At least they knew it was going to sound stupid.
Your electronics blows up under EU mighty 240v power lines
Found the American.
Well, that did sound really stupid.
Big if true
Coming soon:
What do you mean my US dollars aren’t accepted at any big intl. tourist locations anymore… I have to actually exchange them?
The only places I’ve found that take USD are really poor places that really want USD, and maybe Mexico. Even some of those places will really take advantage of the exchange and you get way less than what the USD is worth if you just pay with USD.
I travel all the time and tourist locations, barring the ones I mentioned, don’t want anything to do with handling USD when tapping a card or phone to pay is vastly preferred.
And in the big touristy cities in Europe, there’s so many scam currency exchanges, while if you just take the time to go to official government exchanges, you get reasonable exchange rates. The problem isn’t the locals, the problem is that you didn’t do the research and you did a dum-dum. (Also fuck the people who are scamming tourists, that’s just low.)
I realised this when I took money out of a cash machine in Tenerife.
It shows you an exchange rate and a prompt to accept. If you press yes, you get scammed with a crap rate. It’s not really clear that if you press no you still get money but at your bank exchange rate which is almost certainly better than a scummy airport ATM.
I guess it’s nice that you get scammed right out of the gate, because at least it puts you on guard for the rest of your holiday. Fuck that whole island tbh.
Always check currency in the country you are traveling to, always check approx exchange rate. These are literally just two searches and you are never gonna get exchange scammed (if you use an exchange and not change on the street from random people and get fake or valueless cash).
At the risk of being that idiot ……
I’m still annoyed at crossing a border over an international bridge and having to exchange currency to pay the toll. There’s a good argument that situation should support both currencies at that border.
And of course the currency exchange at that toll did not allow exchanging the amount of the toll. Scammy ripoff of people trying to cross forcing them to exchange larger amounts than they need
Oh no I don’t find that idiotic, that is very annoying, literally anywhere, between any two countries.
I guess the workaround is to plan ahead and do your currency exchanges before hand, but at least in the US, if you do that in cash, well now you’re a drug smuggler or something if you’re brown and/or not in the best mood.
I mean, everybody just has the ability to open up bank account debit/credit cards in multiple currencies, right?
Your bank doesn’t do currency exchange?
Not my problem, pleb, stay in your geographically confined area with a particular force of monopolized violence.
Bank currency exchange is not available if you don’t know to plan ahead, and may not be convenient ever
There’s usually a $5 or more minimum, so less than that might as well be trash. Not convenient for tolls
The only option at the border was an ATM, where you can withdraw currency, converted from your bank, but in $20 increments.
Toll booths did not take credit cards or bank cards for an exact payment. This was before electronic tolling but that still might not be a thing at borders
People like this think Trump is a genius
I know it’s difficult to tell online, but I read that as a joke post. Not serious. But it’s better for others to make fun of others for being clueless I guess.
Why would you start a joke post with “this is going to sound really stupid”?
Yeah. It always strikes me as bizarre how many people online see something that would only be satire in a sane world and completely assume it’s serious. They have no doubts. Never occurred to them it might be a joke…
Damn Poe’s Law
I feel like it should be more like “Poe’s sometimes true thing” because satire does indeed still exist. People making assumptions is the issue.
People making assumptions is the issue.
There’s assumptions involved in detecting satire from just text as well. You would just have a Reverse Poe’s law where “any extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for satire of those views without clear indicator of the author’s intent”.
Normally when people say or type things we (justifiably) assume that to be what they mean, which is why satire works much better when spoken because intonation can make the satire explicit without changing the words or saying it out loud.
I never said anyone should assume something is satire. It’s possible to just not know something and not make a judgement.
Never assumed you did :), but yes, as little assumptions is the best. But as you can already tell, it’s hard to communicate when you take no assumptions when people make explicit statements crafted to dispel assumptions, that are entirely plausible for a hypothetical real person to have.
In fact, your original statement of “They have no doubts. Never occurred to them it might be a joke…”, is in itself a pretty big assumption. Unless, of course. I assume that statement to be a hyperbole, or even satire. But if we want to have fun talking about a shitpost we do kind of have to decide on an assumptive position on the meme that can’t talk back.
So yes, you have to make some assumptions. But to me it’s pretty clear that if someone is expressing anger at a possible joke that would be messed up if not a joke, they probably aren’t trolling/joking themselves. And then even if some people were, when you see people doing it en masse, I think it’s a safer assumption to assume no one gets the satire than it is for them to see a single random thing online and then get mad about what they think it means, when there are multiple possible interpretations
No-one going to mention that they said countries and named two continents?
I didn’t realize because I am too used to it.
Because it reads like this:
“In other countries, like [those in] Europe or South America”.
No it doesn’t
Read it again, d’you really think the same person who wrote that genuinely knows Europe isn’t a country?
Coming from a 'murican, it’s safer to assume they can’t name a single country when given a map
“I don’t have an accent…YOU have an accent!!”
People in other countries use all sorts of crazy “languages”. We don’t bother with that here, we just talk normally.
Why can’t people just be normal. I am being my normal self, but other people seem different. Bastard freaks.
Language proficiencies: Common
Galactic Basic
I moved to California last year from Oklahoma. Occasionally I will say something about moving from Oklahoma and people are like, “oh that makes sense, you have a Midwestern accent sometimes”. We all sound normal to ourselves but everyone has an accent. Like the way California people say their O’s.
Midwesterners are the only people I’ve ever met who don’t think they have an accent. And I’m like “you have a midwest accent.” They’re stunned because to them it’s just a “normal” accent, and they know it must be so because it’s what the TV man talks like. Obviously I know midwesterners who know they have an accent and the TV man is trained to speak that way. But everyone else I meet and know knows their own accent and can recognize variations of it. They’re not so conscious of how they make their accent happen, obviously, since it is their own. But they know they sound different from other people
Part of that is, out side of a few regions of the Midwest that have a really unique accent.
Most of the Midwest is “nutural English”. Yes there’s an accent, but there is a huge lack of slang, regional quirks, and is widely one of the most understandable accents across every English speaking country.
It’s the “universal English accent” in a sense. It’s a large reason why call centers became so popular there. That and low costs.
Functionally Midwestern accent is in a way the English that’s so boring that the banality of it IS the accent. Lol it’s kinda funny.
It’s the “universal English accent” in a sense.
… for American English
No even when polled, British, Australian and Canadian find it easier to understand when spoken over the phone. When compared to any accent other than their own.
Again it’s the reason it’s the most commonly used accent when you need a one size fit all solution and you can’t get a local accent for every region your servicing.
When compared to any accent other than their own.
Yes…? Are you struggling with the concept of an agnostic accent? I’m talking about call centers here after all.
So, I’m from Seattle, basically, and for the longest time I thought no, I do not have an accent.
Then I learned that the reason I thought that was because well, the accent I have is basically the least distinct from the ‘General American English’ or ‘Region Indistinct American’ accent, out of all other regional accents…
With that ‘General American’ accent being what nationwide newscasters, voice actors and movie stars either developed on their own, or were trained into, for being easily intelligible to any other American accent/dialect speaker, or as just sort of a rounded approximation of ‘American’, with no specified regionality to the character.
Thats not to say the PNW or Cali or just general US West accents are all exactly the same as ‘General American’… they are not… its just that they are the least difficult to understand from a general audience perspective out of other regional US accents/dialects… or at least that is the explanation I’ve heard.
As I am aware, the main difference between PNW/Cali English and other US regions is that we have completed the cot-caught merger. Absolutely no difference in pronunciation, the verb sounds are the same… whereas in much of the rest of the US, these are different, distinct vowel sounds. We just use the ‘cot’ pronounciation for both.
Bot cot thot slot thought caught fraught not spot dot.
All the same. No rolling or bending of the first vowel into the u to make a more complex vowel sound, all just ‘bot’ or ‘dot’.
That and pop vs soda vs coke.
For whatever reason, I usually say soda, but that did make me an oddball of most people around me near Seattle saying ‘pop’… but a lot of other places in the US use soda, but also a lot of other places use ‘coke’ to refer to any … soft drink… which confuses and aggrevates my Autistic brain lol.
…
There are a few things that I remember being distinct to Californian accents/dialects as compared to Seattle:
One is the rising tone at the end of the sentence… thing.
I always called this a valley girl accent, and this is because no one I knew as a kid spoke that way… unless their family had recently moved north, from Cali.
Now though, it is more common generally in the PNW, at least in my own experience… but also that could literally be because a lot of Californians have migrated north.
Another silly, but super easy tell someone isn’t from Seattle: Their accent may be essentially indistinguishable from a PNW accent… but they always, always refer to I-5, as ‘the 5’… instead of ‘eye-five’.
No one born and raised near Seattle does this.
I-5 is the main highway that goes all the way down from Vancouver BC, through Seattle, Portland, San Fran, LA, and runs through all of those cities, so its a major reference point of conversation in all those places.
And yeah, the regional vocab difference for how people refer to it is an example of a difference.
I have a hard time understanding the people in a friends village and he lives 50km away
I guess it makes sense. I wouldn’t understand you either from 50km away.
Lemmy: We’re just a bunch of dads
And Linux nerds.
Like the way California people say their O’s
As a Canadian, it’s all I can hear when they speak.
I dated someone who in earnest believed she has no accent. She didn’t understand what could be wrong about that.
Relevant exchange from Suicide Squad (the good one with Idris Elba and Flula, not the bad one with Will Smith and Jared Leto)
I live in a country with two plug types and actually have to use a fuckload of converters
US used to be like that too. When polarized plugs first became a thing, they wouldn’t fit into older non-polarized outlets. It took decades for all those to be replaced and I’m sure they’re still out there. Somewhere
Still I have one (1) in a stairwell in my house. So far I’ve left it alone, partially because it also has a stupid piece of stair molding blocking part of its cover plate but mostly because I have never in all my years found any reason to plug anything in there.
Somebody probably originally intended it to be for a vacuum cleaner or something, but even the corded ones I’ve owned have had cords more than long enough to reach both ends of the stairs from a selection of other nearby, non-stupid outlets.
that sounds like hell lmao where
For power In the U.S. I have to use USB-A, USB-C, Lightning, cigarette lighter adapter, 110 plug without ground, 110 with ground, 220 - 3 types of connectors on those just for dryers, adapters still for mini USB, micro USB, and that’s all before we start to get obscure. Universal lightbulb plugs? Nah everyone had to fuck that up as well.
Not do we need a “special adapter” but a converter as well, as Households in the US use 110V opposed to the usual 230V.
Oh don’t worry about that, just plug in your 110V appliances and watch them run twice as fast
When I was 17 my father brought back a stereo from Japan. I was too eager to use it and plugged that directly to 220. It worked for a glorious 2 minutes. We got it working again after we replaced the transformer. Still have it and it still works fine to this day. Learned a lesson too!
It’s less of a problem nowadays where most things have switching power supplies that can handle either just fine
Oh this gets stranger.
It’s usually 120v, but I’m not going to split hairs over 10v.
So, 120v is not a voltage that is delivered from the grid… Technically speaking. Each home is given one circuit of 240v, which is usually part of one leg of a three phase, coming off of the Transformers… 120v is there because they center-tap the transformer. This halves the voltage by consequence. Inside the house the circuits are generally laid out to try to balance the load between each half of the 240v phase.
The idea is that two 120v loads, put in series, will total 240v. So power will ideally go from L1 to a 120v load, to “neutral”, then over to another 120v load, then finally back on L2.
More or Less.
120v is basically just half of what you should be loading the system with.
The center tap neutral from the transformer is to collect any load imbalance between L1 and L2 to allow for the two “sides” of the phase to be out of balance and still work.
The US “plug” ( aka receptacle ) is a NEMA 5-15R, or NEMA 5-20R (for 20A); these are designed for 120v operation using the half phase described above. Of course, you can mis-wire it and make all kinds of dangerous abominations if you so choose. There is, however, a less known NEMA 6-15R and NEMA 6-20R that is basically the same, but for 240v operation, replacing the neutral wire with L2 instead (and 15/20A respectively).
So it is entirely possible to have 240v outlets in a North American home, while still being compliant with code.
It’s actually really fascinating information when your dig into it.
i hate that all that’s a thing for you
What’s a good resource for learning about electrical engineering for people starting from nearly zero knowledge? I’d love to learn more so I don’t burn my house down if I want to, say, replace a light fixture in my house.
I’m not an EE. I apologize if I gave that impression. I just have an obsession with understanding anything I use on a regular basis, whether computers, smartphones, electricity, vehicles… Anything that does stuff, and I use it, I want to know how it does the thing that it does.
I’m weird like that.
I learned a lot from “Electrician U” on YouTube, along with a few others. Maybe worth a look. The scientific/physics side of things was more from watching other YouTubers (as to why it behaves the way it does), along with a fundamental knowledge that I learned from doing amateur radio stuff. Working in IT and having to deal with the power requirements of systems and making sure that we won’t blow a breaker under load… That helped motivate me to learn.
It all came to a head when we were deploying a network and server for a business that was still in construction of the facility. The electrician was going to run a temp line for our stuff so we could set up and be ready for opening day, and he asked how many amps we needed… I did a bit of a deep dive to figure out an answer for him, and I’ve been learning more and more since then.
Cool. Thanks for the direction. I’m curious about electrical stuff, and I’d like to be able to do some things around my house. There’s some DIY stuff online, too, involving building projects from old parts of appliances that interest me, but I realized quickly that I’d need some very good knowledge about electrical work to stay safe. It’s unlikely I’ll actually pursue the latter, but I’d like to at least know the how and why of my home wiring.
Houses in the US generally have 220v too but not at ordinary wall outlets
There’s a technology connections video on it if you’re interested in the specifics
Yes and in Europe houses generally have 400V too but not at ordinary wall outlets
A few years ago there was the possibility of me moving to the US from Germany and if I would have bought a house there, I would probably have installed additional Schuko-outlets all over the place.
There’s a technology connections video on it if you’re interested in the specifics
Exactly :)
See also any ElectroBOOM video where he travels. Though they’re a very different kind of content.
Why?
Because he makes videos about technical details like this.
And don’t call me Shirley.
For most things people bring on vacation it wouldn’t be a problem since chargers and power supplies can run on multiple voltages. It’s for things like hairdryers where you need converter. Since they are calibrated for a specific voltage to create heat. Though you could probably run them at half settings on the double voltage.
Would be great if an equally clueless European followed up with
“So I visited your country and remembered seeing this post but when I got there, none of my stuff would fit in your outlets. What the fuck?”
Take the adapter off, moron.
One of worlds longest running experiments is when an european tourist visited america and tried to boil water using a kettle and a travel adapter.
The paper published on the experiment noted that water finally reached temperatures of 63c in 2017.
I’ll be choosing an inverter soon. In the US, but considering a 240v just for the kettle.
Steam irons heat faster too, you know, just in case you need to iron your fancy shirt in a hurry before you leave, not that that would ever happen to me or anything…
Btw do you have a big solar array or what is the inverter for?
Yea, big steamer vs iron fan here. This will be for a van. A while back we aquired a mini van and through the magic of DIY it now has no back seats, a couch+bed, fold up kitchen and running water. We are very outdoorsy and like cheap travel, so we are doing some planning for potential next/future stage of life in something that could replace structural living 😉
You’ll need a massive battery and inverter to boil a kettle, that’s a lot of energy.
No more than a pot on induction. Or for that matter, no more than with propane, or friction, or pressure, or with a mini-sun. Takes the same amount of energy regardless hah.
Speaking of which, this is a pretty cool tool: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/water-heating
So for 1 liter in my case, a 2K watt inverter woth 80% efficiency across the system would take under 4 minutes to boil.
That’s 25AH of capacity on a 12v system though, so quarter of the capacity of a 100ah battery, if I’ve done my math right.
Someone from Germany or France or one of the other States should do that to take the piss.
/s
I mean, they’re right. It does sound really stupid
And these people vote…
