In the cheaper price point, IEMs are probably the way to go for noise isolation. If you can get ear tips with a good seal, then the passive noise isolation should be good enough. I’d recommend something like the kz zsn pro (~$20) or the kiwiears cadenza (~$30), along with comply foam tips (~$15) for a perfect seal into your ear. If you have smaller ears like me, then kz IEMs can be a bit uncomfortable, so keep that in mind. If your budget stretches further, then you can try Etymotic ER2SE IEMs (~$100), which have triple flange tips that really plug your ears deep, but I definitely don’t find them comfy enough for long sessions.

If your device doesn’t have a headphone jack, an Apple USB C dongle (~$10) is plenty good enough for any IEMs, or you could get a Bluetooth DAC from Fiio starting at around $40 (for the longest time I had one doing double duty for my headphones and for Bluetooth audio in my car).

My hands get really dry after washing bottles for my newborn, and nothing does the trick quite as well as working hands (although it does feel oily after applying, so I only use it right before going to sleep)

Division Bell! It’s punchy and tart with the citrus and slightly bitter aperol, and the mezcal gives a really welcome smoky flavor. I add just a quarter oz simple to the standard recipe, otherwise I find it a little dry.

-1 ounce mezcal -3/4 ounce Aperol -1/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino liqueur -3/4 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed -1/4 ounce simple syrup

-Add ingredients to a shaker with ice, shake well before straining into a coupe and garnishing with a grapefruit twist

Seconding Jack Rudy’s. While you’re doing yourself a favor, do yourself a favor and try 0.75oz syrup and 0.75oz st. Germain. That extra floral note is great with some gins (I’ve tried citadelle and malfy with this recipe to great success)

Probably because I rambled for way too long and didn’t give sources lol, here’s a couple examples from America’s test kitchen demonstrating what I mean:

Review of a combo Dutch oven/slow cooker that’s not great at either job, and is more expensive than buying the two items separately https://youtu.be/llPyDvfHx3k

Gear roundup for 2023, the best things were ones that innovated in materials or tech that was actually useful, worst things were overcomplicated equipment that didn’t actually try to use tech to improve the mechanics of the cooking equipment https://youtu.be/AU3mUjIF3A8

Cooking is an inherently manual task, and as such any meaningful improvements to cooking tools are enhancements to the manual capabilities of the tools. These are improvements to things like speed/precision/durability of mixing, heating, weighing, etc. Often times the most meaningful improvements are improvements in mechanisms in cooking machines or the materials they are made of, but there are definitely examples of electronics or software contributing in this way. Good examples would be fuzzy logic applied to electric kettles to make the act of heating to a specific temperature more precise by controlling the heating element so the water is brought to temperature without overshoot, or PID controllers in espresso machines controlling pumps to follow a specific pressure curve instead of requiring complex mechanical systems to accomplish the same thing. The problem with many of these internet-connected or heavily software-dependent appliances is that their added features do not improve the manual capabilities of the appliance in any way, sure the machine will tell you how much weight of flour you need for your cake, but your cake won’t be better than one produced by a “dumb” machine because the scale isn’t any more precise than any other scale that would be used for that purpose.

The other issue with these devices is a fallacy that’s really common in kitchen equipment, which is the idea that more functions = better. Fundamentally, a device designed to do both task A and task B will be worse than an equivalently priced combination of one device for task A and one device for task B, because there is a cost associated with engineering the device to accomplish both tasks. This effect is especially noticable on all-in-one devices that mix, weigh, and heat because there’s a lot more complexity, and thus a lot more cost spent on integrating the components together

Dumb question: did you remember to plug the battery connector back in? Or maybe you damaged that connector? That would explain if it only works when connected to power

It probably falls into the “costs a shit ton” but some people recommend the fellow carter mug. I’ve never tried it myself, but apparently ceramic-coated insides are best for not affecting the taste of coffee. I think I also saw some kind of ceramic-coated travel mug at Starbucks too? Can’t speak for how spill-proof either of those things are though

My wife and I ended up having a girl, but the names we were thinking of if we had a boy were Apollo or Layton. Those probably don’t need your criteria, but just throwing it out there!

The university replaced the rocks with trees? Paint the trees instead!

That would be Age of Ultron, also home to the wonderfully awful scene where black widow tells Bruce banner that she’s a monster too because she can’t reproduce 😬

America’s Test Kitchen does very thorough reviews of lots of kitchen equipment, here’s their review of induction cook tops.

TLDW: duxtop 1800W is good, there are better ones but they’re a lot more expensive

Even compared to something like a washed Ethiopian? To be honest I’ve never tried kopi luwak, I just figured it was overhyped and comparable to other specialty coffee lol

That reminds me of this great place I once went to that was literally just a farm house that was repurposed into a restaurant, in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road and surrounded by farmland. It wasn’t cheap but also not outrageous, and the salads were amazing.

I also just remembered this Hungarian restaurant. Can’t get any more homey than some ukranian grandma’s house

You can get that same experience with coffee for much cheaper, but it does require a little effort. You just need to find a good coffee roaster near you or online where you can get freshly roasted specialty coffee(arabica, not robusta; and from a single farm, not a blend), instead of the stuff at grocery stores that’s been sitting for months. It might cost $15-$20 a bag, but that’s still less than a dollar per cup! If you want the absolute best coffee, then grinding the beans yourself and using something like an aeropress or pourover brewer is ideal, but you can still get great coffee just by buying locally roasted beans from a nearby shop, letting them grind the beans for you, then brewing with a regular old coffee machine

Honestly, unless you’re getting headphones that require a decent amount of power, you should be good with Apple’s USB C DAC that they sell for around $8. If you have a limited budget, it’s better to put as much towards the actual headphones as possible, you’re going to get a lot better sound out of $100 headphones through a $10 DAC than you would with $50 headphones through a $50 DAC

It’s so blatant how gen ed classes are used to get every last cent out of students. Like, I understand the reasoning that some students lack general skills they’ll need for their jobs (e.g. engineering students having terrible English skills, which will be needed for presentations/reports), but that’s not an excuse to require every student to take those classes no matter what. If they really only cared that students were proficient in those subjects, there would be the option to test out, but that’s never a possibility. Most big universities near me also refuse to give credit for AP/IB classes, and don’t even allow credits to transfer from other colleges for everything but the most base-level courses.

I can think of about one class per semester (so almost a quarter of my classes) that was pure filler, where I only showed up for tests/presentations, and that I could have tested out of with maybe a week of effort, but that wasn’t allowed. In one case, I managed to skip the first semester of a subject and take the second course because they forgot to list the first one as a prerequisite. The scheduling counselor found out after I had already passed the more advanced course and was pissed. They made me take a replacement course even though I was 30 credits over the graduation requirement and had clearly already filled the knowledge requirement for that subject. You get one guess as to why that was 🤔

Nobody gonna mention the pennies in Belize? That’s the only coin I can think of with wavy edges and it’s so fun

Aww cmon, you might be able to find a used flair lever machine for under $100 like I did, and then it’s game over

Just be careful or you might go fullDIY Perks after long