[2 minute read]
I’m incrementally pleased.
Not exuberant, but grateful for small progress.
My top reason to abandon a 15 year-old dress shirt is an unbecoming collar point worn by the agitator blades of a washer. Only a pricey front-loading tumbler would avoid the agitator. But the second reason is unseemly stressed threads at the pocket’s top. I think pocket protectors are sexy, but they don’t help with that; they’re just another stressor – among which is also a hand-wound iPhone power cord poised to uncoil under tension.
BUT … Apple to the rescue. They’ve softened the pliability of those older, rubbery cords by substituting a synthetic fabric – a great reduction in the coil tension when I tuck my cord over a breast, which I’ll now prefer to the irritation when stuffed in the rear pocket of trousers.
And they did it without new rare earth mines in Ukraine or Greenland. Just good old-fashioned far-east exploitative labor, no doubt. Innovation, likely afforded by reduced canal fees now that Panama has seen the light about Chinese contractors. Whew.
No shirt can live forever, but the 5-year extension on dress shirts is surely a chief explanation for Apple’s stock price. At least I won’t need new shirts when that other pricey company flies me to Mars.
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Neil D. 2026-07-01
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PS. Another modicum of thanks has risen in my throat for how Marriott housekeeping makes my bed and leaves the empty beer bottle. How else could I corral my butts as I chain-smoke in the parking lot to comment on world affairs? In a dress shirt. With pocket threads practically new.
Feel with Neil 