r/AskEurope • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago

Meta Daily Slow Chat

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u/holytriplem -> 5d ago edited 5d ago

I went into a hardware shop today to replace a lightbulb. Now in general, every time I do this I marvel at how much technological progress has been made in lightbulb technology over the past 20 years or so from a laughably inefficient light-producing device that was basically just a heat filament that produced light as a secondary by-product, into something that's actually designed primarily to produce light as its main purpose with a fraction of the same amount of energy. But the flipside of that is now like half the lightbulbs they sell have these added technological bells and whistles on top of being simple light-producing devices, simply because the manufacturers of said light bulbs have collectively decided, for whatever reason, that this is a thing that society needs and they can charge a premium for it.

One of the bulbs they were selling had an in-built Bluetooth speaker, so that you could, if you so choose, play music out of your lightbulb that you can control from your phone. Why anyone would choose to do this, I couldn't tell you. My guess is that, because Americans seem to have some kind of cultural aversion to ceiling lights in their living rooms for whatever reason (but why??? Why can't you just at least install ceiling light fixtures for those of us who want them??? I don't want to sit right next to a bedside lamp just to read a book without getting eye strain aaaargh), they end up having to buy a ton of standing lamps to light up each corner of the room instead. And I guess if you're going to have to do that anyway, why not turn it into a surround sound system while you're at it?

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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 5d ago

I think every house I've been in has a ceiling light fixture (or one of those chandelier/ceiling light bulb-thingies).

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u/holytriplem -> 5d ago

In every single flat I've visited in the US, it's either the bedroom that has the ceiling lights or the living room, but never both. And then when I complain about it to Americans they just say "but...why would you want ceiling lights in your living room?"

Maybe it's a California thing?

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u/atomoffluorine United States of America 4d ago

Maybe. There's some weird things like the non presence of AC on some older homes in the Pacific Northwest that you don't see in the Southeast (or anywhere that has hot summers, probably most of the where the population lives these days). And on your worm comment that didn't pop up here; it's too easy of a joke to make and the wrong type of worm.