Fair enough. I shouldn’t be posting within 30 minutes of waking up anyway…

The problem is that people read a few things on the internet, think they’re now suddenly domain experts, and do it anyway.

That would immediately blow the fuse in the lights and/or start a fire if the two strands were on different circuits that happened to be on different electrical phases.

While I wouldn’t doubt that some people are stupid enough to do that, it’s actually summer that it’s done the most for because of storms and power outages, and people learn that backfeeding is a thing (that you shouldn’t do unless you absolutely know what you’re doing).

Well at that point all you need to do is cut a normal extension cord and strip the ends. Maybe add a switch or a button for extra safety.

In my jurisdiction, backfeeding your house from a receptacle is very illegal. Transfer switches and interlock kits exist for a reason.

For anyone wondering exactly why it’s a bad idea: Power from your generator can, if your house isn’t isolated from the grid, travel back into the utility lines and backward through the big transformer at the utility pole (so now it’s a few thousand volts again) and give an unsuspecting linesman a nasty surprise. People have died from this. It is a bad idea.

Well, here in California we’ve decided that most stores are mandated to provide “reusable” plastic shopping bags (at a cost of $0.10 each) which are more durable and made of a thicker plastic.

I don’t know a single person that treats them as any less disposable than the thin plastic bags they replaced. There is little to no information or infrastructure supporting recycling them.

I’m just glad the stores around here give paper bags if you ask for them.

You have to consider that your tone is important when trying to make a point.

It doesn’t help to call someone out in a way that’s callous and without any consideration toward how they may feel about being called out. All it does is elicit a strong emotional reaction which often results in them doubling down and being defensive of their behavior.

If you call someone out gently, and they’re not willing to listen, then you can ratchet it up a little depending on the severity of the behavior… until you reach a point where it’s clear that you’re not going to get anywhere.

So yeah, again, it’s toxic behavior to alienate a subset of Linux users when the community is already very fragmented. But your comment wasn’t just saying the behavior was shitty, it was also implying that the people who engage it in are shitty people. I understand that’s (hopefully) not what you meant, but humans tend to think that behavior==identity and it takes effort to override that. Naturally, when the quality of one’s person is in question, they’re going to be quite defensive.

As a counterpoint to all of the people saying that you’re overreacting:

They’re right.

However, I think the sentiment of your comment is valid and correct. Memes like this do ultimately serve to alienate newer Linux users.

I think people are mostly responding to the way that your comment is worded, which conveys a much stronger reaction than is necessary for something that ultimately doesn’t cause very much harm.

I think that’s what the US government is trying to do.