Less Wrong Product & Service Recommendations

lukeprog

I have often benefited from recommendations for Things I Didn't Know I Wanted.

Given that Less Wrong is a community of unusually intelligent, critical, and self-improvement-focused people, I suspect we can generate a pretty helpful thread of product recommendations — perhaps even a monthly thread of product recommendations.

Rules:

Post one product your recommend per comment, so they can be discussed and voted on independently.
Provide a link for purchasing the product.
No books, movies, TV, games, or music. (These should go in other threads, like this one or this one.)

I'll post my own recommendations to the comments section, too.

I have often benefited from recommendations for Things I Didn't Know I Wanted.

Rules:

Post one product your recommend per comment, so they can be discussed and voted on independently.
Provide a link for purchasing the product.
No books, movies, TV, games, or music. (These should go in other threads, like this one or this one.)

I'll post my own recommendations to the comments section, too.

If you live in a city: Zipcar (Disclosure: Promotional link - if you sign up through this, we both get a $25 credit)

Saves a lot of money and stress. I don't worry about registration or car insurance or gas prices or parking. When I need a car, I pay a pre-determined rate, and then stop worrying about it. Warm fuzzy bonus: Positive externalities in (less land allocated to parking)+(less traffic)+(fewer CO2 emissions).

I've been bike-only for 10 years, with the option to borrow a car from family a 20 minute bike ride away. I signed up for zipcar a year ago after I really wanted a car for something and the family spare wasn't available.

In the year since then, I've looked into using the zipcar for things probably 5-10 times, and rejected it every time. I'm faced with a choice like: do I walk 10 minutes to the car, then borrow it for an hour for $10, then walk 10 minutes back, or just do the errand on a bike? Or, do I borrow the zipcar for a few hours (where the walking time doesn't matter as much), but it's $30? Nah, I'll do things some other way.

5Alicorn14y

I find it adorable that locations in which Zipcars are stored are labeled with the phrase "Zipcars live here".