I’ve been extremely impressed with the longevity and all around toughness of my Dell Precision. I think it’s gotta be 12 years old now, it weighs a ton, been dropped multiple times, and while I replaced its disk and memory at some point it has never suffered a hardware failure. The thing is a tank, I love it.

A “crescent” moon 🥐

I’m excited to see the progress of 3d printers becoming more user friendly, reliable and inexpensive. I’ve been keeping an eye on the development of consumer printing and there are so many types of materials to print with at higher and higher details with less troubleshooting needed. I’m thinking I’ll finally jump in this year but I’ve had very little time for hobbies lately.

I can’t remember which was first but it would have been Number Munchers on PC or Asteroids on the Vectrex, an obscure console from the 80s.

Ranch dressing, or a mix of half ranch dressing and half ketchup I call “krantchup”. Specifically Marie’s ranch mixed with Primitive Kitchen ketchup is so good on fries.

Cars are a completely unnecessary luxury in a place like the intersections that are used as examples in the article. When the foot traffic is so heavy that 15,000 people are in the area crossing through there in an hour, cars should simply not even be in the picture, let alone given the majority of the space. The roads should be used for trams/trolleys and pedestrians at that point. Cars are point to point transport or through traffic, and they should either have been parked elsewhere or rerouted around the area with the highest traffic.

I personally like how parallel to the door looks but don’t have a logistical rationale for it

I went grocery shopping and realized the music was all stuff I liked and recognized. I even knew the words 😭

The last few times I’ve found music I like via a method that was repeatable was searching through tags on Bandcamp. If I was listening to something I liked, I could look at the tags (electro, downtempo, big band etc) and click a few of those to find similar music. As far as a filter for quality, the number of followers for a page might be a decent metric because the genres are extremely precise and niche, and most of the biggest artists don’t self publish. There’s some amazing stuff on there to be found.

Janelle Monae is fantastic, an all around great creative person. She’s been getting recognition for her acting at least.

Don’t know your other artists but I frickin love emancipator. I’ve listened to every album hundreds of times, not exaggerating. Have you heard Kinack? Not the same but if you like one you might like the other. I’ll have to check out your list when I can use my good speakers.

You can call me paranoid, but the first thing I thought of when I heard about it was how excited the Nazis would have been to access a database like that when they came into power. Imagine knowing the names and addresses of whatever Undesirables you wanted to single out, and exactly what percentage of “impure” they were. Ethnic makeup information can also be used against you in things like gerrymandering congressional districts to hand select voters and disenfranchise minorities. It’s pretty safe to assume that once your genetic profile has been gathered by a private company, it’s vulnerable to all sorts of bad actors gaining access and using that information. Would you want the KKK or the Proud Boys knowing just what percentage black you are? No thanks.

Processed food is usually more expensive per portion than the ingredients alone. The farther you get from the raw ingredients the more expensive it gets. Plus, you’re eating all sorts of junk ingredients.

I had about ten years of experience with a very tight food budget to learn what was good value for effort/ingredients.

Good:

Flour, sugar, canned tomatoes, spices, frozen veggies, fresh produce

Bad:

Presliced or pre-grated cheeses, at least in my experience, are marked up 1.5x to 2x the cost per pound of a block. Another commenter said that wasn’t the case in their store, but check and see if that is true for you and if the cheeses you got are available in blocks. You can even go to a place with a deli counter and they will slice cheese for you for free, and you will get exactly how much you want with less waste (yes it’s an interaction with another human, it’ll be alright).

Uncrustables/swiss rolls/mac and cheese… it’s not for me to judge what someone chooses for an indulgence, maybe those things are what get you through your day, but you can definitely do better value wise. Mac and cheese from a box is cheaper than those individual cups, and homemade mac and cheese from scratch is even better and extremely easy if you have any kitchen experience. Uncrustables will always be more expensive than just making the sandwich yourself. The swiss rolls… well you know they’re a treat. In my opinion if you’re going to treat yourself to something unhealthy spend the extra dollar and get something luxurious.

Breads and muffins, again if you could learn how to make them yourself you might be impressed with the results. Bread can be a tricky balance of time, effort and cost of ingredients, and homemade fresh baked bread is incredible, but if you’re short on time there’s nothing wrong with buying it. Muffins are a quick bread though that you could make at home in under an hour with a mixing bowl and a cupcake pan, and then you could control exactly how much sugar went into them and have hot, fresh muffins. It’s worth making them yourself at least once to see if it’s something you can add to your routine, you can get a cupcake pan for cheap from a thrift store if you don’t have one.

Sauces and dips, as other people have said, they are a lot simpler than you might think to make yourself. In my experience they are one of those things you should challenge yourself to make at least once or twice and see how much effort and time it takes you, and then re-evaluate the jarred/canned stuff. Maybe after making it you realize it is worth the extra dollar or so to save yourself the effort, but maybe you realize it’s not that hard and you’re able to save money in the long run and have more control over the quality and ingredients.

All this stuff is incremental, and any one thing isn’t going to magically fix food costs. Plus as the amount of time in your life to spend on meal prep fluctuates you might find it’s worth it to spend the extra money on convenience. However it’s important to at least get some experience with the alternatives so you understand what amount of time and effort you are buying by getting those processed foods. Good luck :)

Celestial Seasonings and PG tips are good grocery store brands with paper bags, but for loose leaf it’s worth seeing if you have a local tea shop. If there’s nowhere nearby, there’s some great online sellers. I’m a fan of Adagio and David’s tea.

Ok but you said “some of”, not “the” best, I wanna know which whiskey you’ve had that’s better than the $12,000 bottle!

It does matter if I ever needed to replace it 😬 I know I’d order some other teapot instead but I do love this one and I’d miss it.

It’s by Le Creuset, and they apparently rotate out most of their colors. So you can still buy the same teapot in a different color, which is what I ended up doing for my friend. The one I got was a limited run, it’s a pretty rich purple they called “cassis”, if you search Ebay for anything in that color the prices are nuts!

I had a friend over who complimented my teapot, I love it because it’s a nice color, good size and has a stainless steel infuser that fits inside. So I offered to get her one of her own only to find out that this particular color is highly collectible and worth 6-7x what I paid for it originally. Now I have a nice teapot I’m paranoid about anything happening to, haha.

My husband got an Oculus before they were bought out only to find out he gets motion sick with most games. I don’t get motion sick ever so he was excited to see me try out his library of cool starship and fighter games and all I ever play on it is beat saber, lol. The custom map scene is where it’s at!

Like OP, my camera, phones don’t cut it and the pictures I’ve been able to get of my kid with it have made it invaluable. I got the Canon Powershot MKIII and it’s gotten some professional quality shots of him and captured a lot of precious moments.

My electric kettle, I drink a lot of tea and it’s so damn useful. I got one with an all metal interior and no visible heating element, it has a bad pour but I still would have a noticeable dip in my daily quality of life without it.

This one is random but a three foot tall solid wood Balinese dragon statue. I got it at an import shop that was closing, it had some damage and so had been marked down and marked down again. I paid less than 10% of the original price of an intact one. We didn’t have a car so my boyfriend at the time and I had to take it with us on the subway. It’s like 75lbs. On our ~mile walk back to our apartment someone asked directions to a local Asian art exhibition and we had to tell them we didn’t know where it was while holding this thing between us. It’s beautiful despite the damage and it makes me happy every time I see it. Plus, whenever someone comments on it I have a fun story to share.