There’s 3 things that really stand out for me that I would say made a massive difference to my life:

  1. Cordless screw driver. Bought the day after building a flat pack bed with a crappy screw.driver that just shredded my hand. Thought it was frivolous at the time, but I’ve used it so much since. It’s light, small enough to fit in my pocket and good for 90% of DIY tasks.

  2. Tassimo coffee machine. Bought it 9 years ago, use it every day. Nice quick easy coffee. What’s not to like.

  3. My first DSLR camera. It was a Nikon D50 back in 2005/6 and it sparked my interest in photography to this day. It gave me a hobby I can take lots of places and do it alone or with others. I never loved the D50 camera itself, but I did get some really nice shots with it

  • @OhmsLawn
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    4 months ago

    By order of lasting positive effects,

    1. First vape (a cigarette-shaped item from the corner store, cherry flavor). I had been smoking with suicidal enthusiasm for 18 years. I was out of breath, coughing, stinking, and (at $7 a pack) broke. A decade later, I still vape, but I can breathe now.

    2. First not-fully-depreciated used car (3-year-old 2012 Focus SEL hatch with 30K mi). Apart from warranty transmission work, the car’s been stable, and pretty. The real change was introducing me to finance and lending. I grew up poor with a debt addicted dad. At 32, I had never had a credit card. I’ve still never given the bastards a dime, but I’ve pulled in thousands in rewards and have an outstanding credit score.

    3. Passport / first international airline ticket. I mean, yeah. I hadn’t had any desire to leave my state, let alone see the world. At 20, I grudgingly flew to Europe to visit my girlfriend who was studying abroad. We didn’t last, but the travel bug did.

    Honorable mention, only because it isn’t technically a purchase would be my first union payment. Best deal ever.

    Edit: how do you add line breaks? It worked, magically, when I made the list heading bold, but that was hella annoying.

    • XIIIesq
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      4 months ago

      People that say “vaping isn’t good for you!” etc etc are people that are missing the point and people that have clearly never tried both.

      Firstly, no one is saying it’s good for you, just that it is better for you than smoking is.

      Secondly, maybe listen to people like yourself who have extensive experience with both options, the different in you personally health is night and day.

      • Atemu
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        14 months ago

        The statements “vaping isn’t good for you” and “vaping is a lot better than smoking” do not conflict with another; they can both be true.

        Whether vaping is an improvement or not depends on what you were doing before. If you were smoking before and are substituting cigarettes for vaping, you hurt yourself a lot less and it’s an improvement.

        If you weren’t smoking before (the case for most teens for example) and would start to vape, you’d be hurting yourself significantly more than before.

        You should be advocating to never touch a vape (or cigarette) to non-smokers and to try vaping to get out of smoking addiction to smokers.

        • XIIIesq
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          04 months ago

          Fair point.

          It’s obvious that the best thing for your lungs is clean and fresh air and the best thing to do with nicotine is never try it.

          But some people are always going to be attracted to that sort of thing and it’s sensible to not fear monger the option which is clearly the healthier choice.

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      I might be misunderstanding your edit question, but I think you did it?

      It’s just Enter twice to force a new paragraph using Markdown.

      • @OhmsLawn
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        14 months ago

        No. it’s really strange and only happens with numbers. I entered everything just like one would, with double spaces, each item starting with 1., 2., etc. Nothing I did would make it come out with a gap.

        It only worked after I changed the first letter of the section to an asterisk (to make the subject bold). Also, like you see here paragraphs that start with anything other than a number work fine.

        1. It’s

        2. Only

        3. Numbers

        4. Asterisks

        5. Work

        6. Fine

        I’m using sync, but I doubt that matters.

        • Atemu
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          24 months ago

          Numbers at the start of a line followed by a dot signifies a numbered list item. If you just want the numbers without it being considered a list item, you need to escape the dot like this:

          1. This is a list item
            With line break

          1. This is not
          With line break

          1. This is a list item  
          With line break
          
          1\. This is not  
          With line break