For real. Everytime I get in the shower I end up having to point the showerhead away and cower from the cold water and I could have just turned it on first?
And once again, we learn that common sense is actually not that common.
And of course, we have a relevant xkcd.
To be fair this is possibly the most relevant xkcd of all time
You’re not supposed to just stand there and waste that warming-up water, you’re supposed to collect it in a watering can and put it on your plants! It’s got stuff from having sat in the water heater so it’s not the best for drinking but plants don’t mind.
This legitimately is something I’ve been looking for as I hate just running a gallon of water out for no reason.
Iirc if your water boiler supports it, you can have it circulate the hot water in the pipes to warm them up without wasting water
I remember this thread. One of the responses was from someone who thought that the beep his car made when locking the doors got quieter when activated from further away.
We had a guy at work a couple years ago, nice guy but not too bright. He’d fill his bottle from the water cooler, and always got surprised by how fast it filled up at the top. He thought the water cooler’s dispenser somehow got faster as the bottle filled up, not realizing that it’s because the top of the bottle is narrower than the bottom.
Well…by the power of the inverse square law, they kinda do, I guess.
Also probably by the power of Grayskull
I can understand the shower one, but who tf is insane enough to not use oven mitts or a rag? I’d imagine you’d take a moment to think about the possible solutions before doing something that painful
It’s an analogy, not real life.
These are /thathappened.
There is no way anyone is pulling 350°F+ items out of an oven with their bare hands.
There is no way someone grew up without a parent both demonstrating and explaining to let the water warm up first. Might as well fill a tub with cold water and sit in it, then say just add hot water until it’s comfortable. Even if the household was abusive or something and kids were told to shower cold while the water warmed up they still would have figured out on their own that running hot water first would get hot water faster.
Most people wouldn’t, but I know a blacksmith who handles hot metal all day long. He regularly pulls baking sheets out of a hot oven, but he’s got such thick, calloused hands that he can handle that kind of stuff.
Average Joe who doesn’t understand what oven mitts are? Probably not.
There is no way anyone is pulling 350°F+ items out of an oven with their bare hands.
I used to be able to do that when I was working in a kitchen. If you burn your hands often enough you kinda build up a tolerance/calluses. We used to call it having asbestos hands.
I mean…I do sometimes. Usually pizzas or things on aluminum foil. I also used to pull out noodles from boiling water to test them while cooking
Obviously I’m not grabbing 350F glass or metal with my bare hands, but if you’re very deliberate with your movements you’d be surprised what you can do without burning yourself
Not really the same animal. Foil dissipates heat extremely quickly, and I’ve pulled plenty a pizza or other item out of an oven or off a baking sheet that just came out hot when it’s on foil.
I think it’s pretty obvious that the intent of what we’re discussing isn’t someone sliding out a few hot cookies on parchment paper. We wouldn’t be having this conversation were that the case.
I mean, yeah, but you’re not suspending your sense of disbelief enough
There’s definitely people who literally have reached in, with their bare hands, and tried to pick up a casserole. There’s even people who regularly give themselves severe burns because they just straight up forget things are hot
There’s also people who don’t know what oven mitts are, what they’re for, or don’t have them. They might use a dish towel or all sorts of other wacky work arounds. I mean, you can even get by fine without ever using an oven
There’s a lot of humor to be had here if you’re less rigid in your thinking. If you try to imagine how someone could fit that description, assuming that there’s some degree of exaggeration for comedic effect
I’ve seen video of someone pulling stuff out of frying oil with his bare hands. This was made easy for him because all his nerve endings in his hands were dead because he had been putting them into frying oil, but still, I never would have believed anyone to do something that … I don’t know what to call it, callous maybe.
…that seems like it must have been faked. Even if the nerves had been burned off, that’s serious damage. Nerves are in the dermis, and if that gets burned seriously enough to make all the nerve endings dead, you’re going to have a bad time. Just because the pain isn’t being felt also doesn’t prevent further damage.
100%. I say this in jest quite a bit, but I’m absolutely serious this time - Nobody is this stupid.
“I’m working on my masters and I feel like such a dumbass…”
Never assume someone with an advanced degree knows anything outside of that degree because “they must be smart”.
I worked with someone who was working on his second PhD in computer science and the guy did not know how to print.
Literally couldn’t figure out how to click the print button.
In computer science.
PhD.
Computers.
I’ve worked in tech for almost 20 years. A big misconception is confusing Computer Science and IT. Computer Science is generally more about logic, data structures, and programming paradigms across languages. IT is generally more about the configuration, deployment and usage of technology and operating systems for end users.
There’s a ton of nuance in there, like Infrastructure or devops, where it’s about the deployment of technology software and hardware to power large technology services, which sits in the middle.
That being said, I’ve generally found that the more specialized someone is in computer science, the less they know about the operating system they use and how it works. Especially if they spent the time to go for a PhD or something.
The smartest programmer I’ve ever met is my boss, our CTO. PhD from an Ivy League school. Can write haskell on a napkin, even though our stack doesn’t touch haskell. Also doesn’t know shit about how MacOS works even though he uses a Mac, and consistently asks me relatively simple questions regarding unix/linux differences, filesystem stuff, package managers, etc. It’s very interesting to see the difference in knowledge.
Absolutely. I’m a tech, hubs is a dev. Brilliant dev, one of the foremost specialists in my country.
Can’t build a pc for shit, can’t fix a network issue, screams for wifey when the printer’s being a dick :D
Haha I’m unsure if “opposites attract” fits here, but perhaps “there’s no computer science without the computer”
nah, no opposites here, but it’s been funny watching over the years (we met outta uni) how extreme specialisation has pruned other branches. He isn’t fussed, I buy / setup/maintain all the equipment and like all BOFH I’m a raging control freak so I like he doesn’t try to play with the setup.
You can tell he is smart because he asks you about stuff outside of his domain.
Oh yeah he never has that Dunning Kruger setup I see from Junior people on the team. He knows (or finds out) who to ask and when, and always admits when he doesn’t know something. All super important qualities that some people learn earlier rather than later in probably every industry
Honestly, speaking as somebody with two different masters degrees, it’s a good idea to not assume they know anything WITHIN their degree field too, until they prove otherwise.
There is a difference between “intelligent” and “smart” is the way I like to describe myself.
I’m college educated. But I’m also the guy that took twelve years to realize that his stove had a cook-timer on it…
Anti vax nurses are my favorite.
I know mine has one, I just don’t know how to use it. Does that count?
I know I have one and know how to use it but I don’t know why I’d use it
Being “smart” and “thinking” are two very different things. You can be very smart but have no conscious thought. You can be a great thinker without ANY formal education or experience. (Calm down internet geniuses, you’re not that special.)
We might start figuring out how to get either one if we start understanding that there’s a difference.
Your brain doesn’t work the way you think it does. Your mind isn’t entirely your own. Your language influences your internal dialogue, and if you have no internal dialogue, you need to exercise that by reading a lot more and thinking about your thinking.
Famous physicist and misogynist “Surely you’re Joking” Mr. Feynman comes to mind. Didn’t even know you can’t have both lemon and milk in you tea.
I remember seeing this reddit post like a decade ago. Lol
Parenting. You think you’re doing great and you realise at times that some of the thing a you take for granted, you haven’t taught your kids.
Just because they’ve seen you do something a thousand times doesn’t mean they understand why
I remember a story of a child watching their mother cook a roast, and asked why she cut the ends off before putting it in the oven.
The mother learned it from her mother, so they both went and asked the grandmother.
Turned out the grandmother used to have a small oven and did that to make it fit.
As a parent, I was surprised at the amount of stuff kids need to be taught. Stuff that I assumed was obvious isn’t - it’s learned behaviour. And you don’t realize that it’s learned until you see your kid struggling with some trivial task.
An interesting one that sums it all up - crawling babies aren’t instinctively scared of cliffs or drops, they have to learn not to crawl off an edge. Which isn’t all that surprising except for the fact that when they start walking, they don’t carry this lesson forward and will happily walk off an edge. They need to learn it again.
As an ex kid, I only recently realised my parents taught me almost nothing. Even though I later learned a lot of very varied things, I could have started much better equipped for life. To people who chose to have kids, don’t be like my parents. It’s really crippling.
The fun part is watching your kids figure out complex and nuanced things that you never even thought about, much less understood, while struggling with those trivial tasks.
OMG yes! One of my kids I have to micromanage to brush their teeth but is like Deanna Troi when it comes to their friends. (I’m more Data)
The fact that those are the comparisons you chose to use confirms you are, in fact, more like Data, hehe
I just had to say “don’t put your chicken in your butt” to be met with “Why?”
It was the chicken that asked the why?
See also: why LLMs can seem clever and still be incredibly stupid
I’m so thrown off by our current shower which legit heats up in 2 seconds. I was so used to waiting like a minute for it to warm up, I built my rituals around that. But this one… it’s just hot, like right away. Bizarre
In fancy installs, the hot water supply is a loop, not a tree, and a circulating pump keeps the entire run hot.
That sounds like a great way to waste energy.
Someone else already pointed out that these are usually pretty well insulated systems that don’t radiate much energy, but also consider how many dozens of gallons of water aren’t being wasted by waiting for it to be warm.
Nearly all of these systems are put on timers. So they stop cycling while you’re at work or over night. They’ll often make it a part of the smart home ecosystem as well, so you can override from a smart home device or phone
Sorry, you’ve met wealthy people, right…?
It’s just dumb engineering to heat up a pipe the entire day for the 0.8% of the day you need it to be hot.
Insulation + retaining heat means it isn’t nearly as energy inefficient as you think.
They keep the water tanks heated all day, and not heating the pipes means they have to do more work as they are drained of more water to fill the length of pipe to the shower which will then lose that heat over the course the day, only to need the water heater to heat it back up again.
With enough insulation, anything can meet energy-efficiency standards. XD
You don’t have to heat it up all day. Did you just post the first “anti” thought you had without giving one minute of consideration to how modern controls work?
Have you read the previous comments? Because that’s exactly what’s implied.
If you have a hot water tank, that hot water is just sitting there getting cold just waiting to be heated up again. A circulating pump puts that hot water to use by circulating it through the pipes, which has a nice side effect in cold climates of preventing the pipes from freezing and bursting. I doubt it wastes much energy as you think.
Hot water tanks do not just “get cold”; they are fantastically well insulated. And a great way to lower peak energy usage by accumulating heating power, making it possible to use a heat pump to heat the water.
Hot water tanks are usually not that well insulated. If you want to save electricity an easy thing to wrap a good later insulation around it.
A huge amount of waste https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67i4-_sXGcQ Claims $400/year, $35/month.
Rather than just dumping the cold water down the drain?
The distance from the heater to the shower is usually the biggest factor.
Same here! Moved to an appartement so everything is closer and now I don’t need to turn on the shower 5 business days before I want to shower
I’m in a SFH but all the bathrooms are very proximal to the heater so it slaps
No one mentioned (probably an assumed thing) to turn the water on full hot to let it warm up, then move it to the preferred mix position. Doesn’t waste the cold water which will stay more or less the same temp, it’s only flushing out the cold in the hot water line. And because you have it fully on hot, it takes less time.
Or get a tankless water heater to get it almost right away. I’ve seen debates on which is a better choice when factoring everything in, and I think it’s a close tie with no clear winner, each having their caveats.
or install a circulator so cold water in the hot water pipes get back into the tank to get reheated
The water in the pipes is still cold. Tankless heaters are endless, not instant. You still have to wait until the cold water is pushed out of the pipes, same as with a tank. Tankless heaters are still installed in the same central location as a tank and the hot water has to come from that point.
In Asia these tankless heaters are in the shower room itself, when they are not turned on there’s no water in the pipe (in the part after the heating element).
Well, there’s those suicide showerheads containing the heating element…
This is true, but a lot of tankless sells advertise a feature that some have that recirculate the hot water so it’s available without the wait.
So some people assume it’s a feature all tankless have.
Most houses have a line going from the heater to the tap, not a loop, so the water just sits in the pipe waiting for pressure behind it to push it out of the tap. The cold water in the pipes can’t be recirculated. I suppose you could plumb a loop through the whole house and constantly rerun the cooling water through the heater but that kind of defeats the energy savings from a tankless heater. That loop becomes a really long skinny tank that’s right next to all of your taps.
when I was little I would wait for the water to warm up, then pull the thing to turn on the shower head. But there’s like 2 seconds of freezing water in the tube to the shower head so I would have to really quickly pull it, run back to the edge of the shower, and block it with the shower curtain. It had a 50% chance of failure and I did it for years
I learnt that there’s a bit of cold water when switching to the shower head the hard way.
Pointed it at my wife and swapped it and she screamed. Whoops lol.
…and you survived. That’s amazing. :)
I lived the same “realization moment” last year talking to a friend.
I was saying that I need to go home to wash my white undershirts as I only got blacks left (small t-shirt to wear under a shirt and not freeze to death during winter).
He asked me why so I have several colors of undershirts.
Well, black and grey for black or dark colored shirts, white for white or clear colored shirts otherwise you’ll see it behind the fabric, duuuh, are you dumb?
The answer:
Or you can wear white ones under dark shirts as well and it won’t be visible…
🤔🤔🤔😧 FFS dude, why did I never thought of that?
I wish the same were true for bras. Women’s shirts are often much thinner than men’s, so a white bra might show through a dark shirt. It took me until this year to figure out that in order to make your bras less visible under light or white shirts, you should use a skin-tone bra instead of a white bra. Blew my mind when I figured that one out.
I had the skin tone bra thing down pat, but blew my mind when I realized you can also have cute color bras that match or contrast with the outer clothes so if your strap shows it looks intentional!
You can sometimes see the white collar part, unless that’s just it being weird how it sits on me.
Depends on if you get a V neck or not.
You gan also use light grey in most cases, except almost translucent clothes.
Why light grey ? Because you can wash it with dark or light clothes, worst case it get a bit darker or lighter. And as there is almost no color, it doesn’t spill on other clothes. Moreover, unlike white clothes, you fon’t have to worry about it getting a bit yellowish with time, the color is enough to mask it.
The majority of the clothes on the planet do not bleed color anymore.
But they still exists, and unfortunately some of my white clothes are now light blue due to one of them 😅.
Yeah, new jeans and some red stuff still seems to bleed the first one or two washes in my experience.
Black probably stays nicer longer though. And if it does show at all, it matches.
Have you ever done something…this dumb?
Well, at least OOP realizes it was dumb. I’d tell them to relax and not let it ruin their evening. We’re all astonishingly stupid sometimes. It happens to the best of us.
I don’t think I’ve ever used a shower where there was no way to avoid an initial cold spray while standing in it, so it never occurred to me to turn it on first because it wasn’t an issue.
I didn’t learn until my 40s that if you exhale gently while getting water on your face, none of it goes in your nose.
I think I learnt this when I was taught swimming as a child. You always slowly exhale or at least keep the air in your nose slightly under pressure while you’re underwater, so the water doesn’t get in.
Blowing bubbles is always the first thing I taught kids when they were learning to swim.
If you do water somersaults you have to push harder when upside down since the air escapes!
