Hit 15 brisket cooks before I finally got a decent bark, and it was on a $200 offset smoker

Fell for a $50 'miracle' face cream from an Instagram ad

I bought this fancy night cream that claimed to erase wrinkles in 7 days from a brand I saw all over my feed. After a week my face broke out in tiny red bumps and I looked worse than before. Has anyone else gotten burned by a viral skincare brand on social media?

I tried watching a 90s show my coworker raved about and it felt slower than I expected

Last weekend I finally sat down to watch that show my guy Mark has been pushing for months. It's a crime drama from the mid 90s that everyone says is a classic. But I got through three episodes and I kept checking my phone. The pacing was just really slow compared to what I'm used to now. Each scene would drag on for minutes without much happening. I figured maybe I'm just spoiled by modern shows that cut to the point faster. Has anyone else gone back to an old favorite and found it hard to get through?

That one person at the bookstore who changed how I read

I was at Powell's Books in Portland last month, browsing the mystery section. A woman maybe 70 years old picked up the same book I was looking at and said, 'Don't bother with that one, the author cheats on page 47.' She explained how the detective figures something out based on info the reader never got. I started flipping through books looking for that kind of thing after that. Has anyone else had a stranger ruin or improve a book for them with just one line?

Old office building rewire showed me how much LED dimmers have changed in 10 years

I did a full rewire on a 1970s office building downtown last spring, and the before and after on the lighting was crazy. The old dimmers would flicker bad with even a half dozen LEDs, even the ones labeled as compatible. After swapping in some of the newer digital dimmers from Leviton (about $22 each at the supply house), everything smoothed out instantly on a 30-pack of bulbs. Has anyone else noticed how much better the newer dimmers handle mixed loads than that stuff we were putting in a decade ago?

Blew $150 on a fancy router bit set that chattered like crazy

Bought a 10 piece set off some website for the price of two good bits and every single one left burn marks on my oak. Has anyone else had luck with cheap router bits or am I just throwing money away?

That cheap vacuum bleeder almost cost me a brake job on a 2017 F-150

I picked up one of those cheap handheld vacuum bleeders from the parts store for $25. Figured it would save time doing a brake flush on my buddy's truck. Got all the way to the rear passenger side and the thing started sucking air from the handle seal. Ended up with a spongy pedal and had to rebleed the whole system by hand. Took me an extra hour and a half of pumping and holding. The cheap tool actually introduced air into the lines instead of pulling it out. Has anyone else had a vacuum bleeder fail mid job like that or am I the only one who fell for the low price?

That time Hailey Bieber tried to promote her skincare and accidentally used a year old filter

I was scrolling through my feed last night and saw Hailey Bieber post this video about her new Rhode lip stuff. She's talking all excited about how smooth and plump it makes your lips. But the whole time her face is doing this weird warped thing around the edges. It took me a solid 10 minutes to realize she was running some ancient smoothing filter that made her nose look like a completely different shape. The comments were roasting her so bad about it. I counted like 2,000 replies in the first hour all pointing out the filter fail. Has anyone else noticed celebs getting caught with these old beauty filters that just totally backfire now?

Hot take: Venmo isn't actually free and the math proves it

I was looking at my transactions from last year and found I lost about $180 in Venmo fees alone. Not the instant transfer fees, just the ones they sneak in when you pay with a credit card or when someone sends you money. I read the fine print on their site and it says 1.9% plus 10 cents for credit card payments. Most people I know just tap their card and don't realize that adds up fast. Am I the only one who thinks they hide these costs too well?

Found out my flight search app was showing me higher prices because of cookies

I was booking a trip to Chicago last Thursday and noticed my buddy's phone had the same flight for $60 less than what I was seeing. Has anyone else tested this by deleting their cookies before searching?