brandon

joined 2 years ago
[–] brandon@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yeah, my story is purely anecdotal, plenty of people have died from downed lines, especially instantaneous failures in high weather events. just not in my limited experience. Just want to give some counterpoints as the failure cases can be silent but deadly to the general public, unlike most other underground utilities.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

One point for above ground is that it is far easier to know when it’s damaged to the point of being unsafe for the general public and much simpler and quicker to repair. For underground, you don’t know that until there is a failure that causes outages or someone/something gets hurt.

While I have seen numerous downed power lines, I have not know anything actual hurt by them. On the other hand, I have known multiple dogs who’ve died stepping on top of electrified access points while out for walks. While this is purely anecdotal, it’s not black and white either.

Other underground utilities have more obvious failure signs to the public (smells, flooding, water damage etc) and generally have minimal short term consequences while electrical faults tend to go unnoticed until a significant failure event (i.e. power goes out or something gets killed). Our town has hundreds of reported natural gas leaks, that is take years to fix while pole repairs tend to happen within an hour of being reported with police standing by until the crew shows up.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Underground lines, when damaged can also be dangerous. I’ve known of multiple dogs in may area who’ve died instantly just stepping on top utility access points that become electrified due to damaged underground lines. For overhead lines, if it’s not down, it’s generally not a safety hazard to the general public and if it is down, vast majority know to steer well clear of them and report the damage.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

Should also check to make sure you don’t have any utilities buried in the path you want to trench. Many localities will have a number you can call and they will tell the various utility providers to flag any buried infrastructure they may have in the area.

100m is probably fine but you are at the limit of the spec. If you don’t want to deal with re-running the line if you do end up have transmission issues, fibre is better.

Probably worth double checking local regulations but most don’t care about low power lines like Ethernet. Definitely put it in a conduit though, to both protect it and make any future modifications easier. Should also cover it with a layer of different medium, such as sand, so you know when you are near it if you do need to dig it up again.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They can nest in pretty much any nook they can fit into, especially if it came with a tasty mouse snack. Doubt they would spend much time in your house though as they tend to roam their territory rather than stick around to a particular spot.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Possibly a stoat? They are long like a ferret and pretty prevalent.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 58 points 4 months ago (12 children)

Cost doesn’t seem to matter with return fraud. I recently received a “new” $6 item that had its contents replaced with a $4 item and then taped shut. Seriously, who wastes their time on this stuff?

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I could be wrong but it seems like a lot of their big name games are exclusive to their subscription service. I suspect this thing will be a brick in a couple years when the company goes under and services shut down.

At this price point, just get a switch and have access to a massive library of games, with quite a few encouraging active play.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Republicans have been foaming at the mouth about these elections for the past several months and are taking every opportunity they can to cast democrats as “stupid, crazy, communists”. From what I can tell, this is just a more mild form of it, disguising it as public education. There was no reason for him to even mention these races but he did so anyways, likely to stoke controversy.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

There is nothing here indicating that people were actually calling about the NYC mayor or Virginia governor races, but just elections in general. The politician is the one who mentioned these races, likely to throw shade on the opposite party.

Local elections are extremely common off cycle and they tend to be poorly advertised unless elections commissions and other organizations actually put effort into them. Often times, the first time many people see a ballot for such elections is on Election Day.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Yup, that’s very true just pointing out that it’s not completely stupid that people might think they might have an election today, since it’s the default day such things occur, and contact a representative about it. Ideally, we should be encouraging people to take part in the civic process instead of casting derision on them with various snarky comments, which is what this politician did and what most comments here are doing.

[–] brandon@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

There are thousands of jurisdictions in the U.S., with plenty of elections going on, beyond the big ones in the news. My city always has something to vote on each year so I’m not surprised about some people thinking they are missing out on something. I’m actually surprised there aren’t any elections going on in Kentucky, do they have all city/town/county elections sync’d up with state/national races?

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