Best things to buy (and skip) on Amazon: a nerdy list

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By Tommy Tindall | NerdWallet

It’s hard to believe Amazon.com started back in July 1995 as an online retailer that sold books only. Almost 30 years later, it’s likely the first place you look when you get the idea to buy anything.

Retailers like Walmart, Best Buy and Target can be quite competitive with Amazon. Still, with the number of Amazon Prime members in the U.S. at 180 million, according to an estimate by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners in March, dependence on Amazon runs deep. If you shop there, lead with needs over wants to save money where it counts. Here’s a short list of the best things to buy (and a couple to skip) on Amazon.

Buy: Personal care items you can put on autopilot

Product purchases new parents can knock out at Amazon include baby wipes and diapers. Items like these are competitively priced on Amazon, especially when using “Subscribe & Save,” said Kallie Branciforte, a blogger and YouTuber in Connecticut, in an email.

“I am always surprised by how many people don’t take advantage of ‘Subscribe & Save,’” she said. “It’s the easiest way to save on the stuff you use all the time.”

When you subscribe to a product, you can set a schedule that aligns with when you’ll run out. Branciforte, who reaches millions of viewers with her “That Practical Mom” YouTube channel, lets Amazon replenish vitamins, diaper cream, her kids’ body wash and more to make life easier, and often cheaper.

Try subscribing to unique essentials, like nasal strips that let you breathe freely at night, or electric toothbrush heads to make healthy living habitual. Buying items like these on Amazon is more about selection and convenience than price.

As an incentive, Amazon offers up to 15% off when you receive five or more eligible products in one automatic delivery to the same address. “It’s such a simple way to save on things you’re already buying, completely on autopilot,” said Branciforte.

Buy: Pet food and litter

Putting pet food on auto-order is another convenience play for Prime members. Nobody likes scanning 25 tiny cans of Fancy Feast at the grocery store self-checkout lane. You can save the hassle and try to beat the per-can price by ordering the 30-pack on Amazon.

You can save your back by getting big bags of dog food or a 38-pound box of cat litter delivered.

Skip: Clothes you want to fit well and feel comfortable

Clothing can be hard to get right on Amazon, says Trae Bodge, the shopping expert at truetrae.com.

Bodge bought a dress on Amazon last year and loves the look, but says it’s scratchy inside. She prefers a store like Target for affordable pieces she can feel first.

When it comes to jeans and sneakers, you might be able to do better by buying from the source. Joining the Levi’s rewards program, for example, gets you free shipping and returns on Levi.com. “What you’ll find is that the style selection is broader, the size selection is broader,” says Bodge.

Nike is another brand that incentivizes customers to shop on its site. Members get free shipping on orders $50 or more, and shoes and apparel at Nike.com regularly go on sale.

Buy: Batteries, cables and phone cases

Back to the essentials, the Amazon Basics brand of batteries is an exceptional deal. At $12.52 for an 8-pack of 9-volt batteries (at the time of writing), you can add it and a pack of AA and AAAs to your cart the next time you checkout. Compare that with the 8-pack of Duracell 9-volt batteries we spotted at the Home Depot for $29.05.

Make Amazon your first stop after you buy a new or used iPhone or Android too. Apple’s $49 silicone case is highway robbery when you compare it with cases on Amazon that look, feel and protect the same for under $15. Amazon is also the place for power adapters, cables and wireless charging pads at prices that are cheaper than at Apple.

Buy: Amazon bestsellers

A helpful hack Branciforte shares in one of her YouTube videos is to use Amazon’s “Best Sellers” lists to narrow down searches.

It’s a little out of the way, but you get there by navigating to the top left of the desktop site and clicking the three bars to open the menu. Select “Best Sellers,” and from there, you can dive down by department to find popular buys in specific product categories.

Let’s say, for example, you’re looking for a shower head with better water pressure than the one you have. Rather than roll the dice on something from Home Depot or Lowe’s, you can look up bestsellers in the bath section on Amazon. Scroll down to the first or second one, likely the AquaCare HighPressure 8-mode handheld shower head for around $25, then buy it. This paragraph isn’t sponsored, but this Nerdy writer can attest to the power of this particular model.

Skip: Large furniture pieces that can be painful to return

Kind of like clothes, online furniture purchases can be regrettable.

Bodge avoids buying larger items at Amazon that you have to assemble. The perceived burden of sending it back could compel you to keep something you don’t want. And even if you do like it, the cardboard and other packing material that comes with a coffee table can be a royal pain in the trash.

Now that it’s normal to frequent stores again, it can save you time and strife to pick something out and buy it in person. You can also save by buying used. Thrift stores, antique shops and Facebook Marketplace are great places to score cheap furniture pieces from yesteryear that are still in style (and probably better made).

Advice: Read reviews and check price history before buying

Whatever you buy from Amazon, it’s important to read the reviews and it’s better when there are plenty of them, said Branciforte. She tends to be leery of items with few ratings unless the category is very niche.

“I’d rather buy something with 4.3 stars and 1,000+ reviews than 4.8 stars and 15 reviews because I know the first has been on the site longer, making it more trustworthy and valid,” she said.

Given that other retailers are working hard to outprice Amazon, Bodge says it pays to check the price history and look around before buying. Shopping browser extensions like PayPal Honey and the Camelizer make light work of making sure you aren’t overpaying. And it’s easy to do a quick Google search for any product.

With Prime Day in July, better deals could be on the horizon. “I think it can be worthwhile to wait,” said Branciforte.

You can still shop, though. Just put it in your cart and select “save for later.”

Tommy Tindall writes for NerdWallet. Email: ttindall@nerdwallet.com.

Carl P. Leubsdorf: Nixon understood what Trump won’t acknowledge

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A half-century ago this August, a career congressman named Gerald Ford took the presidential oath in the White House East Room, proclaiming, “Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our republic is a government of laws, not of men.”

Ford was able to preside over an unexpectedly smooth transfer of power, marking the end of the two-year Watergate scandal, in large part because his disgraced predecessor, Richard Nixon, respected the institutions of government that produced his downfall and tearfully accepted their verdict.

But the transition was far more fraught with peril when Joe Biden, another career lawmaker, took his presidential oath in 2021 amid an even greater test of the nation’s constitutional underpinnings and, in language akin to Ford’s, declared, “America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge.”

In fact, that challenge to American democracy remains ongoing because Donald Trump, unlike Nixon, has refused to this day to respect the constitutional procedures – a free and open election — that ended his presidency.

Instead, he has spent more than three years inaccurately and dishonestly persuading millions of supporters and intimidating timid GOP leaders to believe Biden’s victory was somehow tainted. Even more unfortunately, he is seeking a return to power – and may get it – on a platform of vengeance against all who counted him out or launched the proceedings that led to 88 state and federal felony indictments against him.

Those two contrasting examples came to mind when Trump, not for the first time, made clear how much he disrespects our nation’s legal processes in condemning the 34 felony convictions in his New York hush money trial, the district attorney who brought the charges and the judge who presided over the proceedings.

“These are bad people,” the former president said in what was billed as a press conference but turned into a typical Trump rant. Judge Juan Merchan, he said, “looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil.”

He concluded, again inaccurately, “This is all done by Biden and his people,” falsely blaming the president and Justice Department for a prosecution that, in fact, was brought by the elected district attorney of New York County.

And using words that were far truer than he might have realized, Trump said, “This is a case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.” He had it backward. As Biden put it later that day in his first comments on the verdict: “The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.”

In recent years, many people have asked me, as a journalist who covered the Senate during the Watergate era, to compare the two presidents whose flouting of the proprietaries and the laws caught up with them, Nixon via the impeachment process and Trump through the criminal process.

Their cases are, of course, not precisely parallel. The institutions of government rendered a final judgment on Nixon, which made it impossible for him to remain as president. The nation’s voters rendered one judgment on Trump’s presidency and one of its judicial institutions another, both of which he might still be able to politically and legally reverse.

But it is hard to imagine Trump ever saying anything like the words Nixon used nearly 50 years ago when he bowed to the inevitable and resigned, noting he no longer had the votes to prevent impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate.

In his official farewell speech to the nation, he said he was acting to hasten “the start of that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America,” declaring that “if some of my judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation.”

Then, in a second, more personal speech the next morning, a tearful White House farewell to friends, supporters, staffers and family members, he blamed himself. “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” Nixon said.

That is a lesson Trump has not yet fully learned, that much of what he rails against was brought on not by his enemies but by his own ego and his disrespect of the nation’s laws and political proprieties – and that his means of dealing with it may not achieve the result he claims to seek.

Indeed, as the contrast between Trump’s reaction to his conviction and Nixon’s reaction to his forced resignation makes clear, Trump has shown by word and deed that he disrespects the legal and the constitutional process — if he truly understands it. Nixon, even while resisting and fighting it, showed ultimately he respected it.

That is why the Nixon-Ford transition went so smoothly and the Trump-Biden one didn’t. And it is why the forthcoming election could result in an even greater threat to our democratic processes should Trump again be defeated and, as he has already suggested, again challenge the result.

Ironically, the fact that he seems likely to spend the next five months railing against his conviction, the courts, the Biden presidency and the unfairness of it is all — instead of offering a positive vision for the years ahead — may ultimately prove decisive in determining that result.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. His email address is carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com

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Northern Minnesota: Soudan Mine tours reopen after 4 years of work, waiting

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SOUDAN, Minn. — The Soudan Mine reopened last month for public tours on a regular schedule for the first time since the state park attraction closed at the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

After closing for COVID, and then reopening on a limited schedule given ongoing transmission concerns, the facility closed again in October 2021 for a $9.3 million reconstruction project that included rebuilding 500 feet of the steel skeletal structure lining the mine shaft.

“Some of that steel was 100 years old,” said Jim DeVries, assistant manager of the Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park. “As you can imagine, steel that’s been in a wet environment for 100 years was starting to degrade. So we’re glad to get new steel in there, rebuild that piece so that we’re able to bring tourists down for generations to come.”

Interpreter Reed Petersen describes the geology on the bottom level during a tour of the underground iron mine facilities on Thursday, May 30, 2024 at the Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park near Soudan, Minn. (Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group)

That work was concentrated between levels 19 and 24 of the mine, following similar work done on lower levels after a two-day 2011 fire when wood debris was ignited by sparks from shaft maintenance work. Seventy thousand gallons of fire-suppressing foam took a toll, in addition to damage caused by the fire.

“We did that section from 24 down to 27,” said DeVries, “right after we had the fire in the shaft and we had some emergency funds to repair that steel. We knew at that point that we needed to do the 500 feet up above that.”

New video, exhibits

The shaft lining reconstruction won’t have much perceptible impact on the experience of visitors riding an elevator down to level 27, where tours take place. Upon arriving at the decommissioned ore mine, though, visitors will certainly notice the new eight-minute introductory video, as well as new exhibits that include a three-dimensional model of the entire mine.

“We are so fortunate that we were able to, over the last two years, do a lot of research and development to have for the very first time a professionally created exhibit in this space,” said interpretive supervisor Sarah Guy-Levar, standing in the mine’s dry house. That structure, where miners would change clothes after a shift, now functions as the attraction’s visitor center.

The model depicts the 54 miles of drifts — “what we would call tunnels,” explained Guy-Levar — that were excavated during the mine’s 80 years of operation.

“Not only do they get to have a real experience,” said Guy-Levar about mine visitors, “but they can come back here in the visitor center and fully understand the complexity” of the mine.

Tourism landmark

Since first opening for public tours as a state park in 1965, three years after the 1882 mine ceased operations, Soudan has become a tourism landmark on the Iron Range. In a typical year, said DeVries, about 35,000 people descend 2,341 feet below the surface to visit the most recently excavated section of the mine.

That’s deeper than any other public underground mine tour in the United States, based on a list maintained by the National Mining Association. DeVries believes the state of Minnesota, which paid for the recent reconstruction through a combination of bonding money and state park funds, appreciates the value of its unique attraction.

“There’s a lot of commitment statewide, from the (DNR) commissioner’s office to the governor’s office,” DeVries said while standing near the towering elevator hoist Thursday. “They’re excited that we are opening up again.”

A sign at the entrance to the bottom level of the mine greets visitors during a tour of the underground iron mine facilities Thursday, May 30, 2024 at the Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park near Soudan, Minn. (Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group)

Aside from tourist infrastructure such as the passenger rail cars that carry visitors three-quarters of a mile through the mine’s deepest drift — “train is for ore, train is for product,” said interpreter Reed Petersen about how the mine’s tracks would have been used during regular operation — the Soudan Mine remains largely frozen in time as it was left when miners last clocked out on Dec. 15, 1962.

“By the early 1960s, the mine was no longer profitable,” a narrator’s voice explains in the new introductory video. “Instead of the rich iron ore found in Soudan, steel producers wanted a processed ore called taconite … With new technology, mining companies could gather lower-grade ore more quickly, process it more cheaply.”

“Soudan was called ‘the Cadillac of mines,’” said Petersen on Thursday while standing in a stope, or underground room, created by ore excavation. “Because this rock is so dense, it seals out most of the water. … There’s also a good airflow that happens through this mine.”

Total darkness

Standard mine tours offer a 90-minute experience highlighted by the elevator plunge, the train ride and an opportunity to experience total darkness when interpreters briefly extinguish the stope’s electric lights.

In Petersen’s experience, “Whenever you ask people, ‘What do you remember from this tour?,’ they always say, ‘I remember going down the mine shaft and I remember being in total darkness.’”

Park staff said that later this summer, they expect to resume occasional “science tours” that include a visit to the mine’s laboratory space. Most recently, two large physics experiments, active until 2016, took advantage of the mine’s insulation from cosmic radiation.

The science tours will explain the research conducted in the space, which was first used for laboratory work in the early 1980s, and will publicize the fact that “it is open for a new group (of researchers) to move in there.”

The facility’s historic infrastructure includes the 1924 electric hoist that still lifts and lowers the elevator cars. While the cacophonous half-mile ride is a vivid experience that leaves some visitors rattled, DeVries explained there’s no need to be nervous — the elevators have well-functioning emergency brakes and were built to lift heavy loads of iron ore.

“The rope is able to hold up to 90 tons of weight,” said DeVries. “Putting tourists on the cage, we don’t even come close to that kind of weight.”

An aerial view of the Soudan Underground Mine near Soudan, Minn. The Soudan Mine reopened May 25, 2024 for public tours on a regular schedule for the first time since the state park attraction closed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. (Wyatt Buckner / Duluth Media Group)

During the recent reconstruction work, the hoist returned to something like its original mining schedule, running around the clock. With 40,000 square feet of shaft lining to remove and replace, workers relied on the same hoist and cage used by yesterday’s miners and today’s visitors.

“We had hoist operators from the park here that were manning this hoist throughout that time,” said DeVries. “They did two 12-hour shifts, six days a week while construction was going on.”

Little brown bats

One reason for the hustle: Work had to break for bats.

“This is the largest hibernaculum for little brown bats in Minnesota,” said DeVries. “During our construction phase, we did have to close down for two months, from the middle of March to the middle of May, to allow those bats just enough time to get through that hibernation period.”

Among the many thousands of miners who worked to liberate ore from subterranean Soudan, four live to this day, said DeVries. One of those aged industry veterans recently returned to his former workplace for a tour.

“He was excited,” said DeVries, “to be able to go underground again.”

Park staff encourage visitors to make advance reservations for Soudan Mine tours, as time slots regularly fill up. For information, see dnr.state.mn.us.

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Other voices: Biden should practice what he preaches on justice system

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The response to the Donald Trump verdict was predictable, as partisans raced for their corners. But President Joe Biden’s comments were particularly thoughtless given their lack of self-awareness and glaring hypocrisy.

On Friday, Biden weighed in on the New York jury verdict that determined his predecessor was guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up a potentially damaging tryst with a porn star. He was particularly unsympathetic to attacks on the criminal justice system from Trump and Republicans.

“It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden said. “Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years, and it literally is the cornerstone of America. Our justice system, the justice system, should be respected, and we should never allow anyone to tear it down. As simple as that. That’s America. That’s who we are.”

Stirring words. If only Biden and Democrats believed them.

In fact, not only do progressives rail against a justice system steeped in “systemic racism,” they openly seek to “tear down” the U.S. Supreme Court precisely because the justices prefer to follow the Constitution rather than bend to fashionable statist orthodoxy. Undermining the criminal justice system is part and parcel of the leftist playbook. When the court issues decisions they don’t like, congressional Democrats now threaten to manipulate the institution with court-packing schemes.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, did Biden urge his supporters to respect the decision, while defending the importance of an independent judiciary? Hardly. Instead, the president attacked “extremist” justices and accused them of “being far removed from the majority of this country.”

Just a few years earlier, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, took to the steps of the high court to rile up a crowd upset about a pending abortion case. “I want to tell you, (Neil) Gorsuch. I want to tell you, (Brett) Kavanaugh,” Sen. Schumer said, “you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Not a peep from Biden about such threats and intimidation being “reckless” or “dangerous” or “irresponsible.”

And while the president is preaching “respect” for the Trump verdict, he’s blatantly ignoring the Supreme Court by continuing to forgive billions in student loans despite a recent ruling that he lacks authority to unilaterally take such a step in most cases.

Our courts do indeed deserve respect. But if Biden and his fellow travelers are truly concerned about Trump supporters “tearing down” the justice system, they might start leading by example.

— The New York Daily News

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