What on Earth Is Dekton?
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worksinprogress.news
For the induction cooktops, you can cut porcelain slabs to 6mm compared to your 3cm (sometimes 2cm) quartz and granite. This is also why you can use it for walls and floors. The thinner materials allow the magnets to actually function.
The manufacturing process for engineered quartz is now being interwoven with silicosis through the legal system, leading to manufacturers marketing “low silica” quartz at a cost premium. This premium is closing the cost gap with porcelain. This is the main economic and legal reason as jurisdictions- Australia and maybe soon California look to ban these products forcing the market towards natural stones.
If you’re then selecting from natural stones, porcelain is essentially used as printer paper for whatever stone pattern is desired, and given that people tend to want things that look like marble, this “ink” is essentially free for the manufacturing process, making the porcelain look like marble more than quartz or granite.
Engineered quartz is also not a great exterior material, again yielding to porcelain.
I mean, it doesn't actually look like natural stone, though. At least not the mid-to-high-end stones. (Or sell for as much as it.) The floor can be similar if you're looking at some of the cheaper natural stone options, but the ceiling is extremely different. And the really unique depth and transparency of natural stone pushes much more toward the ceiling. Engineered quartz looks like a composite with some tells. I did some extensive shopping for countertops last year, it very much has a specific look. It just looks *different enough& from entry-level countertop options people are most familiar with that it doesn't (yet) read "cost-cutting" to less-familiar renters or buyers. And it presents a lot of attractive durability aspects to people concerned with that re: natural stone. Eventually I have no doubt that it'll be prevalant enough—if not regulated away—that it'll be pattern-recognitioned as "2020s basic" kinda like a modern formica.
Porcelain is also not widely seen yet, which presents the same benefit (especially because many of the "basic"-grade/inoffensive options that flippers or apartment builders want have practically no depth to them even if they're true natural stone!).
This is wrong, and the response to it was misguided.
The problem never was the manufacturing process, as manufacturers, especially in Australia, are well aware of occupational hazard.
The problem was people cutting engineer stone dry and without respiratory protection. You can’t really dry cut anything that vaporises or aerosolises without creating some kind of hazard. There was one 26 year old guy here in Australia who’d been cutting engineered stone on site, dry, with no or insufficient respiratory protection, and was expected to check out before turning 30.
The response, banning the products is misguided, because natural stones present approximately the exact same risks. Namely, you can aerosolise any stone and deliberately hoof the particles and expect good outcomes.
The correct response was to ensure the people working with the product follow the correct safety protocols.
But this being Australia, next time something like this happens, Anika Wells will just ban us from talking about it, if the toxic Labor-Greens federal government get their way.
But: Natural stone has nowhere near the same magnitude of damage from the same level of exposure. And often it's not on-site (or outdoors) and the people working in those facilities are getting far more damage than the ones working on natural stone.
Is that true?
Or is it simply that before the "engineered" stone these kinds of countertops were sufficiently expensive that they were rare, and workers rarely had enough exposure to wind up in the hospital?
California’s ban would be an acknowledgment that the state’s laws
requiring safer processing techniques for quartz are not enough to
protect workers: Compliance is too low and the industry too
fragmented, with many small shops that escape inspection, according
to the California Department of Industrial Relations, which has
pushed for the ban.
And then a ~3x3" sample I was looking at Home Depot slipped and fell on the floor, from under 3 feet in height. It landed more or less flat on its face and absolutely exploded over ~25 square feet. The internal stresses in this stuff are nuts. Then I found YouTube videos evaluating it. Everything they claim seems to be accurate, except for shatter resistance. Any sort of focused stress (one video dropped a bearing ball from a couple feet up) will absolutely wreck it.
Ended up going with a high-quality quartz instead. Not as much heat resistance as Dekton, but it won't break if something falls out of a cabinet.
We had to cut a prescribed pattern out of the edges of the slab to relieve stresses. Even at 2cm thickness it was slower to cut than any 3cm natural stone.
Part of the job was smashing the offcuts with a sledge to fit more stone per dumpster. Smashing dekton is like when you get a bad hit with a baseball bat and you feel it through your elbows and shoulders. Every time, like nothing else.
I think it looks like crap. Maybe good for high traffic floors or wall treatments where weight is a concern.
Check out prince rupert drops for another example of this.
You should see some of the more unique "statement" showoff-level marbles and quartzites out there. ;)
Normal induction glass top stoves are a unit that drops into the countertop so of course you get the glass included (because at the very least, it has the decal for the cook zones and controller built in). The invisible ones only come with the burners so you can custom fit the top. Looks like you can get them off AliExpress even. It seems like this is the point of confusion - the author thought he could go down to a glazing shop to buy some tough glass..?
I suggest go and watch Huygens Optics series about CERAN:
I was apprehensive: it is expensive and “not real stone”.
Super happy with it. Spilling red wine, putting sizzling hot pans on it, accidentally dropping big pans on it. Dekton brushes it off.
Go into debt if you have to.
You're either using your bathroom wrong, or have a vastly more interesting sex life than I do.
(Yeah, I missed the kitchen counter on first reading)
If it's not an investment, don't go into debt. And a premium finish is not an investment, unfortunately. If you sell soon, you won't recover the cost. And if you sell down the line, it will be out of fashion regardless of how well it physically held up.
By all means splurge on yourself if that's what you want! Just don't justify it by framing it as an investment that you should be taking on debt for.
The reason for the thinner countertop was merely preference, she wanted it that way and I wanted her to be happy.
The reason we went for it because it appears to be the only way to get a light-colored stone countertop that won't stain when you spill red wine or tomato sauce on it. It has been excellent, hasn't picked up any stains at all.
Torture it however much you want - heat (dish straight from the oven at 240C), acid, oil, scratching, etc. it resists all.
Only thing: use 2cm thick, thinner 1.2cm could crack if you drop a pan onto it.
It's like a bit like someone opening their article with "I am a bit of a PC building nerd, stop rolling your eyes, so anyway I thought you could just plug an enterprise NVMe drive into any motherboard but it turns out you can't??"
I'm no materials scentist, is this a physically accurate description?
* https://assetstools.cosentino.com/api/v1/bynder/doc/221CDFBE...
I went with a basic Frigidaire model, and sure ~$1500 is not unaffordable. It's just a lot for what it is, because the market is still pricing induction as some bespoke premium option.
Seems like he’s giving a ballpark of 150 here.
I have caught myself in this many times, mesmerised by shining advertisements that promise when I buy this super duper kitchen appliance or material, my life will be finally complete.
The worst thing is that it indeed works and you are indeed in heaven for the first two weeks of usage but the thrill fades fast.
To keep up the dopamine you must keep looking for ways to increase your revenue just to make more purchases that feel so good.
Of course this is unsustainable usually so you decide that fuck it, what a dead end, let’s read the books from the library instead.
That tension nowadays between becoming prey to marketing and living authentically I can feel it all the time. Everyone wants to sell me some kind of identity.
In my opinion books are the true cure for it all. When you read the books, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, for completely free, you no longer consume. Government probably hates that.
If everyone did this economy would collapse immediately.
When Reading Becomes Consumerism:
Book Hoarding & Hauls: Buying massive stacks of physical books faster than you can realistically read them (often driven by social media trends like BookTok or Instagram).
Aesthetic Collecting: Treating books as interior decor, buying multiple special editions of the same title, or prioritizing how a bookshelf looks on camera rather than the text inside.
Surface Level Consumption: Reading purely for status, volume goals (like churning through 100 books a year for a tracking app), or keeping up with hype rather than deep engagement.
Why Reading Itself Is Not Consumerism:
The Act Is Immersive: Engaging with a story, learning a concept, or exploring ideas requires time, mental effort, and imagination. the exact opposite of passive commercial consumption.
Low Cost or Free Access: You do not have to buy anything to read. Public libraries, used bookstores, digital swaps, and public domain archives make reading widely accessible outside of retail markets.
Long Term Relationship: Unlike fast fashion or single-use goods, a well-loved book is often kept, reread, annotated, or passed down for decades.
So as you can see modern publishing relies on consumerism to drive profits and exist in an economic sense but it is not remotely the same as a pure act of experiencing literature detached from collectible drive or acquisition.
In similar vein you can experience a sunset by consuming a product - a travel agency trip. The act of watching the sunset is not consumerism. Yet the purchase of the holiday trip is consumption.
Buying a brand new, special edition hardback from a massive retail chain is the equivalent of buying the holiday trip. Actually sitting quietly, turning the pages, and letting your mind build a story is the equivalent of watching the sun go down.
However I am not claiming that capitalism or consumerism is inherently bad. No one managed to ever establish the connection in a rigorous scientific way that capitalism is morally bad and eg. Communism is morally good despite countless attempts to prove so. (When Cohen realized that a pure exploitation framework could actually justify inequality (like a naturally gifted person earning millions and keeping it all, à la Robert Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain argument), he had a "Road to Damascus" moment. He realized he didn't actually care about arcane Marxist economic formulas; he cared about human beings having enough to live a dignified life.)
Too much of consumerism is definitely unhealthy and so it is important to know what is consumerism and what isn’t to apply the antidote once in a while while keeping the economy we all profit from in a good shape.
So true. Kafka and Dostoyevsky are also quite a dopamine detox, because they're flat out boring and the pleasure is really fed with a syringe and worked hard for.
But the bit about society collapsing reminds me of Rick and Morty Covid* season finale after the credits. Where they made a small outro about their merch, asking people to buy their merch, buy anything, keep consuming, to keep the economy going and the world running. Read by Rick's drunk hiccup filled voice.
* everyone one was scared of a real recession, but ppl did keep buying stuff.
Frankly, pertaining online religions, I am more into anti church, gnostic feminist type of Christianity focused on the way Jesus lived and what he teached as opposed to later perversions of his teachings than either of the nowadays fashionable ideologies or the horror of what Catholic Church has become or always was.
Not that I manage to live such life as Jesus but I consider it significant.