Turning the question around, too, it is clear why small manufacturers MUST use all the top spec parts: they don’t have Apple or Google’s brand and ecosystem of services to fall back on. Who’s going to buy a phone from a nobody brand with no services or ecosystem that also has crappy specs? Apple and Google can get away with it, and cheaper parts are cheaper which helps their profit margins. Small brands have to try hard to wow the world and get noticed. One way to do that is to compete on specs. In my opinion it’s a crappy way. But it’s a way.

Yeah being white is necessary but not sufficient.

If you had any idea the kind of info that mothers and daughters have to talk about, you wouldn’t worry about helping your son trim the verge :D

events around the world

Well that narrows it down.

Detroit is easy to hate but there’s more wrong here than how much can-do energy they wake up in the morning with. If they competed on features and quality they could never compete on price. Everything we do to keep the dollar strong makes it impossible to manufacture here.

You can probably dial that 30% down. Even if you’re really that inundated with questions and complaints about this, you can choose not to engage as much. It isn’t a good return on your investment of time, and I hate the thought of you truly paying a 30% tax on this.

What a great example. Wordsmithing for fascists is a fruitless enterprise.

I went to my first gay pride parade in 1992. It was a fucking revolutionary act. It also radiated a kind of wonder and joy that is hard to describe now. It was like lifting a veil on the world and finding a whole and better new world just sitting there underneath. It was fairly intoxicating. Maybe I’m just remembering being 18 :D

A lot has changed since then and gay people don’t live with the threat of extinction the same way anymore. But we’re far from past the need for this event. A lot of miles still have to be travelled. And even in the far future, coming out will still be a revolutionary event for the kid doing it and having a Pride event to attend will matter every bit as much to them.

So no, it’s not something we’ll ever not need. Gosh wouldn’t it be something if we could ever not need this…

I don’t have a source but I’ve read that young children can learn up to 4 languages at once, without mixing them up, before they show any sign of strain.

This is apathy. “Oh well nothing will happen so who cares?” Apathy is probably not where you wanted to end up in life. Give it some thought.

So you do care?

Yeah heart disease kills more than either but we don’t hold candlelight vigils to ban butter. Because food is a normal part of life. I know a lot of people grow up with guns, but to me, guns are weird. I don’t know anyone who owns a gun. Not that I know of anyway. I have never held a gun. I have never seen a gun, except strapped to a cop walking by. I hope to never touch a gun (or be touched by one).

I think it’s fair to say that kettles and funnels can be found in non-plastic materials. And I have to admit I’ve never seen an”coffee maker” that wasn’t plastic. I suppose a restaurant grade Bunn machine has a stainless steel basket and a glass carafe, but there isn’t anything for the home. Unless someone is about to tell me I’m wrong, which, this being Reddit, someone probably is.

Sounds like it would amount to much the same thing: you’d need some special wiring, and a kettle made to take advantage of it. No one has made that kettle.

Just curious though, since you seem to understand electricity better than I.

If it’s as you say, and all we need to do to get more energy is to raise the amps, then why do Americans still install 240V lines for laundry machines, ovens, large power tools, etc etc? Why don’t any of those just do what you said, and operate 120V at 30 amps?

You make an interesting case. I haven’t seen one of those that I liked. Just the nasty ones from the 80s that were always crusted over with scale. We do have to descale the Zojirushi often.

Starting from room temperature water to near boiling takes a ton of energy. I don’t know if keeping it hot for 8 hours takes more electricity than starting it back up in the morning.

This made me think.

It seems like it would be a wash in the end. The Zojirushi is insulated, so it stays pretty hot even in the 8 hours it’s turned off overnight. But let’s imagine it is losing a certain amount of heat called “x” per hour.

In the morning I’d have to spend 8x to get it back up to temperature. But it still loses heat even when it’s turned on. So I’m already spending the same x every hour just to keep it on.

Now let’s imagine that the insulation loses x per hour but 4 hours is enough to leak all the heat out. Okay, I’ve lost 4x. But I would have spent 8x to keep it on all night.

So it seems like it can only be a gain to turn it off for certain spells. And that is intuitively obvious, too: turning something off should save energy.

I’m also a woodworker. What do you use a kettle for out there? Mixing your own shellac or wax or something?

You can’t. You can’t use European 240V kettles in the US because of phase differences (or something - an electrician told me so and declined the job to give me an outlet even though he accepted and performed other work for me).

No one to my knowledge has marketed a 240V kettle for the US market. It’s a business idea for anyone who wants to pick it up.

My electric kettle has plastic parts. Also my pour over funnels are plastic. This is not a meaningful distinction between the two.

Yes the preference for coffee over tea is very strong and a lot of people do t drink either.

Another factor is the coffee maker use. Personally I think they’re pointlessly limited machines and they get nasty quick. But people love them for some reason.

I’d love it if someone would market a 240V kettle for the US. I’d install the 240 line for it. I mean I use the damn thing multiple times per day, more than my stove, and that has a 240 line.

Still. I’m not convinced it would make a major difference. Like I said I have a 240V induction stove and I have experimented with how fast I can boil water on that thing in a suitable pot or kettle, versus the 120V electric kettle. It is not a big difference. We’re taking a few seconds.

In the winter months when we’re drinking lots and lots of warm beverages we plug in the Zojirushi hot water carafe and have hot water all the time, instantly. It does consume some energy to keep it hot all the time, but it’s well insulated and we use a timer to turn it off at night and then on again in time for morning wake-up. Eliminates the wait entirely.