I am rather surprised at the astounding success of our plan to get conservatives to do incredibly stupid, pointless things in public. Be sure to let them all know how much your feelings have been hurt by these performances! Maybe they’ll escalate. I sure am glad that no one told Laura that there are regulations about contamination of meat that we’d hate to see violated, and that libs think it’s a bad idea to smash those light bulbs and put broken glass in your cheerios.
As Popehat is fond of saying: “If you fuck a goat to own the libs, you’re still a goatfucker.”
My gods, the poor goat!
Truly, conservatives have dizzying intellects.
Oddly enough, I’m neither angry nor triggered. Instead I’m just laughing about how silly this “performance” looks.
Conservative virtue signaling is hilarious. Keep on drinking out of a toilet to own the libs.
What brain worms did she get from eating undercooked and unregulated red meat that she thinks this is clever? I know, there are some vegans who’ll get all huffy and puffy at people who eat meat, yet most “liberals” are not even vegetarians, and while there are some attempts to ban straws, I hope by now every person who actually cares about people understands that this is a terrible idea due to there not being safe alternatives for disabled folks.
As for the light bulbs: I really don’t understand why people desperately want to have higher energy bills. Same for the brexiteers who hate the EU for having had the audacity to mandate more energy efficient vacuum cleaners. Our current one uses 1/3 of the energy the old one needed and is more efficient…
Brain broke. What they consider “owning” is funny and sad.
@4 kurt1
Yeah, I remember seeing a clip about a group of people who install mods in their pickup trucks to make them spout more and very visible black smoke, wasting gas and money and probably damaging their cars in the long run. Pretty pathetic, but if that’s what tickles their nethers, whatever.
Why people insist on using incandescent lightbulbs baffles me. My LED lights were more expensive to buy, sure, but they give off a lot more light, use a lot less electricity (about 10%) and I did not have to change a single one for about five years by now.
This is akin to the “rolling coal” idiocy.
@5 Giliell
Sorry, I’d like to think I care, but I don’t get what you’re driving at. It’s not like straws as such get banned, it’s about plastic straws in particular. How would only having, say, paper, glass, metal, noodle, wood etc. straws be a problem for disabled folks? The implement still does the same thing and if you use reusable ones (or make the paper ones less flimsy), I don’t really see the issue.
After some thought, it occurred to me just how far we’ve slide in just a few short years in how much absurdity we tolerate from conservatives. Clint Eastwood talked with an empty chair at the RNC back in 2012 and we had a national conversation about it for weeks. In the past few days, Trump drew on a weather map to argue that Alabama would be hit by a hurricane rather than admit he was mistaken, Steve King drank out of a toilet fountain to show that the conditions in the concentration camps at the border aren’t that bad, and Laura Ingraham is trying to drink a steak through a straw for no reason other than to try and show conservative superiority to liberals and we won’t be talking about any of these things next week.
…to add to #8: Hell, there are thicker, reusable straws made out of plastic, too. So it’s not even about plastic straws, it’s about the single-use wastefulness.
I think this shows the aging demographic of Fox News more than anything else. I doubt there is anyone under 30 with great affection for incandescent bulbs. I’m close to Ingraham’s age, and the most I’ll say is that there were serious quality issues (or planned obsolescence) in the rollout of CFLs, which seemed to fail faster than incandescents (someone I met in the lighting business says they were not designed for horizontal fixtures, but I have not heard it elsewhere). The LEDs are a bit better and use less energy, but they could definitely improve the reliability; I have had a bunch fail. For all that, they produce good lighting and use less energy, what’s not to like?
Red meat? Meh. Plenty of “libs” buy meat. A lot of stores in the Bay Area would be out of business if that were not so.
The plastic straw thing seems about as real as the War on Christmas. They’re still pretty common (unlike plastic grocery bags). Boba tea is still growing in popularity as far as I can tell, and it’s hard to enjoy it without a wide and durable straw. However, I’m pretty sure most of the young boba drinkers would be even happier to have an eco-friendly alternative to plastic.
It is only the old farts that prefer using old, bad, dirty tech whenever possible. Of course, Trump would like to go back to asbestos and CFCs in hairspray (he is on record on both of these).
My immediate thought was that I need to write an episode of Argument Clinic about this tactic. But I don’t think I could keep a straight face.
If all the conservatives would shoot themselves, it would really trigger me. And it would lower the population, which is a tiny step toward sustainability! Besides, they like their guns. It’s win/win/win all around!
I swear these characters must be stuck in some kind of harmful feedback loop– as it sometimes happens when people get older and start to lose their sense of balance. Instead of looking at the horizon, they intuitively start looking at the ground, which causes more instability, which makes them look down, which…makes falls more likely.
All the bitter tears and drama over not understanding the world they live; it seems to drive conservatives deeper into cognitive dissonance that they just can’t handle.
In Ingraham’s case, it’s like she’s also taped a big “kick me” sign on her own backside. Well…
What would it take to get a Fox News commentator to pee their pants on national television to “own the libs”? It doesn’t seemed out of the question. “Rolling coal” is basically the automotive equivalent.
Actually I thought the funniest thing was when conservatives were briefly buying Keurig coffee makers to smash them with golf clubs. I can’t stand K-cup coffee anyway, and I don’t even remember what that was all about.
We don’t need single use plastic straws, there are biodegradable single use alternatives readily available, which is all I have been given in UK outlets that would previously have given me a plastic straw.
There is exactly one good reason to get incandescent bulbs. That’s if you are using them in a lava lamp, which basically relies on the inefficient conversion of so much energy into heat to operate.
What about Easy-Bake ovens?
lol…
Just don’t say “happy holidays” to these people…
I laugh at the inanity of these irrational displays to rile other people. They think its a protest against the “nanny state”, showing the libs they can’t be told what to do or how to think. Pitiful and irresponsible is what comes to my mind.
I have reduced my red meat consumption drastically on the advice of my physicians. I use LED bulbs because they are far cheaper to use. My electric bill went down dramatically when I finally discovered 60 W candelabra bulbs for chandeliers that gave the 3000K indoor light. I also stopped needing to replace those bulbs on a frequent basis. I don’t use straws, but the Redhead did when she was bedridden. Plastic straws can be washed and reused. Paper straws would be OK for fast food drinks, but likely wouldn’t stand up to day or night long immersion.
It isn’t that hard to recycle; my recycle bin is always fuller than the garbage bin.
My per mile costs for my small hatchback is a lot less than a big SUV or truck. I can use the money saved by being frugal on other things.
I think she misunderstood when someone said to share a “light” meal.
@8, those with intellectual disabilities and various forms of dyskinesia tend to bite straws, leaving paper useless and harder straws, like steel tend to then chip their teeth. Given the biting problem, I really doubt that I need to go into glass and wood, especially glass.
As for incandescent light bulbs, about the only thing I can think of that they’re worth a damn for were the ancient model EZ bake ovens and lava lamps. Later model EZ bake ovens came with a heating element and resulted in over 700 second and third degree burns, one requiring partial amputation of part of a child’s finger. Modification kits were made that slightly lowered the injury rate, but all heating element units ended up getting recalled.
@11, I had a few CFL’s fail prematurely, a couple, with the magic smoke being released. When I disassembled them, most had failed electrolytic capacitors up against the switch driver transistor heatsink. The capacitor was working right up to its rated voltage, so add heat, seal degrades, electrolyte evaporates and first a puffed capacitor, then popcorn. All, save one failed that way, the one that didn’t looked like the switch driver must have failed, likely from a voltage spike.
I was considering purchasing an 8 pack of steel straw, but as I considered it, I dismissed the notion, as the last time I drank out of a straw was at a McDonald’s, drinking a 1/3 sweetened, 2/3 unsweetened iced tea and that was last summer. Total waste of money for me.
Fwiw: coidak makes remote controllable LED color-changing lightbulbs that draw way less than CFL or incandescent and you can have all the lights in your house turn deep red or purple when you want to wander around at night. I’ve been running them for 3 years and no failures yet, so they’ve paid for themselves.
She knows her audience.
Is this what straight porn looks like these days? You lot are weird…
Here in Finland, environmentalism is already the leading culture war issue. I don’t really look forward to that catching on in United States. Rolling coal was just the beginning for all the stupidity that will ensue.
Fundamentally I don’t understand, if we did get rid of disposable plastic straws, why it should be remotely necessary or sensible to ban them without exceptions.
Same with the ban on plastic bags, which is occasionally proposed here in EU. Most plastic bags are unnecessary but it’d be idiotic for our society to try to manage entirely without them. Not to mention that plastic bag trash is mostly a problem in developing countries, not here.
A lot of the grocery chains here in the USA will recycle plastic bags. This includes not only their bags, but also almost any thin plastic like dry cleaning bags, newspaper delivery bags, packaging bags, popped bubble wrap and air cushion bags. Easy to drop a bag off on the way in.
No wonder Trump™ ragetweets at False Noise: Ingraham forgot to put ketchup on her steak!
1) in a great many places, the local electric utility frequently subsidizes fluorescent and LED bulbs; I was able to buy both at a considerable discount.
2) using them saves me money in lowered electicity costs.
3) back in the daze when ‘Merca was Great (at least according to these asshats) straws were made of paper! Widespread use of plastic straws didn’t happen until the 70’s.
Charly @ 7
Because they believe they are being ordered around by liberal “BIG GOVERNMENT” all over a made-up “junk science” threat. The same with meat consumption and straws. No one tells them what to do, least of all pot smoking hippies who care more about trees and snail darters than they should about humans. To you and I to looks ridiculous, but to the paranoid right, this is a act of defiance.
I started using CFLs in c.1990 when the price became reasonable. None of those I bought back then failed. I did have one given to me by the power company some years later fail, after working (albeit eventually with the dreaded dim-yellow-at-first disease) for c.20 years. My speculative hypothesis is those relatively-early CFLs were built like tanks but later ones were less-solidly constructed — e.g., the early ones were noticeably heavier than the later one which did fail (albeit well past it’s rated lifetime, as I now recall). Some, but not all, have the dim-yellow-at-first disease.
I switched to LEDs several years ago (so those CFLs were c.25 years old when I retired them (they are now collecting dust)). One has failed and one (rather cheap unit) came apart, but the rest are fine. The last(? known) incandescent is the one in the refrigerator, which burned out a few weeks ago… it’s a bit of a pain to replace (poor design).
brucej@28 I remember paper straws. You’d get a plastic straw with a drink in the 70s, but they still sold packs of paper straws in the supermarket. It never occurred to me that one worked better than the other, though I remember the paper straws being skinnier. It’s a very silly issue.
This woman is a step away from eating human feces live on camera.
Please, someone help her.
I still use over the air radio and broadcast tv. The LEDs I’ve bought have all interfered with reception.
None of the alternatives have all the qualities those damn plastic straws have. They’re safe in case of seizure, they’re positionable, they’re allergy free, they can be used with hot liquids and so on. I was sceptical, dismissive and simply abelist when I thought that disabled people were just making a fuss, there are alternatives and so on. Please, everybody, google this issue.
kome@9 I wonder why Democrats didn’t take advantage of the Eastwood stunt by pointing out that Eastwood is a serial adulterer. An odd choice for the supposed party of family values.
PaulBC@15 within the last few months one of the Fox News crowd claimed they never washed their hands after using the bathroom.
Nerd@19 hopefully your recycling program is actually doing well at finding buyers for the material they collect. There have been a number of reports of Canadian recycling programs having problems finding buyers for materials, such as this recent Globe and Mail report: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-wish-cycling-canadas-recycling-industry-in-crisis-mode/ Here in Saskatoon the company that runs our recycling program, Loraas, is trying to get out of taking glass, because the majority of glass ends up broken by the time it reaches their depot.
Don’t forget that the last two Republican presidents were idiots, nominated specifically because they’d “trigger” the libs. If you will trash your own country because you hate your fellow citizens, what won’t you do?
I have a steel straw that I received via a NCSE fundraiser. I was in a restaurant here in Kentucky recently and overheard a bunch of elderly men who were apparently regular FOX News listeners griping about “liberals” banning straws. Since I was about to go fossil collecting I was dressed down like most of the people in the place and sort of looked like one of the local rednecks. It was fun to use my stainless steel straw, as it visibly upset them. I’m a big guy, so they didn’t say a word.
So it has come to this, as the environment crumbles around us – any attempt to do anything at all that reduces environmental damage, ANYTHING, will be met with mad-brained libertarian outrage demanding to destroy any part of the environment they want to, because “freedom”. Or have I misunderstood something?
…they’re allergy free
As are straws made from (theoretically..) biodegradable plastics like PLA. Free from the corn allergens people seem to be upset about, anyway. A corn allergy won’t give you any more trouble with PLA than an allergy to plankton would give you with polystyrene or polypropylene*. Corn starch might be a feedstock, but any allergens have been thoroughly transformed/destroyed by heat and chemistry.
I get that people are upset about being ignored and thrown under the bus for arguably negligible environmental gain. But this particular concern is a red herring which isn’t really doing the movement any favors.
There’s a bigger issue here too, which makes me less than sure that forgetting about straw bans is really a viable answer to the problem. Straws are just the tip of the iceberg, as it were. We ultimately need to move away from a great many aspects of the destructive disposable/convenience culture we’ve developed. Packaging, transportation, all kinds of things.
As with drinking straws, a lot of those changes ultimately won’t mean much more than a little bit of annoyance or inconvenience for most of us. But as ever, my ‘inconvenience’ might translate to disaster for someone in a more vulnerable position. So we need to get used to findings ways to accommodate and ameliorate that potential suffering — make exceptions, find viable alternatives — without giving up on fixing the problem altogether. Straws are as good a place to start as any. If we can’t figure out how to stop throwing bits of plastic in every glass of water while still making a few available for those that really need them, we really are doomed.
* An allergy to one of these polymers themselves, rather than the feedstocks, is a possibility, of course – I’ve heard of reactions to polypropylene stitches, for example. But AFAIK, there isn’t any reason to think PLA allergies are more common than polystyrene or polypropylene allergies. Like I said – red herring.
What’s really bizarre about this is the stupidity of the presentation.
Why not put the bulbs in a socket instead of in a piece of meat? That way they’d even be consuming electricity, which is the actual problem.
Why not put the straw in a liquid? (Bonus points – it could have been a sugary soft drink, of the kind also threatened by ‘libtard’ sponsored taxes and bans. Not a milkshake though – I get why she’d be terrified of those…)
Why not cook the steak properly, and then actually eat a piece?
The mind boggles.
I have a silicone straw that I use. Biting down on that doesn’t hurt it or the user. It is, however, a little difficult to use when you get to the very bottom of a glass. It doesn’t move around very well.
As for rolling coal, whatever. It’s illegal here (Cheyenne, Wyoming, of all places!) and the people who get caught doing it get ticketed. I understand that many of the policemen/women who hand out tickets for that do so with a great deal of pleasure. As for me, it’s not a deterrent from riding my bike because I enjoy it. The cycling community here in general thinks it’s a penile extension. And when someone does that to me when I’m 15 miles out or at the top of a hill, me general response is to figure they’re jealous. I mean, I went up the hill under my own power, but whoever is driving needed 45 horsepower to do it. (Just so you know, I am not trying to single out people who can’t ride a bike or walk. There is a big difference between can’t and won’t, and as someone who was sidelined for years by a brain injury, I have an enormous amount of sympathy for those who can’t, but wish they could.)
JL #39, supposedly most plastic straws are made out of PPE, which lasts a llllooooonnnnngggg time in the environment. The problem is actually doing the final separation at the recycling centers (per WIKI).
timgueguen #35, I’ve neither seen nor heard anything about glass recycling problems.
Nothing like enjoying a tall glass of meat!
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ren+stimpy+fake+dad+meat&view=detail&mid=1C1A3F60A49BC3C67B771C1A3F60A49BC3C67B77&FORM=VIRE
This is well over a decade ago, but I was talking to someone about recycling in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they were talking about how hard it was to recycle glass, partially because the raw ingredients (mostly sand) are so common and inexpensive, and the glass itself is heavy, and the transportation costs can be prohibitive.
I think they were looking at adding it into concrete and such, but I don’t remember the specifics, it was quite a while ago…
Yeah I really don’t get it with the incandescent light bulbs either. They even make them in a yellowish “light bulb color” if that’s what you’re into.
Them being LED lamps, I meant to say.
@42, UMM ACTUALLY I think you mean ‘PP’. (PPE sounds like an interesting but fairly exotic polymer mostly for special purpose use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphenyl_ether)
I would have thought the biggest problem with straws is that their size and use will mean the vast majority of them don’t make it anywhere near a recycling stream at all, sorting difficulty notwithstanding. The ones from your water glass at a sit-down restaurant probably end up tossed into the food waste bin next to the dishwashing station. The ones in the waxed paper cup at the takeout place similarly end up stuffed in the same trash can as the soggy uneaten fries and the burger wrappers.
Hence the need to either stop using them — at least not give them out unasked — and/or make them out of something like paper or PLA that has a fighting chance of breaking down in the organic waste stream.
We recently moved to California, and we’re still staying in a hotel,waiting to close on our new home. We just returned from going downstairs to the bar and grill for dinner. The lovely thing about California is that the waiter will ask if you want a straw or not. We replied with “No, we don’t suck!”. The waiter loved it, but I had to explain to him that there is actually a “Don’t suck!” campaign. We now live in a town that is next to the ocean, and we understand the dangers that plastic products cause our sea life. We are perfectly happy to sip from the side of the glass. (As a disabled person, I understand the exceptions very well).
Prior to our move, we lived in Texas. I drive a Prius with disabled plates. I was often singled out by drivers of pick-ups equipped with “rolling coal”. It can be very dangerous for an already shaky and impaired driver to suddenly have a thick black cloud of smoke impairing one’s visibility.
Conservatives don’t care how much danger they cause to people, animals or the environment.
magistramarla@47
I always wondered if that was even a real thing. Every other car around here is a Prius. I have a 2015 Prius (last of the old rounded style). What kind of jackass takes fuel economy as a provocation?
PaulBC @48
Did I mention that I used to live in Texas? The jackasses there are provoked by simply seeing a Prius on the road. I’ve seen them “roll coal” at bicycle riders as well. I once read an op-ed in the paper there in which the writer opined that the only people who rode bikes were “illegals or drunks who had lost their driving privileges”, meaning that they were fair game for being run off of the road.
My Prius is a 2008. We moved to California in it in 2009, with two cats in the car. We reluctantly moved back to Texas in it, with the same two cats and a German Shepherd. We just finished the trip from Texas again, with one of the same cats, plus two young ones. Sadly, one of the older cats and my dog have passed on. My little old Prius is a trooper!
When right-wingers start to accurately reflect the caricatures we make of them, we should start to become really worried about their mental state and what they could do next.
Matt Bors: High Steaks
@50 Phrenomythic Productions
May I recommend that you take a moment and re-watch old Captain Planet cartoons and have the dreadful realization that the over-the-top 80s villains in that show don’t hold a candle anymore to the very real conservatives we have in power, both in government and in industry.
It’s a very weird moment in human history when the entire planet would be better off if genuine cartoon villains were in power instead of the current crop of people we have leading world powers like the USA, the UK, Russia, China, and so on.
timgueguen @35: Republicans have long made it clear that serial adultery is a virtue, not a vice, when it’s done by the rich, famous, and conservative.
As far as the original clip goes, Fox News has been in a 30+ year race to see how outrageous they can be on TV and still be taken seriously by their viewers. The stupid comes in, the stupid goes out. Everything’s a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.
I have not yet heard anyone say anything about banning straws. You can actually buy compostable straws right now, or reusable stainless steel straws. I’m surprised corning hasn’t come out with gorilla glass straws. I’m still mystified with the incandescent lamps. Why is it necessary to heat a tungsten wire to the point it will put out visible light, when perfectly acceptable LED lamps are available that cost a bit more to buy but have easily 25x the service life of an incandescent bulb, if not more than that. As for the meat issue, the cow methane issue is not insurmountable. Or, of course, we could shift to vat-grown meat, or everyone’s favorite, Soylent Green.
Some restaurants around here give out those biodegradable plastic straws. The big issue is that they don’t work in drinks over around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Which, honestly, doesn’t affect to many people, I wouldn’t think.
Even though Saganite was a bit of an ass about disabled people and straws, I’m thankful for it because I didn’t know why it was an issue for disabled peyote, and now I know.
Really, we shouldn’t be giving out straws anyway, unless people ask. Sweet Tomatoes has them up by where you get the drinks, and I never even think to grab one when eating there, though most restaurants just give them to you, so they’re wasted anyway. I don’t usually usr them, so I wish they’d keep it so they don’t just have to throw them away.
I’m assuming the issue with disabled people using silicone straws or similar is because they’re inconvenient and need to be remembered and washed all the time? I think over time this could just be the norm, as I’m sure caretakers need to remember other things for their disabled charges as well. I’m also not advocating for a ban on plastic straws, either. I just think we should be asked if we want them.
On the topic of the light bulbs, I’ve had CFL and LED bulbs fail, but they were the cheaper ones and all failures could be counted on one hand. I’ve broken a couple CFL bulbs, too, and lots of incandescent. The big savings to me for using LED’s comes down to the fact that they are harder to break. Plus a drastic reduction in energy consumption, meaning my bill is lower. I’m all about the bottom line most of the time; I just want other people to be able to afford what I have and not go hungry. I don’t understand how basic human decency became a “libtard” quality.
I’ve actually had worse luck with CFLs and LEDs than most people report here. I have LED bulbs that did not last out a year. Now I am wondering if there is something about my wiring or electric utility that could explain it. The wiring in this house probably dates to 1952. I still don’t see how that could make a difference. These are all the cheapest bulbs I can get, ideally at a subsidized price, but that’s not available now. I was excited about the LED bulbs and they work well when they’re in good shape, but the electronics in the base seem to burn out. Then they flicker for a while and stop working. I have lost at least 30% of them.
I still have absolutely no interest in going back to incandescent. I just wish they’d resolve some quality issues.
I must have failed as a liberal then, because this looks more like something Divine would have done in a really tame John Waters movie from the 70s.
Mildly cringey to think about, but hardly triggering. Like a performance piece by a student who had no idea what they wanted to say or how they wanted to say it.
PaulBC,
I’ve had the same problems, including with halogens. I have a newer house but suspected wiring and had it checked out. Apparently not the problem. I’m thinking poorly made products, often from China.
I mentioned interference with radio and TV. This isn’t supposed to happen. If it does, there’s a recommended number where you can report it to the FCC. Bottom line, I got scripted responses that dodged the issue altogether. That was quite a while ago, though.
@PaulBC, I had problems with the first batch of LED lamps that I have bought too, some six-seven years ago. Many went bust rather quickly – either they started to flicker, or the some diodes went bust. But then I bought a bit more expensive ones from a different manufacturer and those are keepers – five years and counting. And I can illuminate a 5×4 m room with just 3 10 Watt bulbs to a degree that I could not achieve before with 100 Watt bulbs.
I think the problem for me was the fact that I am at the very end of the electric grid, so I have relatively big power fluctuations. When I was a kid, I remember toy slotcars going noticeably faster on certain daytimes due to this. Cheapo-LEDs were apparently not able to handle that.
PaulBC@55, “I am wondering if there is something about my wiring or electric utility that could explain [frequent / rapid LED failures].”
Possibly (more on this below). Ignoring dimmers, one reason for premature LED failure is overheating. The electronics in the base produce heat which if not conducted away will fry them; hence the heavy heatsink in the base. However, that’s not sufficient on its own, the environment / socket shouldn’t let the heat build up. Not all sockets / fixtures are LED-compatible, and even those which are (most modern ones, as far as I know) may still allow overheating if in a hot or confined space with inadequate ventilation.
There are also problems with counterfeit LEDs, and concerns about the complexity (and number of modes of failure) of the electronics in the base. There are also sometimes mechanical issues; e.g., the glue may be inadequately heat-resistance (I suspect that is what happen in the one LED which fell apart on me).
The heat produced by the base isn’t anything outrageous — you can hold it in your hand provided it’s been adequately ventilated — even after several hours of operation. (Compare with a incandescent, which is far too hot to hold.)
The electronics in the base convert the rather “dirty” AC mains into the lower-voltage “clean” DC the LEDs require. Poor design and cheap components are apparently a problem (even with some non-counterfeits), and it’s within the realm of possibility a sufficiently “dirty” AC mains can cause problems even for a quality design. (In the one LED failure I had, I suspect this was the case; I’ve since moved and have had no failures for multiple years, except for that one cheap(ly-made) LED coming apart.)
re @59:
I depended on the heat you mentioned when I needed to replace the bulb in my Lava Lamp [tm]. I wanted to go LED with it. No good. Had to search diligently for a 25W incandescent, as low power LED’s seem to have overtaken the market.
I’ve noticed that LED all now use only Lumen to indicated brightness, and dropped the Lumen->W conversion number, like they did on the first round packages. Seems people no longer use W fo brightness, like when incandescent saturated the market (which is good). Now W is there simply to show how little energy the LED uses. (another good thing)
Incandescent bulbs are also still required for oven and refrigerator lights. LED and CFL bulbs just can’t handle the heat of an oven or the humidity of a fridge without failing prematurely or without the device being specifically designed to shield them from these conditions. Beyond that, and some other niche uses like the lava lamps already mentioned and some photography setups, there isn’t much reason to use these obsolete bulbs anymore. There’s even LED bulbs that simulate the transparent “filament” style bulbs popular in certain light fixtures.
The trickiest part of LED bulbs is making sure you’re using the right one. Some aren’t compatible with dimmers. Some don’t tolerate being installed in potentially wet/humid locations. Some can’t be used in enclosed fixtures. Worse still is the packaging sometimes does not make it obvious which ones are or are not suitable without searching the fine print on the packaging or bulb itself.
You know people, I’m not going to discuss the whole straw thing. Disabled people have informed the rest of us that they need them and currently don’t have any safe alternatives, so I’m going to fucking believe them. Don’t use straws if you don’t need them, but don’t act like you’re saving the planet.
I’m not going to say how I know this, but daily peritoneal dialysis uses a hell of a lot of plastic. At least three 5-6 liter plastic supply bags, at least one 15 liter plastic drain bag, about 20 feet of plastic tubing and a little plastic membrane pump. You use that much every night and throw it all away. There is no reusable alternative, and some people need it (or equally resource-intensive hemodialysis) to stay alive.
So, upshot, if people need stuff, they need stuff. It is a matter of quantities not purity or virtue. Plastic is a marvelously useful material than saves lives in many cases. We should definitely continue to use it when necessary and not use it frivolously.
ck–you need incandescents for your oven now, but they are working on a silicon-carbide LED
methuseus @#54 Gilliell may not want to say more, but I do
Look if you are not already disabled or caring for someone who is disabled I get that you really don’t understand, so I’m going to spell out for you why this is not an acceptable attitude. When you have limited energy Every. Single. Thing. you do takes some of your limited energy budget, you have to work out how to spend that budget to get the best out of life, people make judgements like “I am not going out of the house today so I will not wash myself because washing myself takes energy I could use for something fun like making dinner rather than having a ready meal. Again”. Adding in jobs like washing straws means the carer or disbled person spending their limited energy on another tedious task sapping their limited energy for tasks that give them self worth, it is not in any way something that will “just be the norm” it is in fact the kind of straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Jen Sorensen predicted this. Not that it’s hard to predict. You’d think it would dawn on those galaxy-brained alt-rightists that mindlessly doing the opposite of what liberals suggest isn’t any smarter than mindlessly doing whatever they suggest; either way, you’re allowing the liberals to decide what you think. Controlling such people is child’s play: all you have to do is tell them to do the opposite of what you want them to do, and they’ll unwittingly do what you want them to do every time. Even the makers of the Super Mario Bros. movie understood that concept. If you really want to be an effective rebel, don’t just reject what the other side is saying out of hand. Look into WHY they’re doing it that way. Maybe they’re doing it for a good reason. As Lu-Tze said in The Thief of Time,
“Look, that’s why there’s rules, understand? So that you think before you break ’em.”
Yep. I’m using one right now. Had it about two years, works great. I got it partly for the looks, but also because I needed a high-lumen (more technically, I think, high lux) bulb which wasn’t a spot. I’ve got an LED spot as well (of about the same age), also working well in its niche.
Now, since you’re all too lazy to google but insist that disabled people carefully wash silicone straw, here’s an informative video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBH0pcKzlY
I, for one, have done the googling, and I am perfectly willing to accept the fact* that there isn’t a good alternative to plastic straws for some people with medical conditions, at least not a one-size-fits-all one.
The problem is, it does not follow from there that restaurants need to continue to plop non-recyclable bit of plastic waste in the drink of everyone who walks through the door.
For the vast majority of people it is just. not. necessary.
I mean, if restaurants handed out disposable colostomy bags with every meal, it’d be much the same situation. I have no doubt that’d be super convenient if you had a condition requiring a colostomy bag. It’d be one less thing you had to worry about when going out for a meal. But it would it nevertheless be a huge waste for everyone else. And if someone came along and said, hey, maybe this is wasteful, maybe we don’t need to provide unnecessary, single-use medical devices to everyone who walks through the door, they’re not actually attacking anyone’s condition or being uncaring.
None of the straw bans being contemplated actually make the use or posession of plastic straws illegal, particularly if they’re necessary as a medical device. In proposals like California’s, they won’t even stop being available in restaurants. You’ll just have to ask instead of getting one unsolicited.
Well, everything, except, again, the biodegradable allergies thing, which, AFAICT, is made up BS.
What’s funny is that I live in the SF Bay Area, which is usually ahead on trends like this, and they still hand out plastic straws everywhere. You do have to pay 10 cents for a paper bag and plastic bags are mostly unavailable.
Being able to ask for a plastic straw and get one seems like a reasonable alternative to being handed one by default. I oppose banning them, if anyone has proposed this. I would still like to be able to buy normal or bendy straws for occasional use. There are contexts such as hospital rooms in which providing a sterile, disposable straw could make a huge difference in a patient being able to stay hydrated and not have to go back on IV. (A chemotherapy patient trying to recover from mucositis for instance.) So my guess is that no matter what, they will keep manufacturing these straws. The issue is one of waste.