repost: https://hexbear.net/post/2052540
My most reactionary opinions all stem from selfish people being annoying as hell in loud ways.
Vehicles (often illegally) modified to be louder than normal solely to be annoying is probably my top one.
The other worse noise in the world is the near constant droning from 8am-8pm in suburban areas of lawnmowers/leaf blowers/edgers/etc. Everyone individually mowing their individual lawns with their individual lawnmowers on their individual schedules. Lawns are the stupidest fucking things on earth. Insane waste of resources and a huge source of annoyance for literally everyone who has to exist around them
Hate. Let me tell you how much I have come to hate the leafblower.
Seriously just use a fucking rake, I like using a fucking rake, I like sweeping, I like the silent meditativeness involved in using these things and getting the job done slower, who gives a shit? It’s not a job worth doing and it’s certainly it’s not worth the sonic enshittification.
Or at the very least, don’t use it in the early morning on a weekend. “Early bird gets the worm” fuck you you’ve gotten the weekday we all have to slave away at 8 in the morning despite our circadian rhythm, let me have two days were I don’t have to wake up at 7 in the morning.
Some guy was cutting grass in my neighborhood at 7:30am the other day.
I really fucking hate everything sometimes because on one hand I kinda know if I went out there and acted like normal person and was polite enough and said “hey, man… it’s 7:30. Why? Can’t this wait until maybe 9 or 10am?” he’d probably just say sorry and sure for next time. Because a lot of people being assholes are just oblivious or not thinking at all in my experience.
But it’s one of those annoyances that’s so temporary, and so small yet seems so big at the moment. It feels obvious to me that a person should avoid making loud noises at 730 or 8 and I think I end up getting into a spiral of “it’s not so much the individual act, it’s the fact that I have to go outside and explain to another human that he’s basically running a vibration, ear-fucking machine outside my window while I’m sleeping or otherwise in a “peaceful” state of the day.” Like if I ever made loud noises at 730 I’d feel ashamed for the entire day. It’s incredible to me that other people apparently totally lack this ability. I wonder how they’d feel on the receiving end of the annoyance, but I also have found that some people also don’t care on that end of things which is wild to me. Like people who can live in apartments and have a car alarm go off daily and just ignore it. I have met these people. And I’m just like holy fuck I guess you either develop a part of your brain to fully not hear that or you end up on the news. Shit’s crazy to me.
I suggested to people around me to switch to battery mowers , which had a reputation of sucking ass many years ago that its never managed to shed, but one guy caved and bought a Chinese egopower and the rest saw it be better in noise and power and also ended up getting similar ones. Now I can enjoy weekends without the constant 2 stroke drone of gas mowers. Also less exhaust fumes in the air which is nice.
Doesn’t solve the issue of wasting this giant plot of land that could be used for native flowers or gardening or growing herbs and veggies, but its better than nothing.
I regret not getting an electric mower. Definitely will when the next time comes. I got all electric for everything else. I picked up a bunch of dewalt outdoor stuff during some sale years ago because I was in “battery ecosystem” with their drill and impact driver. I was highly skeptical, but i got the trimmer (use it for edging too if I give enough shits… which is like once a year) and it’s literally better than any gas powered trimmer I ever used for my parents as a kid. Those pieces of shit spewing burned oil in your mouth… this thing is nearly silent except when it’s chopping the shit out grass. I have some of 2A batteries and one of them is enough for me to get all the way around my fence and other places. I got like a small tree branch/bush trimmer too which works great for the intended purpose… don’t try to cut down saplings though… I got an electric leaf blower to clean dirt and grass clippings from my walking areas. It’s definitely loud as fuck but still not nearly as loud as a gas engine. Still just as powerful.
That’s what honestly surprised me because I had little experience with electric replacements for traditionally 2 stroke lawn stuff. I expected it all to kinda work but mostly just be frustrating and it’s really not. So when the mower starts shitting its ass I’ll have to do some digging and find a good electric replacement and be done with small engines forever hopefully. Not to convince the “pros” who have riding mowers the size or a small car just to mow lawns the same size as mine… at 8am, on a Saturday. Shit like that really makes me understand Rand Paul’s neighbor and that whole incident.
I can practically guarantee those large riding mowers could be converted to electric. But then the issue would be converting the overcompensating suburban lawn care company owner (not the poor asshole cutting grass in full sun all day) to electric because it’s “gay and for pussies.” That’s the general response or vibe I get when I tell people I’m planning on covering my roof in solar panels. One guy literally said “you’re into that… solar stuff, huh?” Like a Hank Hill response. “I sell non renewable produced electricity and non renewable electricity accessories… That’s how you can know I ain’t gay.” I always have to tell people like “why do you give a shit what produces the energy? It’s cheaper and you don’t have to be cucked to an uncontrollable unregulated electric company.” “Yeah, but solar sounds gay… and Chinese…”
You know what the true test of strength and potency is? Not using any external supply of energy to do the job.
As a bonus, it costs zero in gas/electricity, motor doesn’t wear out, battery doesn’t wear out, basically cannot malfunction.
This post was made by rotary mower gang
My top concern in switching to electric lawn equipment is removable battery storage in the winter, and battery degregation/range concerns.
I bought a used 4 stroke lawnmower from someone moving away, and it mows my whole lawn.
Considering the rate at which my laptop battery deteriorated, I don’t think the lawn mower battery would last 2 years if I want to do my whole lawn at once.
Electric replacements for 2 stroke stuff is definitely way better, I love my electric trimmer/edger. It’s easier to charge a battery than mix the oil/gas and smell all that purposely burned oil.
I hope you live somewhere you can sell that solar energy back to the grid, batteries are the worst part of electrifying stuff. I wonder if anyone’s built a water tower in their backyard for energy storage. Pump it up during the day, release the water down into a cistern at night.
Btw those DeWalt strimmers can develop a common fault eventually. I took one apart for a friend after it started cutting out. I took the bottom apart and cleaned it all – no fault down there.
It’s up in the handle. There’s a connection between two blue cables. It lays next to what looks like a transformer. So it gets hot and melts the plastic coating for the connection. I’m still trying to figure out what to replace it with. Probably solder and heat shrink. Maybe a metal crimp? Another plastic connector block well probably just melt again. I just need to borrow or pick up a soldering iron from somewhere.
Anyway, thought you might like the info on case yours starts cutting out. This one was cutting out here and there for a couple of weeks before it stopped completely.
As for the mower, I’m no pro but when I rent somewhere with a lawn I use a hand push mower. It’s quicker, easier, and results in better grass than an electric imo. Even with bigger lawns tbh. They’re also practically silent and while you might run out of energy, it won’t. I find they’ve got their own momentum, though, so it’s not really any more difficult than walking up and down with a non-self-propelled gas mower. Something to consider.
But then the issue would be converting the overcompensating suburban lawn care company owner to switch to electric
I’m surprised they don’t decline on the basis of battery charging. The batteries work for individual home owners, you can usually do your single-occupancy-home yard and charge the battery for next month or w/e, but these companies do apartments, businesses, highways, they might being doing yards that can’t be done by one person, or on one battery, or they might be doing 12 yards in one day.
I don’t know the logistics of switching from “fill up this portable gas tank at the start of the shift” to juggling batteries and charging from the back of a truck, you’ll probably need to be able talk numbers to them that debunk the presumptions they will have about the upfront costs of switching hardware (progressively or all at once) and waiting around (unpaid standing around) for batteries to charge.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The other worse noise in the world is the near constant droning from 8am-8pm in suburban areas of lawnmowers/leaf blowers/edgers/etc. Everyone individually mowing their individual lawns with their individual lawnmowers on their individual schedules. Lawns are the stupidest fucking things on earth. Insane waste of resources and a huge source of annoyance for literally everyone who has to exist around them
every week my complex does their landscaping starting at like 7-8am (no noise ordinance against that apparently!) and then the neighboring complex does it the next day. definitely love to not be able to sleep with the windows open when the weather is nice.
This is more of a systemic critique than individual. I also have to mow my lawn, etc. Having wild growing grass and weeds everywhere would also suck. Ideally, I suppose, you bulldoze all this shit away, build high density, high quality apartments where people all have private areas without disturbing or disturbed. And there would be large public green areas, maintained by unionized city workers on a regular schedule. Lawns are kinda like everyone having a tiny but much shittier park. All this stuff just feels normal because we grew up around it
Vehicles (often illegally) modified to be louder than normal solely to be annoying is probably my top one.
I absolutely hate that one. Why do you need to remove the thing that makes your motor make less noise? You’re in the middle of the city! The amount of absolute lack of brain cells needed to do that is astounding to me. They think they’re cool! They think people look at them and think “wow what a cool guy!” They do not understand people think they’re losers, it’s wild.
People that work nonstandard hours have to deal with this stuff every time they try to sleep.
The real solution would be to have high quality insulation that prevented neighbors from bothering one another when they do normal things like watch a movie or have a party. And to minimize nonstandard hours jobs. But that would inconvenience the land leeches so instead we get to fight with each other.
Had a neighbor that almost got me evicted just because I work swing shifts and don’t get home till 11pm and sometimes I just wanna talk to some friends without having the literal fucking cops called on me and threatening my life because you heard something slightly above a murmur while I was on the phone speaking just loud enough to be heard on the other end of the line.
Funny thing is the property manager is actually a comrade and informed me that the dumb fuck came up to my door to record me inside my own home so I put the fear of god into him and implied I could get him criminally prosecuted for illegally recording me if he didn’t move out by the end of the week (something I am not even sure I could have done but he thought better of assuming I was bluffing).
The good post there applies here, we live in a society that causes us to inevitably step on each other and somebody will always end up annoyed. One most common factor being that people are cramped into tiny, poorly separated spaces with no communal areas, where they can hear each other’s every sound, because money.
The best we can do to get on in these shitty situations is compromise and recognise it’s a dumb arrangement that shouldn’t exist to start with.
This comes back around to my unironic assertation that our concept of time is a bourgeois construct that exists to sell alarm clocks.
maybe not sell alarm clocks but absolutely structure and control behavior, that shit goes waaaaaaay back though
We have abolished second sleep so our capitalist overlords can make a few dollars more. We have gaslighted people into believing circadian rythms don’t exist and a large part of the population are just lazy. To cope with this we have normalized needing stimulants in order to function (Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee)
Hello NKVD? I’d like to report a counter-revolutionary. That’s right, my wife complains when I stay up till 4am playing video games because it keeps her up. Yes, the gulag is fine too. Thank you.
