This year's headphones

I came back from walking the dog in the late afternoon, removed the headphones through which I hear music, and ... SNAP! The rigid curved plastic that keeps the headphones' shape snapped. These are the headphones that I bought¹ 17 months ago, and although they had a tendency to return the songs to the beginning of the playlist at random times, I was very used to these headphones.

Fortunately a few months ago, I bought a similar pair of headphones from Temu as a spare, knowing that one day I would need them - well, that day has come. Of course, the button layout is different, and on these headphones, a long press increases the volume, whereas a short press moves to the next song. The previous set of headphones had the opposite behaviour, where a long press would move to the next song. These phones seem to play only in mono, very strange for these times.

Obviously it will take me some time to get used to the new layout, especially as the required buttons will now be over the right ear, as opposed to the previous set where they were over the left ear. Maybe next time I'll order two sets of headphones so that I won't have to endure culture shock when the first set breaks.

Temu informs me that these headphones are no longer available, and this gives me an insight into how Temu works. Very often, next to an item will appear something like 'almost sold out'; I used to think that this is a marketing ploy to encourage the browser to order today! because tomorrow the item may not be in stock. This actually seems to be true. I get the impression that Temu buys up old stock cheaply from suppliers because once all the items are sold, there are no more. Several items that I have purchased over the past year are no longer available.

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