Why I’m switching to Bosch and why Ryobi isn’t that much cheaper

Ryobi make decent tools and when I started my woodworking journey it seemed like the logical place to start. Mid to high range quality in the hobby sector, while still being somewhat affordable.

The Ryobi 18v one plus range has many decent tools that mostly have you covered. For the most part, Ryobi tools work well enough to get the job done.

Ryobi though isn’t without it’s quirks. Quality is somewhat lacking. While the tools might be fully functional they’re somewhat entry level-ish and lacking in features. I know that’s a generalization but take my random orbital sander for example – The Ryobi one has no speed selection and after about half a year of use, it’s making some interesting noises but it still works. Then there’s the trim router, which does a decent enough job, but can only accept 6mm bits and the spanner for the bit adjustment broke and it’s never been comfortable to use.

Next point worth discussion are accessories. Ryobi once again offer a very basic spread of accessories which are either average quality or non existent. Never amazing or stellar. Bosch on the other hand offer a much wider range of accessories and consumables and the quality is far higher.

And last but not least is the battery form factor, while this has never been a glaring issue for me, the Ryobi battery size and shape is the same as it was when it first hit the market, so it’s quite a bit larger than other brands as technology has scaled down.

Why I no longer recommend Ryobi

It is not that Ryobi tools are terrible, in fact on the whole they’re pretty good and most of their core tools will end up serving you well. It’s just that Bosch and specifically Bosch blue tools are simply better and either cost the same or slightly more.

It’s a misconception that Ryobi tools are cheaper. They’re not.

The battery line investment problem

Unless you have an unlimited budget, it’s a good idea to pick a battery line and stick with that. The reason is when you need a new tool, the cost is heavily reduced if you already have existing batteries for those tools.

In many cases, the battery costs more than the tool, and you will need a way to charge those batteries too.

Because of this and only because of this, I would always recommend bypassing an inferior brand from the get go.

Bosch isn’t that expensive compared to other manufacturers and still gives you incredible quality and longevity in the tools you use.

Support the troops

My view point on a certain matter has changed. You see, for roughly the entirety of my life, since I was born on this amazing little rock circling the sun, America has had it’s Army and Airforce aligned to the middle east and my entire life I’ve thought well obviously those greedy bastards are just after the oil.

This has influenced my thinking on war, the military and how politicians can direct force disguised as one thing or another and how the general population can be duped. I’ve thought like this my entire life up until very recently.

That event that changed it all was the Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan. This one event got me to question everything I thought I knew about war and US involvement.

War isn’t glamorous

I’m sure a great deal of those previous suspicions I had are shared by many and war or military involvement isn’t straightforward, certainly there are always going to be cases where corruption or hidden agendas are present, but on the other hand let’s get back to basics and discuss the obvious.

The obvious point we must acknowledge is that humans are nothing more than a species of apes. Fairly intelligent apes capable of creating powerful and destructive weaponries to kill other apes. Petty apes who cannot always reason through problems or find peaceful solutions. Apes who possess multiple world view points and divided by cultures, religions, ideologies and geographic barriers. Not all of these apes are noble, and not all of these groups of apes and their ideologies are good for humanity at large. Certainly even in 2021 more than ever dogma tends to be the predominant theme.

I’m against the idea of a simplistic black and white model of good vs evil. What I do however strongly believe in is that people can be programmed to believe almost anything and that programming is not always good, and can not always be reasoned away.

Hence war and hence a vigilant and powerful military force is sometimes needed to keep such elements at bay. Sometimes that force will be the US Army or Nato.

This isn’t a dig at Muslims

The world has a huge population of Muslims who aren’t out for blood or domination, who are generous and kind people who just like everyone else wants to live a good and peaceful life. These muslims are valuable to humanity. Unfortunately with everything in life, there are always going to be bad elements of what might be an otherwise good thing.

Support your troops

Because when perhaps one day, action is required against bad elements of humanity it isn’t going to be your Netflix watching ass that will do anything about it while you theorize conspiracies and wish the problem went away.

Reddit still sucks and glad I walked away

I made a decision to cut down on Reddit about 3 years ago, however roughly 2 year ago I decided to stop using Reddit completely.

Sometimes though, not often you might need to ask an actual serious question. In my case 2 days ago I had a woodworking related issue and decided I would take it to Reddit.

I had to register a new account for one question. The question also involved a specific brand of tool, omitting this would make the question total nonsense.

Since it was my first post in years, I expanded on it, and made a quality post, only as soon as I submitted, and I mean within milliseconds I noticed the familiar new message icon light up.

Lo and behold “This post has been removed by the moderation………… “. Reason “advertising a tool brand”. I then noticed the list of impossible to adhere to rules of that sub group.

Now I honestly don’t really care enough to chase it up. I simply immediately logged out, and closed the browser tab. I was obviously a bit disappointed, but not too outraged. I remember thinking “Well it’s typical Reddit, what else can you expect”. A site that wants to infuriate you.

What I will say is, Reddit might once very well have been the front page of the internet, but these days that’s all changed and at least to me it’s inevitable that the site is totally doomed and will become extinct. It’s already no longer mainstream and it’s had its day.

Here are the reasons :

1. The moderation. It’s excessive, and in a world where comments and posts are being censored and users are being banned, when such actions are excessive as to infringe on basic free speech and common sense, then all it does is shut down dialog. It stops people wanting to use that platform for communication because there’s a level of dishonesty and predictability to the communication and a frustration when the ability to effectively communicate is removed from the user. Reddit was once upon a time one of the good guys, allowing such free speech that’s all changed.
2. A giant circle jerk. Again if you remove the ability to challenge or truly discuss, what you end up with is content that is sterilized to fit a certain agenda. Content that must be either agreeable (when everyone is agreeing) or disagreeable (when everyone is against something). That might fly for average dimwits but anyone with any kind of intellect consider this pure nonsense.
3. People no longer care. What Reddit and other such social media discussion sites have taught us is to categorize and distinguish between subjective opinion and objective facts. As the internet grows more objective facts get added in their respective bespoke domains, there is still a great demand for objective factual content. The demand or tolerance for subjectivity and anecdotal however is on the decline, to the point where “blogging died”. Most people no longer blog at least not like they were 10 or even 5 years ago. Those days are gone. Reddit is mostly a mix match between subjectivity and objectivity, and requires “sifting”, trying to find any actual information on Reddit without asking an actual question is akin to scanning through a forum website similar to what existed in the late 90’s or early 2000’s.
   
   However while forums aren’t totally dead, there’s usually always a better place to locate info for a specific topic other than “Reddit”. That’s mostly because the actual serious and intelligent user base has been eliminated and those remaining, the kind of people who would tolerate being on Reddit as their platform of choice are those too stupid to fathom alternatives or the problem with Reddit and why it should be boycotted. The content of Reddit is mostly subjective nonsense.
4. It’s a text based platform. Redditors have this believe that their discussions are “actually intelligent” and other platforms such as Youtube are pure nonsense and utter rubbish. That is certainly going to be somewhat true if you’re watching the kind of content found on Reddit, which is mostly utter garbage anyways.
   
   However that’s totally untrue, when you start factoring in bespoke interests, such as engineering topics, music, artistry, dance, fitness, etc. In all these cases Youtube wins hands down. In the case of Youtube, it’s primarily a visual platform. The information contained is presented as a video. However the comment section allows you to connect with not only other users, but the author directly. Unlike with Reddit, users don’t join “sub groups”, instead on Youtube you subscribe to content creators who give you the information you want, inspire you in some way, or actually improve your life. And further content via Patron can be offered. In short for information, Youtube is a great teacher and will make you smarter. Reddit on the other hand could be considered nothing more than a frustrating time sink. For the most part you’re not learning on Reddit, you’re consuming garbage content and reading garbage discussions you won’t remember in a year from now.

Certain things on the internet never totally go away. I mean AOL still technically “exists”, likewise games like Anarchy Online still exist. Reddit still exists but I suspect the only thing keeping it alive are school and college kids looking for memes. For anything else it’s mostly total trash.