> Fun fact #1: you rent your cap and gown in the US. You have to return them. And they’re expensive, too! I paid $94 just for the privilege of renting mine, which is insane because they probably cost way less than that to manufacture.
Ah, yes, of course this is how it works in the US.
I'm surprised at the concept, somehow I thought the whole "graduation cap" thing was just in movies. Seems out of place in a country that's otherwise so individualistic.
Yes, you have to pay a decent wage to the people helping you fit, cleaning, and storing the goods. Manufacture is done in a low cost country with cheap labour, so buying clothing seems cheap.
Well, some will go on corporation tax, some on business rates, some on rent of the land the storage is on (which itself has to pay corporation tax, I suppose).
Yes. Competitive forces would push the cost toward the most expensive input which is likely people. That would be somewhat muted if the supplier was sole source but even then outright purchases would put downward pressure on the rental price.
What competitive forces? It's not like people have a choice in choosing whether they want a particular cap or gown and the people who contract the rental agreement (i.e. the university admin) are not the ones bearing the cost.
> It probably would’ve been easier if I didn’t use Rust and just used the Arduino libraries, or if I used a different board. But I was really married to this blog post title idea
> Fun fact #1: you rent your cap and gown in the US. You have to return them. And they’re expensive, too! I paid $94 just for the privilege of renting mine
Ah, the final way that US universities transfer wealth from students to corporations... just before they start sending out begging letters for alumni donations to the poor, destitute university*
*: my university shuttered the CS graduate program the year I graduated, on the basis that "there are more jobs in communications", so I never donated a red cent
I skipped the graduation ceremonies for my BA and my first master’s degree. For my second, apparently the cost of a cap, gown and hood was included in the tuition so I have academic regalia sitting in a box somewhere should I ever find myself in need of such, a scenario I cannot imagine ever coming to pass.
I just did online school and didn't bother showing up to any kind of ceremony. I was 30 when I finally finished school, I didn't really feel the need to prove anything.
It’s not just for graduations! You can wear it at any gown-appropriate event!
Marriages, graduations and funerals carry forward some traditions that haven’t made sense for generations. They are the irregular verbs of modern life. Interestingly, marriages and funerals often have a religious element, and religion itself is conservative—but graduation doesn’t have that excuse.
OP paid $94 to rent their gown. I'm pretty sure I paid less than that (if not a comparable price) to buy mine. Thank god it wasn't multiple more, I only wore it for 5 minutes for a picture, since I graduated during Covid.
Those ATtiny85 boards that plug directly into a USB port are great if you need 1 to 5 GPIOs and/or a HID interface. At 2 dollars apiece or so it's worth having a few around.
Living in the PE side of software, with its EBITDA and other metrics, poorly researched product initiatives, senseless firefighting, and toxic bro cultures, it's nice to be reminded some of the reasons I got into this. Thank you.
> I thought about it but decided it looks pretty tacky. It looks like what kids would think of as a gaming PC and what boomers would think of as a seizure.
Missed chance to be a school legend and initiation of a career launching arc.
I don't recall that there is a situation that you can turn on gaming RGB on your head. Someone suddenly starting to shine is as bad as keep shining. It's just either stealing everyone's concentration near you or give a jump scare to how ever was unlucky to look at your direction when you turned it on.