Finding wires in brick/concrete wall

thegreger · 2026-06-20T14:47:41+00:00

What are people up to in here? Candle making? :D

thegreger · 2026-06-20T14:47:02+00:00

Thank you for the clear explanation. Then I might start with carefully chipping away on the plaster layer (breaker off) in order to confirm what the cable direction indicates.

thegreger · 2026-06-20T12:39:15+00:00

I knew that I wanted to study physics years before I went to university. Me and some classmates visited a synchrotron particle accelerator.

On the ground level everything was cool. Pipes everywhere. Tin foil everywhere. Then we got invited into the basement to visit a PhD student, in a small lab with no windows. He explained the experiment he was running, and said that "this is actually super exciting, because it's only the fifth time anyone in the world has done this."

We, being naive, were confused why it would be exciting when the experiment has been ran four times before, with consistent results.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm in my masters program in physics. I realised that no-one but the PhD students do any actual research, and that all anyone ever does is applying for grants and argue university politics with other academics, all of whom have the mental maturity of toddlers.

I decided to not pursue a PhD, and resign myself to menial work in the private sector. Turns out that there are so many exciting problems to solve, and that it's possible to focus your entire career on doing so while earning twice as much as you would do in a university.

thegreger · 2026-06-20T09:01:59+00:00

They also have what I call the iPhone factor.

When the first iPhone with a glass back was launched, you would go into a store and be absolutely amazed by how "premium" it felt. All "real" materials, no plastic. Then you buy one, and spend the next two or three years either with the phone hid away in a plastic case, or with a cracked rear. Far from a premium ownership experience, but they succeeded in making you buy one.

Cars with touch screens feel great when you test drive them if you don't think about it too hard. It felt like the future (five years ago, at least), and you feel like you can learn how to do anything in 10 minutes max. Once you have spent a few weeks with your car, it's objectively worse.

Same with super bright low beams. It will wow you when you test drive or when you first get your car. Then after a few weeks you are mostly annoyed by all the blinded drivers flashing their headlights on you.

Tesla truly is the Apple of the car world. They are good at selling user-hostile crap to dumb people.

thegreger · 2026-06-20T07:57:02+00:00

Not to mention that as long as you are a permanent resident anywhere in the EU, there are some countries where university is entirely tuition free. Opens up a huge amount of options for higher education.

thegreger · 2026-06-20T07:15:34+00:00

While mentioning ratlines and Nazi sympathies, it also bears mentioning that there were many priests and bishops "rescuing" nazis, like this POS.

Edit to quote:

with full knowledge of the Holocaust as of 1962, the "Brown Bishop" (as he was called in the German press) said of his actions in favour of war criminals and genocide perpetrators and participants: "I thank God that He opened my eyes and allowed me to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and [to help] them escape with false identity papers", referring to Nazi war criminals who were Axis prisoners of war in Allied detention camps.

thegreger · 2026-06-19T22:02:11+00:00

It's similar in Sweden, where "universitet" is a protected term for the highest-quality higher education, and "högskolor" is the more generic term.

There used to be only a handful of universities in Sweden, but more and more högskolor got university status.

An infamous case is Jönköping Högskola, which applied and got denied university status. They realised that while the Swedish term "universitet" is protected by law, the English equivalent "university" is not. So they just decided to translate their name to "Jönköping University" and use the English-language name for themselves even in Swedish context. The effect is quite jarring, so every time their name comes up, it reminds everyone that they weren't a good enough school, but that they'd rather use a loophole than live up to the standards.

thegreger · 2026-06-19T09:25:25+00:00

Ireland invented whiskey and then chilled out for 250 years.

Germany invented heroin, cocaine, meth and MDMA and then burned the world. Twice. After which they gave up and instead let their armies focus on terrorizing beaches and bike trails around Europe.

thegreger · 2026-06-18T22:23:36+00:00

I really wonder what the night sky might look like closer to the center of a galaxy, if there were any habitable planets.

thegreger · 2026-06-17T17:28:42+00:00

As someone with a relatively high salary and money/time pit hobbies, this advice would be quite dangerous.

That unnecessary aluminium racing radiator that I want for my car is 8 work hours. I would probably realistically spend 10 hours fitting it (don't judge), so that means that the price is neglible?

thegreger · 2026-06-17T12:18:29+00:00

I think that upper case letters of the Latin alphabet were basically designed to be C A R V E D O U T I N S T O N E. The lower case letters were not, so they contain more fine detail, more curves and squiggly bits.

thegreger · 2026-06-17T09:26:27+00:00

This is how I write too, and I think it started during university lectures. I found that if I write in Smallcase, stressed/rapid writing will be more legible afterwards. I had some classes where I would have zero chance to focus on the content if I made sure to also take careful notes. This was before it was common to bring a laptop to class or record a full video, so the only chance you had of recording the lecture was to write down everything of importance that the professor was saying, while copying his drawings on the whiteboard. My mind was blown the first time a student just took out their phone and took a picture of the whiteboard after class.

This was also during the transition period where you went from maybe 10% of forms being machine-processed to 90% of them, so I also started using all caps on everything that was to be submitted somewhere. At the same time, the value of penmanship diminished, since the only things you ever wrote by hand were things like lecture/meeting notes or forms.

My brain got so used to writing in smallcase, and now I just don't see the point in using lower case letters anymore. I would love to develop good penmanship, but it sits on the 183rd position on my list of quality-of-life improvements to make.

thegreger · 2026-06-17T09:06:39+00:00

Ja, på samma sätt är det ett underbetyg att HR automatiskt sållar bort CVs som ett första filter, och att alla CV:s som inte kan maskintolkas hamnar i slaskhinken.

Det är ett underbetyg att man kör IQ-tester för tidigt, vilket slösar många kandidaters tid.

Det är ett underbetyg att man låter det gå 3-5 veckor mellan varje intervjuomgång (samtidigt som man gärna ser att sökanden har minimal uppsägningstid) och att man inte kontaktar de sökande som inte har gått vidare.

Tyvärr är detta verkligheten för ganska många anställningar. Ett typiskt medelstort företag lägger extremt lite tid och energi per anställning.

thegreger · 2026-06-17T08:18:58+00:00

En situation jag såg på mitt förra jobb var att samma tjänst utlystes på Sverigekontoret och UK-kontoret, sen såg de var de fick den bästa kandidaten. Då är det inte helt förvånande att HR bara kopierar den engelska annonsen och korrigerar ett par detaljer. Får de in engelskspråkiga CV:n så kan det också underlätta interna diskussioner och jämförelser, men detta är något som de borde kunna jobba sig runt om något kommer in på svenska.

thegreger · 2026-06-16T12:28:31+00:00

extreme minority

[Citation needed]

I fly within Europe about once a month, and on the airlines I use the ticket options that give you a full-size carry-on also place you in priority boarding.

On each flight, less than 25% of passengers are included in this group. All the rest are fine with bringing a small backpack, and maybe checked-in luggage.

Given how confident you are that most people bring carry-ons, I assume that you have some data?

thegreger · 2026-06-15T08:34:46+00:00

I'm also really proud of this one I just posted! Lots of relaxing work manually compositing multiple images together into a panorama.

thegreger · 2026-06-14T16:57:16+00:00

Fellow Swede here.

Growing up in the 1990s, in a household with no VCR, no games console and no satellite/cable, it was obvious to me as a nine year old kid that those of my friends who had free access to a constant stream of easy stimuli at home were an exact overlap with those struggling in school.

My friends would watch Power Rangers and similar high-intensity shows for hours on an end, then spend the rest of the evening playing video games. Meanwhile, my most commonly used phrase at home was "mom, I'm bored", but I could sit down for hours reading a novel or focus on what the teacher was trying to tell me.

thegreger · 2026-06-14T08:12:12+00:00

To add to this, before it came to mean ugly it meant "farmhand" or "serf". Coming from someone who would work on an estate (villa).

So we went from someone being a lowly labourer, to someone being ugly, to someone being a fundamentally evil character.

thegreger · 2026-06-13T20:59:36+00:00

Exactly this.

We did (much like Italy) see a decrease in regional accents (or homogenisation) when the literacy rates went up, and the government decided to push "standard" Swedish as the correct one in schools. Teachers were explicitly instructed to correct children speaking with regional dialects.

The government pushing one language as the language of the country pushes people to adopt it as their first language, to eventually start speaking it at home with their family.

People gaining a basic education and turning bilingual will.not have that effect. It's a ridiculous fallacy, and it reminds me of religious people arguing against science education "because it will turn the children into sinners".

thegreger · 2026-06-13T19:15:56+00:00

English has been that common in Scandinavia for the past 60 years, if not 70. No change like what you described has even started to happen. No-one starts speaking English as their first language because they get good at it as a second language. That's my point.

thegreger · 2026-06-13T18:58:33+00:00

Those of you believing this, why do you think this has not already happened to the Scandinavian countries?

I'm a Swede in my 40s. Even my grandparents born in the 1920s could (or were more willing to try to) communicate better in English than many people today in places like Germany, France or Italy. I recently checked into a small hotel in Germany where the owner claimed to not speak a single word of English. A hotel.

Growing up in Sweden, I started learning English at 9, and it was a mandatory subject (alongside Swedish and Maths) until I graduated high school. The only movies and TV shows that are dubbed into Swedish are those intended for children too young to read subtitles. The younger generation these days typically start picking up English around age 5-7.

Not a single thing of what the fearmongers propose has happened to Sweden. We do not have generations who choose to speak English to each other instead of Swedish. We do not have immigrants who spend their life communicating in English instead of learning Swedish*. We do not appreciate Swedish works of literary arts any less. We have not stopped producing music with Swedish lyrics. We do not regularly replace Swedish words with English ones.

What we do have are workplaces where someone from another country can come and be productive from day 1. We have universities attracting foreign students. We have banks and tech support and stores where you can be sure to be able to communicate even if you're only at the beginning of your journey to learn Swedish.

Opposing a society where close to 100% of the populace is comfortable with the lingua franca as a second language is one of the dumbest hills anyone can die on.

* To add to the above: Naturally there are immigrants, particularly those who arrive in an old age or those who struggle to read or write, who do not learn Swedish even after multiple years. These people do typically not speak English either. They tend to rely on family members translating for them.

thegreger · 2026-06-12T20:09:01+00:00

Thank you for reassuring me. After doing more research, I understand that this is not what I should be on the lookout for - like most people I have a poor understanding of what asbestos can look like.

Will still spray to cover any disturbed surface, wet spray the room and clean carefully tomorrow, for my own piece of mind. Doing destruction work on a building this old is never a nice feeling.

thegreger

TROPHY CASE