Air conditioning. Near the coast in Texas it’s more or less a lifesaver.
Clean and well-tasting tap water. It sucks when I’m going to another country and they have chlorinated tap water
Where in the world?
We have clean water in Austria, directly from the mountains without adding anything (just cleaning it with UV light to kill potential bacteria in most regions, nothing else. Not even that in some regions).
Some of the best and cleanest water worldwide, so whenever I go to another country I’m disappointed by their water quality.
Swede here who frequents Austria. I agree, and I love drinking the water while hiking in Austria.
If you visit Sweden, our water is mostly as good as the one in Austria. Some exceptions are Gotland because of high chalk (so? “Kalk”) levels.
How’s the water in the Netherlands, out of curiosity? If you’ve been there, that is. Or Belgium, maybe.
PC world.
I haven’t thought about that jingle in years (decades?) but it came back instantly. And now it won’t leave.
Oh fun, here’s another:
There’s a magical place, we’re on our way there
With toys by the million, all under one roof…
- Air conditioning
- Chocolate
- Coffee
All 3 are things that are reasonably likely to have troublesome accessibility in my lifetime.
oh
a/c
yep that’s the one
I think AC will be the most reliable if home solar takes off. The other two though…
It’s still prohibitively expensive to buy AC units in the first place though. Vast majority of homes do not have AC pre-installed.
I can hear to say coffee, but AC is at the top. I live in a tropical country.
Chocolate is nice, and I love it but I could drop it.
Hot showers and a bidet.
We just finished a big holiday trip, 2 weeks visiting both sides of the family. Stayed with one family and then the other. After that…yeah…seriously considering getting everyone bidets next year for Christmas…
Travel bidet
We recently got a bidet ourselves. There are portable ones. Basically a water bottle with a pump and sprayer on it.
Yeah, but there’s something a lot more gross about spraying yourself with a bottle than just turning a knob and letting the plumbing do it.
Maybe it is because I have a hand held sprayer that it does not bother me. But either way it is still better than stuffing your hand in there with a wad of paper.
Electricity.
If you lose electricity most people lose access to:
Hot water
Running water (if you have a well)
Air conditioning
Indoor heat
Television
Internet
Indoor lighting
And hot meals if you don’t have gas.Losing electricity would cut you off from almost all of your luxuries as we’ve become completely dependent on it over the last century or so.
it sounds like a necessity
It’s a utility and so I agree it’s a necessity. A luxury would be some of the things electricity allows like Internet.
The Internet access should be classified as a utility but good luck getting ISPs to stop lobbying against that
Not necessarily, you could absolutely survive without electricity, I live in a predominantly Amish area that proves that.
It just wouldn’t be any fun.Hah, that’s fair
Yeah but no electricians no more electrocution… Think of the positives lol
Toilet paper.
(I’d argue that’s more a necessity but) Bidet plus a a toilet rag covered in the stains from your previous toilet rag adventures?
Spices. Very much spices. If I was limited to like 5 good ones I’d make do but I have a drawer with like 50 spices in it I use regularly and it’s my happy place.
Music, without a doubt. Specifically, being able to choose particular songs to listen to. I’d get pretty miserable after a few days.
Find a radio station you enjoy and experience new to you music
No such thing anymore. 50% commercials, 50% whatever music the overlords want us to consume.
Yeah I think I would never have gotten into prog rock if I was limited to the radio. That would have sucked.
Caffeine
I’d be broken for a little while but tbh I think I’d be better off in the long run
I would normally say this too, but it’s surprisingly easy to get off caffeine. I’ve gone weeks without it, to usually slip up and start using it out of habit… but I don’t think I would miss it if caffeine suddenly just vanished from this world. I’d just slap my knee and say “huh, remember that weird drug we all used to take in the morning?”
Around 5 hrs to fully metabolise caffeine. Physically you would be fine in a day.
The habit, however would take longer to get over. That depends on your psychology, I know I can’t just replace my morning coffee with tea, because it doesn’t feel right.
I usually have my last coffee at around 2pm, so by the time I get up in the morning, there is no caffeine in my system. The feeling of drinking coffee and tea is different for me, it’s not just about the taste.
Literally, depending on where you draw a line between luxury and important but not mandatory for most people, it’s air conditioning. We have three people in this household that do very poorly once heat and humidity starts to climb, including myself. Plus, uncontrolled humidity in the south ruins things, so there’s an increase in costs associated with whatever decrease in power usage would save. For us, AC is right on the edge of being a necessity, as in a medical thing.
But in a more literal luxury that serves only pleasure or want, chocolate. No nutritional necessity, and it isn’t like we all can’t do without it. But gods damn, it would hurt. A nice piece of good quality dark chocolate is the ultimate mini reward for me. Do something incredibly painful and time consuming, that bit of chocolate is enough to turn it from something that I’m weeping in pain trying to finish into something I’m able to get through before I break down. That’s a luxury, but fuck me if it isn’t something I lean on heavily as a crutch. I really don’t know what I would use to coax myself through really bad days where I’m barely functional but still have to function.
Man, I hear you. In tropical Mexico, whatever semi-dry goods we didn’t use up by the end of spring will be ruined and moldy within three days of summer starting. Most seeds won’t even germinate in like two months.
Soap and clean water
A/C
Indoor plumbing and summer time AC
healthcare
Sharpening stones and files. I can’t imagine using dull knives. I can’t stand knives duller than hair popping sharp. I have excellent knives that hold a crisp edge and I sharpen those every 30 minutes of super fast chopping (10 seconds on a 9k stone).
Not just knives but scissors, trowels, shovels, cooking spatulas, dust pans, vegetable peelers, can openers, toenail clippers, all need to be sharp. Not being able to sharpen all of those would be a tragedy.
If you are delaying getting into sharpening, just do it. It will serve you for the rest of your life, and I sharpen every single day (I’m a woodworker). Its truly a luxury to have sharp tools, all the time. So satisfying.
Aside from that, chocolate. The cravings will never go away.
Air conditioning, but I would argue that is a very expensive necessity.
Dull knifes are even more dangerous to use because they tend to slip in unexpected directions.
Do you have some suggestions for a novice sharpener on how to get started?
I use the Spyderco Sharpmaker on all of my stainless steel blades
I sharpen my knives about quarterly but I’m not cutting wood with them.
