Devial

They are referencing the lack of isolation on the prongs for US plugs. If a US plug isn't fully inserted, it's possible for both of the two prongs to form electrical connections with the outlet, whilst not yet being fully inserted.

This means a small part of the prongs which are now at 110V potential to each other is exposed, and could potentially be touched by a child, or cause a short circuit if an object gets into the gap.

So yeah, the electrical code in the US for household plugs is just straight unsafe.

You can see the way to do it properly in this post: Notice how the two L+N prongs only have exposed metal at the very tip, this, if they're inserted deep enough to create contact, it's not possible for any exposed metal to still protrude from the outlet.

Having switched outlets wouldn't make US plugs any safer, at least not in any meaningful way.

The individual switches on UK outlets don't really add significantly to safety, they're mostly just a convenience feature, because for an electrical plug/outlet to even be considered safe in the first place, it has to be always safe, whether it's powered or not. You can't rely on people switching off unused outlets instead of doing actual safety design.

The main factors that make US plugs less safe than UK ones is the potential for exposed metal contacts with a closed connection to the outlet, the lack of internal fuse and the lack of polarisation, and, particularly in combination with the first point, the comparatively weak grip strength and protruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.

Best plug+receptor design in the world for electrical safety.

Worst plug design in the world for bottom of foot safety.

That's like a principal letting the bully keep all the lunch money they stole from someone, let the bully chose what lunch they're allowed to buy in future, in exchange for the bully pinky promising to stop bullying the victim, and then acting surprised that the victim doesn't fall on their knees in gratitude for this amazing deal

That's pretty much universally the view on freedom and rights that today's neo conservatives have.

They cry states rights and freedom when someone else wants to ban them from doing anything at all, but the instant someone else is doing something they don't like, they suddenly make up moral panics to justify federally banning those things.

That is to say, conservatives by and large don't have any principles beyond being selfish and hateful towards minoritied. Everything else, including fundamental freedoms and human rights is negotiable so long as it doesn't negatively affect them OR negatively affects the people they hate more than them. They just use terms like freedom or rights to virtue signal when it suits them, but are just as happy to drop the pretence the millisecond doing so becomes beneficial to their goals.

A good example is the free speech screeching of conservatives in the heyday of fact checking, Vs. Their tortured justifications and dismissals of Trump's blatant attacks on free speech and press today.

Or alternatively, many TERFs and their open willingness to draw support, and work together with misogynistic conservative groups and even straight up open Neo Nazis, just because those groups also hate trans people, all whilst turning around and claiming with a straight face that they're doing this for women.

The quote in the original french version is, at least iirc, let them eat brioche, so cake isn't even a good translation. More something like "let them eat sweet bread".

But translating brioche as cake instead makes the quote sound even more tone deaf and outrageous.

The ISS orbits at about 400km, or about 250 miles.

"Thousands of miles" away from earth's surface would be further than any astronaut, except for the ones on Apollo 8, and 10-17, have ever been.

Did the north not decide to abolish slavery federally until after war was already over? Because surely otherwise, the south would have fought for both of these things.

the rest of the "civilized" world was essentially keeping Germany permanently poor, living under such misery breeds a certain...psychotic world view.

Jup. There's a very strong argument to be made that had the terms of the treaty of Versailles not been so unfair and hostile towards Germany, World War II would have never happened.

Rehabilitation and reconstruction is ALWAYS the best option for the winning side of a large war to extend to the losing side, regardless of who/how/why the war started. Heavily penalising and fucking over the loser for years and years after the war is just going to foster resentment and discontent amongst the population, and make them feel (arguably, with a degree of validity) that conquering th countries fucking them over is the only way their country will see prosperity again.

I mean the layout in terms of functions is generally standardised between PS and XBox style controllers (i.e. "back" is the right hand button, "confirm" is the lower one...) it's just that the buttons have different symbols for those functions across PS and XBox style controllers.

I don't think Elmo has an ego small enough to independently even consider the idea that his sycophants might be largely fake.

Fun fact, Spam, as in spiced ham, is actually the origin of the name email spam. There's a monty python sketch where the name Spam keeps getting incessantly repeated, and based on that sketch the term spam for unsolicited digital messages was coined.