scarabic
@scarabic@lemmy.world
- Comment on Car crashes have killed and seriously injured roughly the same number of people as shootings in Chicago this year. Only one of these things is treated as a safety crisis in the media 1 day ago:
Yeah heart disease kills more than either but we don’t hold candlelight vigils to ban butter. Because food is a normal part of life. I know a lot of people grow up with guns, but to me, guns are weird. I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. Not that I know of anyway. I have never held a gun. I have never seen a gun, except strapped to a cop walking by. I hope to never touch a gun (or be touched by one).
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
I think it’s fair to say that kettles and funnels can be found in non-plastic materials. And I have to admit I’ve never seen an”coffee maker” that wasn’t plastic. I suppose a restaurant grade Bunn machine has a stainless steel basket and a glass carafe, but there isn’t anything for the home. Unless someone is about to tell me I’m wrong, which, this being Reddit, someone probably is.
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
Sounds like it would amount to much the same thing: you’d need some special wiring, and a kettle made to take advantage of it. No one has made that kettle.
Just curious though, since you seem to understand electricity better than I.
If it’s as you say, and all we need to do to get more energy is to raise the amps, then why do Americans still install 240V lines for laundry machines, ovens, large power tools, etc etc? Why don’t any of those just do what you said, and operate 120V at 30 amps?
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
You make an interesting case. I haven’t seen one of those that I liked. Just the nasty ones from the 80s that were always crusted over with scale. We do have to descale the Zojirushi often.
Starting from room temperature water to near boiling takes a ton of energy. I don’t know if keeping it hot for 8 hours takes more electricity than starting it back up in the morning.
This made me think.
It seems like it would be a wash in the end. The Zojirushi is insulated, so it stays pretty hot even in the 8 hours it’s turned off overnight. But let’s imagine it is losing a certain amount of heat called “x” per hour.
In the morning I’d have to spend 8x to get it back up to temperature. But it still loses heat even when it’s turned on. So I’m already spending the same x every hour just to keep it on.
Now let’s imagine that the insulation loses x per hour but 4 hours is enough to leak all the heat out. Okay, I’ve lost 4x. But I would have spent 8x to keep it on all night.
So it seems like it can only be a gain to turn it off for certain spells. And that is intuitively obvious, too: turning something off should save energy.
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
I’m also a woodworker. What do you use a kettle for out there? Mixing your own shellac or wax something?
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
You can’t. You can’t use European 240V kettles in the US because of phase differences (or something - an electrician told me so and declined the job to give me an outlet even though he accepted and performed other work for me).
No one to my knowledge has marketed a 240V kettle for the US market. It’s a business idea for anyone who wants to pick it up.
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
My electric kettle has plastic parts. Also my pour over funnels are plastic. This is not a meaningful distinction between the two.
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
I’d love it if someone would market a 240V kettle for the US. I’d install the 240 line for it. I mean I use the damn thing multiple times per day, more than my stove, and that has a 240 line.
Still. I’m not convinced it would make a major difference. Like I said I have a 240V induction stove and I have experimented with how fast I can boil water on that thing in a suitable pot or kettle, versus the 120V electric kettle. It is not a big difference. We’re taking a few seconds.
In the winter months when we’re drinking lots and lots of warm beverages we plug in the Zojirushi hot water carafe and have hot water all the time, instantly. It does consume some energy to keep it hot all the time, but it’s well insulated and we use a timer to turn it off at night and then on again in time for morning wake-up. Eliminates the wait entirely.
- Comment on Why don't Americans use electric kettles? 1 day ago:
Uh we do.
- Comment on Why doesn't the US government just tax illegal immigrants a little bit more than the Average american? Then use those funds to fix infastructure or a new WPA of the 21st century? 2 days ago:
Family visiting is a nightly so why does anyone launder money? Isn’t the whole purpose of that to hide conspicuous flows of cash from illegal activities? If it’s safe to pay taxes on ill gotten gains, why launder?
- Comment on Why doesn't the US government just tax illegal immigrants a little bit more than the Average american? Then use those funds to fix infastructure or a new WPA of the 21st century? 3 days ago:
I just mean that the aphorism about drugs dealers is colorful and amusing. I understand it’s making a real point but it’s also funny.
- Comment on Why doesn't the US government just tax illegal immigrants a little bit more than the Average american? Then use those funds to fix infastructure or a new WPA of the 21st century? 4 days ago:
I havent heard that one. That’s rich.
- Comment on Why doesn't the US government just tax illegal immigrants a little bit more than the Average american? Then use those funds to fix infastructure or a new WPA of the 21st century? 4 days ago:
I’d really like to fix the whole mess. Our economy relies on these folks but they are kept a second class, subject to exploitation and prosecution at any time. All so agricultural and construction labor can be got for less than minimum wage. It’s disgusting and broken. And anytime the racists get riled up, they have a legal basis to browbeat everyone with. It’s ridiculous.
- Comment on Why doesn't the US government just tax illegal immigrants a little bit more than the Average american? Then use those funds to fix infastructure or a new WPA of the 21st century? 4 days ago:
I have to wonder how many would ever use it to file for a tax refund though. Wouldn’t that out them to the government?
- Comment on 32, f. Are there any dating sites that are actually free and don't suddenly force me to pay to actually use the site? 4 days ago:
Yeah you can’t really talk though.
- Comment on So if we're just good with careening into fascism 2.0 what does the future look like? 6 days ago:
Only 3? Found the optimist!
- Comment on Project Hail Mary - Trailer 1 week ago:
Yeah I’m pleased for everyone who seems to know this book but I don’t and now I don’t feel like there’s any point i seeing this.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Just as a point of perspective, I’m 51 and my wife is 46. We are entirely independent and on great terms with all our parents. I still don’t relish the idea of staying overnight at her parents house with them.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Pretty condescending though and makes a lot of age based assumptions.
- Comment on Movies not starting when they are scheduled. 2 weeks ago:
I love reserved seating. And they seem to have given up on selling lots of tickets. The chairs in my theater are huge and widely spaced.
- Comment on Why is the progress pride flag so poorly designed (especially the intersex progress pride flag)? Will it be redesigned? 2 weeks ago:
It’s interesting - the psychology of that. Recently I was answering someone who asked why the US doesn’t have more of a working class movement, and a big part of my answer was that no one in the US thinks of themselves as part of the working class. Even if they are unarguably at the base of the economy, their plan is to get out of the working class, not make it better. Similarly, I can see Americans having a problem accepting themselves as a permanent minority. In other parts of the world this is just a fact of life. Christians in Syria know they will never be a majority. When rebels ousted Assad, one of the first things they said was that they will treat minorities well. Kurds are 15% of Iraq and that is just a fact based on hundreds of years of ethnic history in the region. But in the US, everyone is on their way to something better (at least so we think). Parts of Europe had very formal class systems for long periods of history so there are people who just think of themselves as working class and they stand for workers’ rights. Not so in the US. No one here is working class or a monitory. We’re too full of all the rhetoric about being created equal.
- Comment on Why is the progress pride flag so poorly designed (especially the intersex progress pride flag)? Will it be redesigned? 2 weeks ago:
I’m just hearing it for the first time in this thread but my first impression isn’t great. Do you really want a label that brands you as a “minority?” That doesn’t seem like a great first step toward equality.
- Comment on Why is the progress pride flag so poorly designed (especially the intersex progress pride flag)? Will it be redesigned? 2 weeks ago:
It’s the same phenomenon as “LGBTQI+”
It was literally LGB at one point. I understand the concept of inclusion but I think pursuing it by appending and appending and appending is a lousy way to go. I believe the “Q” was finally added in part because it was hoped to be some kind of catch-all, but that didn’t work.
- Comment on The White House is paving over the Rose Garden with concrete. People are outraged 2 weeks ago:
Melania was expected to do something with it and she had no interest. This reflected poorly on her in a lot of people’s expectations, and so the two of them were like “fuck the rose garden.” End of story. The Trumps will never have class so they figure no one else can either.
- Comment on Why do some people hate drinking water? 3 weeks ago:
Water just wasn’t really an option
This is funny, considering how many people in the world survive on muddy water they had to walk miles to collect in a bucket.
- Comment on Why do some people hate drinking water? 3 weeks ago:
Yes chlorine is a very volatile chemical and dissipates quickly.
- Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues? 4 weeks ago:
Yes I think “having to work” is definitely the boundary of upper class. We’re talking inheritances, investments, landlording, whatever.
I earn a great deal of money at my job - top 1%. But I live in a HCOL area and am raising two kids. We have no aspirations but to own our house someday and send our kids to college. If we go on a vacation once a year we are happy. I would lose absolutely everything were I to get laid off from my job. We still look for sales at Costco and cook at home instead of eating out, like everyone else. This still feels like “middle class” to me, whatever my wage is.
However I am seeing that even the basic components of the American Dream, a house and a family, are more than most can attain. I think that says that our working class is growing and perhaps getting pretty large. Certainly if you are living hand to mouth that’s working class. If you have no prospect of owning your home or sending your kids to college, that’s working class.
“Working class” has associations from when we were an industrial and manufacturing economy. People who work in an office don’t think “I’m working class” because they don’t wear coveralls and operate power tools. But we’ve transitioned to a services-based economy now for many years, so I think a LOT of people are working class without even realizing it.
And if you don’t even know you’re working class, how are you going to get fired up about a workers rights rally?
- Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues? 4 weeks ago:
I’ll add one extra thing here: that no one in America identifies themselves as “a worker” or “working class.”
Perhaps Europe, with its historic class strata, is better prepared for this. Maybe people there know that they are working class and always will be. With that identity firmly held, they can find each other and agitate for their rights.
In America, if you are working class, first of all you’d never admit it. Everyone is “middle class,” here, don’t you know. And even if in your heart you know you are working class, your aim is to get out of the working class, not make its life better.
No justifications here, just a description of American psychology on this topic.
- Comment on All this produce is going to spoil at the food bank where I volunteer 4 weeks ago:
I wonder if your good bank can set up some kind of relationship with farms in your region. Those farms may be open to taking lots of spoiled produce as animal feed and compost material. In exchange they might share their crops with you.
- Comment on All this produce is going to spoil at the food bank where I volunteer 4 weeks ago:
My workplace used to donate all its leftover food to a local meal service charity, daily. But they refused to take fresh fruits and vegetables because they just spoil too fast. It was sad because those are the foods people need the most but they are logistically very difficult to deliver, as you are witnessing.