107
What's a small luxury under $20 that significantly improves your daily life?
(discuss.tchncs.de)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
107 points (99.1% liked)
Casual Conversation
1910 readers
129 users here now
Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.
RULES (updated 1/22/25)
- Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling. To be concise, disrespect is defined by escalation.
- Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible. You won't be punished for trying.
- Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There's a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it's vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a "controversial" message for it to be allowed.
- Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate. A rule of thumb is if a recording of a conversation put on another platform would get someone a COPPA violation response, that exact exchange should be avoided when possible.
- No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc. The chart redirected to above applies to spam material as well, which is one of the reasons its wording is vague, as it applies to a few things. Again, a "spammy" message must be applicable to four purple answers before it's allowed.
- Respect privacy as well as truth: Don’t ask for or share any personal information or slander anyone. A rule of thumb is if something is enough info to go by that it "would be a copyright violation if the info was art" as another group put it, or that it alone can be used to narrow someone down to 150 physical humans (Dunbar's Number) or less, it's considered an excess breach of privacy. Slander is defined by intentional utilitarian misguidance at the expense (positive or negative) of a sentient entity. This often links back to or mixes with rule one, which implies, for example, that even something that is true can still amount to what slander is trying to achieve, and that will be looked down upon.
Casual conversation communities:
Related discussion-focused communities
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca
- !askmenover30@lemm.ee
- !dads@feddit.uk
- !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk
- !movies@lemm.ee
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
A decent pen and/or pencil. I have several nice fountain pens that I use for journaling, but I use my Zebra F-301 ballpoint daily for general notes/etc. -- ~$10 for a 4 pack on Amazon. If you prefer a pencil, you can pick up a Pentel Sharp Kerry for under $20 on Amazon.
I prefer the Pilot Precise V5 as my favorite cheap and ubiquitous pen upgrade. Everyone remarks on how smooth it writes. Not the best for labels with gloss though is the only catch with it. Capped or retractable versions, and while I like the V5 (0.5mm tip) because I write smaller, they also have a V7 (0.7mm tip) for those that write larger or what bolder lines.
After that, hop on Jetpens and there are tons of <$10 pens that are way better than anything in a store, or refills to turn your favorite cheap pen into an undercover fancy pen so you don't need to worry about losing a fancier pen body. I stocked up on so many great pens, and now I have a job where I hardly ever have to write and I really miss getting to use my pens all day. The cheap office pens skip and are so scratchy it feels like drawing on dirt with a stick in comparison.
That's a great tip about the "undercover fancy pen!" I hadn't even thought about that, but I'll definitely be doing it now!
I've got a few hybrids at this point. Some really nice pen bodies come with crap refills, or they will come in a tip size you don't like, or you can put a more expensive refill in a cheap pen, so if you like using something like a Cross pen but worry about losing it, put a Cross refill in a cheap disposable pen body.
Most pens use one of 2 fairly universal refill types, so swapping is easy 90% of the time and there are a number of great styles and brands in those formats, and now with 3D printing, you can buy adapters for popular pens that use oddball refills to use the common ones.
There are so many good pens for $3-5 that you can just pick an assortment from a place like Jetpens (they list compatible refills for each pen body!) and mix and match until you create your perfect pen.
It's a much more affordable and practical (sorry fountain pen fans) way to get an affordable but perfected for you writing instrument that you won't cry about if you lose it or someone walks off with it.
Edit: If you'd ask me to make you a $20 pen that should be awesome for almost anyone....
Zebra Sarasa Grand - metal body, good weight but not heavy, nice spring clip that shouldn't snap off and you can clip it to things normal clips wouldn't like, comes in a ton of unique colors ($14)
Uni Jetstream refill ($2) - the Sarasa Grand ink isn't bad at all, though I thought it was a little free flowing for my taste, but when I bought it they only had the bigger 0.7 tip, which is too big for how I write. It's a gel ink, so it looks superb and bold, but it will smudge on labels. The Jetstream is a great hybrid ink blending the good qualities of oil based and water based inks, pretty smudge proof on just about any writing surface, comes in black/blue/red and 0.3/0.5/0.7/1.0 mm tips so anyone can get a size and color combo that works for them. Lasts much longer than a gel ink also.