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Comment by colinsidoti | Hacker News Reader

I love content like this. I've found my knowledge becomes more specialized as I age, and content like this gives me an opportunity to grok other specialities with relative ease.

For whatever reason (I'm a software engineer), I particularly enjoy content about everyday physical goods. Knife steel has just been added to my bookmark list, but here are a couple more I think are worth sharing:

Making the ideal wool fabric for outerwear: https://weatherwool.com/pages/the-weatherwool-difference

Choosing the ideal card-holding material for leather wallets: https://ashlandleather.com/blogs/inside-ashland/johnny-the-f...

The grades and quality of Panama Hats: https://www.brentblack.com/panama-hat-grades-explained.html

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I once visited a Panama Har factory and the difference between a $20 and a $100 hat was striking. However real surprise was awaiting in the special room with $600+ hats. They feel like they are made from completely different material - soft like fabric, yet able to hold their form no matter how much you try to stretch them. You get that unique feeling of a very high-quality physical product like you would get from, for a example holding a very fine sword.

Maybe this observation will be unwelcome, but that content exists because it has very broad appeal these days, especially among hipsters and the "bohemian bourgeois". Those aren't my terms.

"Authenticity" is the word that usually gets wheeled out to explain why people want to spend time learning about, purchasing, and living with these goods, whether the goods are inexpensive, common but basic items or more expensive craft products. In the end it comes down to an ethos about quality, hand-made goods, often made locally, that seems to have survived through the 20th C in the high-end clothing and food industries. It's a form of commerce that people can get behind that doesn't involve mass-production by impersonal corporations.

It's a massive social trend.

Could we stop calling it content and refer to it as “writing”?

I don't think that genie is going back in the bottle.

Not exactly the same thing, but you might well enjoy the Boring Conference: http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2015/05/boring-v.html

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