Ha, I thought I was being novel pointing out how convenient it was for solving the myriad problems that come with parenthood. I printed a bunch of car logos for my vehicle-obsessed kid to stare at, name, and futz with during diaper changing time and it has figuratively paid for itself in terms of mitigating piddling power struggles.
Plus I cannot express the collective relief my spouse and I felt when I was able to repair a poorly designed part on the malfunctioning coffee maker in an hour's time. We're solving the real problems here.
I forgot that! Once he started to recognize his name I printed several toys with his name on them. Like, a dinosaur off thingiverse with “Steve” in raised letters on his belly.
This will sound frivolous and ridiculous, but I have a toddler with constantly changing tastes and it's a nice way to be able to engage with and encourage their interests. For example, cars have been a huge deal lately, and being able to 1) print a bunch of logos for room decorations and 2) put the logos in areas that the kiddo finds onerous to encourage them to go there (e.g. How many cars can you name while we get changed for preschool) has been a life saver.
Plus it's nice to be the hero around the house when I can solve random maintenance problems with a quick search on Thingiverse or a couple of hours of designing and printing. Not sure it has literally paid for itself since I got one, but it has definitely be more useful than I expected and I would say it has been borderline indispensable for my household.
It's interesting to me that between this and Apple's news app that we're steering to a less-social-engagement centric model for news presentation. One new way to save myself from looking at the comments.
I would argue that at least DFW (and possibly the author) knew exactly what he meant when he said irony. I think maybe irony is misunderstood as necessarily being obvious and bald-facedly deceptive in a noticeable way. I think a lot of the problem DFW was addressing (and I very much agree with h here) that it's so pervasive that we don't even perceive it's ubiquity culturally, and that our modes of communication are so shot through with the stuff that we can't just break down and communicate directly. I could be wrong, but in that sense I thought he was frighteningly prescient. I may be (probably am) mis-reading you, but arguing that irony is important because irony was important doesn't quite work as a counterpoint for me in this case.
I think you're right that the authors knew exactly what they meant when they said "irony"; it's just that what they meant wasn't really irony (I make no comment about DFW, whom I haven't read).
"maybe irony is misunderstood as necessarily being obvious"
You aim for that sweet spot where about half your audience will miss your point. Socrates could needle someone in such as way that only his target was unaware of being mocked.
"our modes of communication are so shot through with the stuff that we can't just break down and communicate directly"
Again, I'm willing to take others' word for it that this is the world they live in. I'm just happy that I don't.
I don't know if beer has any special rules regarding it's taxation, but assuming it doesn't and knowing the beer craziness here in Colorado, I'm not too concerned.
Furthermore, if we finally killed our remaining blue laws (Only one location of any chain store can have alcohol in the state) I'd imagine the alcohol revenue would bump back up.
Yes, I designed it. The image was generated using the game engine. Adam Robezzoli from attractmo.de produced it (his idea) in collaboration with LOOMLAB who are really good at making amazing scarves.
Plus I cannot express the collective relief my spouse and I felt when I was able to repair a poorly designed part on the malfunctioning coffee maker in an hour's time. We're solving the real problems here.