Let me start out by saying that I am by no means an authority on the matter.
First was some generic brand 7" chef’s knife. I think I paid around $40 for it. It did alright for a while, but what I noticed about it was that the ergonomics and fit/finish were (just slightly) lacking. Unrefined edges made it a bit uncomfortable to use.
My next knife was from Zwilling. It’s another standard 7" chef’s knife with the hollow cutouts on the blade. This one was much better quality wise, the fit and finish and balance are all there.
The next one after that is a 5" Chef’s knife (with hollow cutouts) from Wüsthof. This is my current everyday knife, and I like the size of this one much better. I got this one because I really needed something more compact, and it’s been great for mostly everything I use it for right now.
The next knife I want to get is a Nakiri style. Wusthof is sold out of their more affordable line, and the Zwilling one doesn’t have the hollow cuttouts on the blade. The Zwilling brand doesn’t look quite as good as the Wusthof, in my opinion, but it may still function great.
The last thing I’d like to mention is a knife sharpener. When I got my Zwilling, they also threw in this little keychain Wusthof sharpener, and as long as I give my knife a few swipes every couple of times I use it, they stay pretty sharp. Definitely don’t overlook this detail, because even a lower quality knife will benefit greatly from a consistent sharpening routine like that.
Good luck, and I hope that helps. Let me know what you end up going with if you do decide!
There are two main sharpening angles. 20 degrees is typical american knife. Some overseas chef knived get into 15 degree edges. Lower yhe degree, the sharper the edge, but the quicker itll dull against bone or stone or use overall. Pay attention to the angle when you buy a sharpener. You can get basic pull through sharpener for cheap, good for starter as the sharpener is set at the angle, just make sure the sharpener angle matches the knife angle, and if it comes with course/fine or whatever, only ever use the fine. The course sharpeners are for when you ding or dent the blade edge and they remove a lot of metal.
If you get into knives and want more, then i would move to a proper sharpening stone with a wedge or jog to hold the angle for you. Thisll let you get a feel for what angle to hold the knife at. After a while you can freehand without the wedge or jig.
Dont go too high dollar on your first knife, an 800$ japanese knife is incredible but the difference is not apparent to you from a 40$ knife, hence victorinox as the starter knife (15 degree on most of those). Everyones hands are different so what works for one person doesnt fit everyone. Typically a chefs knife will do what most people want, 8" to 10" to start out. Dont overthink it or worry about it
I went through a glasses addiction myself as well lol. I found an eye-care clinic where they would cut the lenses and have them ready within 3 hours.
I would go to garage sales, thrift stores, and swap meets to find glasses to put lenses on. They were like $60 for the lenses and I never spent more than $10 on frames.
I ended up with 3 seeing glasses and 4 sun glasses before I realized it was going to be unsustainable to get new lenses for my new prescription every year.
Having an expresso machine doesn’t mean you will drink 10 cups a day. It will just make the cups you drink taste better and be more enjoyable. Personally, I avoid coffee after 6PM and don’t have any problems with sleep. I’m also fine without drinking coffee, some days I prefer tea or just water.
To the best of my knowledge, how a body processes caffeine is highly individual.
My body seems extremely bad at processing caffeine, and I’ll sleep worse and get other bad side effects after a few days of drinking two cups of coffee before 2 PM.
Other people drink coffee until the late afternoon and don’t report such problems.
In summary: I would recommend anyone who experiences sleep problems or the feeling of being stressed to avoid caffeine for 2-3 weeks to rule it out as a source of problems. OTOH if your sleep is okay and you don’t sleep bad, consume as much caffeine as you are happy about.
One more word about the research concerning caffeine: Usually the research is done with young (< 30 years), healthy (they sort out people with illnesses problems) people. AFAIK everything they say about caffeine is technically true, but unless you are young and healthy, the research doesn’t tell you anything about how caffeine will impact your life/body/health.
We interact with hundreds if not thousands of chemicals in every ordinary act of life. This is not just unavoidable, it’s normal and natural, and has been going on for centuries if not millenia.
Are you proposing we stop cooking food (which results in chemical alterations of the underlying food). What about soap?
You have a point, but you’ve oversimplified it and taken it to an extreme where it’s no longer a sound or balanced idea.
Zoloft Lexapro aka escitalopram. I thought everyone had the anxiety voices like I did. I told myself I was just a worrier. Then it got REALLY bad in my 30’s and even I thought it was getting absurd. My doc asked me “how are you feeling” and I just broke down, spilled my guts. He said “let’s try a small dose.” and after a couple months adjustment, the crazy voices went from 4/5 to a 1/5. They’re still there, but they’re WAY more quiet. I had no idea that this is what normal people think like.
The one that made me realize something was wrong was a normal, gentle rain. I bad this overwhelming fear that the roof was gonna fly off or leak or disintegrate. It was normal weather, not an extreme storm. I couldn’t sleep because the worries were so bad.
Once I started taking medicine, I realized other things. Not everyone worries they’re gonna be fired every day, that their tires are gonna be flat, etc.
I literally just bought Shokz (apparently the ones I bought are called OpenRun Pro- as I was looking up the model that I got, I learned that apparently I could have got some truly waterproof ones which I kind of regret not getting now, but these were already at the far edge of what I’m willing to spend) and have basically not taken them off in the 3 days I’ve had them. I couldn’t give you a recommendation one way or the other on the specific brand, but they seem serviceable enough. I’m really more enamored with the technology itself rather than the brand.
I originally bought them because I had a hearing test done long ago, and as part of it they use bone conduction headphones to test your inner ear separate from your middle ear and outer ear. After that part of the test, my tinnitus was completely gone. It crept back in over the course of a few hours, but only in one ear. It returned to stereo tinnitus about 3 days later. I wanted to figure out the specific frequencies I needed to play via bone conduction to make that happen again. it was one of the first times I’d experienced true silence in my life, and and I haven’t forgotten it.
One of the biggest annoyances I have with traditional headphones is how big of a deal it is when you get interrupted when you have them on. With the bone conduction stuff, your ear canals are never blocked so any interruption is handled just by hitting the play / pause button. This eliminates one of the main reasons I just straight up don’t wear headphones unless I’m in an office environment and trying to be antisocial.
I also have a huge problem with sweat management. I’m a sweaty guy. I haven’t done any kind of strenuous activity yet with these on, but they purportedly handle sweat like a champ, and I’m not running the risk of giving myself an ear infection by keeping them on for hours and hours at a time.
The only real complaints I have with these particular ones are that 1) they’re awkward to wear with glasses, 2) It’s basically impossible to get really nice-feeling bass with them, and 3) they put pressure in a weird spot on my head, so adjusting to them has been a weird sensory experience. I’m still not quite used to them.
(2) really isn’t that much of a complaint because I really shouldn’t be damaging my hearing that way, but (1) might end up being a deal breaker. I don’t know. I hope that’s not the case.
I got Shokz open run, they hook over your ear and the left and right conductors are connected by a thin band that goes round your neck. They do take a while to get used to but if you can then all the problems of ear buds & tiny ear canals are gone
Warning for people like me. I have no way to define it clearly but these headphones make me want to die. My wife bought them for me so I didn’t know anything about them when I tried them. I’ve never been more nauseous in my entire life. I lost my balance and almost puked before I ripped them off my head. I still feel like a drama queen.
My wife loves them though lol (she’s not a cunt so she was really confused why I hated them so much). For those that want them for running so you are more aware, they make you deaf as fuck to the world. Just run with 1 Bluetooth headphone and stay safe.
Galaxy buds live are also great for people with tiny ear canals, because they just sit in your ear and don’t go into the canal at all. They’re super comfortable for a long time.
I’m a heavy shitter, I shit alot and I shit so much my ass crack looks like caramelized fondu. When I go outside flys swarm around my ass and get stuck on my sticky ass crack. Everyone would avoid me in the local Walmart when I shop for gaming supplies (Doritos and Dr Pepper mostly). I have difficultly wiping because I can’t physically reach under there and I can’t stand up in the shower. One day my mom told me to lose weight (yeah thanks for bullying me again mom 😒) and I know I’m a little heavy at the moment because I have to use cooking oil to greese up the doorframes so I can squeeze through but that’s only because of capitalism shrinking all the rental apartments and cramming as many people in as possible. Anyway I was playing Amongus and one of femboy friends told me about bidgets. At first I was like “huh?” and he explained that because he plays Genshin he cannot physically leave the house or bathe and he has a special toilet that cleans his butthole for him. So I ordered one of Amazon and my god it is the best thing ever, now this device shoots water up my asshole and poof! No more shit streaked stretch pants woohoo!
I used to have very bad plantar fasciitis from my time in the military. For years I suffered every step of every day. I researched possible solutions and found out zero drop shoes help it. I bought some Xero shoes and after about three months it all just went away. Now I just wear zero drop shoes.
It’s crazy how much of a difference this makes. Even putting on a pair of shoes with a tiny drop now makes me feel like i’m wearing cowboy boots or heels or something.
I don’t really know for sure. Best bet is probably a ball pen when I was like 11. I’ve used only fountain pens until then.
It just doesn’t leak and I don’t have to wait for ink to dry up.
Ironically I went the other way lol. I can enjoy writing even if it is work notes. (Mine don’t leak and I found inks that dry fast enough for me, most of the time).
My highschool made us use fountain pens for “real” work and I cannot stress enough how shitty and obsolete they are. They skate around the page and any slight mistake can quickly turn into a multi-line mess. They’re almost impossible to transport without making a mess, and if you don’t use them often enough they just dry out and you have to dig out a new ink cartridge.
I think this is a difference of use case. I use mine for writing long-form prose, so the dry out times aren’t an issue (though I do sometimes slip it into the cap if I’m considering where to go next). The skating is nice because I don’t have to put too much pressure on the pen and get hand cramps. I also like refilling the pen once it gets low, but I have a piston filler so that happens less often than with cartridges.
All that said, if I had to use my fountain pen to take notes in school again, I would absolutely hate it. Quick, random note taking is basically a worst case scenario for a fountain pen, so I do see where you’re coming from. Glad you’re happy with the ballpoints :)
They are expensive and I don’t have one for that exact reason, however it’s not just “squirting a bit of water into your mouth”, it’s high pressure water that, as the name suggests, is a complete replacement for traditional flossing.
I love mine and it’s absolutely disgusted me when I first used it and found so much stuck between my teeth.
But they are not a replacement for floss. They don’t scrape the sides of your teeth the same way. They are a part of my routine, but floss is still required to actually clean the teeth.
A house. My mortgage is cheaper than rent, and now I get to actually address annoyances with my living conditions.
It’s almost 100 years old, and a bit of an fixer upper, but the important stuff is solid. Last summer I invested in proper drainage around the foundation so that I can start making the basement livable. This year I invested in a proper bathroom. Next year it’s a new kitchen. And if time allows I’ll start rebuilding the basement mainly for one extra bed room and an office.
This is a good one. I finally teamed up with family to invest in a house last year. I’ve found a lot of issues that I’ve since fixed, especially with the electrical. There’s still a lot to fix, but I’m elated that I can actually take action to fix stuff.
While renting, my hands were severely tied. The only benefit with renting was that if anything was literally broken, it would be fixed by the landlord, free to me. “Fixed” is subjective, usually done as cheaply as possible, which is often making things less convenient.
Now I can have things fixed correctly, making things more convenient overall for me and my family.
Long term, we’re planning on renovating and adding another kitchen and bathroom, possibly another entrance and I’m considering splitting the HVAC for one portion of the place and almost splitting it into two independent homes that are conjoined.
Depends on market. In Vancouver existing rentals are controlled until you move, the house sells, or you are reno-evicted. This involves evicting the tenant to “fix up the suite” and then renting it out at a much higher rate.
There is also the move to evict for a " family member" to move in but often this is abused to get low paying tenants out.
New mortgages are much more than existing rent here. As much as renters go through credit checks, I think landlords should too as you don’t want to rent a place where they can’t afford the interest rate increases. Often they cheap out on repairs and usually sees the place being sold or one of the above abuses of the evictions to get a higher paying tenant in.
The market is really tight in places like Vancouver and Toronto. The interest rate hikes will eventually catch up to most renters as properties are moved/sold.
Same, cut my monthly housing cost by almost $1000 two years ago. So many good things have happened as a result as well, because it was a move between regions and opened up alternative employment options not previously available. As a result I also doubled my income.
This only talks about rent. And when rent increases, so does the value of the property, because you can get more money as rents are higher.
If you now consider the amount of work you have to invest into owning property and the associated risk of owning a house or flat, in an ideal market its simply not possible.
And while the housing market is imperfect due to the high burden for entrance, I have never seen a proper calculation where mortage, insurance and maintanance comes out lower than renting.
I’m not going to doxx myself by giving the exact address, but my landlady in 2019 wanted to sell the house we were in. She first offered the place to us for $430,000 - which would have been a discount because she wouldn’t have needed an agent etc.
Assuming we had the 20% deposit to borrow $344,000 and taken her up on that offer, our current repayments would have been about $464 per week. Even without the discount, repayments would have been under $500.
Instead, she eventually sold the property and we had to move to a smaller house where we are now paying $650 per week. Going from a 4 bedroom house with a yard to a 3 bedroom townhouse sharing the block with two other residences. No yard. Admittedly, we moved a suburb closer to the CBD.
Take a look at Real estate for a 3+ bedroom house within 10km of any Australian city, you’ll see that $650 is not extravagant by any means.
The 20% deposit is the entire point. It’s the barrier of entry to home ownership that keeps people renting. Of course I factored it in, it’s why I spoke of a mortgage of $344k and not $430k.
What does insurance have to do with anything? We are comparing rent to repayments. We have renter’s insurance now. We’d be changing that.
Are you saying you spend over $100 per week, every week on maintenance?
True. We’ve downsized from a four bedroom house to a three bedroom townhouse. You’ll just have to take my word for it that 4 bedroom houses in the next suburb go for about the same as the place we have because I’ve already told Lemmy enough about where I live.
Mortgage cheaper than rent here - just outside of Washington DC. (Only true when comparing like for like living spaces, same bedrooms, square feet, etc)
I have a silver Jansport that is probably a decade old now and is still used 3 times a week or more for work, as well as used for airplane travel.
I’m about to look into having the large zipper repaired (it still zips, but I just have to make sure it’s aligned now), rather than buying a new one. Best backpack I’ve ever had
Shokz (Aftershokz rebranded) are fantastic for endless online meetings if you’re working remotely. I often forget I have them on. I did a whole set of in-person job interviews with them on before I realized I was wearing them at the end of the last interview.
It’s pretty much the convenience and comfort of using external speakers, but without anyone else hearing. It’s just a shame the audio quality isn’t high-end for music.
Not only have they made it impossible for me to reach for my phone while I’m meant to be watching my TV/monitor, but I also end up with a practical, useful, personalised product at the end
Have had a dog most of my life. Hard to imagine living without one. They’re better than people, fantastic companions, and the entire relationship is based on each other trying to make each other happy.
It’s very hard. I cry for days and drink a lot. It is a huge piece of life suddenly gone. But, like my last dog, I see all the things we did, so many adventures, and how many people are upset—even strangers at my climbing gym reached out because they knew him but not me; someone even drew an amazing portrait of him for me and it’s on the wall. That made me realise how awesome a life he had and how many people loved him. A truly good boy that got a hell of a life.
I know I’ll be sad, but it passes and I’ll be very happy with what I did for my dog and what they did for me. Then I’ll get another dog and they’ll get an awesome life too.
True, it’s so hard to loose them. But it’s worth it. The pain and sadness goes away and all that’s left is good memories.
It’s been years since I lost my first dog and I still think about him. Sometimes the eyes are kinda wet but it always end up with some smile on my face.
A dildo. Get to know yourself and what you like a little and it’s legitimately brain melting. You don’t have to be gay to enjoy em, I’m glad I gave butt stuffing a try.
For me getting my first dildo was probably one of the steps that led me to finally acknowledge to myself that I’m trans (and also coming out as trans) so there is that 🙃
Ikea. And I’m not kidding. They make theirs with reputable manufacturers (Electrolux and Whirlpool, at least in Europe), they have functions that are still rare in others like popping out the door when finished, AND they have more than double the usual warranty. (5 years instead of the usual 2.) We LOVE ours and everybody I know that has theirs from there.