Leatherman metal bracelet with a lot of tools on the wrist. Not only it is strong and sturdy, but also looks cool. Also, saved me from being completely locked inside a room with no one around cause the door handle decided to break. Quickly disassembled the locking mechanism with the bracelet and was free in 2 mins, lol. Leatherman might be on an expensive side but there sure are alternatives. More than that, somehow I never had any issues with airports. They literally let me take it onboard every single time.
Phone holder for bed, aka robo-arm. Watching content before/while sleeping has never been more convenient.
A waist bag. No more stretched out jeans cause I keep all my stuff in the pockets.
A gas lighter. Works as a candle substitute if necessary. Also stylish.
A small but reliable kickscooter might be a great option if you need to go some distance that’s too long to walk and too short for a taxi drive.
A second usb-c charger for the laptop actually is a convenient thing if you need to carry the laptop across rooms. No need to carry the bulky charger every time.
Speaking of chargers, consider buying a lot of 2 or 3 way wireless chargers for your mobile devices. I don’t remember last time I bothered with plugging in my phone cause it’s always charged wherever I go due to having wireless chargers everywhere.
On an expensive side, but a good sturdy metal gaming chair.
A portable SSD. Saved me by having all my backups many times.
A usb-A and usb-C compatible flash drive.
Paper cups and plates I guess? I don’t like doing dishes and those two both eliminate the need to, but without a downside of being plastic.
Gonna sound strange, but a ladder. Replacing burnt lightbulbs with a chair is a nightmare, at least in my house.
What I meant is a gaming chair with some good metal base construction. I currently use DxRacer Iron series and it’s by far superior to all alternatives I’ve used.
Equally as expensive but I’ve found high quality office chairs are much better. Gaming chairs used to be fine for me until WFH. Every day after work my back was killing me, and I couldn’t ever game after work.
I got a relatively cheap ($500) office chair and it’s been fantastic. Ergonomic, fully adjustable in every way, and shaped for someone to sit in for 8 hours a day. Fantastic. I’d love an aeron but even used they’re over 1k and 500 was already a lot to spend on a chair for me.
This line from Uncle John’s Band by Grateful Dead is really simple and maybe kinda cheesy but it’s given me motivation and kept me in check a few times:
Well the first days are the hardest days, don’t you worry anymore. 'Cause when life looks like easy street there is danger at your door
First step would be tagging posts/comments, to clearly separate ones meant as pure opinion from ones meant as a factual claim. Then tagging for sourced/unsourced/disputed/misleading/omitting crucial details, etc. claims. Then tagging things like how confident the poster feels about what they’re saying (e.g. from “I heard it somewhere” to “I’ve seen it with my own eyes on multiple occasions”)
Then you would need easy to inspect metadata showing the sourcing chain all the way to the origin. And ability to comment on that (e.g. if some source’s claims are misinterpreted and the source doesn’t actually claim the thing).
Then you would need the people to actually care about facts, even if the facts go against their existing beliefs or preferences.
Also people need to be able to think more with varying degrees of uncertainty built-in, not just “this is definitely true”/“this is definitely false” (unless there is enough material to back that up).
You might be able to find this website on Google, but if you are in the US, this can help you get the freshest produce. I use it all the time. snaped.fns.usda.gov/…/seasonal-produce-guide
“Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache”
The real challenge is “how do users can judge what is a fake news?”. In a similar situation it is an extremely difficult task even for newspapers with journalists on the field. See what’s happening with the blame-shifting on the bombing of Gaza’s hospital.
Even guardian and bbc have trouble understanding where is the truth.
A solution could be filtering the sources (for instance, no unknown blogs, or the sun and fox News, only reputable sources such as guardian and bbc). But important real news might be missed in this case, that are direct testimony of journalists on the field. And supposedly reputable sources such as wsj or similar are also known to have shared fake news, particularly when it comes to this conflict. And also reputable sources are biases.
It is an extremely difficult topic. No one has a definitive answer unfortunately.
I would be in favor of filtering at least the widely known sources of fake news (shady blogs, all Murdock’s media and so on)
People need to learn to admit to themselves that “I don’t know enough” and “I’ll refrain to the best of my ability from passing judgment when I don’t know enough”.
Yeah, the heavy emotion-inducing nature of propaganda is there to push you into “taking a position” (and real news often also have a strong emotion-inducing component, but if they’re honest it’s not going to be a constant “appeal to emotion” like propaganda) so it’s hard to fight oneself on this on such an emotionally feeble principle as “I shall not take stands on shit I don’t know”, but at least try it.
(And, by the way, this is also a “message to self”).
My own experience in political parties (not in the US, by the way, so don’t presume, dear reader) has shown me things like, for example, in big party conferences when asked to vote on various things almost nobody actually goes for “I abstain” even when some of those things are of the “very few people are qualified to pass judgment on this” kind. I remember this situation of voting for various suggestions to add to the party electoral program, were in an audience of over 1000 people maybe 3 or 4 would actually abstain once in a while.
Having lived in various countries in Europe, I don’t think this difficulty in admiting “I don’t know enough to make a choice here” is a local cultural phenomenon.
I don’t put wsj as reputable. I meant that even a journal considered reputable as wsj has been found publishing fake news in the past. That’s why I say that I am pro filtering all Murdoch’s media
Edit. I added an adjective in the original comment to make it clearer
So if you say “pants” people in the UK think first of underwear? I know they use trousers as well but I thought pants is still predominantly a word for jeans etc.
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