor i'd probably use it more often, but since it's still using a (minimally wasteful) disposable blade, i'm less inclined to get better at it.braun series 3 3050cc
another gift to me. i was initially enthusiastic about the idea of the shaver cleaning itself between uses; however, that enthusiasm was definitely curbed when i discovered that the cleaning solution came in disposable plastic cartridges. thankfully, with some diligence, you can reuse the cartridges by rinsing them thoroughly and then filling with isopropyl alcohol (optionally, you can also add some fragrance). that said, i do like the shave that the braun gives me, but it has some problems getting to the base of my neck cleanly. it also takes longer to do my whole head than using a regular razor, as i typically have to make several passes over an area to get all of the hairs trimmed. finally, because it's an electric device, you have to either keep it plugged in all the time or remember to charge it before you use it.dollar shave club - the 4 blade
this is the razor that i turn to when any of the other razors falls short. i use it more often that i'd like to, because it just works. the downsides are that the cartridge head is easy to break and clogs quickly, meaning that i have to waste a lot of water and time cleaning it, and then it just ends up getting thrown away. moreover, since replacement cartridge is proprietary, you are locked in to buying single-use, disposable products. it gives the most consistent shave of the four.so therein lies the dilemma -- the razor that works the best is also the most wasteful. in fact, i would argue that as the razors get less wasteful, they also get less effective. i guess my ideal would be an all-metal, articulating razor that had multiple blades that were individually replaceable. if i were crafter, i might try to fabricate something to that effect using the blades i have on hand. (update 5/25/22 -- i finally found a razor that fits the bill -- the leaf razor. not only does it work great, but i can continue to use the same derby professionals that i have in abundance from the shavette, so i won't need to buy new blades for years. for once, market forces ended up generating something that i think is fairly optimized; however, it's also more expensive than the supply razor, so my overall points below still stand.)
some might wonder why i care about this so much, but it's simple: shaving is an activity that almost the entire adult population has to do to varying degrees. in aggregate, there is a lot of waste in just using disposable products. i am fully aware that waste and pollution from corporations vastly outpaces that of individuals, but corporations are driven by consumption. if we change our consumption, then eventually we can change corporations.
there is also another point that i frequently consider, and that is to what extent we can change the focus on disposable consumer goods. the reason why disposable goods are ubiquitous is not because people don't care (though i imagine that a lot of people don't), but because it's cheap. it's cheap to produce these goods and people can purchase them cheaply. i can drop $100 on a new gizmo at the drop of a hat because i am fortunate enough to make plenty of money, but for a lot of people that is a much bigger ask. correspondingly, i do not know what the ideal long-term solution is for a problem like this, because most people just don't have the time or money to search for alternatives. right now you can buy 60 disposable dorco razors on amazon for $9. that's a lot of waste, but if you don't have a lot of money, the idea of spending $30-60 on a sustainable product just isn't tenable. moreover, with some pretty reasonable assumptions (stretching the supply blades for 10 uses per blade and reusing disposable razors a couple of times) it never becomes cost-effective to use the more sustainable product. you'd have to actually treat the disposable razors as truly disposable and throw them away after each use just to have a chance at reaching a break-even point, and even then it'd be almost 3 years before reaching that. when you're stretching your money, thinking about sustainability is typically not at all a part of your decision matrix.
which leads, then, to the bigger problem. we know what the best course of action is: a sturdy, sustainable product with minimal waste. but for that to make an impact, it has to be at scale. but we can't do it at scale because the average consumer can't (or won't) buy it. how do we solve this? two words:
the free market doesn't have an optimal solution with resource consumption and environmental concerns in mind, so the government should step in to correct it. ideally, that would be banning the use of disposable consumer goods (especially single-use goods) and then providing enough universal basic income to offset the additional cost. i know that some people probably think that this is insane, but i'm standing by it. i don't see how we can realistically reduce consumption in aggregate without some sort of centralized solution.
insanity of scale.
zmap is an open-source tool that lets you map all of IPv4 space. let that sink in for a minute. with a gigabit connection, you can map every device with a publicly-facing v4 IP address in about 45 minutes. almost every device that touches the internet has an IPv4 address -- granted, with NAT and private IPs, there will be large swaths that are de facto unreachable from the outside, but with vulnerable endpoints it's possible that these could be touched. companies are using this tool to conduct large-scale surveys of basically the entire internet every day, usually multiple times a day, from multiple geolocations, and looking for all kinds of exploitable stuff (open ports, vulnerable services, certificate issues, and so on). most companies that do this are doing it because it ties into a security offering that they sell. but the fact remains that anyone with a robust connection can do this. threat actors are doing this because they want to exploit the vulnerabilities that they see. tools like shodan are indexing vulnerable or otherwise "open" devices all the time. this is why security updates are so important -- if it's unpatched, determined people will find it.but how crazy is it that not only is the entire public-facing internet being indexed, but it's being indexed by at least 30 or more companies and untold numbers of threat actors, security researchers, etc. probably hundreds or more times per day? if you told me 20 years ago that not only would we be running low on public IPv4 addresses but we'd have robust enough computing that we could trivially index the entire public-facing internet from a personal computer, i'd have eaten my hat.