site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3024 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 25, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What's the best bang for your buck (in terms of QOL) purchase you've ever made? The cheaper the better.

I'd say in-ear earphones with solid ANC are up there. I'm sitting outside the arrivals section of a busy international airport, and I felt mildly annoyed by the honking and general noise with earphones on and ANC engaged. Then I took them off to check and was practically deafened. Yup, they're cutting down 90% of the cacophony.

I own a pair of Galaxy Buds 3 Pros, purchased at about £130. I think they sound great, the ANC isn't quite as good as the Airpods I bought my brother on his birthday, but it's clearly a cut above my older Buds 2 Pro (Plus?). I happen to prefer the sound quality, and unless you've got an iPhone, they're about the best you can get on an Android device that isn't rooted and running Libre Pods. In fact, good ANC tends to improve sound quality overall in my experience, as it preserves bass by changing the acoustic impedance.

(The default Android kernel has a buggy, non-compliant Bluetooth stack. Until Google upstreams a patch, you need the root to get actual standards compliance and the ability to make use of all the Airpods' features.)

As a single man currently lacking access to female fingernails, my $4 bamboo back scratcher. No longer do I have to rub up against a door frame like a bear when my back itches.

That and my wireless bbq thermometer with multiple probes. If you know how to work your vents, it gives you all the precise control you'd ever need to run circles around the rich boys with their automated pellet poopers.

My fiancee would say her liter canteen. She gets great mileage out of it.

Easily our cast iron skillet

Have you tried carbon steel? I switched out my cast iron skillet for one of those and I wouldn't go back. It gets rip roaring hot and lasts forever like cast iron, and it's much easier to cook with because it's so much lighter (though admittedly that does mean it retains less heat). I highly recommend them to anyone who hasn't tried one, as to me they more or less are a straight upgrade from cast iron.

I have a carbon steel wok, and it seems like the ideal material for that (light enough for wok tossing, quick temperature changes when I need them), but I can't see why I'd want it for a skillet. My wok doesn't season as nicely as my cast iron skillet, I don't move my skillet around while cooking so I don't care about light weight, and I do care about heavy weight - retaining as much heat as possible when we (sometimes over-...) load it with steaks is like 90% of the point of that skillet! For anything that doesn't need a long sear, what's the advantage of a carbon steel skillet over (thick, quality) stainless?

If you're interested, Chris Young has a video about different pan materials.

Cast iron retains heat but doesn't move it very quickly, so the pan directly under your steak gets cold, and the heat in other parts of the pan is slow to move in. Thick, quality, (sandwiched around aluminum) stainless is his ultimate recommendation.

Not that that stops me from cooking in cast iron, but I found it interesting.

If you don't care about light weight, there is none. Personally I hated using my cast iron skillet because it was so damn heavy. But you said that doesn't bother you (and like you said it can be an asset because of the thermal mass), so carbon steel doesn't have anything to offer in that case IMO.

I'd say in-ear earphones with solid ANC are up there

Haha, I read your first line, settled on my Quietcomfort 2 Bose Earpods and then came back to see I was 'right'.

The sound is awesome, but I found it degrades to take calls as perhaps it needs bandwidth for the microphone.

Anyway, they had a pretty big QoL impact for things like commuting on public transport, or other environments where I could afford to sacrifice some situational awareness. The noise cancelling really allows for moments of peace (although I've had a girlfriend have to punch me on the arm to get my attention when I'm using them before sleep).

Edit: Some honorable mentions -

  • BPA free 2 Liter handled water bottle to carry around the house with me to stay hydrated.
  • Kindle Paperwhite is an amazing ebook reader that eliminated a lot of eyestrain. Its backlight lets me read in the dark without disturbing others. It finally sold me on ebooks over paper (although I recently read a hardcover when I was on holiday and I kind of miss it).

My interest in active noise cancelling earbuds/headphones is very much piqued. I can't stand airports and planes and so on. I think the noise plays a significant part in that.

What are the 'best' ones? If you don't mind paying another 50 or 100.

Not sure whether the Apple air pods are the best option for an Android phone user like me.

I don't usually enjoy having earphones or earplugs inserted for more than an hour or so. Are the super fancy, expensive ANC ones more comfortable? Or should I go for over-ear headphones (though these are much less portable).

I'm not an expert, so you'll have to do your own research with reviews unless someone chimes in here that they've gone through a few different brands.

I don't have a reference point for what is more comfortable. I would presume its just normal earbud vs over ear headphones.

Something I do like is that I can tolerate earbuds in bed with audio books before sleep if I'm on my back and for short periods on my side.

That's me though. I'm not ultra sensitive to physical discomfort.

The sound is awesome, but I found it degrades to take calls as perhaps it needs bandwidth for the microphone.

If it makes you feel any better, all Bose and Sony noise cancelling headphones do this (I'm pretty sure even AirPods do it too). It's quite a negative impact when you're trying to talk with friends and play a game when the equipment is linked to a computer- while it's possible to disable the "hands free" mode to force high quality but sacrifice the ability to take calls on it unless re-enabled, certain games will force themselves into this mode anyway and end up sounding like absolute garbage until fixed in the settings (or are completely unfixable, as the case may be).

Which means a 500-dollar pair of headphones don't work unless accompanied by a 10-dollar desk mic. Such is life, apparently.

The root cause is Bluetooth, not the headphones. The only (partial) solutions to the problem require licensed codecs that must be supported on both sides of the connection and many prominent phone manufacturers are not interested in doing that (not least because to get benefit, all the headphones would have to support the same codec).

Yep, I'm having all of the issues you've described, including problems with receiving audio from discord and games at the same time (even in 'AG' hands free mode).

I've made my peace with it. Pure noise cancelled audio with no comms is worth all of the problems.

I haven't found in-ears that I can tolerate yet, but my QOL while in flights rose significantly when I started using noise-cancelling over-ear headphones (mine is Bose). They really filter out all the annoyance of the flight (and the airport). I just put an audiobook up, relax and my flight experience now is pretty low-stress. My only regret is I didn't start doing it earlier, using non-noise-cancelling headphones or just toughing it out. It's absolutely different experience (at least for me) when I don't have to deal with the noise.

Use case is a little different but I hate in-ears and ended up buying some Powerbeats Pro 2s for my commute and they've been great and don't really irritate my ears the way most in-ears do (by virtue of not actually being in-ear).

I'm really happy with this soldering iron. Yes, I also have a standard weller rework station for serious work (which cost nearly three times used what this did new), but 95% of the stuff I do it's completely sufficient, the thing's easily luggable, I've ended up needing to solder in the field more often than I'd like to admit, and it's just an absolute joy to work with. There's still occasional situations where everything's so tightly spaced that I needed to haul out the old benzomatics, so I wouldn't complain if someone manufactured a version with a built-in battery, but being able to switch from wall power to a cheap usb battery pack and back is way more convenient most of the time.

These toolkits. They're not good -- the magnet inside the driver is held in by hope and prayer, the spadgers are about as strong as toothpicks, and the suction cup is aspirational -- but they cover pretty much any small electronics situation you're going to run into, and when someone inevitably loses the 5.5mm or the tweezers, it's just not that big a deal.

A good, quality, canvas satchel ('messenger bag') or hard-shell briefcase. Daily usage sorta thing, and extremely high-variance: I've seen mediocre bags in the 300+USD range, and 'classy' ones can get ridiculous (and I don't trust real leather to survive what I put mine through), but the low-end is crap that falls apart into plastic flakes in months if not weeks. And then there's also surprisingly good options in the 40-80 USD space. The ones I've been happiest with so far are Rothcos. They're not perfect. As you'd expect from a Chinese clone brand, there's some awkward design decisions, and I'd recommend hitting the shoulder straps with some reinforcement stitching. But compared to how floppy anything cheaper and canvas gets, or how quickly anything pleather degrades, it's a great sweet spot.

Do you carry a notebook in your satchel?

Both of the pen-and-paper type and the small laptop definitions. Although the pen-and-paper side is a little aspirational: I tend to end up giving up the paper notepads nearly as often as people ‘borrow’ usb chargers permanently.

Does the bottom of the back protect the laptop when you're putting it down? Are you pretty gentle with the bag when you put it down? How do you generally handle it?

I'm pretty rough on carry bags, but I don't hurl it like a discus, either. Haven't had any damage to my laptop yet... but it's one of the last good ThinkPad models. The only real padding is more intended as reinforcement material, so I don't think it's enough I'd be comfortable using the thing to carry a laptop when bicycling or something where a completely uncontrolled impact is plausible, and I don't think any of the other variants are much better there. The best I've seen from them is the B-15 Pilot variant, and it's still only fairly thin 'leather' padding with some reinforcement.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any good inexpensive ones that are much better.

Thanks for this. The impact on a laptop is probably the primary concern I have of buying this style of bag. I've got this weird association between carrying bags and dumping them down, probably from bad habits picked up back in high school. Which is more of a problem with 'me' as compared to the bag.

A down comforter! They work so much better for temperature regulation in sleep than anything else.

Darn Tough Socks. I have returned my used socks for replacements 4 times now. They just keep sending me more. As long as you don't lose it or have your house burn down, it's 10 bucks for a pair of socks for life.

Thanks! I was just looking for a new set of skiing socks. My favorite ones are very close to turning into gauze. They have pretty generous return policy for an online clothing manufacturer, I'll try them out.

Unironically, my wooden spoons. They cost me something like $10-20 for the 4 I have, and I've had them for something like 17 years now. They aren't flashy but I use them all the time and the cost per time is insanely low.

I'll counter with "(heat-safe) silicone cooking utensils", the ideal material for a house full of semi-competent cooks. All my stuff is 15 or 20 years old, and over that length of time everything eventually gets accidentally left on a hot pan, where wood surfaces turn to char, nylon and other plastics turn to goo and poison-smoke, and good silicone just shrugs it off and stays good-as-new.

Plus I'm too lazy to hand-wash (much less oil) wooden spoons like I do with my wooden cutting board, and I've noticed that wood tends to get gradually ruined by automatic dishwashing.

Oh trust me, I don't hand wash my wooden spoons. They go in the dishwasher with everything else. They're still going strong (honestly, people baby wooden spoons too much from what I've seen online), but even if they got ruined one of these days I'm not going to be upset. They were cheap as hell, so I'll just go buy another $20 pack of spoons that will last me for a decade or more.

I do have silicone spatulas and I agree they are excellent. My only complaint is that they have no rigidity at all so they don't pick stuff up or scrape particularly well. But I have other tools for that (including some metal and plastic utensils for the right situation).

What's the best bang for your buck (in terms of QOL) purchase you've ever made? The cheaper the better.

IDK about best of all time, but my best recent lifestyle upgrade was a Bio-Bidet BB-1000.

I own a pair of Galaxy Buds 3 Pros, purchased at about £130. I think they sound great, the ANC isn't quite as good as the Airpods I bought my brother on his birthday, but it's clearly a cut above my older Buds 2 Pro (Plus?).

For whatever reason, the Galaxy Buds 3 Pros actually weren't quite up to the Galaxy Buds 2 Pros in terms of ANC. They were pretty widely knocked in for worse ANC at low frequency levels compared to the Buds 2 Pro, which was something that kept me from upgrading to them.

Father in law gave us a bidet for Christmas. Kids immediately learned how to turn it into a squirt gun. We had to return it.

Eh? I've used both back to back, and I can assure you the ANC is miles ahead on the old model. I haven't seen that claim made in a professional review so far, and I did check quite a few before purchase. I didn't see much of a problem on the lows, but the most annoying noise you want to cancel is usually mid frequencies or higher in my experience.

Weird, I tend to go with the audiophile reviews, and several different reviewers talked about this issue with the Buds 3 pro, but to each their own.

A "shiatsu" massage pillow I paid 20$ for. I hurt my back in a coughing fit during Covid and couldn't even sit up in bed without sharp pain for a few weeks. A single session with the pillow unpinched something and fixed 90% of the problem.

Even though it was $5k, I'm tempted to say my cooling tempurpedic mattress. That thing is amazing.

Best bang for my buck purchase I've ever made: a house.

Rents around my area have more than doubled since I bought it.

Best cheap bange for my buck: a Victorinox fibrox bread knife.

Not sure if it's the absolute best but it sure is bang for buck: A good led headlamp bought directly from the Chinese specialist manufacturer. Much better quality than almost anything sold in Western stores for a much cheaper price (I paid 50e because I wanted fancy red light mode and high CRI but you can get good ones for just 30e). I hadn't realized just how useful it would be for everything from tinkering with small things to reading tiny text to trying to see the notes in the low contrast sheet music my guitar teacher had given me and how much more pleasant a good one is to use.

A good bed. That's gotta be up there. Even though it's a high cost:high reward thing.

Can't think of anything exciting that's both inexpensive and fantastic right now.

it's a high cost:high reward thing

It doesn't even have to be that high cost.

When I bought mine I was lucky that a local magazine (well regarded for their comparative tests) had done a large comparative review just a year or two earlier. The top two were fancy high end beds costing 5000e or more. The third winner was the highest end model Ikea sold (for around 1000e back then). No points for guessing which one I bought and have been happy with since.

I got mine for around 1000 too. Which is perfectly reasonable for a bed, but a lot higher than the price of what OP brought up.

Wide, convex rear-view mirrors for a car

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats