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- 22 hours
Being able to smugly utilize the thing that people always ask why you carry around is one of the best feelings there is.
one of the major beefs I have with sci-fi is just how crappy the torches are both in what’s meant to be the modern day and the future
23 hoursMuch as I have always loved Star Trek: TNG and its take on future tech, every time they beamed somewhere dark and pulled out their scifi flashlights all I could think of is how tired their hands would quickly get in the unnatural position needed to use those things.
- 21 hours
They called me an idiot for spending $20 on a tiny Sofirm flashlight but then I clip it on a cap’s brim and work in the darkness while the mortals must rest
- 20 hours
I’m in Tokyo right now, got a limited EDC since no firearms/knives at the moment, but it felt nice to have my ifak and flashlight when the (false) earthquake warning popped up on my phone.
As a Kyiv resident: no, you don’t want power outages. It’s less fun after the 10th time in a week.
- 1 day
“It’s your time to shine.”
“Other people will look up to you and will be able to tell the time.”
“An enlightening experience.”
“A bright idea, if I may say so myself.”
“With great brightness comes great visibility.”
“Your ability to illuminate a situation is truly outstanding.”
“You are the light at the end of my tunnel.”
“Don’t take this lightly when I say you’re brilliant.”
- 1 day
I’ve got a memory where I was in a small meeting room with no windows and the power went out. One person said “I wish somebody had a flashli…” right as I clicked mine on.
I’ve had a little single AA Fenix in my pocket for almost two decades now… Comes in handy more often than you’d think.
… But I also always forget phones can do light as well. That said, I’m not shoving my phone down in an engine bay to get a better look at wiring, but that $15, 20 year old flashlight, sure.
I guess sign me up for flashlight crew.
One person said “I wish somebody had a flashli…” right as I clicked mine on.
I came in my pants a little just imagining the perfectly-timed ego stroke. In my mind, the click of the flashlight is immediately followed by a moan.
- 1 day
: D
I didn’t realize it was a core memory for me until this post pulled it up immediately.
It was… very satisfying.
Ive said it before: do you want to be the grumpy, antisocial prepper that eats beans in his (yes, almost exclusively his) bunker until radiation poisoning finally gets him?
Or do you want to be the hero of the neighbourhood, who has a solar-powered stove to heat up the baby milk for cute single mother next door?
- 1 day
You’ve hit on my bugbear with most post-apocalyptic fiction: pretty much universally humans have shown that they will tend towards co-operation when placed in situations of hardship. But most writers, game designers and preppers want you to think that when civilization collapses everyone will be like “there’s no rules any more! I can murder whoever I want and take their stuff!”
- 20 hours
I think this might be one of the reasons zombie a apocalypses are so popular because it gives a plausible reason for why large groups could be just as failure prone as small groups, as well as a plausible reason as to why the survivors don’t just immediately restart society considering the infrastructure, power stations, and factories don’t just disappear but require the knowledge and logistics to run or maintain them and some essential people might have been turned into zombies, plus the risk of attacks while doing maintenance or going out to run it.
I have been in a flood that turned the land into a lake, horizon to horizon. Densely populated. Utterly devastating. The railway was elevated enough to get between two mid-sized cities, and on the 12km trek I saw an amazing amount of compassion, mutual aid, and casual, natural-feeling grassroots organization to just get on with life.
I have been in a few crises and minor disasters, come to think of it. I think generally, most people like banding together and helping out when shit gets crazy.
There’s a Cory Doctorow short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, that’s exactly this: a bunch of rich, ultra paranoid preppers get together in a bunker after societal collapse. They’re all incredibly selfish and eventually turn on each other. Meanwhile, everyone else cooperates and gets along just fine to survive.
- 1 day
Is that a modernization of the Poe story by the same name or am I confusing titles?
- 23 hours
Just looked it up, it seems to be a direct hommage to poes story
- 24 hours
“A paradise built in hell” by rebecca solnit is a great book about spontaneous co-operation during disasters
- rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish23 hours
When the early bright white LEDs came out (not the ultra-packages) I got my father a photon keychain microlight.
He was working dozer/fire duty with a coworker. They were back deep in the woods investigating. Their regular flashlight bulb burned out. It was after midnight, completely overcast, no moon, rural, Dark AF. They stumbled in the dark trying to get back to the truck. It was the early 2000s, they didn’t carry cell phones or pagers. Dad remembered he had a keychain light. “We came out of there, about five miles, with that little light, we took turns smashing the button. both our fingers hurt, but we made it out” Yeah, dad, they have a little lock on the front, that holds the button down if you need that :)
- 19 hours
I had an assortment of those types of things back in the day, both the genuine article and myriad knockoffs of varying levels of quality. Photon was the big name brand for those at the time. These days it’s astonishing to think that LEDs used to be an “exotic” technology at least for the purposes of illumination and not just being indicators on things, and they went through a period of being deemed neat but inferior in performance to their analog counterpart in almost exactly the same way that LCD screens did for a while. Which is an interesting but irrelevant parallel.
Anyway, the best one of those I ever got my hands on is one that I still have, which is an “Inova” branded Photon knockoff which among its admittedly rather short list of features included a sliding switch that would keep the thing powered on for you without having to pinch it the entire time.
Those little jobbers were and still are powered by a pair of CR2016 coin cells which the LED is extremely unkind to. There are no active electronics and also no current limiting resistor. The sum total of the light’s components consist of the casing, the batteries, and the LED. They’re switched by just mashing one leg of the LED into contact with the batteries, and the current draw of the LED is so immense compared to the couple of milliamps that the coin cells expect to be faced with that they’re literally incapable of supplying enough current to damage the LED. As a result of this their battery life is famously awful, and their full brightness runtime is probably less than two minutes. They’ll continue to illuminate in at least some capacity off of extremely beat batteries, though. I unearthed my little Inova light the other day and it still turns on, albeit not at a terribly useful brightness, on its original batteries. Which are probably from 2004.
- 22 hours
Great reminder to not just carry gear but be familiar with it before we need it.
- Chronographs@lemmy.zipEnglish2 days
That moment where you pull out the fleshlight and it makes you a hero. People, almost exclusively other guys, will ask you where you got it and you get to talk about it. This. Is. Your. Moment.
- ClownStatue@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
Not gonna lie, it was the highlight of my day haha
Edit: one too many has. It’s important to accurately quote.
- Calming_Pants@feddit.orgEnglish2 days
People, almost exclusively other guys, will ask where you got it
It will not work here:
“Sir, This Is A Wendy’s”
but maybe here:
“Anyway, this is a Walmart”- 2 days
I mean, looking into it (you can thank me later), it seems like a great support group!
Very little friction to speak of. I’ve seen some communities that just felt like a square peg in a round hole and this one definitely doesn’t have that vibe.
My wife thought it was dumb when I picked up a lockpick set to play around with. Didn’t think it was so stupid when we accidentally locked our keys inside when house sitting and I actually managed to pick the lock.
- 24 hours
Congratulations, you’re now “the wizard who can open doors” forever. It’s really nice to be able to help people with something that isn’t that hard (for most locks) but appears as magic to so many people.
I was once at a wedding at a lodge type place in the middle of nowhere with rooms that auto locked like a hotel. Opened the locked closet that held the tables/chairs when the owner had accidentally left it locked and was two hours away. … Then three rooms for drunk people that locked their keys inside… Then somebody who rented a cabin 30 min away drove me out there to let them back into the cabin they’d locked themselves out of (hopefully I didn’t just break into a random cabin for them… But the keys were sitting on the counter just inside the door, and they knew exactly where they were, so probably not)
Plus, it’s just fun.
What picks do you use?
- 2 days
Double edged sword. I was into lock picking as a teen. When my family found ourselves in the same situation, I leapt into action and got the side door open in no time.
My mother freaked out at how easy it was to get into our house without a key, and went on an anxiety fueled journey of kitting the house out with extra security. It wasn’t a bad idea to up our security, but I felt horrible for stressing her out by trying to do a good deed.
- 24 hours
That is definitely a thing. When I got into it I repinned all our locks with a difficult bitting and added spools/serrated pins.
… All the while knowing that a burglar is just going to smash a window or kick in the door so I really just made it harder on myself ; )
I’m a firefighter\emt. I’ve gotten to pick Sooo many door locks over the years and it’s saved a lot of people a lot of money and headache for it.
Anytime someone has “fallen and can’t get up” in their locked house, but says they aren’t injured, I’ll pick my way in, instead of us having to break a door or window just because they need help off the floor.
How heroic and badass did that feel? I need to learn to lockpick. And get a wife. And lock her out.
… And that’s how I got your mother to subscribe to the lockpicking lawyer.
- 2 days
MFW the roofers came to inspect a leak a couple of weeks ago and the kid turned on his phone’s light before climbing into the attic.
Me after lending the kid my 3000 lumens pocket flashlight.
- 2 days
There’s an entire horror game about having only your phone flashlight during a power outage.
Actually, it looks like there are a few.
- 2 days
There’s an entire horror
gamegenre about having only your phone flashlight during a power outage.
- Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish1 day
Provide a means for people to charge their phones = Instant Hero.
I guess I can’t compete. :(
…oh, wait, what’s this in my pocket? A brand new pack of gum!?
How the tables have turned. ANYBODY WANT A PIECE OF GUM?
- 2 days
I get excited when my solar/battery setup seamlessly deals with short power outages. That $35k I spent years ago really pays off so I don’t need to wait 5 mins before browsing memes.
- cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish2 days
I can get a battery/inverter set up in about 10 minutes that’ll last from dusk until bedtime that’ll run my entire server and network and TV.
The trouble is that the power usually comes back as soon as I switch the inverter on.
Can you add a UPS switch to your setup so it switches on automatically before the server even knows it lost power?
- cenzorrll@piefed.caEnglish22 hours
It’s just a bare 100mah battery and inverter. it’s a setup half built for camping so it was never intended to work as a ups. I’ve just got quick at dragging it out of the garage and plugging my server ups into it.
- Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish1 day
Assuming your ISP and the equipment between you and them didn’t got hit by the power outage …
- 2 days
Did you see the old “follow the light” post from /r/flashlight? It’s a classic
- 2 days
Mine unfortunately has a 3s delay before it cuts over to battery when grid synch is lost. Too long for servers to stay up. So I went and bought a lithium power station, and put it online in UPS mode. Now when the grid goes out, the UPS kicks in, the house battery kicks in, and I have 16kwh (plus whatever solar is coming in) before I need to start turning off servers.
