I’ll tell you a story:
One summer, I went on vacation in Europe. I rented a car and hopped from friend to friend, touring around.
When I came back, one of my workmates asked me:
“So you drove quite a few miles! How did you cope?”
“What do you mean ‘cope’” I replied
“Well, Europeans drive on the left. Wasn’t it confusing?”
“W…What?”Turned out, the dude was totally convinced only Americans drove on the right.
Americans are fucking clueless about everything going on outside of their country, and largely clueless about what goes on inside of it too. They’re honestly shamefully ignorant.
I mean for one this is by design, so that they don’t know how fucked our country is, but also our country is the size of several European countries so it’s not exactly apples to apples. Even state to state you can have wildly different traditions, house styles, etc.
I’ve been around a bit, but never west of the Rockies. California might as well be another country.
I bet this person rotates the square in tetris
Rotation buffering makes it fall just a bit slower so a good Tetris player would probably still do that.
Huh? I’m seeing those videos from the Tetris Gods and I see pieces falling down at a speed that my brain can’t even understand, this technique maybe is used by “entry level” Tetris professional players?
US electrical plugs are the worst.
I still regularly manage to electrocute myself on those death designed shit plugs that allow uounto touch love metal if you’re not very careful
Then the “Gravity will pull your plug out of the wall” design which is just amazing too.
Then the “bends by breathing at it” strength
I could go on, but you get it.
UK plugs are the best and can double up as non destructive landmines.
i know you meant live metal. But I love the concept of love metal. There’s a spark between us
Immediately Wings of a Butterfly starts playing in my head.
Electrocute means to be killed by electric shock. Unless you’re being reincarnated again and again I think you mean to say that you’ve managed to shock yourself regularly.
Electrocute means neon green and attractive. I will not be taking questions.
Aiiiight french academy
Collins and m-w both have “kill or [severely] injure”, whereas Cambridge has only “kill”. So I guess it can be used their way sometimes some places?
He was just being cute with the phrase.
And yet i haven’t had those problems. If your plugs fall out then the springs in your outlet are old, get a nee outlet.
That confirms the shitty design. Decent outlets don’t require springs to keep plugs from falling out.
the springs are also how the metal make contact. something has to hold them in place and make contact.
Plus don’t just go for the cheapest ones. The ones I’ve seen like this are cheap outlets made in the 70s, so a combination of old and crappy, but older outlets can be more sturdy and non-crappy modern ones appear sturdy
It’s like accents. Did you know America is the only place that doesn’t have language accents? We just speak normal English here.
I like accents. There’s a nugget of truth to that though. Accent variation in the UK is greater than across the whole of the US. You can drive the length of Britain in America and still hear less variation than you’d get in just 15 miles across parts of the UK, thanks to its highly localized linguistic evolution over centuries. Interestingly, some American accents are actually closer to 17th century English than many found in the UK today, and (comparatively) lack strong markers like rhotic dropping, vowel shifts, or intonation patterns that give it a ‘vanilla’ vibe.
I would imagine that this has similar root causes like Italian in South Tyrol. About 100 years ago in an attempt to forcefully italianize the german-speaking Tyroleans the fascists moved a lot of italians from all over Italy into South Tyrol, resulting in a very clean italian (somewhat “high-italian”) being spoken there, opposed to the various regional dialects all over Italy. The clean language is a more common ground between everyone, so it makes sense to default to that (and is a lot closer to the language foreigners learn)
I have a buddy in London who swears he can almost tell what neighborhood someone grew up in based solely on their accent. I don’t think it’s quite that bad but last time I was there he did point out several that were solely in London.
Yep I can tell apart different accents from around Glasgow. Most cities will look like this so easier than it sounds.
That map is Manchester. The clue is “scally” in the west and posh as you get towards Cheshire.
Yes I know it was an example hence ‘most’
Same for me, grew up in the countryside, there were at least 3-4 villages that had a distinctive enough accent that I could pick up on it.
That is because the size of an area has less importance to the development of dialects than time. Dialects developed in pre-industrial times in fairly small localised areas, when contact with other areas was sparse. European countries much smaller than the UK still have more dialects than the US because of this.
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Interestingly, English does have a “reference” accent. “Queens English”.
Back in the days of the British empire, the aristocracy had a serious problem. When they traveled, the local population were difficult to understand, they all had accents. To solve this, the hired help were taught not just English but a clear “accentless” English. This meant the rich could go anywhere in the empire and not have to decode the local’s butchering of English.
While it’s used a lot less now, it was only a few decades back that the BBC stopped requiring it for news broadcasts. It’s the “classic” British accent you see on TV shows.
Fun fact it’s also the Coruscanti accent in Star Wars
I’m not able to find the link right now, but Technology Connections did a fantastic breakdown of the designs for U.S. plugs/outlets compared to those in (I think) the U.K.
Unsurprisingly, our outlets in the U.S. feature several braindead design choices that make them more dangerous.
We could just flip our outlet upside down and be sort of safer, but we don’t because the little face 😮
Funny thing is, the outlets in my house are installed with the ground prong up, unless they’re installed horizontally.
That’s probably because that’s the recommended way to install them for safety, and that’s why they’re installed that way in hospitals, but people install them upside down in houses because they like the face
Wel no fire code or even electrical safety standards mention the orientation of plug. Hospital codes are the one exception
Chicago–a city very paranoid about fire–has some relatively unique fire codes, like all electrical wiring in a structure must run through conduit, and outlets are either typically, or are required to be, installed horizontally.
I can see why Chicago might be.
The city that famously burned down that one time? There’s an outside chance that has something to do with it.
Tom Scott once upon a time made a video about why the UK plug is the superior overall design, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q
At this point you can get gfi plugs, abd chil proof plugs that block the live outlet. At this point all wr can add is plastic wrap at the base of the prongs
They’re right, it does sound really stupid, but it’s also actually really stupid.
Is there still a lot lead in the air in america ? 🤔
Nah, we get it from the water now. And if you drink too much of the water as a kid, sometimes from snacking on old paint.
I’d like to take this oppurtunity to point out that UK plugs are, by a long shot, the best plugs.
They have ground. They slot in and stay in. The structure of the plug means that the wire comes out the bottom and not the back, which is better for plugging stuff in behind furniture.
Basically every other plug-type is ass compared to UK plugs.
Their only real disadvantage is how comically large they can make normally small power bricks
And stepping on one makes Lego seem tame.
The structure of the plug means that the wire comes out the bottom and not the back
… What? I have lots of right angle cables. The way the wire “comes out” of the plug is not limited by the plug itself.
There are American plugs that also put the wire out the side rather than perpendicular to the wall. diagonally down is most normal so that it wouldn’t block the lower outlet when installed in the upper outlet. I also have some six-gang outlet extenders with the sockets on the sides rather than the front.
A swiss plug will go into a German or french socket, a German plug will go into a french socket and visa-versa. A two pin German plug will fit in a swiss socket. There are probably more compatibilities with the EU, but these are off the top of my head.
Also, traveling to a different country within the EU isn’t the same as going to a different state in the US, so technically, we are better off in the EU plug wise.
Swiss plug with a grounding pin won’t fit into a Type-C or Type-F socket though unless it’s a multi type socket. And Italy has that weird Type-L socket that comes in two sizes. Though they also have Type-F (Schuko). Ireland uses the British standard so not Schuko or Type-C compatible.
This is actually a serious problem in parts of China (Shenzhen, at least). You can never predict what kind of wall outlets will be in a building. Either the UK style (popular in nearby Hong Kong), American style (NEMA 5-15), or Europlug, and sometimes multiple types in one building. At the company I was mostly visiting, each conference room had universal power strips, which accepted all three styles of plugs as well as pinky fingers. I never figured out what the voltage/frequency was, and made sure to plug in only devices that could handle 120-240V.
The frequency is always Kenneth.
The sad thing is that this person is probably eligible to vote.
Only a sith deals in reposts
That aside, isn’t the US the country were, supposedly, people will go into financial insecurity and ruin if an emergency of 500 USD or less happens to them?
Where, according to collectivists worldwide, the average person doesn’t even have savings to cover said 500 USD emergency?
How the hell then are you expecting the average us citizen to know and understand the realities others live by in other countries? Specially adapters? The thing that is sold so much in airports because even frequent travelers forget about it?
It will be probably strange for them to grasp why people have to adapt anything to a specific socket as the reason why they vary is not obvious at first glance, but that’s not something to mock or make fun about?
Like, haha you don’t have the privilege to be well travelled, what a poor dumbass?
Really
I assure you, this isn’t an issue of privilege, just stupidity.
They are correct though. In the US, it doesn’t matter where you go, every state uses the same plug.
In Europe, different countries use different plugs, even though they are all in Europe.
Ireland plug:
France plug:
Switzerland plug:
Italian plugs:
Congratulations, you’re just as dumb as the person in the post.
You should travel, see the world, open your mind. You’d find that traveling the EU is just like traveling the US, no borders, no checks, even my cell plan moves, all the same. It’s even called the European “Union”, you know, like how the States are a Union (pst, it’s in the name, the UNITED states). So yeah, it would be the correct comparison.
States aren’t countries. The US isn’t a continent. If you go to a different state within a European country, it won’t have a different plug either.
You should travel, see the world, open your mind. You’d find that traveling the EU is just like traveling the US, no borders, no checks, even my cell plan moves, all the same. It’s even called the European “Union”, you know, like how the States are a Union (pst, it’s in the name, the UNITED states). So yeah, it would be the correct comparison.
If you go to a different state within a European country, it won’t have a different plug either.
You mean like in Italy, that is even shown in the picture to the comment your replying to?
You’re being awfully condescending for someone making such an incredibly weak defence. By your logic if the EU had stricter borders, the criticism of plug sockets would no longer be valid.
I’ve traveled to Italy many times, vacationing. I live in a country where schuko is dominant and I’ve never had to use an adapter. These are all old legacy plugs, I bet you can still buy them to replace existing plugs, I don’t know, but I’ve stayed in hotels and rented rooms (staying with people basically) and I haven’t even put any thought into it.
Only Ireland and Switzerland doesn’t accept Type-F aka Schuko which is the de facto EU standard. And the Swiss socket does accept Type-C, which is the two prong plug that fits everywhere in the EU except Ireland. And in Italy all hotels and homes have sockets that accept Type-L and Type-C/F
Also they are not correct, since they are implying that everyone in those countries uses adapters.
Can’t your union standardize this? Like, this feels like exactly what the EU is for, facilitating unified standards to increase trade and improve quality of life across Europe.
Oh, and please don’t copy us north Americans. Yeah the US, Canada, and Mexico (and japan for some insane reason though you still need an adapter because of the frequency if you’re in the half where it’s different) share an outlet type. But seriously, our polarized grounded plugs are fine enough but we have a lot of type A and yall can do better than that.
We have a standard it’s called Type-F aka Schuko. It’s cross compatible with the French plug and socket. Though a Danish three prong plug doesn’t fit in a Schuko socket but a Schuko plug does fit in a Danish socket. And in Italy it’s standard to install sockets that accept both Schuko and Type-L. Also type-C plugs aka Europlug (two prong, no grounding) are accepted in every European country except Ireland and UK.
The EU actually did regulate the voltage and standardized the acceptable tolerances for appliances, which is the difficult part. In the olden days, your French 220V appliance wasn’t necessarily guaranteed not to burn out if you put a British 240V through it.
That makes sense and is awesome. Since you went through that effort it’s weird you have different plugs
I suspect that the cost of refitting every single house, office and appliance in several countries would be many orders of magnitude higher than the cost of everyone just buying their own travel adapter. It’s not like they’re that big a problem. Most hotels will lend you them for free, or have universal sockets.
