I’ve got a memory where I was in a small meeting room with no windows and the power went out. One person said “I wish somebody had a flashli…” right as I clicked mine on.
I’ve had a little single AA Fenix in my pocket for almost two decades now… Comes in handy more often than you’d think.
… But I also always forget phones can do light as well. That said, I’m not shoving my phone down in an engine bay to get a better look at wiring, but that $15, 20 year old flashlight, sure.
I guess sign me up for flashlight crew.
One person said “I wish somebody had a flashli…” right as I clicked mine on.
I came in my pants a little just imagining the perfectly-timed ego stroke. In my mind, the click of the flashlight is immediately followed by a moan.
: D
I didn’t realize it was a core memory for me until this post pulled it up immediately.
It was… very satisfying.
“It’s your time to shine.”
“Other people will look up to you and will be able to tell the time.”
“An enlightening experience.”
“A bright idea, if I may say so myself.”
“With great brightness comes great visibility.”
“Your ability to illuminate a situation is truly outstanding.”
“You are the light at the end of my tunnel.”
“Don’t take this lightly when I say you’re brilliant.”
Provide a means for people to charge their phones = Instant Hero.
I guess I can’t compete. :(
…oh, wait, what’s this in my pocket? A brand new pack of gum!?
How the tables have turned. ANYBODY WANT A PIECE OF GUM?
Ive said it before: do you want to be the grumpy, antisocial prepper that eats beans in his (yes, almost exclusively his) bunker until radiation poisoning finally gets him?
Or do you want to be the hero of the neighbourhood, who has a solar-powered stove to heat up the baby milk for cute single mother next door?
Don’t use my love of beans against me
Don’t use my love of
beansbeams against me
You’ve hit on my bugbear with most post-apocalyptic fiction: pretty much universally humans have shown that they will tend towards co-operation when placed in situations of hardship. But most writers, game designers and preppers want you to think that when civilization collapses everyone will be like “there’s no rules any more! I can murder whoever I want and take their stuff!”
There’s a Cory Doctorow short story, “The Masque of the Red Death”, that’s exactly this: a bunch of rich, ultra paranoid preppers get together in a bunker after societal collapse. They’re all incredibly selfish and eventually turn on each other. Meanwhile, everyone else cooperates and gets along just fine to survive.
Is that a modernization of the Poe story by the same name or am I confusing titles?
I have been in a flood that turned the land into a lake, horizon to horizon. Densely populated. Utterly devastating. The railway was elevated enough to get between two mid-sized cities, and on the 12km trek I saw an amazing amount of compassion, mutual aid, and casual, natural-feeling grassroots organization to just get on with life.
I have been in a few crises and minor disasters, come to think of it. I think generally, most people like banding together and helping out when shit gets crazy.
Beans beans beans! I will always choose beans!
Can we bring this kind of energy to Lemmy? Pretty please?
🔦
Same with screwdrivers and my trusty pouch of cables and adapters. Always a great feeling to surprise someone with a solution when they didn’t even expect one.
I humble brag about my backpack being a bag of holding for everything I may need for any situation and, yes, yes it is a good feeling.
As a Kyiv resident: no, you don’t want power outages. It’s less fun after the 10th time in a week.
10 times a week are rookie numbers
Yeah but check out my thick beamshots
People with hobbies are cool
Werid that guy is carrying around an actual flashlight. Modern people just use their phones.
The flashlight/phone debate reminds me of the multi tool/knife debate. Do one thing well, or 20 things okay…
Modern flashlights are bright AF in a decently small form factor. This isn’t a 5D-Cell Maglite he’s hauling around.
There’s always a trade in EDC for practicality, reliability, weight, size, etc.
A decent modern flashlight with an 18650 battery is a nice pocket sized light that’s streets ahead of anything a phone could do, and a lot of them can also be used as a USB power bank, so you can get some other use out of it.
There’s even little (tiny) lipo rechargeable ones these days that are stupid bright. I’ve got an OLight OClip on my backpack that’s very small and way brighter than I’d ever need for simple “find something in the dark” purposes
I’m having trouble thinking of something to compare it to size wise … Maybe 5cm x 2cm x 2cm?
I don’t carry the 1200 lumen surefire edc2 around anymore because I just don’t ever need a mini sun.
… Shit, am I a “flashlight guy”?
But the flashlight of your phone doesn’t have the ability to take down a fighter jet when pointing at it.
My wife thought it was dumb when I picked up a lockpick set to play around with. Didn’t think it was so stupid when we accidentally locked our keys inside when house sitting and I actually managed to pick the lock.
How heroic and badass did that feel? I need to learn to lockpick. And get a wife. And lock her out.
I’m a firefighter\emt. I’ve gotten to pick Sooo many door locks over the years and it’s saved a lot of people a lot of money and headache for it.
Anytime someone has “fallen and can’t get up” in their locked house, but says they aren’t injured, I’ll pick my way in, instead of us having to break a door or window just because they need help off the floor.
Double edged sword. I was into lock picking as a teen. When my family found ourselves in the same situation, I leapt into action and got the side door open in no time.
My mother freaked out at how easy it was to get into our house without a key, and went on an anxiety fueled journey of kitting the house out with extra security. It wasn’t a bad idea to up our security, but I felt horrible for stressing her out by trying to do a good deed.
… And that’s how I got your mother to subscribe to the lockpicking lawyer.
I wish r/fleshlight was this wholesome.
It will not work here:
“Sir, This Is A Wendy’s”
but maybe here:
“Anyway, this is a Walmart”Power outage at the grocery store. Big day for me.
Beamshots.
That moment where you pull out the fleshlight and it makes you a hero. People, almost exclusively other guys, will ask you where you got it and you get to talk about it. This. Is. Your. Moment.
Not gonna lie, it was the highlight of my day haha
Edit: one too many has. It’s important to accurately quote.
People, almost exclusively other guys, will ask where you got it
I’ll let them have it. I’ve got three more at home.
From either Hank, Jackson, or Simon, iykyk
Fleshgenerators on max power.
It’s plenty holesome.
I mean, looking into it (you can thank me later), it seems like a great support group!
Very little friction to speak of. I’ve seen some communities that just felt like a square peg in a round hole and this one definitely doesn’t have that vibe.
Dunno, seems more like a circlejerk to me.
It can be both
I got the Olight Ark Pro ultra in limited edition Zombie color as my edc light. I absolutely love that thing. Gets more use than my pocket knife. It’s just the best.
Honest question: how? When?
I use my phone for light, some times the screen alone, since it’s enough.
Same with the knife, I almost never find myself needing a knife…
My everydaycarry is a Fenix AA, about 10 years old.
Uses today included: checking on the henhouse, and going out back to smoke a joint, and I stuck it in my mouth to hang the hummingbird feeder. Before dark, I used it to help me vacuum in a hurry before guests arrive (lay it on the floor to highlight everything needing a cleanup), to look into a corner of the car trunk, to poke around in the storage room briefly, and at work to better look into the guts of a computer.
My swiss army knife got used a few times today, too. Different blades and tools. I’m semi-rural so dont leave the bedroom without those two items.
MFW the roofers came to inspect a leak a couple of weeks ago and the kid turned on his phone’s light before climbing into the attic.
Me after lending the kid my 3000 lumens pocket flashlight.
There’s an entire horror game about having only your phone flashlight during a power outage.
Actually, it looks like there are a few.
There’s an entire horror
gamegenre about having only your phone flashlight during a power outage.
I get it. This summer I bought a battery bank and portable solar panels so I can a) take some load off a circuit that is overtaxed in the summer and b) be able to very slowly charge the car in the event of an emergency.
A month after getting it, we got a notice on our door that they were working on poles and our power would be out for 8 hours. I kept my whole homelab, and refrigerator running the whole time and the entertainment center running most of the time. Any thought that I spent too much, given the probable utility, immediately disappeared. I wouldn’t call it pride in my decision, but it came damn close.
You can charge your car with a powerbank?
People will ask you where you got it and then you get to talk about it!!
That happened in other responses!
You have my exact use case energy wise (homelab + fridge). Can I ask what battery and panels you got?
I was able to get a good deal on a lightly used 3.6kWh EcoFlow DELTA Pro and this ZOUPW 480W panel. I got 380 - 395W through the July afternoon, but I’ve since learned I didn’t have the panel at a good angle given my latitude and time of year.
How do you run into a battery like that lightly used if there isn’t anything wrong with it? Seems weird that someone would get rid of it to me?
I built what is basically a smart plug, but it uses 4G connectivity instead of my standard WiFi. The idea is that if my home network screws up and I need to reboot my router and modem, I can still do that remotely. There have been 2 times in my life that I really wished I had this set up because my Plex server was down while I was traveling. The ideal scenario is that I never have to use the thing, but whenever I see this flashlight post, it reminds me that I kinda do want to need it just once.
I’ve always wanted a backup network connection, no matter how slow. But i cant find anything cheap enough to be worth it. What service do you use?
It’s not a fully redundant backup network. It’s a microcontroller called a particle boron that has a 4G antenna. I bought it because there’s no monthly connectivity charge within a certain usage limit, and I’ll never go anywhere near that limit with this use case.
I learned about it from this cool YouTube video where a dude uses one to build a pizza compass.
Only works in North America :(
Dude, this is sooo cool! As a Ninja Turtle, I LOVE this!
Excellent find, thank you
Really intrigued about the particle boron with no monthly fee.
I bought mine years ago for around $40. I think they still sell it but it costs a bit more now. They have cheaper boards, but I don’t know if those have the no monthly fee thing. It’s a very cool little dev board, but be warned! Unless they changed it, there’s no reverse polarity protection on the battery connector! It uses a regular jst battery connector which can physically only plug in one way. I foolishly assumed this meant that it couldn’t be plugged in with reverse polarity, but it turns out there’s no established “correct” polarity for that connector and the battery I had fried the first board I bought. If you buy one, make sure you double check the battery polarity!
