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What is something really stupid you purchased that turned out far better than expected? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by RanchOnPancakes to c/asklemmy

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I bought a piece of 1.5 inch stiff foam to try to fix a sag in a bed. It didn't work but having that thick piece of solid foam around has been a life saver.

Need something flat to put a laptop on? Throw it on the foam. Going to be doing something that requires you to be on your knees for a while? Get the foam!

It went from stupid purchase to something I'd gladly replace if it broke.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (14 children)

Oh, definitely not a purchase, but Emacs. My life was a mess because of Twitter and it was anti-Twitter in every way – no characters limit, offline, insanely powerful. While Twitter would prevent me from prioritizing, Org-mode could handle task lists, spreadsheets, text documents, with academic citations support, and could export them to .ics, .odt, .pdf, .md, etc. Ideas are affordances and Emacs has let me focus on these instead of trying to build a picture perfect online profile.

Whereas Twitter isn't meant for most people's use cases so it runs a long-term scam called “optimization for engagement” (which is actually abuse by definition), doing everything it can to prevent its victims from taking hindsight on and conceptualizing what's happening to them, Emacs is letting me channel all of this frustration into reading and writing my master thesis. Which deals with how social media increase social inequalities. Highly recommended.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (5 children)

This comment is weird? It reads like an ad lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's free software, funded by donations. Anyway, no, not where I live, and I'm autistic, you're comparing the way I communicate with an ad.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

It's not the communication that is being critiqued, it's the unsual leap of contextual logic made to connect Twitter to Emacs. The Enties don't follow it, because they can't see how the unusual comparison paired with a strong recommendation for Emacs could be anything other than an "ad", and not just an enthusiastic personal endorsement for a thing you're passionate about.