Being able to smugly utilize the thing that people always ask why you carry around is one of the best feelings there is.
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.
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
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
Much 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.
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 :)
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.
I was honestly expecting that story to be a romance
This evening on /r/fleshlight, a night of romance
Two dads, one Fleshlight
Edit: oh my
Great reminder to not just carry gear but be familiar with it before we need it.
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.
: D
I didn’t realize it was a core memory for me until this post pulled it up immediately.
It was… very satisfying.
“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.”
I have a whole electric generator and I would prefer not to own it. Where I live, electric service can be iffy at times due to falling trees. And it can sometimes a day or more for the power to come back.
The LAST bloody thing I want is for that generator to come and run. It costs real money when it does come on and that cost sucks. The only thing that costs more is freezing the house up when it’s -30 outside.
You have an electric generator? Is it self sustaining? Where can I get one?
It self sustains as long as I keep the LP tank full.
MF living in Siberia
Close. Northern Minnesota. Though thanks to the upcoming el Nino, we are to expect a warmer winter. I would really like to save some money on my heating bill this year.
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?
Don’t use my love of beans against me
Don’t use my love of
beansbeams against me
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!”
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.
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.
Is that a modernization of the Poe story by the same name or am I confusing titles?
I think technically it’s a parody of Poe’s story?
Just looked it up, it seems to be a direct hommage to poes story
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.
“A paradise built in hell” by rebecca solnit is a great book about spontaneous co-operation during disasters
Beans beans beans! I will always choose beans!
As a Kyiv resident: no, you don’t want power outages. It’s less fun after the 10th time in a week.
Yeah but check out my thick beamshots
10 times a week are rookie numbers
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?
Can we bring this kind of energy to Lemmy? Pretty please?
🔦
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.
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?
How heroic and badass did that feel? I need to learn to lockpick. And get a wife. And lock her out.
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.
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.
… And that’s how I got your mother to subscribe to the lockpicking lawyer.
People with hobbies are cool
I wish r/fleshlight was this wholesome.
Power outage at the grocery store. Big day for me.
Beamshots.
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.
The customers at the sperm bank: 😱
Not gonna lie, it was the highlight of my day haha
Edit: one too many has. It’s important to accurately quote.
People, almost exclusively other guys, will ask where you got it
I’ll let them have it. I’ve got three more at home.
From either Hank, Jackson, or Simon, iykyk
Fleshgenerators on max power.
Me, too!
It will not work here:
“Sir, This Is A Wendy’s”
but maybe here:
“Anyway, this is a Walmart”It’s plenty holesome.
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.
Dunno, seems more like a circlejerk to me.
It can be both
