I use a straight razor! I think I spent ~100 USD on it… forgot the brand/make, but with a decent water stone + leather strop most half-decent straight razors can be honed to be quite good

I only use it for face shaving. Because I wanted something that is both 1) highly effective (want to go for a 100% clean look) and 2) environmentally friendly… I started off with a safety razor too, later upgraded to the straight razor since it is as eco-friendly as it gets, no need for shaving cream/cartilages/etc. The razor was pretty cheap all things considered and the plastic handle has already fallen off, but the blade itself still works like new

Downside is 1) a bit more annoying to use as it has to be honed every time, and 2) much higher risks of accidental injury especially for beginners

I am considering getting an electric something for shaving other parts of the body though

I think it goes this way

• Least: Probably a tie between most liberal arts majors. I can’t rank them, but methinks none of these directly lead to employable skills 😂 (which sucks because I think they are wonderful for a well-rounded education)
• Really bad: “Pre-X” (pre-med, pre-law, …). The majors themselves are honestly quite adaptable to most white-collar jobs. But their fields carry the stereotype of requiring a super-advanced (often doctorate) degree, so probably high chances of underemployment
• Bad: whatever major that was previously the part of a boom/bubble, so currently probably stuff like IT/data science. Great all-around majors that probably suffer from extremely lopsided demand-supply after the bubble pops

My personal dislike for Tesla/SpaceX aside, they do employ 6-digit numbers of workers and make impactful real-life products, so Musk’s companies themselves would be worth a metric fuckton of money (maybe comparable to Honda/Toyota?) no matter what. But they are also somewhat overvalued on top of their already high inherent worth

And on top of this, Musk has really large stakes in his companies… I don’t know the exact details, but I don’t think it’s common for a CEO to own 20% of their company outright. So these together made Musk the richest person

If I am being pedantic, technically the richest entities in the world are countries and their governments… Basically like your examples suggested. No private company in the world can spend as much as the world’s largest countries. So by extension, leaders of dictatorships are arguably “richer” because they essentially own their country. Case in point, the House of Saud has a total net worth of ~1.4T USD

Technically Google Pixel, because of GrapheneOS. Realistically I don’t have a single mobile phone brand that I like

Not as expensive as some of the other comments here but

Around $70~80 for the cheapest steak at a medium- to high-end restaurant in Chicago. Worth the experience and I bet most ppl would have loved it, but that’s how I found out I don’t like steak…

The second most expensive restaurant I’ve been to (averaging $40~50 per entrée) was legit amazing though

My work account once got placed on a biotech mailing list so there’s that

Outside of work accounts, I don’t think the algorithms think I exist lol. I use adblockers everywhere, and the only site with real ad-targeting I routinely use is YouTube… which I exclusively use on private windows while logged out, and with adblockers as well. Mayyybe YouTube/Google thinks there’s a weirdo Japanese weaboo (which is only half-correct) living around the vicinity of my house based on my IP address, but that’s pretty much it

More often than I’m actually wrong

Which… is a problem. I think I learned to do this in order to not offend bosses, might have something to do with my field of work…

Rhythm games, both in general and in terms of my main game. Don’t think I can recommend it to most people though

Got into it… partly because osu was popular when I grew up, partly because I listened to a lot of “rhythm game music” growing up. This video game genre also always resonated with me quite well, I love extremely challenging video games so there’s that

Reason I couldn’t recommend it… First of all it is not an easy hobby to get into outside of Asia, and because of this finding a community (even for really popular games like maimai/CHUNITHM) will be tough. Secondly because of the first reason, getting into rhythm games outside of Asia can get expensive, between arcade visits and homecabs and all. It’s also somewhat of an extremely all-encompassing hobby that leaves little room for one to do anything else. Finally there’s a pretty significant risk of injury especially at higher levels, I’ve had a bone fracture before and several ppl I know have had serious injuries, despite the fact that there’s little to no “payoff” (such as for-profit tournaments) like most sports

On the plus side, stomping it out on DDR/ITG (the latter much more accessible) is a really fun way to do cardio!

Just VLC. I don’t stream music and most of the stuff I listen to have no lyrics so it works fine as-is

I wonder if this has something to do with “whom you primarily identify with”? Seems to me that the primary identity comes first in naming systems

Because there’s some interesting parallels. Even though the order is reversed, in CJ cultures (don’t know about K, presume similar) people overwhelmingly refer to each other via family names (which comes first) instead of given names. Where I grew up in China people almost never refer to your given name; most people refer to others with some honorifics + family name (brother Li, lil’ Liu, teacher Zhang, etc). In Japanese culture referring to each other via given names is reserved to close friends only. Also in these cultures the given names have a lot more diversity than in Western culture

Based on my records, probably averaging 40-50% on needs. Exactly 30.7% on housing, somewhere >10% on basic needs food, and maybe just a bit more for emergency. The numbers for food is a bit fuzzy since I don’t specifically separate out, say, a 6-pack beer or a really nice chocolate bar from other groceries

For context though, I make above average salary for my area, am relatively young & healthy (so almost no healthcare needs), and didn’t mind living a bit frugal…

Everything I post about that is video game-related. I do post sometimes but I don’t think I really did it for validation (not that many people look at it anyways)

Split between either housing or bureaucracy

Housing is… not actually about affordability, but rather the plain difficulty of even getting a rental. I’m living in supposedly a part of Europe with a good housing market, but even here every decent rental on the market would instantaneously get 20+ applicants, so it’s quite competitive… not as bad as NL, but still pretty rough

Bureaucracy because of expat/immigrant/etc shenanigans

I don’t know if this is spooky, fucked up, or just really funny (in my twisted sense of humor)

In college. I was a workaholic and didn’t sleep a lot, and I lived in a student dorm (layout was like a hotel, each student had their individual room) that was fairly well-liked by upperclassmen. Anyways there’s a random girl I know outside of class with a friend group. Generally a bright and upbeat person, quite well put-together, also an international student, etc…

There was one night when I was just passed out on my dorm bed. And at 3am in the morning, I saw that particular girl standing in front of my dorm room with the door open. Crying, being really sad and all… Later was escorted away by the RA.

What I still couldn’t comprehend is… First of all, why the heck was my door unlocked. Second of all, why was this random person standing in front of my door. Did she want anything from me. Also later I never heard from that girl again, what happened to her

• Getting a good night’s sleep
• Getting a nap in, for those who can fall asleep quickly
• Drinking a nice cup of hot/warm tea or water. Seriously it works surprisingly well for relieving stress

I’m using mailbox.org with a custom domain. German company, all of their email services seem pretty industry standard, so the biggest advantage for me is that it works quite well with 3rd party mail & calendar clients. Forgot when I switched but so far I have no complaints

Now that I’m thinking about it, I mainly have a gripe with people getting addicted to gambling. Can be in many different forms IMO; can be spending too much money at the Blackjack table (which is somewhat skill-dependent), whaling on lootboxes/gachas (where you’d literally never “win” money back), or even day trading (which is technically positive-sum)

In theory everything is fine in moderation, but then most gambling systems reward people to whale whether they intend it or not, so…

I don’t play that many but I generally 100% games I play. So… a bit embarrassing, but Dicey Dungeons. The later chapters are genuinely difficult & are more puzzles than roguelikes… so I just gave up at one point

If specific endgame challenges count, I’ve never beaten Dead Cells BC4 boss rush, or the fabled Noita 34 orbs run (was very close though). Oh and every other rhythm game if you count skill analyzers/Dan courses, but most players don’t clear those

I just had my quarter-life crisis and was starting to have a very FOSS period of my life. Forgot from where, but I heard someone mentioning Mastodon so I joined; this was months before the Reddit API fiasco

Oooh nice!

Something I am very curious: how do the guitar controllers compare against each other? I’m saying this as someone who has been buying and reading up on quite a few rhythm game controllers (DDR/ITG, Taiko, more esoteric things) and knew of the whole slew of comparisons/tierlists between controllers… I knew close to nothing about Clone Hero controllers for high-level gameplay so