How Did the Casio F91W Become a Terrorist Icon?
reaperfeed.com
reaperfeed.com
I started getting into watches last year, and the F-91W is a sort of rite of passage in watch circles. I've since bought a few expensive† ($1000+) watches for my collection, but I often find myself wearing the Casio. Yeah, I modded it and it has a bit of personal attachment, but it's not just that. There's something really strange about it: it fits so snugly on my wrist, so warm, yet spartan; it simply just feels good.
[1] https://dvt.name/2019/06/03/hacking-the-casio-f-91w-to-handl...
[2] https://static.highsnobiety.com/thumbor/hC8faiWSsiFpNpszRf0l...
[3] http://ethiopiaforums.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/osama-b...
† This is of course relative. Watches can cost up to millions, and serious watch collectors have watches that can easily go up to $50,000++.
If you watch Napoleon Dynamite closely, you'll note that Napoleon has an F91W, but his "classy" uncle has an A158W. It was funny to someone like me.
Hah, I definitely missed this detail, I must've last seen Napoleon Dynamite years ago.
The EL light was super, very bright and very well distributed (because the whole backlight film would light up). I'm surprised they managed to put one in such a small watch as EL film needs fairly high voltages, you could hear the switching coil whine when it was on :P Yet it still lasted a good while on battery.
Certain objects are so ubiquitous and their signaling so minimal, it’s to the point of background noise and contextlessness.
The Casio F-91W is one such object.
The monobloc chair is another[1].
The community jokes a CIA analyst looking at a gritty Polaroid of a monobloc will have no ability to discern if the picture was taken in Djibouti or Denmark.
In a certain, Cayce Pollard / William Gibson “CPU” aesthetic, there is cachet and delight in signalling contextlessness - and a small cult has grown around these objects. They collectively call objects that share this anonymous property “monoblocs“ for short and their is a bit of fun in acquiring the most base form (counter to our every instinct!)
I liked your article’s tangent on incompressibility. As, like fluid, noise is incompressible and by reinforcing your F-91W, you have made it doubly so.
[1] http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/04/06/those-white-pl...
I had no idea of this new "monobloc" trend, but I feel like you're on to something. When I wear, say, my Longines Diver and I look at my wrist, I feel that my watch is communicating: it's an intricate, hand-built machine telling me the time. I need to wind it and breathe new life into it. I get complimented on it: "new watch?" or "nice watch, what is it?" It's an accessory. A deliberate choice.
When I look down at my F-91W, it's as if it's not even there. I'm the one telling the time. Everyone ignores it, no one mentions it, no one brings it up: it's there but it's not. Just like a monobloc chair or a #2 pencil.
I think we often underestimate how much depth there is to subjects we are only casually familiar with, and I'm sure a CIA analyst could glean a great deal of information from a still of a plastic chair.
At the same time, I'd like to see an article that explains why he considers one plastic chair superior to a different one, or what was the basis for ranking the chairs in the order he did.
I don’t know what CPU aesthetic is, though.
>>In a certain, Cayce Pollard / William Gibson “CPU” aesthetic, there is cachet and delight in signalling contextlessness - and a small cult has grown around these objects. They collectively call objects that share this anonymous property “monoblocs“ for short
Do you have more information on this ? Searching for monoblocs doesn't turn up anything useful apart from the monobloc chair.
I hate this chair with a passion. Didn't even know it had a name.
Totally agree. And it's great utility because of this. You can use it while playing, sports, music and it doesn't get in the way. There's no anxiety of busting and if you do it's cheap to replace.
Otherwise love it. The battery lasts longer than the plastics. Has this timeless 80s chic of the original Walkman and Thinkpads.
I would love the calculator one more, but that is critically missing a light, which makes it impractical.
The only digital watch I own is the F-91W, and I think it makes a nice contrast between the watches I wear more regularly.
> Some sources suggest heating the mineral oil to ~50° Centigrade, but I’m not exactly sure what the reasoning for that might be, so I stuck with room temperature.
I expect this is just to reduce the viscosity of the oil so that it fills the cracks more easily.
Guess I should see if the battery has exploded and if not get it out of there :/
I like to replace the watch bands with a pair of elastic hairbands. It makes the watches much lighter and more comfortable in a variety of scenarios:
- Running (doesn't bounce around or get sweaty)
- Yoga/pushups (can bend wrist fully)
- Typing on a laptop (wristband doesn't hit the edge)
I do have to change out the elastic hairbands every 4 months or so as they stretch out, and there's about a week of breaking it in where the new bands are too tight. Otherwise it's so great I'd seek to commercialize it.
Photos: https://imgur.com/a/qNJ4MuG
If anyone wants to try it out and could use some tips let me know.
Yes, the article even points out four chaplains also wore it. "Cheap, reliable and common watch is also popular with terrorists" isn't as sexy a headline though.
It's important to point out here that what you're reading about is people being tortured to confess on the purpose of a watch.
The logic of "Interrogators smelled a rat" is terrifying. Imagine you get captured by a state enemy and they ask you why so many Americans have iPhones. They beat you until you tell them and clearly "uh, they're useful? everyone has one? you can pay for them in installments so the cost is hidden?" aren't going to be acceptable answers. The interrogator smells a "rat" and wants to get the "real" answers from you.
Clearly the answers of "so we can do Muslim things" are to appease the interrogator. The prisoner knows that "I don't know, cause everyone else has one and they're cheap" is not going to fly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#...
It's important to point out that you have absolutely no evidence of anyone being tortured to confess to the purpose of a watch. The interrogators could have just asked.
Of course, the watch is not only appreciated by the terrorists of the world but likewise by the people who combat them... Such as the Syrian Democratic Forces which is a coalition waging an anti-ISIS campaign across war-torn Syria.
...in the first place because the vast majority of SDF were specifically interested in forming a Kurdish "homeland". Nothing wrong with that, but it's not an "anti-ISIS campaign". Sometimes they fought ISIS, sometimes they fought the Syrian military (with whom they've since suggested a truce), but now they fight the Turks. [0] SDF mostly served as a fig leaf, so that USA could insert vast quantities of munitions into ungoverned parts of Syria and still pretend we weren't ISIL's primary armaments supplier. Now that Syria, Russia, and Iran have defeated ISIL, maybe we should ask the Turks if SDF and YPG are really "people who combat terrorists"...
The fact that "Батя" doesn't mind dropping such transparently WaPo-approved propaganda into the middle of an unrelated article really undercuts the whole "independent journalism" vibe that "Reaper Feed" claims to cultivate.
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/syrian-democratic-for...
Uh oh...
Or maybe because it’s a $6 watch...
Kinda like how 90% of murderers have been shown to eat bread within 12 hours of their killing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Lib...
The article describes them as "insurgents" initially, but in the immediately next sentence goes on about "the terrorists of the world". The photo of their leader follows immediately from photos of Osama Bin Laden and er, an unidentified ISIS militant, apparentlY? It's extremely dodgy to lump such clearly terrorist organisations with the Zapatistas. The latter are an indigenous liberation army who have fought in opern warfare with the national army of Mexico and are not known for attacking civilian targets, carrying out suicide bombings or anything like that. Not to condone armed struggle but one could call George Washington a terrorist, under such a loose apparent definition of terrorism.
I had one of these when I was young (though it may have been the pretty similar F-105W actually). I loved that cool blue glow. In fact I think the only difference between the F-91W and F-105W was the print on the front.
Edit: Nope, the F-91W had a poor green LED, the F-105W had super cool blue electroluminescent backlight, so that was the difference, thanks to dvt for pointing this out.
Also, I have a satellite phone, and many radio transceivers (mentioned in the article). Just the "Large quantities of cash" I don't have (I buy too many radios and other toys lol).. I suppose I'm on a list now :D
[1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-toyota-pickup-truck-is-...
I still miss the Wikipedia article "List of Guantanamo Bay captives accused of possessing Casio watches" (I think republished at http://wikialpha.org/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_captives_ac... ) which seemed to give evidence that watch ownership was used to classify people in detention camps.
1. It's small and looks like G-shock classic and has typical C-shock features.
2. Solar powered.
3. Multi-band 5 timekeeping from atomic clocks in the US, EU or Japan. I set the time once after I bought it and just switch daylight savings time twice a year.
The only issue is that it needs integrated strap specific to the model, not generic one. Casio straps for G-shocks break in everyday use in every 5-6 years. Durable stainless steel strap costs $100, roughly the same as the watch itself.
My only real complaint is the countdown timer is only 1 hour. There are times I could use a 24-hour countdown timer.
A minor nitpick is the watch's thickness is just a tad too think to be worn under shirt cuffs. If Casio would ever release a 25-30% thinner version with the same features, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
How do you attach Nato strap to GW-M5600? With those weird adapters? https://www.watchuseek.com/threads/gw-5600-nato.194176/#lg=t...
Nato straps just don't go into integrated straps. I have tried.
I don’t know why Casio charges so much. I’d think that if they reduced the price then people would buy more.
The other annoying thing about G-Shocks is the band. I have a all-black model with a clasp link band. I love it. It’s super easy to remove and put back on when I’m using they keyboard.
Much better if it was the Arnie watch: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/seiko-prospex-snj025-aka-t...
That said, they have a few limitations:
* The backlight is pretty weak
* The stopwatch tops out at 1 hour
* It needs batteries, as opposed to solar or kinetic charging (this is probably why the backlight is underpowered)
* It would be great if it had a compass.
The reason for this is because the LED is mounted facing directly up, not facing the display. I've seen some mods where they replace the LED with a side-facing and it's far better.
Casio do a British Army G-shock now but I can’t imagine any actual soldier using it, it’s 2cm or more high and has features that will snag on anything. The F91w is very thin. It’s more marketed towards airsofters I reckon.
A bunkmate thought it would be hilarious to set alarms on all of them to go off every 15 minutes while I was asleep and he was on watch.
It was nearly indestructible. Never left my wrist during daily jogs, showers, swims, saunas ... you name it.
After a few years finally some water had gotten into the housing. The watch was still working, but the screen had become less readable. Still, best watch ever owned.
Could be testable by turning the stopwatch on and then change the time. I have no idea how these clocks work; if they have a Unix time style counter as internal reference, then this test won't work. Would need a 36 bit memory to run for 20 years continuous counting; 30 billion times bit flipping on the lowest bit. Probably done differently.
from what i remember from failed watch repairs on these as a child, there's really nothing super easy about that connection
So I asked my parents for a cheap digital watch with inbuilt light. I got something similar to this Casio but am not sure if it was exactly this. But the darkness readability aspect of a watch had never been a concern for me prior, or after, but during that year the most important feature. Perhaps terrorists operating in the dark as well have come to a similar conclusion.
An analogue watch with SuperLumiNova(tm) will be usable all night from a 10 second blast with a good torch. Source: regularly do this.
Quick google search gives lots of results on this, here's one: https://www.wearethemighty.com/tech/how-the-white-toyota-hil...
The photo caption is wrong, I think. Ryusuke is not "polishing" a Samurai sword, or Katana. Rather, most likely, he is simply analyzing it and looking at the curvature, etc, and using a cloth to not leave any fingerprint on the blade.
But I have never checked my Casio F91W is counterfeit, so I figured it's a good time, I used this -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGuJAJ0I1Cg
My watch says made in Japan, so I guess it's a genuine fake. But it is full of water, so that bit sucks.
EDIT: that video is fascinating. The different in beep frequency is a dead give-away, though.
A few weeks later I noticed it was slowly losing time and had some other issues, clearly a fake or reject watch. So that's how, I guess.
One last word of caution, even the F91W fakes do the three-button CASIo module thing now.