I always dreamed of having a fast food pop machine in my house as a kid. It took me about a year of owning a SodaStream as an adult to realize that I do own a slower and smaller scale pop machine and I can make as much pop as I want.

I bought a used rusty school bus. Six years later, at least I know how to weld now. Sort of. I also learned how to survive hitting my head on a large steel C-clamp nine times without suffering any brain damage. Additionally, I learned how to survive hitting my head on a large steel C-clamp nine times without suffering any brain damage.

Does a Hello Kitty bandsaw count?

A blank 10cm by 10cm square piece of aluminium. About 2 cm thick

I think I wanted to know how it felt. Like, the vibe of aluminium

I bought an old pachislo machine from a garage sale because ... I'm not real sure, but I have one of those now.

I bought a pallet of computers at an auction at a local college for $250 a year or two ago. HP Elitedesk GenIIs specifically (4th Gen i5, 8GB of RAM, 256gb SSDs, and space for add in cards and more drives if needed) I did not expect my throwaway bid to win but it did. So now I have a bunch of computers. I have some projects in mind, but honestly I've mostly been tossing them to friends and family when they need a computer for something. Eventually they'll all be allocated, sold and given away but it's certainly taking a bit

Despite the site screaming left and right that one should not count on a proper keyboard's worth of keycaps at all, much LESS a matching set, and despite years of forum and reddit posts declaring their underwhelming nature, I still bought a 5-pound (2.27kg) sack of random keycaps from Signature Plastics in Washington state.

I just have to know, and I'm kind of unironically looking forward to sorting them like so many Lego bricks. I may even get a few that are useful for my projects.

Wayyyyyyy too much tea

Espresso machine A nice double boiler one

A convertible that I had have tuned to the max and foiled and re-seated to my liking in my favorite colors. It looked awesome in my head.

Then my pimp-mobile came. And I always was the center of attention. Which I, a very private person, highly disliked but gloriously failed to predict.

Also it was horrible to drive for >30mins because you basically had your nuts on the ground and felt every Lil pebble on the road.

Few months later I sold the car and bought one which basically made me invisible. One that only >70yrs olds drive here 😁

My pregnant wife asked me to get her a fountain Coke Zero from Costco the other day.. I paid for the thing and waited patiently for my empty cup. When I approached the dispenser, I found that all three Coke Zeros were out of order. I had no choice but to fill it with Diet Coke. It was the lowest Costco experience of our lives.

This subject is dear to my heart, because I realized that part of my conservative upbringing taught me money is the important thing and that emotions are worthless and dumb. If you spend money on something that makes you happy but does not provide commensurate utility or return on investment, it is by definition a dumb purchase. Treating yourself is a waste of resources and therefore makes you a bad person. Maybe unless you are debt free and fully funding every retirement and college account you got. (note the unspoken implication that it's cool for the rich to do whatever they want)

As I have spent decades reverse engineering the instructions for my brain, I have recently concluded that not only do I thrive when building and creating things, but having the perfect high-quality tool that is great at what it does right down to the sensory feedback can really enhance the experience for me.

I've spent a bunch of money expanding and upgrading my collection this year, and I haven't regretted it once. But I've spent even more on the materials just in the months since!

I keep buying more synthesizers while I already have more than enough. I buy more than I play with them.

I am currently surrounded by empty cardboard boxes from all the jars I bought because I wanted to make a bunch of preserves because I have a supply of free apples. Slow cooker is currently on warming up 5L of pureed apples that I will make into chutney.

If this was a dumb purchase or not depends on who you ask.

My dumb shit is all homemade.

Ungodly ammounts of ultra high power flashlights with open source, customizable UI

$19K in watches. Now I have a kid, and I am straight salary. In hindsight, I would be perfectly happy with the least expensive one. I'm a mechanical engineer, and they really interest me. But they were not smart purchases.

I bought an old boat in Amsterdam (3000€), did some reparations (500€), replaced the engine (1500€), paid the local tax (600€ x 3years). I had fun with it. No regrets. Then I was moving back to my country, I couldn't find a buyer... so I lowered the price to 1500€.

You were great, old boat. But not a great investment.

Not enough room here to show all my impulse purchases.

Another synthesizer that I don't even have a stand for.

Self-balancing electric vehicle gang! I have a VESC onewheel build and it’s the best waste of money ever.

I bought healthy food that rotted away, and took a significan't amount of my income. I now only eat slop again.

Most of it I just didn't know how to prepare proper, was stored badly in the shop itself, and I could not find all the ingredients for. It was expensive as fuck too.

The Tofu tasted like fish, and made me feel nauseous.

So, don't try to min-max your diet if you live in a shithole I guess.

At least the slop is cheap, and caloric. And I still have peanut butter left over.

A switch 2. No regrets on that fat PP tho love that thing.