4mo ago

Whats an absurd luxury you enjoy every day in your life?

I have a lap cat so I get lots of cat-in-lap time 🐱

185 comments

I get to work from home every day, and so does my wife.
We each have our office space so we can work in peace but at any point in the day we can just have a chat, we can have lunch together, we can have our evening planned and be out of the door at 5pm
It's just all so much better than the old office-based life
- Nothing about that is absurd
  
  It would be if you had this exact same scenario 5 years ago. It’s absurd if you remember what it was like before, and it highlights how absurd return to office mandates are.
- You could even, oh my god, have a hug or touch her nose.
  
  Boop!
  
  see some of that ankle

2 gbps symmetrical fiber optic internet
- What do I need to do to make this happen in my neighborhood? I want to push municipal optical internet at the city level so bad.
  I have cable internet and it’s actually fantastic for typical consumer-based ISPs but I’m tired of the horrible upload speeds.
  
  Millions of dollars. Sadly that is what you need.
- Nice, we get 8gig here :p
  
  nice!
- I have the option for 2 gbps but it costs more than the 1gbps connection I have at the moment. Do you get any use out of the higher speeds? Did you have to upgrade your local network gear to take advantage?
  
  sfp+ modules are pretry cheap, just running om3 patch cords everywhere.
  Things download faster, so steam games, off-site backups go faster.

Clean tap water.
- People have no idea how fortunate this is until it's gone. Several years ago we had a bad algae bloom in the river that supplies our water and we couldn't drink it for a couple weeks. Every store in town was out of water and you had people with well water leaving hoses and signs out front of their house offering it up to people. One Pilot gas station tried scalping 6 packs of Dasani for ~$50. It's so crazy how you take it for granted until you can't just go to the sink to fill up a cup of water (we have excellent tap water) along with taking for granted the fact that stores have bottled water on the shelves.
  Ever since then we've kept a small stock pile of water in the garage just in case.
  
  Thanks, i sould appreciate it more. Tap water in switzerland is maybe even healthier as bottled water.

Air conditioning, indoor and safe plumbing/water supply, Internet to name a few
- Growing up in the Midwest of America I took AC for granted. Pretty much every home and shop had AC, and if it didn't there were at least window units. Moving to the Pacific Northwest with a more mild climate almost no one had AC, and it's just normal not to have it.
  Until the heatwave a few years ago that melted power lines I didn't care, but I realized it was a safety issue and had a heat pump installed. That's when I realized it's a luxury. Almost $10,000 to get it integrated with my existing HVAC.
  It's wild, it's definitely a luxury that most people just assume is normal. You have to go somewhere that doesn't have it to truly appreciate what it does and how much it costs.
  
  Native midwesterner living in SoCal, and these shithole window A/C units have me at my wit’s end. This is the technology state?
  Also, natives here have no concept of closing doors after themselves when entering a place with heat or A/C. I get it that we grew up with this but is it hard to figure out later on in life or something?
- Those are all absurd luxuries? Not luxuries but absurd luxuries?
  
  Well, that depends. If you're talking amongst my own country (the US)? No, probably not. If you're talking compared globally? I'd argue yes.

I have a genetic predisposition to be a night owl. I proved it with a DNA test, comparing my results with actual scientific research on various genetic-related conditions. Plus, my mother's side of the family always stays up super late every night.
Unfortunately, I signed up for the US military when I was 17 and they require you to get an early start every day. So I spent 20 years going to bed when I'm not tired and getting up at godawful early hours of the morning. I would basically get a lack of sleep for a few days until I was so tired, I'd pass out early and get a solid night's sleep, then start the cycle over again. My days off were the only days I got to sleep in.
Now I'm fully retired and have nothing important going on each day, so I can finally let my body adjust to its preferred sleep schedule. I'm wide awake until 2-4 AM (sometimes later), then I sleep until 10 AM to 1 PM. It's so nice not having to set an alarm anymore and naturally wake each day. I've never felt so rested!
- Son you're fully retired at 37? Good for you mate! Enjoy!
  
  Lol!
  Or they just got a better or non-military job that didn't require strict bed- and wakeup-times, but still didn't let them sleep in.

I get to handle over $1 million in musical instruments every day for my job.
(I’m a church organist and pipe organs are insanely expensive)

I can afford to buy groceries from the expensive supermarket!
- Hint: they’re all expensive 😉
  
  Expensiver
  
  Ron Howard

Having my washing machine and dryer inside my home. After having lived in an appartment with a shared laundry room for 10 years, that chore isn't as tedious.

Coffee
- Love muh tea muhself
- I usually try a new single origin every month, and this is the first time I'm reordering one because it is so good. Some stuff is pretty unique and I never see it again, so I can't miss out on more of this.
  It's like pineapple and brown sugar and is so sweet and refreshing, especially at room temp or fridge temp. When it's hot outside, it's a bit tougher to find a coffee I get excited about and this stuff rocks.
  Vietnam Dung K'No
  
  FWIW cold brew coffee is extremely easy to make, gives a different flavor profile than brewing with the same beans hot, and I find it super refreshing in hot weather. My only complaint is the extraction is inefficient so you go through a lot more beans for the same amount of beverage, which irks me. But then again, sounds like you've got the situation sorted, that tea sounds great.
  
  Nice. I quit smoking weed and reduced my alcohol intake to near zero a few years ago. To make up for all of the lost ritual, I dove deep into coffee brewing. It’s the only part of my day that I have complete control over and I love that.
  I will try those beans! Thanks for the tip.

No human had a hot shower before a hundred years ago and now I have at least one a day
- 214 years ago, since I'm an insufferable pedant.

Work from home and live near a very nice park. When I am stressed or bored, I just put a fake meeting on my calendar or set my Teams status to busy and go for a walk to clear my head.
- Living next to a park is great. I do the same, except I've got my phone with me connected to teams. I can get back home on my computer in under 2 minutes if I need to.

I live in a tropical humid place that regularly gets 40+Celsius temps even during "winter" (it is currently "winter")
But I can afford air conditioning. A lot of people in my country cannot, and have just an electric fan and a lot of water to get them through the days.
- I can afford air conditioning
  "No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater; than central air." -- Azrael, "Dogma" by Kevin Smith.
  We live in a more temperate place, but with the summers going increasingly more smoky and hotter - dry 49.6c temps caused our town of Lytton to burn to the ground - we took advantage of new, aggressive building code that stipulates one room must not get above 26c, and the cooling it mandates, to move to a new qualifying building.
  The A/C units - even these lesser VRFs - are fantastic. Truly it changes the mood when I can work morning and night (WFHx2) without me or the nerd gear being too warm. It's worth this $4/sqft/mo price tag when the rent rebased.
  I'm SO with you on this one.
  
  Not even central A/C here. Just Split units on the bedrooms/home office -- But it already makes life so much more bearable
- Even in humid areas, evaporative coolers can work and significantly cool things off. I imagine a combination of those (which tend to be much less expensive than AC and don't require any installation), a decent fan, a home painted white and a decent amount of shade trees would work quite well.
  Of course, a lot of those things are luxuries as well.
  
  True on all accounts.
  Also fun aside -- Evaporative coolers are sold under the name of "refrigerating fans" here, a sort of "alternative" for someone who can't afford an AC (or can afford the machine but wants/needs to save on the power bill).

My ABCC11 gene is in it's recessive AA form.
Which is more common in Asians, but I am European. This means my earwax is almost white and completely dry, which makes it just crumble/flake out. But more importantly, my sweat is almost odourless. I am a bigger dude and sweat a lot as it is. When I used to take a certain medication that made me sweat insane amounts I would literally be wet above the belt when I walked a minute. No stank. I check regularly and have my partner check my smell but I legit have to shower more often because my hair is greasy than because of body odour. When I had super short hair the thing that made me want to shower is when my skin gets oily, which happens after about five days. I still shower every other day because hygiene, but it's a really nice perk.
Don't be too jealous though, nature balanced that out with heaps of mental health issues.
- Fun, I never heard about these before ! here's all my good vibes for your mental health
  
  Thanks, it's well under control now, but I had some shit years, not gonna lie.
- My mom had this and also no leg hair. She told me "I shaved it once and that worked, it never came back". Not Asian as far as I know but part Native American or Mexican, she never found out because her dad was so estranged from his family.

WFH.

Day AND night moisturizer for my face and eyes feels pretty absurd and with inflation over the last four years is entering what I consider to be luxury territory for my budget.
But, I love taking care of my skin and looking nice, and my face feels amazing after applying the moisturizer, so whatever.
- What moisturizer(s) do you use? Just curious!
  
  My day regimen is:
  Neutrogena Mens 3-in-1 Face Lotion and RoC eye cream
  Night regimen is:
  IFUDOIT Retinol Cream and Era Organics Eye Cream
  And I keep a bottle of Ceravie with 30 SPF on my desk to use when I take the dogs out for walks. It works really well if you're consistent. I am in my 40's but get mistaken for early 30's all the time.

I have a smartwatch, which I got for my birthday. I have no real need for such a thing, but I really do enjoy it. I spend most of my time at home, and it's nice to not have to do stuff like go find my phone and take it outside with me if I want to sit on the deck in case I get an important text or call or miss an alarm.
Also, because other people are mentioning audio and music- my dad was born in 1931 and died in 2016. He absolutely loved classical music and was a real expert on it, especially the Russian composers. He pointed out that in his lifetime, if he wanted to listen to recorded classical music, he had to go from multiple 78 records, about 3 minutes per side, which you had to just keep flipping over and switching to the next one if you wanted to listen to something long (this is where the word 'album' came from, it was originally a literal album full of 78s) to a smartphone or mp3 player that could hold virtually every CD in his massive collection.
That was definitely a luxury, but a luxury that gave him a whole lot of comfort in his old age.
Edit: I just hung up on a telemarketer from my wrist. God, that was satisfying.
- I just hung up on a telemarketer from my wrist. God, that was satisfying.
  Like slamming down the receiver of an old land line, I imagine you did this by slamming your fist through drywall.
  
  Sadly, I am a little weakling.

Reduced work hours and work from home with good salary.

I have 2 lap cats who will fight each other over who gets to sit on my lap.
And I live in a house from which my lap cats and I can take a walk into the woods and onto a beautiful apple orchard on a private path without meeting anyone else. But it's also within 10 minutes bicycling distance to the center of a beautiful historic city, which is an international tourist attraction (Heidelberg).
I pay 500€ rent per month for the house, an acre of land, a 3-storey barn, a shed that fits 10 bicycles and my workshop, and a small log cabin.
- Holy shit will you adopt me? That sounds amazing!
  
  Depends. Are you a cat?

My dog spoons me every night and it's the best sleep.
- Same with my kitty cat, she curls up tight against my chest, in my arms 💕 she is snuggled there at this exact moment, even, since I'm putzing around on lemmy instead of getting out of bed just yet
  
  Between the legs making a makeshift bed for them is awesome too

A King Charles spaniel.

A bidet seemed like a luxury until i started using the one that was installed in the house that we rent.
Now it seems more like a requirement

Clean water, a place to live, a doctor, able to vote in a free election, driving a car,

When washing my hands, I use an electric soap dispenser.
- Washing my hands, I use a $1 bottle of dollar store soap, feels pretty luxurious (I'm a broke university student and my codormatory had no soap before I bought it don't judge).
  
  I'm gonna judge you so hard for doing something positive for your living space.
  🥇
- I once bought an electric hand dryer for the "office" bathroom in my house.

About once every 3-4 months I take a 4hr hot bath with, phone in a waterproof sandwich-bag, bluetooth speakers, tunes, Epsom salts, and reading material.
It's excellent self-care. (No, the water doesn't go cold, I let out half the water and top it up with more hot, when needed).
Highly recommended.
- Am an American in my mid 30s. Recently bought my first and almost certainly only house. There is so much stuff about homeownership that feels like a luxury vs renting.
  I'm a somewhat tall guy and my house's only bathtub is too small to do this. God knows when if ever I'll have the money to renovate that.
  
  Get a hot tub. My partner and I are both tall and both love to relax in hot water. Now we get to submerge our tense monkey bodies in our personal hot spring and just float any damn day we want to, for as long as we want to. It's great for our relationship. Plus, foot jets! We spent $7k on ours- a true luxury- but it was one of the best health / self care purchases I've ever made in my entire life.
- Isn't this how we all watch movies nowadays?
  
  From a person with no bathtub, I wish.

I work 24 hour shifts but also get paid to sleep. This results in 6-7shifts a month to cover a full time job. It allows for a lot of free time and also easilly able to add extra shifts if needed during tough times
- I would so do this

High quality recorded audio everywhere I go
- Plus too much music to listen to in a lifetime
  
  Too much music, too many books, too many TV shows, too many movies... a blessing and a curse. There are so many things people talk about that I just never got around to seeing because there's way too many other things that piqued my interest more. I've never seen an episode of Downton Abbey or The Wire. I've never seen any of the John Wick movies. I've never even seen any of the Godfather movies. And yes, you are welcome to tell me any of those things are amazing and I've absolutely got to watch them. Thanks. I'll put them on my super-long list.
- This very much. And also awesome apps to mix and enhance it
  I still don't understand what sorcery allows recording something and having it ossified into text in the way that music works now 😵‍💫

bidet with warm water hookup. the toilet seat kind, I don’t have the space for a whole extra thing
- how the warm work? does it have heating built in? or does it blend some mix from hot and cold water pipes? do you have to run it for a half minute to get the temperature right?
  
  heating built in. They make the kind that have mixing but as you said the hot water is contingent on your homes supply. In my house that’s like 90-120 seconds and that is a lot of time and wasted water for bidet usage. Plus I have a vanity instead of a pedestal sink so running the hot water line would’ve meant I had to cut a hole in the vanity and get a pretty long line.
  this one was a decent bit more expensive but circumvents those issues. It also adds some features like a heated seated, a blow dryer to dry you when you’re done, and nozzle adjustment to make sure you get the right spot. Downside of this is that it needs electricity but I was much more comfortable running a new gfi outlet to the toilet than I was tapping the hot water line of the sink and cutting the vanity (or running a more permanent hot water line). Outside of the outlet the install is simple, install the mount the same way would any toilet seat, slide the seat into the mount (the seat can pop out of the mount with a button so you can clean it easier, which is nice), turn the water off and drain the lines, install a t adapter, reconnect the lines to tank and seat, turn on water, check for leaks, plug into power, done
  It’s definitely some bougie shit but I don’t care, I love it. I got an open box and saved about $225 (mine is a toto washlet, I paid about $275). I’ve had it for about 5 years and it’s been perfect, reviews suggest they’re bulletproof and I plan to use it basically forever. there are more brands now though that are significantly cheaper with the same exact features though but not as clear as to whether they will last as long. toto is built super solid but I don’t know if it’s worth the price premium over some of the chinese brands that have popped up on ebay and amazon
- I envy you, my toilet is not compatible

I have a lot of kids and I work hard at being a good dad so I get a lot of hugs and occasional unprompted "love you". That is the truest luxury to me.
- Oh man, as a new-ish parent I'm starting to get those sudden out of the blue hugs and cuddles and they're amazing. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that my kid would love me but it's like an instant shot of dopamine every time.
  
  Congratulations. :) You've many more to come (hugs that is lol).
  The best are the random ones when you've had a bad day like we all occasionally do. It all just melts away. Enjoy!

I get to be depressed while having a (shit) apartment, a job, a phone, and a car.
Globally I'm hitting a home run every day. In the US I'm a worthless schmuck who will never own a home or retire.
- Just having an apartment of your own practically makes you live like an Olympian god, luxuriating in the true solitude and personhood not many enjoy
  Actually my fave luxury, but I get how hard it can be to truly enjoy these things when you're being ground down steadily by the econmic treadmill

clean water
- From your kitchen tap?
  
  Yes

When I was a kid, we had a single family home in a major city. Amazing being able to walk or take transit everywhere but also not share walls and to have a back yard. That crappy little house is totally unaffordable to me now.

Ridiculously expensive tea from artisanal tea gardens. Like four bucks and more per portion (which you can brew 6-12 times in that sitting, though). It's addictive and sets your standards so high, I can't drink cheap tea anymore
- Herbal tea or tea tea?
  Doesn't actual tea get unusable basically after the first wash due to tannins?
  
  High quality tea can be brewed multiple times, you'd typically use a higher tea to water ratio than for a single steep though.
  Green, pu erh and especially oolong teas also often change their flavor profile and taste in subsequent steeps, bringing out more nuanced flavors.
  
  Tea tea :)

Fiber. In addition to my cheerios every morning, the kind that gets me reliable gigabit symmetric internet service with lag consistently only a couple ms. You could argue I overpay since I don’t use anywhere near that bandwidth, but it just works. Internet use is so much nicer than neighboring towns with shitty Comcast monopolies
- I got it how couple months ago and am in love. The perfectly consistent low ping and fast as fuck bandwidth is just so nice.
  Though, at first I thought you were talking about dietary fiber and was going to agree there as well cause I'm in the US and the average diet does not include any fiber but my diet has plenty.

Depending on where you live my almost daily trip to the bakery for fresh baguette or croissant could be a luxury I guess?
- Really, smaller shops and more diverse mixed neighbourhoods are great for everyone inside. A luxury like that is just a side effect

A really good mattress is a gift that keeps on giving

Lawn. I have a lawn. Just grass. Takes water and space. Makes a little O2 and that's it.
FWIW, I'm trying to get rid of it. Plans to build a solar array in the back yard, cover the patio with a greenhouse that connects the house to the garage, side yard is going to be raised planters, and the front is going to be mostly wildflowers with some small pathways and nooks for reading and relaxing. I'd like to get it to the point where I can "mow" the whole property with just a string trimmer.
- Yeah, I’m going native yard now with a small hidden garden as well. Lawns aren’t the symbol they used to be.
- A back yard lawn (and a deck in our case) is a luxury for sure. I really like having a big fenced-in area where the dogs can run around and get some good exercise even on days when we can't walk them. We traded a more urban life for things like that, although we're still relatively close to town. We also have a dog door, which, again, an absurd luxury but I really never want to live anywhere without a backyard and a dog door again if I can help it.

Seeing the bathroom related comments.
I have my own personal sauna.
In a cheap rental apartment.
Also a built-in bidet.
These things can be said for practically all Finnish apartments built this millenia. Buildings built before the 90's, on the other hand... Personal saunas were a bit rarer and apartment buildings would just have one large one you could reserve hours on. Sometimes free sometimes for a marginal fee.
But yeah. I think some might consider that a luxury, I guess.

I flew nonstop from Newark to Singapore. That was a crazy flight with fantastic amenities. First time I’ve ever had the “hot towel” treatment
- Thats something you do every day? Wow.
  
  Oh shit, whoops. Gonna go ahead and blame that on posting before coffee. No, just the most luxurious thing I’ve ever done. I have essentially unlimited clean water and sewage at my house, I think that’s pretty easy to take for granted

Two eggs every morning
- Holy crap, slow down there Caligula!

Got an Inada massage chair (~$6k) on FB marketplace for $50. Used massage chairs are easy to get ahold of for cheap, if you have the space

I live next to a large open field in the middle of my city. I'd guess its about 15 acres. It's beautifully undeveloped with a few paths through it. Lots of people use it to walk their dogs and stuff.
Why is it empty?
The land is contaminated. It used to be a rail yard about 50 years ago. A company in a major city hundreds of kilometers away owns it and as far as we know has no intention on scraping the top few feet off it so it can be rehabilitated.
Sucks to know that the land is poison but nobody's growing stuff there. Many people enjoy it, including me and my wife. The view off my back deck is about 750m of green right smack in the middle of the city. Love it.
- I'd love to go see that on google earth or something but would understand if you'd rather not divulge your location

Having my own home - I mean I have to pay off the loan for it but still, I never thought I would be able to call a house my own.

My absurd luxury is probably my PC. I had a pretty decent one but saved for 1yr and built a $2,600 one. It was unnecessary in almost every sense of the word.
- Same, been the only thing I will throw money into since I use it all day. I got 2k saved up for a new GPU as my 1080 is starting to show its age. Waiting on the 5000 series and I move the old card to the old PC and use to as an Ai server or something cool.
  
  Truuueeeee, I have my old PC waiting on me for some project still. I just gotta figure out what maybe as an intro to Linux main? It has a 1080 as well so it should definitely be a capable machine!

I have a Xbox series x

After everything I've been through, existence.

I have this comforter I bought at a consignment sale for 15 dollars years ago. Every day I revel in how much I like it.

I eat as many lobsters and crabs as I want, and it's a lot.

Unfortunately I’m not young enough to pull this off anymore, but back in my early 20’s I would engage in some light identity theft for the purposes of free luxury golfing. I have two rich uncles who are both avid golfers and both members of a ridiculously expensive country club in the city where we live. They also both have sons, and the club benefits extend to all minor children. So, I’d pretend to be my 17yo cousin and with my other cousin (who was only lying about his age, not who he was), we’d regularly hit the links. For non-members, the typical price for a round of golf was like $200

Wake up at 11:30am - 12:00 every day.
- I HATE when I sleep in that late, ugh.

Gaming PC, PS5, VR headset...
Shit now I feel bad cuz I'm imagining some starving kid covered in flies just watching my fat ass play games in awe and anger.

I eat a grass fed steak every day
- Hows your cholesterol, weight etc?
  
  No idea, don’t own a scale. The aspects of my health I can detect are better when I do this.

185 comments