this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
572 points (98.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43963 readers
1458 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Dealing with winter. I live in the rural upper Midwest, where winter can hit -20 with whiteout blizzards, week-long power outages, and car-burying snowdrifts. I've seen too many people move here from warmer places and think "I guess I'll buy a warmer coat and a snow shovel", rather than "I should have a backup generator, a backup heat source, a few barrels of spare fuel, a month's worth of stockpiled food, and at least two different pieces of heavy snow-moving machinery tested to be in good working order".
I had a friend visit from London, (the real one, not one of the many towns in the US) in February one year. I warned him he needed heavy winter gear. I picked him up in Indianapolis. He deboarded the plane in a track suit. I pulled the car as close as I could to the terminal, and he made a mad dash for the car as I loaded his luggage. I asked him if he had any heavy winter gear, and he replied, "I'm wearing it!"
Off to Walmart we go then, I pulled up right next to the door and let him dash inside. Parked the car. Found him bewildered and lost in the women's clothes section. Took him over to the hunting and sports section to get him a real coat, and coveralls. He was much happier when he left Walmart, and asked me why I didn't warn him.
I just asked him what he thought it meant when I told him it was -26ยฐ C
He said he thought I was exaggerating. SMH
Apparently there have been issues when US and British forces have worked together before du to the "I thought you were exaggerating" mindset.
The brits have a tendency to downplay really bad situations to the point where, "It's actually quite chilly" means "We're in deep shit". I read somewhere that this caused serious miscommunications several times, because Americans didn't understand that brits were downplaying things, while brits though the Americans were always exaggerating.
Out of curiosity. How do you deal with week long power outages? I'm assuming you mean in the winter.
I'm in Eastern Ontario. We're on well water and septic. We also have very dodgy power lines out here (supposedly the lines are over provisioned in this area and high wind days can cause overloads of some kind).
We have a portable generator as well as a wood stove.