Mine is a shark and has a different looking filter than that. They probably weren’t designed to be checked in the washing machine but it has worked every time I’ve done it so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

It’s a brush similar to a regular vacuum, a long thin tube with bristles. Like I said I clean the vacuum about once a week, including checking that everything spins like it’s supposed to. The wet/dry versions do look like they would be much more effective at keeping your house actually clean however when I bought mine several years ago those were still well over $1,000 and not yet a well-tested enough setup but I would have trusted it to have water going around my house without supervision. If my vacuum dies and I need to buy another one I will most likely buy a wet dry vac but I don’t see a reason to upgrade for now as long as mine keeps the majority of the mess away. It’s definitely not perfect, but a regular vacuum isn’t perfect even if you do it three times a day you still going to have dirty rugs that need to be washed and a hardwood floor that needs mopped. The dust collector being about 1-2 cups worth of dust and cat hair when I change it out each week makes me feel very confident that it helps keep my house cleaner than I would be able to on my own, and for the roughly $300 I spend on it over 4 years ago, well worth the price.

My robot vacuum! My robot vacuum with the little home dock tower thing that lets it dump its load and keep vacuuming! I had the original robot vacuums that didn’t have a dock to dump their garbage in and it helped some but mostly it needed to be cleaned more often than I would have vacuumed my house without it, the newer ones with big receptacles are so worth it, once a week I dump his container and change his filters and maybe give him a little wipe down with a dust rag and he’s happy as a clam. I bought a set of replacement filters so that I can take the old filters out and use my big vacuum on them to get most of the dust and then chuck them in the washing machine, once they’re clean they go in the filter drawer and I just rotate filters once a week.

My litter robot! I got mine refurbished so it was a little cheaper. Not only is it worth it to not have to scoop all the time and somehow still have a stinky house, it has saved me TONES on litter. I buy one 40lb bag for $20 a month and that’s more than plenty, whereas before it would be at least 2.5 bags a month. All that and still I would buy all sorts of different scent absorbers and diffusers and good smelly type things to try and mask it and it never worked. So I’m saving about 30 bucks a month on cat litter and probably 40 bucks a month on good smellies and filters AND my house actually smells nice. Totally worth it, even with the almost $500 price tag for the refurbished machines. Just with the savings on litter and smellies it probably paid for itself within a year.

My power tools. I’m not a professional but doing all the diy home repairs myself with the right tools for the job has probably saved me tens of thousands of dollars in contractors. And believe me when I say get the right tools for the job, it’s worth it. You can fight with the wrong tool for hours trying to get a job done poorly or do it right in minutes with the right tools for the job. Not only is your time valuable but having the project done correctly the first time means you don’t have to pay to fix it a second time. Even if you’re the one doing it the second time, you still have to spend the time ripping out the garbage you put in and pay for the materials to do it right the second time.

My sous vide, 100% I have never gotten a steak from a restaurant that was better than what I make at home with my sous vide and a good thick iron pan. It cost $100 and it probably paid for itself with one package of steaks from Costco.

Flowers for Algernon and FUCK NO I DID NOT LIKE IT AND WOULD NEVER HAVE CHOSEN YO WATCH IT IF NOT FORCED!!!

It is good to know that Lemmy is correct. The answers were, mostly, either maruchan or shin black, both of which are correct. the maruchan is what you pick when you are broke/ sick and aren’t sure you’ll keep anything down, and shin black is what you pick when you want good ramen not from a ramen shop. $2 USD per packet is a little steep for not sure it’s gonna sit well. I have a very picky tummy though so maybe most people have fewer issues with feeling guilty about “losing” pricy food.

I grew up in the farm-y outskirts of a big-ish city. I got to catch lizards and tadpoles and toads in the creek nearby, and we’d collect reeds from cattails and weave them into little mats for fun. we’d walk/bike to our friends house without parents, just yell that your going to so and so’s and off you trot. We knew the farmer who grew the sweet corn we ate all summer, and the farmers who had the peach orchard and tomato fields we’d harvest from at the end of summer to can cheap produce for the winter.
The foothills behind our neighborhood were covered with grass and shrub, spattered with bike trails and caves right up to the tree line. There were foxes and racoons that you’d need to protect your chickens from. Deer would chill in our yard in fall eating the fallen Apples from around our trees. Flocks of starlings covered our huge cottonwood trees making a huge racket and pooping everywhere. I’d take a metal baseball bat to our big metal clothesline post to make a big gong noise to scare them off cuz they were so loud.

Then a fence went up, blocking us from using the hills, and they started construction on a bunch of high end mc mansions. They filled in the caves, killed the foxes and racoons, and paved over the creek to make a walking trail. More and more deer ended up as roadkill till they stopped coming to eat the apples altogether. Developers bought out the farmers to build more houses, first the tomato fields, then the corn, and finally the peaches were ripped out and paved over. The dairy became a giant strip mall for a Staples, and a Kohl’s, a donut shop and a sandwich shop. The road I walked alongside, barefoot, to play in the creek became too busy to be safe for kids to walk next to.

In summer we’d play outside and drink from the hose till we were too hot, then we’d run inside and stand under the swamp cooler to cool down. Year after year it got hotter and hotter till the heat was too much and we couldn’t play outside for too long because the swamp cooler wasn’t enough to cool us down anymore. In winter we used to make snow men and build igloos with buckets full of snow as bricks, and we’d trample paths into the snow drifts that came up to our hips. But year after year the snow banks got shorter and shorter and the snow came later and later until… I remember the first year we had no snow till after Christmas. The decorations looked so sad and stupid sitting on brown grass instead of coated with bright snow. That’s the last year I bothered to put them up. The more people moved to the area, the thicker the smog got in the winter. All the stagnant stinky car exhaust and fumes from the refinery got caught in the bowl of the valley all winter, till the hazy air was so dense you couldn’t see the mountains that surrounded us.

The world got hotter and more full of cars and houses all while the people got more stranded inside. Yes by the lure of Internet, but also to try to escape the heat and dust and smog. New neighbors in the big houses would snap at us to get off their lawn then smile like they gave a fuck the next Sunday at church.

Neighborhoods full of community became individuals in houses.

I’m only 34.

Ah, see, I think a world in anarchy would be ideal. Not in the hyperbolic common use sense where anarchy means the purge and chaos and zero government that most media portray it to be, but the actual definition of anarchy, a world without hierarchy. A world where no person, group, or government has the right to use violence or the threat thereof to coerce anyone into doing anything against their will.

There are so very many ways these ideals could be debated and edge cases brought up. So many people, with much more detailed and complete knowledge than I, have written many books on the subject. I don’t have the answers to it all. Mostly I don’t think people require a State, which is to say a sovereign government that has the authority to enforce a system of rules over the people living inside it’s jurisdiction, to live in peaceful coexistence.

Police are definitely necessary if the goal is to uphold the laws of the state. I just don’t think we need a state and, by extension, I don’t think we need the police that enforce it’s laws.

I’m aware I’m an idealist, I just can’t bring myself to aim for a worse world because what I want seems too hard to get. A perfect world can’t exist but I’ll be damned if I don’t try anyway.

Anywho, I’ll relinquish the soap box now, thanks for listening and being open to hearing my point of view.

Reforming a police force still implies the existence of a militarized group of people whose job is to uphold the power of the state at the expense of the people. Law enforcement’s job is to enforce laws, right? Laws are the will of the state, and enforcement is making people obey those laws with the threat or act of violence. That is what a police force is.

That’s why people, why I, don’t think reforming police is the answer, because by definition police are the violent arm of the state.

Abolishing the state’s monopoly on “lawful” violence is, in my view, the only way to reduce institutional abuse of power against marginalized groups. Having people whose job it is to de-escalate heated situations, deal with unsafe conditions, and direct people away from harm is a necessary job, but that doesn’t require violence. That doesn’t require “Police”.

I do think there are people who join the police with the intent of doing good, helping people, and keeping people from harm. I just think that should be a separate and distinct job from enforcing the law.

PS I love your username. X)