> Looking at my own purchases from 2025, the pattern becomes obviou

As far as I can tell he's among the techies that purchase a lot of e-junk each and every year, no matter the circumstances, not sure of how that's an improvement on anything.

Sort of the opposite, I've found everything uninspiring for the last decade or so and have rarely purchased anything, and when I have it's basically been Apple.

The below purchases are all durable things that should last at least 5 years. An E-Junk list would be riddled with IOT, and devices that forcibly ratcheted tech in ("smart water bottle", etc).

The Leica, Matic and Kindle replace 10+ year old devices.

The Oura replaces itself, with a heavily diminished battery. The hard drive replaces something barely half the size.

The Android is to create a minimal distraction device with only select apps, while slowly weening myself out of the Apple ecosystem stranglehold.

The TRMNL is a side-project, to build some custom code for. The Bambu is used for hobby projects at least weekly and frankly should have been purchased years ago.

The ASUS was a misadventure back into dual boot Windows / Linux after 15 years on Mac. Demoted from a CUDA dev machine to general use second computer.

The Ray Ban Metas only really make an appearance when I travel, but when I do, I'm very glad to have them. Provides a very different perspective than a handheld camera or smartphone, especially in dense areas (walking through crowded outdoor markets, etc)