Ben Hur Horse Race

  • 17 Posts
  • 299 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: June 13th, 2023
  • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.eetoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•Why do so many UK electrical sockets have an on/off switch next to them?
    0·
    8 days ago

    yes.

    Im from the states and live in Ireland. Here, people unplug lamps when they leave for the weekend. Dozens of times, I’ve had to plug lamps back in when coming into the office over a weekend or things like Christmas break.

    I’ve also had to explain to at least 5-6 people that something that does not draw power by being plugged in, such as a toaster, electric kettle or light fixture (unlike a computerized device that has a stand-by mode) is not “wasting power” unless you unplug it or turn the outlet switch off.

    I had a person at a party tell me their father was an electrician and taught her to turn the switches that lead to anything such as lamps OFF when they’re not being used because it costs electricity to “keep the wire charged”. True story.

    Mainly they exist because there weren’t central fuse boxes for a while due to wartime copper shortages.

  • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.eetoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Do you have kids? Do you want to have kids? Did you regret having / not having kids?
    1·
    14 days ago

    So my wife and I are child-free by choice. I’m in a rare position that I wind up speaking to many people in-depth about their lives, and the folks who have children talk about raising their kids all the time.

    If I’m honest, many, many days I think “the moral of the story here is do not have kids, foks”.

    That’s not to say that it’s all bad for everyone, but it is very bad for a lot of people. Essentially, their lives become exclusively about managing their children’s problems. Everyone thinks their children will be well mannered, sweet and thoughtful little guys who will fill their hearts with joy and purpose. The reality is many children are little nightmares with behavior problems that don’t seem to improve no matter how much work they put into seeing child psychologists and play therapists- every single day they spend 3-4 hours trying to calm their kid down as they fly into an uncontrollable rage, overturning tables and swinging their arms as hard as they can at the care givers and their parents. They want to help their kids learn how to control their feelings but they can’t. It’s really sad. The parents live in hell a little, every hour of the day is spent trying to manage their screaming, raging child.

    I will also tell you that many people have tried to convince me over the years that we should have children. Family members, neighbors, co-workers… I also once had a neighbor (who’s kids were little terrors, I once saw one take a swing at his face because he was being punished, and they also once threw BIG rocks over the wall separating our properties without seeing where they’d land) say to me: “You just get to do whatever you want, don’t you?” when I was getting in the car to leave to go work remotely out in the countryside for a week.

    My point is people don’t often tell you how hard it can be, most people lie and say that it’s great. At least half a dozen times I’ve had parents say “now I don’t wish that my child was gone or would never have been born as such, but I do often long for a life where I didn’t have to take care of them all the time”. Like they DO wish they never had kids, but they have to be careful to say they don’t want their child to disappear because its too dark of a thing to say.

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