lithium fires

One has to wonder how. There aren't a lot of differences between masculine and feminine body chemistry, and why gasoline - relatively volatile low molecular weight hydrocarbons - might be imagined to be at the masculine end of that spectrum isn't exactly obvious.

And the smell of gasoline is pretty unpleasant.

I didn't notice I had my adblock turned off, mostly because I rarely visit sites on the "legacy web" that have ads in the first place.

I feel like most people under age 30 almost never visit the "legacy web" at all, TikTok, Reddit, X, and Instagram are "The Internet"

Oh! My adblock extension got turned off somehow, that explains it.

Being the "younger generation" that I am I realized I rarely n look at commercial sites on the "legacy web" that have ads in the first place, anyway, unless it's an e-commerce site for ordering something.

Adblockers don't do much about ads on social media, but I am glad people drop links to the legacy web outside social media like Reddit, YouTube and Instagram/TikTok as a reminder that it's largely devoid of content worth looking at...

Gasoline (petrol) is a bit feminine. Real men smell of diesel.

Women like guys who can fix things.

"The only use women have for engineers is to marry them."

I have a relative with a PhD in Engineering Mechanics. He doesn't know which end of a screwdriver is which.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

People who design electronics to sell have to keep current on parts and technologies and competitors. Personally, I'd find that awkward to do on a phone.

I use my phone a few minutes per day, for calls and as a camera. It's dangerous to walk around here with so many people staring at their phone and not looking where they are going.

On beautiful trails with great views and birds singing, people with ear buds are looking down at their phones and talking obvious blather.

I do notice that people walking their dogs don't do that.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

The kind of engineer who spills gasoline on himself isn't going to be great at fixing things. My wife had done a car maintenance course before she married me, but expected me to fix the car anyway - I'd had a lot more practice. I ended up doing a lot more carpentry for her than car maintenance - we could hire car mechanics, but carpenters tended not to take her seriously. Not a wise move.

There are women engineers, Those that I've known have married men.

It happens. But I've been asked if I fixed my own car at a job interview, and got the job. The guy who asked me the question turned out to be a very good engineer indeed - he'd been trained by Peter Baxandall at the UK Royal Radar Establishment (which didn't come up in the job interview).

Eek!!! That's a hell of thing to have an allergy to - its everywhere! Does it include all of solanaceae like aubergines and potatoes as well?

Back in our day there was a side reaction byproduct in the production of medical penicillin that many people were allergic to. I think my allergy is real to the medical penicillin but I'm not keen to try it again. It killed my grandfather and I was ill for a couple of weeks after being given it for the first time with a spectacular scarlet fever style rash.

I'm fine with wild penicillin strains in all the classic blue cheeses.

I can tell if I am standing near someone who is a smoker and smell vapes from about 20m downwind. It always made me wonder about how effective the various Covid containment procedures were in practice.

Vapes remind me of clutch fluid to which they are distantly related.

I can tolerate it now. I suspect that growing up I hadn't learned to deal with how sensitive my nose was to some smells.

I'm not so sure. Cheapest supplier, shortage of high quality goods, cheapest integrator and excessively tight timeline lead to trouble.

Are US ICE cars really *that* unreliable? I was only counting ones with flames or smoke still visible as I passed.

Lithium battery fires even for a laptop scale can be quite scary. The larger rechargeable bikes seem to be a big problem here. Especially after they have been doctored to go faster and without pedalling.

Specsmanship is what sells. Fast charging is very much a thing and smartphones are very power hungry. Daily cry of feed-me feed-me.

We have run an iPhone 6 battery into the ground soon enough for it to be replaced under warrantee. I am back on my wife's iPhone 6s now after my Pixel 6 bricked itself following a drop onto rocks while hiking.

Its battery is quite long in the tooth now. We had an early iPad battery swell to about an inch thickness once and a mobile phone one to ~1cm.

The UK stats are very different. This is from the UK motor insurers:

Plug in hybrid EV 1/100k Range extended EV 3/100k Petrol fuelled ICE 7/100k Diesel fuelled ICE 11/100k

That is something like a factor of 200x smaller than in the US. And there is a higher percentage of EVs on the roads here mostly newer models.

What is a bit tricky is knowing if that only counts spontaneous fire claims and not fires arising out of an RTC.

Many UK tow trucks are refusing to move EVs that have been on fire because of the risk of reignition. This poses big problems for the authorities trying to clear a motorway after a major incident.

We have called two of them in to the fire service as we went past. If you ever have one whatever you do *don't open the bonnet*.

Get out and stand well back is the best advice in all cases.

I recall one of the Hemmingway daughters marketing a boutique scent that smelled like fresh guinea pig bedding.

It may have been a joke.

I think petrol smells might be a 'guy' social thing.

RL

Nah. It has to be WD40 - engineers aftershave ;-)

It may not have been. About 20 years ago a lot of women were wearing a scent that I recognised from my work - it was the smell of a randy boar. Perhaps it was supposed to be a subliminal turn-on but it reminded me of our pig man, who rarely washed.

I wouldn't go near a real boar if I were wearing it, in case he thought I was a rival.

It is a bit dated but this was the UK insurers stats for vehicle fires:

More recently AutoCar stats for London where EVs are common:

Around here they are mostly Japanese or Korean. Or Tesla.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

They were common in Japan as taxis back in the 1990's - an attempt however feeble to make the air in Tokyo breathable again.

But I thought Belgium and Netherlands were both Diesel countries? IOW Diesel is cheaper than petrol there.

My cousin has a hybrid. I thought seriously about an EV last time around but my wife would be in a state of permanent range anxiety. With her driving the old diesel would do 800+miles on a tank, and the replacement petrol version sportier with a smaller tank will only do 400+ miles. The EV claimed range was <300 miles on a good day with a trailing wind.

What really put me off was the range limitation and a serious shortage of working EV charging points in the rural north of England.

Mostly souped up ones with limiters disabled using dodgy aftermarket kits. Several total destruction house fires have resulted. Deliveroo etc have a lot to answer for...