Those promising treatments are, for a large part, working.

Of course cancer is not one disease, it's a lot of distinct diseases with a few common features, and as such they are treated with a broad spectrum of different techniques. Many of those promising cures of course didn't pan out (such is the difficult path of progress), but many other added one extra arrow to our quiver.

Have you checked how the survival rates for cancer have changed over the decades?

I'm pretty sure it's not even due to Asimov.

He pretty much just uses it as a setting, so in the sci-fi world it must have been at least somewhat familiar.

1993?? Check out "reason" by Isaac Asimov. It's a short story, written in the early 50s, set inside an orbital solar farm.

When trying to BIFL there's always a risk to end circlejerky. What's the point of having non-stick pans built like tanks?

Those pans, cheap as they were, were put through constant use for a bit over 6 years. For a long time they were my only pans. During most of it, they even went in the dishwasher all the time. If I hadn't moved to a house with induction, they would have maybe lasted another year, I could start to see the first signs of wear on the Teflon.

Sure, they were thin aluminium. That simply meant they didn't cost as much work and energy as a steel pan. Seems like a good thing to me.

They were what I could afford when first moving out, and they really really delivered a lot. Definitely not BIFL, but I wouldn't call them disposable garbage by any measure.

9/10 would recommend to anyone on a budget.

Stainless steel is just as BIFL as cast iron, and easier to maintain.

It's just a slightly different way of cooking, and many recipes need a slight adaptation going from one to the other.

Stainless steel is somehow traditionally more common and more used in Europe, cast iron in the USA, and carbon steel in many Asian cuisines.

Meh. Unfortunately I haven't really used any of those two, but Kuhn-Rikon is going to be much easier to find and maintain (e.g. spare parts for a pressure cooker) here in Europe since they're a Swiss company. That to me already decides between those two.

If you're open to other ideas, try and take a look at Paderno. They're a brand catering mainly to professional kitchens, so they can take a beating.

I have a couple of their pots, and they're really quite good. Including a little 3-ply saucier pot which I absolutely love because the steel is almost non-stick just by itself, perfect to make sauces and minimise the risk of burning.

You'll find their stuff around (e.g. Amazon) or on their web store, which ships within Europe for 5 to 15€, depending on countries. Not too bad for bulky and heavy pots.

Edit: I actually have a pair of Kuhn Rikon kitchen shears and it's really great, though it has molded plastic handles so likely not BIFL.

I'm a fellow European, so if you really want brand recommendations I can give you as many as you want in any price range.

Warranty over a pot? What do you expect should happen to a steel pot? If the steel doesn't suddenly rust in the first six months it won't afterwards.

I have IKEA pots which I bought when I first moved out on my own as a PhD students (10 years ago). Still going, no sign of slowing down.

I did have to throw away a couple of 6y/o, 30€ a pair, thin aluminium, non-stick, pans from Tefal. Because they were pure aluminium, warped from using very hard on a gas stove, and I switched to induction when moving places.

What you should be asking is rather "which pots are worth keeping around for a lifetime" and that's am entirely different discussion.

But I wouldn't worry too much about durability.

Edit: this also involves a big discussion about what you like to cook, and how.

You doubt it, but have you actually checked? You'll be surprised. Probably not every 3 years, but total energy consumption in EU and USA has stopped growing years ago, and not because we stopped using driers or heating our homes (well, until now, this winter is going to be tough). And this happened in the EU while Eastern Europe was enjoying a post-soviet growth burst.

Estimates hold even after you account for moving productions to China.

Of course we should also demand better quality and reparability from manufacturers. Hopefully some countries are drafting Right-to-repair laws that should change the landscape quite a bit, but it will take a while.

It is absolutely not a negative, environmentally of financially if you bother to do a little math.

10 bucks a month is 120 a year and it very quickly adds up to the cost of a new dryer.

About environment, it's tricky to find data on te costs of building a new dryer. But just look at the CO2 footprint of the EU. It's been dropping for decades, and it's not because people stopped using appliances. Simply the efficiency of new appliances has outpaced the impact of producing them.

And all that while Eastern Europe has been growing massively after the fall of the USSR.

Energy efficiency matters a lot. Just try and look into it a little.

And yes, the carbon footprint of the EU has been dropping even after you factor in how much production happens in China.

I did some rough math for cars.

Swapping a 15 old car for a new one within the same category, the break even point in terms of CO2 emission is about 300000km, say 200000 miles. If the old car is ~40years old the break even is much much shorter.

So by all means make sure you get a good amount of miles out of a car, but a 50y/o Mustang is just an ecological monstrosity and should be only be used as a show piece.