Ask Lemmy

A bottle jack. Super cheap, but when you need to lift something super heavy, a bottle jack is the goat.

zinc oxide paste(diaper rash), . they are used for baby rashes, and also adult rash. but they are also useful for certain kinds of dermatitis, weeping atopic dermatitis rash it stops it from weeping and dries it out in between topical medication regimens so you dont get too used to a topical medication, this can help extend that.

and helps with sweating in areas with alot of friction too from getting irritated like your crotch (aka swampballs or boob sweat rash)area. allegedly people have used it on perioral dermatitis, but it works on some but not others, because the highest percentage is very drying so dont use when your skin is already dry, also the brand name ones or equilvalent has Talc, get the non-talc versions instead.

originally i never considered buying sonic or electric toothbrush until it was reccommended by a dentist, and i was super excited how well it clean without aggressive or inefficient brushing of a manual toothbrush, i opted for generic toothbrushes since the brand names were quite expensive, generic toothbrush head replacements over brand name replacements which are fraction of the cost, any electric or sonic toothbrush over 100 is just pure marketing holds no real benefit over the cheaper ones, especially the "smart" ones.

I bought a pocket sized mini keyboard the other day.

Here are some other good buys under $100

-Used graphics cards and computer hardware in general, sometimes you can get 1070s and 1080s for under 100 bucks and they still play most modern games just fine at highish settings. If you don't have the budget to build a powerful new system.

-Some cool tool kits

-Mini projector that is pocket sized.

-Pocket sized arm computer consoles. Made for emulation. Most run android which is a big downside but a surprisingly capable little computer if your cell phone isn't enough.

-Accessories, necklaces, wristbands, earrings, etc. Never a bad time to improve your looks.

-Buying shirts on eBay, it's a good place to find actually cool shirts.

-Rotary cutter and high quality scissors - good for modifying clothing to get a style you like, crop your own shirts to turn guy shirts into girl shirts, i got into this when I transitioned. Looking nice really helps with being trans.

-A large battery or battery case for your phone.

-Some used phones which have open bootloaders, which greatly increases the utility of your device. Be careful about devices which require signing. I made this mistake with buying a moto G. The unlockable bootloader on the moto G is mostly false advertising.

-Smart lights, led strips.

-Wifi mesh extender.

-A good set of Bluetooth headphones. I like brands like Sony.

-A wireless Xbox controller. You need stupid windows to update the firmware to make it work on Bluetooth often times, but it's nice to have a wireless controller to play PC games with.

-Old laptops to throw Linux on

-Microcontrollers with gpio, probably has enough processing power to get you to the moon and back if you are clever. A cool way to learn a bit about electronics.

-A nice high quality blanket, I spent 120 on a blanket many years ago, and it's amazing in the cold. Improves sleep quality significantly.

-Colored/RP contact lenses, upgrade your cosplay.

-Greek drachma coin, carry a bit of silver history in your pocket from 2000 years ago. Can be useful against the undead

-Handheld audio recorder. In many states you are allowed to record conversations and can use these in courts to force companies to honor their promises and verbal contracts. Phone companies have tried to make it impossible to record these conversations with corporations, but you can still do it.

-An old MP3 player.

-.22 revolver. Good for hunting and ammo is cheapish and lightweight.

-Folding chair/portable hammock - never be without a chair or bed!

-nice backpack, there are some cool ones with built in solar panels that can put out a few watts, when coupled with a power bank or two then you can always have a bit of portable power for charging your devices.

-used handheld ham radio, always a useful tool to have in uncertain economic and political times.

-Scout hat/ranger hat/sunscreen - take care of your skin if you work in the sun alot. Mineral based sunscreens are the least invasive even if they are kind of gross sometimes.

-Pinetime watch - cool little smart watch for 20 bucks that is open source, and you can easily write your own apps for

-cheap impact drill + adapter bits - once you use an impact with bits to fit all your sockets and screwdriver bits, you will hardly ever have to use screw drivers and sockets again, you will cut all of your repair times in multiples, go from a 1 hour repair to a 10 minute repair. Wallmart has some cheap ones that are plenty good for light duty use and will last many years.

-VPN subscription - Make it harder for people to spy on you, steal your keys, and censor you. Protect your IP from snoops.

-A domain + cheap webhosting - create your own website and buy at least a year if webhosting, you can find some cheap options for under $5 a month. Have a off-site cheap little virtual server that you can use for many things. Storing files, hosting websites, reverse proxy and reverse ssh behind bad routers.

-A good toothbrush

-Rechargable AA batteries - make sure they are 1.5v and not 1.2 v

-Pepper spray and/or a nice knife.

-Youtube premium subscription - more then 100 a year but get your time back with no ads, offline playback, free music streaming, and support creators more than ads do.

-ChatGPT+ - more expensive than 100 a year but nearly invaluable as a resource. The chatGPT5 model is excellent for many tasks and is significantly smarter and more aware of context than the free models. Use it for anything from helping you write scripts and bash, to understanding Linux. Use it to research and educate yourself.

-Better pillow, you spend 1/3 of your life sleeping, don't cheap out on it.

-Nice coat/shoes/gloves/etc - you spend 2/3rds of your life wearing clothes, don't cheap out on them.

-Reusable razor, clippers, maybe a waxing kit - Again, looks are important, how you look has a significant effect on how people treat you and effects nearly every aspect of your life and happiness.

-Old books, knowledge is increasingly being erased and manipulated by current regimes, don't rely on the internet for all your knowledge, pick up old reference books from thrift stores, medical, language, engineering, history, and anything else.

-Medkit, and then expand it, get stuff to do emergency surgeries. Keep a notebook in it with notes and also references for common things and instructions to use them safely. So e good emergency recipes to have are lidocaine from aspirin, a local anesthetic, and chloroform for emergency surgeries, dangerous but potentially life saving in some situations. Keep some extra stuff in there if you come across it, opiates, wide spectrum antibiotics, antipsychotics, benzos, iodine tablets whatever. Gauge and medical tape, stitches, Tylenol, alcohol, and other useful things.

-Survival seed banks, water filters.

-An offline battery device configured with offline AI models, can be useful for looking up information, even if it's really slow. Good for conversions, medical advice, and just general knowledge.

-Geiger counter - always a useful tool to have around, just to be sure, it also detects Radeon gas emmisions usually.

-Good quality pen, sketchpads, charcoal, erasers, colored pencils.

-Flute - make sure it's well designed

-Sex toys - life is too short for shame, be happy and practice good hygiene and don't do things you wouldn't want others to do to you, like touch your things after they have been weird.

-Good quality sunglass

-OBD reader - very useful for working on cars

-Serial bus to USB - If you are inclined to white hat hacking.

-A few high quality tools if you have the money to spend, get a good high quality set of magnetic screw drivers and some decent rachet wrenches but don't break them! Have a set of regular wrenches for breaking bolts first. Other useful tools are things like, magnetic parts bowl, mechanic gloves, safety glasses, extendable magnet.

-Nonplastic eating utensils, cut down on micro plastics!

-Glass bowl pipe - I don't smoke weed anymore, but when I did I always preferred a fine glass bowl to keep exposure to plastic and metal low

-A good quality belt or two

-Logic analyzer/good quality multimeter

-Mini vacuum - upgrade your cleaning

-flags - hang a flag to represent!

-Mini statue of Athena or whatever you choose - Improve your aesthetics, while making little offerings and prayers

-Compass, humidity detector, barometer - Never get lost if you can't remember the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and predict the weather yourself, low pressure and higher humidity, and higher temps means its more likely to rain, high pressure, low humidity, lower temps on average means your weather is likely to be more stable.

-Laser carpentry level, used surveying level, be careful that it's calibrated - can be useful to have various levels for any construction tasks.

-Political pamphlets - hand out pamphlets to people to inform them that they have voted consistently for years to fund mass surveillance and genocide and brainwashing, hand out pamphlets at the courthouse to inform people about their right to nullify unethical legal proceedings as a juror, even in the face of jury intimidation and manipulation by the state. Make sure they know that the state belongs to the people, not billionaires, not stuck up moralists, not corporations, not to foreigners, it belongs to us, the citizens who work and build this land, and pay taxes, and are not corrupted by power.

-Old moniters or tvs from thrift stores - often damaged or has dead pixels but you can find some gems occasionally

-USB long range WiFi adapter - improve your life when using Far away internet.

-Laundry baskets/higher quality trash cans/storage containers - little micro optimizations add up over time to improve your happiness and time efficiency.

-Portable SSD - much faster than SD cards especially for random read and write.

-High quality large thumb drive - through a very well built Linux distro on it, perhaps hirens boot CD for windows repairs, some disk images, a few Linux distros, reference material, ebooks, documentation, old video games that are small so you can pack many on there, emulators with roms, offline copy of Wikipedia, AI models, if you have the space or multiple drives then make copies so your data doesn't get corrupted.

A screwdriver set with all the tiny weird heads that you almost never would use. I got one as a gift and it's been really useful

A 10,000 mAh power bank with attachments to jump start your car or charge your phone. Also has a built in flashlight. It's come in handy on a few occasions now.

I understand that there are new ones now that also have a built in air compressor for pumping up your car tires, but I don't know how good they are.

A bidet

A leatherman multitool.

There are really nice ones over $100, but they also make versions under that price as well. I’ve used them in a pinch on cars or other random projects.

Glass Tupperware, if you look all your plastic ones I bet they are scratched - melted or otherwise damaged. All those missing parts end up in the food.

Silk pillowcase. Absolute game changer for my hair and face.