electruleician (piefedimages.s3.eu-central-003.backblazeb2.com)
 
Picture of a plug and a outlet captioned: "It's simple. Male. Female. Not both. Not a 3rd option. Any questions?" Below:"[laughs in Electrician]" Picture of various different plugs and outlets

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[–] 183 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Meanwhile french plugs and outlets :

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Not gonna lie.. my first reaction to that in this context is "two in the pink one in the stink". Now I feel dirty, thanks, Beryl.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Weird. I find it really easy to just bend the ring finger but fairly hard to bend just the middle finger. Am i a freak?

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  • [–] 189 points 1 year ago (24 children)

    It's the classic:

    "It's grade school biology!"

    "Okay, but when you get to middle school..."

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  • [–] 76 points 1 year ago (23 children)

    It's middle school biology!

    Okay, but when you get to high school...

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  • [–] 61 points 1 year ago* (22 children)

    It's high school biology

    Okay, but when you get to college.

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  • [–] 57 points 1 year ago (21 children)

    It’s collegiate biology.

    Ah, someone failed biology in college.

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  • [–] 52 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    As someone who has experienced Post graduate biology, at that point explaining some things does reach the level of "trust me bro" when speaking to people that have no baseline biology knowledge.

    Do you want a series of 1 hour lectures and a few thousand pages of reading material? No? Then you just need to trust the experts.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I'll settle for some unlikely and interesting bits out of context, such as the existence of single-cell dogs.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm not a biologist myself, so this explanation might be full of errors, but the gist of it is:

    A dog got cancer. Cancer tissue is a part of your body with the same genetic information, just growing uncontrollably, right? Well, one of the cancer cells got separated and somehow learnt to survive on its own, reproducing asexually and started a lineage of a new single-cell organism that still exists to this day.

    This single-cell organism has the same DNA as the dog. Genetically speaking it is a dog.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Cancer tissue is a part of your body with the same genetic information, just growing uncontrollably, right?

    I have no idea. Don't ask me to verify this stuff!

    one of the cancer cells got separated and somehow learnt to survive on its own, reproducing asexually and started a lineage of a new single-cell organism that still exists to this day.

    This single-cell organism has the same DNA as the dog. Genetically speaking it is a dog.

    I regret asking!

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Funny enough I didn't have to take biology in college

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Most people don't?

    I mean why would anyone not studying biology (or related fields) have to take biology in college? Or is that a US-American thing?

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

    It's a common general education requirement for college in the US, yeah. Biology, physics, psychology, economics, English/writing, math, etc. are often all required, or at least a selection of most of the discipline-intro-level courses is.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Huh, that's weird. Isn't highschool sufficient for general education?

    Thinking about it, it might not be. I've just checked and at least in Germany a US highschool diploma (including passing tests like SAT or ACT flawlessly) doesn't (generally) qualify you for entering university here. That is, you are literally prohibited by law from enrolling.

    I'm genuinely glad this isn't part of university education here. I mean, I'm attending lectures because I have interest in a certain subject - not because I want even more general education after finishing secondary education.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    Well another major wrench in the system is that because education is largely regulated by the states rather than the federal government, they can have very wide degrees of variance between education quality, oversight, and quantity of subjects studied.

    This can be good (for instance, as a Californian, I was given the opportunity to take a 4 year engineering course series in high school that helped propel me into studying Electrical Engineering right now in college), but can also be bad due to negligence by the state to maintain and audit schools, along with issues of content erasure or censorship (Texas and Florida being the most blatant examples).

    Additionally, this can lead to the "Name school prestige" problem where employers largely focus on students who graduated from elite colleges or universities with higher barriers of entry (Money) and reputable quality, while neglecting students who may have undergone the same rigorous studies at a school that's not as well known. (With students only holding a High School diploma left in the dust)

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    The issue isn't that states are responsible for education. Mostly.

    Germany's constitution prohibits the federal government from nearly everything relating to education as a defense against a possibly fascist federal government. So much in fact, every time the federal government wants to subsidise anything - even as simple as aiding in school renovations - a constitutional amendment has to be passed.

    The reason it works (for the most part) is because of the Kultusministerkonferenz - the conference of ministers of education. While there are still somewhat significant differences between the states, they have standardized vast parts of education amongst themselves. This ranges from mandating the teaching of English as a second language to outright changing German orthography in 1996.

    As a result, basically all universities in Germany have similar prestige. Sure, some of the larger one's are better known but you have pretty much free choice where you want to study without hampering your future employment. The exceptions are private universities – everyone will believe (for good reason, may I add) that you basically purchased a degree and are incompetent.


    Though now I wonder: Does the US actually have any voluntary body of states that makes standardized decisions for anything? Like education, justice, police, etc. Or do you states insist to do everything their own way because talking is communist or something?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    The US federal government does have some oversight and regulation of schools (largely through funding programs such as the school lunch program - fun fact, only exists nationwide because of the high rates of malnutrition for WWII draftees), but because states contribute the overwhelming majority of funding through property taxes, they tend to have most of the sway on what happens within.

    The role of the federal government in education (on paper) is to step in when students' rights are being violated in things such as discrimination (most notable during the desegregation and activist movements during the 60s/70s), but a lot of those protections are being dismantled by the first, and now second, Trump administration (largely by de-fanging the Department of Education).

    This caused states to start implementing their own standards and working together to try and push back against societal backsliding and censorship/erasure (using my home state of California again as an example, having robust LGBTQ+ protections in curriculums and safety, alongside active aid programs for students in need). While I don't think there is an active "cross-state standard" for graduation and employment, some organizations outside of government do have standards that employers rely on (such as certifications). The emergence of the "Pacifica" bloc of states to try and collaborate on legislation and reform (California, Oregon, Washington state), may be the first of its kind towards what you're describing.

    Edit: typo fixes

    Edit Edit: Also, private universities in the US (along with prestigious state colleges like MIT, California Polytechnic(s), and Texas A&M) are usually held on a pedestal compared to normal college graduates (although college graduates from any school are more preferred over High School diplomas) usually because of their very rigorous academic requirements to get in compared to standard colleges, since money alone won't carry you to graduation (you WILL get kicked out if you aren't learning anything).

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    outright changing German orthography in 1996

    This is wild. What changed?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    A couple of things to make German more consistent.

    Most notably, the use of "ß" (the sharp s or sz [pronounced es-zed]) was adapted. Words with a short vocal cannot be followed by an "ß" now and have to be followed by an "ss".

    Some words affected:

    that: daß -> dass
    castle: Schloß -> Schloss

    This rule was in use in Austria-Hungary from 1879 -1901 by the way.


    Another change was allowing the use of triple letters for combined words:

    For example:

    Ship journey = Schiff + Fahrt => Schifffahrt ≠ Schiffahrt (old)


    There were a couple more changes with some exceptions for well-established words & some of the more controversial changes were retracted in 2006 but all in all it was a success.

    The Wikipedia article does a better job at explaining some of the detail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1996

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  • [–] 84 points 1 year ago

    Americans having a conversation about sexual orientation

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  • [–] 71 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    It's simple. Humans aren't cables. Any questions?

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    They're more complex than cables. Not less.

    Did you know under the right conditions you can urinate from your belly button?

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  • [–] 67 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

    Fun fact, the plugs used in Europe are intersex.

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  • [–] 53 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    US has those too, theyre 480v usually

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    fucking yikes.

    that things safety feature is "anyone with intrusive thoughts has long since been eliminated from consideration"

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  • [+] 40 points 1 year ago (8 children)
  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (7 children)
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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It really isn't, it's the scientific term for a feature in a whole bunch of animals...

    Like holy shit context matters, and I don't mean that in a "it's fine if it's not meant as an insult" way, because people have a right to ask to not be referred to a certain way regardless of intent.

    But also the tumblr links ask me to log in so I can't tell if they would reveal this as sarcasm or they have an actually convincing argument.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I assume you mean the "h" word I used. If that is a slur than I apologize, I did not know. It is a common industry term for genderless electrical connectors.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I appreciate your civil response. So, this word has been used as a slur against intersex people (people born with or who in puberty developed genitalia or sex charasteristics differing from the concepts of 'male' and 'female') since the middle ages and has had a long history of violence, such as forced genital mutilation and infanticide, behind it. It often is conflated to mean someone or something possessing both a penis and a vagina, who is typically capable of both impregnanting and becoming pregnant. (it should be noted that this does not occur in humans without body modification!) Because of this, the h-word was later (19th or 20th century iirc) used by scientists to describe cosexual animals and plants because someone was too lazy to come up with a new term that didn't have truckloads of baggage attached to it. Thus leading to what we're talking about.

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    [–] 58 points 1 year ago (11 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Can I ask, what's the (ill-advised) use case for this?

    I don't know anything about electronics but I readily believe this is a dangerous cable

    But what I don't get is what people want it for. I've never been in a situation that calls for this

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    They can be used to hook a generator to your house if your power goes out, but people will use them for things like if they strung up Christmas lights backwards so 2 female ends are next to each other.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    It allows you to move power from a live circuit to a dead one by connecting the outlets between them. The most common use I've seen is to easily hook a gas generator to a household circuit during a blackout.

    But yes, they're very dangerous and there are less-stupid ways to hook up a generator that won't make tripping over a power cable lethally dangerous or risk burning down the house by bypassing the circuit breaker and overloading the wiring in the walls.

    But this one is popular because it can be done very quickly and easily with minimal supplies.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    they exist and my coworkers kept buying them from somewhere and I never trusted them not to kill themselves so I did the one underpaid above and beyond the boss didn't deserve by fixing the idiotic wiring

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    When I was a kid our electricity got cut (yes we were poor). We found an outlet with power for some reason. Must've been wired to another unit in the 3 family home.

    So my moms boyfriend went out to the hardware store and made this cable. Then plugged in the working outlet to a nearby dead one and we got power again...

    I don't remember how long we ran that but nothing exploded.

    If I recall he was from another country and they did this all the time across houses when someone lost power or hooking up gas power generators.

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  • [–] 55 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (16 children)

    Most circuit boards are an absolute pride parade. You have your male to male/female to female connectors, MtF/FtM transformers, master/slave setups, multiport adapters, splitters, switches, docking, etc

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Master/slave terminology needs to die off. What a blatant callback to slavery times.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I quite agree. Personally I use Main/Secondary, I find it does away with the problematic terminology while needing no changes in acronyms.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Eh, I think master is used (AFAIK) unproblematicly in other contexts like a master key, recording master, and master pattern. Converting it to "main" seems like a change or loss of meaning, but the problem may be that there is not really a consistent meaning across electronics usage to start with. I think "secondary" has some connotation of filling the same purpose or type as the primary, which doesn't really fit for m/s usage. Master/sheep is my most similar option that keeps the "m/s", but it feels awkward enough to draw attention to what it replaces. Could just do master (or main) and sub, where "sub" could mean substitute, subordinate, subscriber, [submissive,] etc. as needed.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I like parent/child. Add something? Parent adopts. Remove something? Parent abandons, leaving the process or component with trauma that will require years of therapy.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Another example where this argument falls flat is spaceship docking connectors, which are genderless so they can all dock to every other one.

    In space being heteronormative is less useful.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    now I'm interested, any recommendations too learn how every work?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Unfortunately, it's difficult to find a good shot of the docking adapters in nomal docking videos. Scott Manley has a bunch of good shots in this video, and I found this fantastic video showing the docking process in detail.

    Or read the wiki on the International Docking System (IDS), or spacecraft docking systems in general.

    Unfortunately, the IDS isn't androgynous right now, the passive and active sides are slightly different. Androgyny is planned for a future version.

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