Ask Lemmy

Here's an odd one my wife and I were just talking about. Some years ago, we were redoing our kitchen and the contractor told us to go buy the kitchen faucet we wanted. We went off, looked at several, and picked the one we thought looked the best with what we were doing.

When the contractor went to install it, he opened the box and a battery pack fell out. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why a faucet would need batteries. It turned out that you can turn it on and off by touching it anywhere (handle, faucet itself, whatever), you just leave the physical handle open and set where you want it, then you can touch on and off. I thought it was the dumbest thing ever and we'd never use it.

Flash Forward to now and it's one of the most used conveniences we've ever bought. All those times your hands are covered in raw meat or other cooking mess? Just touch the faucet with your elbow. Rinsing a bunch of veggies one at a time? Tap on, tap off. It works flawlessly, unlike those touchless ones at the airport: no delay and works every time. We will never have a kitchen sink without it - my wife wants them for the bathroom.

Wireless headphones. The original goal was working out and I didn't want to carry my cellphone on the hand. I never went to work out, but it turns out to be very convenient when my neighbors are being loud, since it has noise cancelling, and also for chores.

Also, some better clothes. For context, I'm FtM. My sister and mother are vain and buy chic clothes like every month, so I always had a surplus of hand-me-downs. I didn't want to buy more clothes because I already have perfectly serviceable unisex clothes on my closet, but when I donated out all my feminine-cut clothes and shoes I found myself lacking clothes so, yeah, I went and bought the stupid clothes. I fucking love them and wear them on every opportunity I get. They make me feel so much better :)

Oh, definitely not a purchase, but Emacs. My life was a mess because of Twitter and it was anti-Twitter in every way – no characters limit, offline, insanely powerful. While Twitter would prevent me from prioritizing, Org-mode could handle task lists, spreadsheets, text documents, with academic citations support, and could export them to .ics, .odt, .pdf, .md, etc. Ideas are affordances and Emacs has let me focus on these instead of trying to build a picture perfect online profile.

Whereas Twitter isn't meant for most people's use cases so it runs a long-term scam called “optimization for engagement” (which is actually abuse by definition), doing everything it can to prevent its victims from taking hindsight on and conceptualizing what's happening to them, Emacs is letting me channel all of this frustration into reading and writing my master thesis. Which deals with how social media increase social inequalities. Highly recommended.

An oversized poncho cape from the local Goodwill. It was woven in different shades of blue and while I'd never wear it outside, I've used it as a wearable blanket at home for a few years now.

I found out it was actually hand made, and costs 300+ USD from the original shop. Bonus points, I feel like a wizard when I wear it

Ember mug. I saw James Hoffmann’s review and went, “how good could it be?”

It’s the only mug I can drink from now.