Ground News. The blind spot feature gives me great insight to where my "out of touch" family is coming from with their political narratives.

Proton Mail and VPN. I saw them advertised a lot when I was first getting into Linux, and it seemed like a great way to start the arduous task of degoogling my life. Its been several months now and my only complaint is setting up the VPN on Linux desktop, it works great on android ootb and the email and calandar service have everything I need. I can even easily share calandar invites with my wife who is still on google everything

Tailscale is pretty fucking great if you’re into self-hosting

I bought a safety razor after an in video ad from a YouTube channel I watch.

It came with a bonus extra set of blades.

It is my first safety razor and I'm loving it. Disposables are a sucker's game. I knew it for years, but I only finally took the plunge. Totally worth it.

I saw a video going over atheletic greens and it was a pretty subpar supplement.

I've heard raycons are way overpriced.

I asked gamersupps support if it's vegan, since their website doesn't say and they have some ingredients that could be animal derived or plant based/synthetic, and they told me to look at the website.

sooo... in my experience/what I've heard, no not really any good ones come to mind

I've pretty much made up a rule for myself that I won't buy anything I've heard advertised on podcast

Backblaze, it’s a personal cloud backup solution that just works in the background. I don’t have to manage a backup protocol, I get an offsite backup, and it’s cheaper than trying to let a file sharing service like Dropbox or Google do my backups.

Zenni eyeglasses. They’re great.

I kinda like Magic Spoon cereal. It sticks to your teeth and has artificial sweetener (allulose) but it's pretty tasty and very low carb and comes in lots of fun flavors. I currently have the Fruit Loops flavored one. Was all over youtube a while back.

Atoms shoes. Back then, they did quarter sizes and you could get two different sizes because most people have different sized feet. They were awesome and I bought several more pairs.

They've been out of stock of most common sizes for a couple months without restocking and yesterday when I clicked the Contact link to ask about resupply the link is dead / goes to a redirect page. I think they're about to go out of business. Fucking shame.

Ridge wallet is the best purchase I made in a long time. So great I didn't feel bad about buying a second one for a cool design and for a dual money clip setup a few years later.

I'll say it, Blue Chew. Never really had a problem getting hard but it takes my partner a lot longer to get off than me, so I wanted to make sure I could last long enough for them. No regrets, great decision.

Runner up is a Purple mattress. We tried soooo many mattresses and couldn't find one we truly liked. My partner suggested trying Purple. I was first against it because I felt like it was just marketing but agreed because of their return policy and we've gone through sooo many mattresses at that point. It ended up being our favorite by far and kept it.

I have a groove belt. It really is as advertised. A true BIFL belt. Even has a lifetime guarantee without restrictions. I could send in the one I have now just to get a different color if I wanted.

My Hansen razor, bought it over a year ago because the cheap plastic safety razor got too annoying to use and I remembered the ad.

Didn't spend extra for the titanium version and got the aluminium instead.

It's not my main way of shaving since I bought an electric shaver few months ago to do it in less than 5 minutes in the morning, but I have kept it for when I want to actually get everything shaved and the large pack of blades should last me a decade with my usage

Grip6 belts. Waited awhile until they had a Father’s Day sale a year ago to buy a simple black one with a honeycomb buckle. That thing is now my everyday belt. I now have 3 belts, 4 buckles, and have 3 more belt/buckle coming from Prime Day.

I like my Vessi shoes and plan on buying another pair.

I actually liked Factor and heard about it from a podcast. It worked really well for me but I didn't keep it more than a few months because it is so expensive. If I lived alone or made more money I'd do it again.

Linode Cloud Services (now owned by Akamai). Heard about them on multiple Linux youtubers channels. Been hosting multiple apps and websites with them for a couple years now on their lowest plan and it works well. I'm sure people have their criticisms of them, but I've yet to have any issues.

Might be placebo for some, but I really liked Beam Dream. It really helps me to fall asleep quickly and keeps me sleeping until morning without the groggyness of just melatonin. It is pretty pricey though so I only buy it when the site offers me discounts.

Somehow, still nothing

Squarespace. Works pretty well for my needs tbh.