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federal report reveals the dangers of backup generators:​

'Every single year … there's a report of a few people dying'​

Tina Deines / Wed, December 31, 2025

Out of the frying pan, into the fire?

It is easy to run a generator from far away, or add an extension to the exhaust pipe.
I worry more about other gas devices like lawnmowers, leaf blowers, warming up the car, etc.
 
"Could be, but I don't see Russia doing the bad things the greedy capitalist countries do.
About the only thing I can see worth criticizing is the Russian attempt to invade Finland before WWII.
With Afghanistan, I actually prefer Russia to our Taliban." R5 #40
A principle we ought not ignore:
"American people are friends of Liberty everywhere, but custodians only of their own." John Adams
Problem is, when Adams formulated that thought, it took weeks to transit the Atlantic ocean, as fast as the wind could propel us.

In the new millennium a troglodyte in Afghanistan can topple our skyscrapers from a hemisphere away.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. - John Philpot Curran (1750-1817)
The U.S. in Afghanistan, reportedly the U.S.' longest War (not counting Drug War) was folly.

You're a better student of such history than I am R5,
seems to me the U.S. took the wrong fork in the road when we engineered the overthrow of Iran's duly elected Mossadegh.

The U.S. has meddled quite a bit since then, and it seems many a new crisis for U.S. foreign policy results from prior ostensible U.S. foreign policy successes.
 
"It is easy to run a generator from far away, or add an extension to the exhaust pipe.
I worry more about other gas devices like lawnmowers, leaf blowers, warming up the car, etc." R5 #41
Indeed.
I've chosen the UPS route. I've got a multi-fuel auxiliary generator, runs on propane / LP.
But my UPS are simple & reliable.

APC makes versions for home use.
But I have a bank of eight deep-cycle AGM batteries, each weighing about 70 lbs.

Simple:
This battery bank feeds a sine wave inverter which runs the A/C equipment I run.
The rest, like lighting I run direct from the UPS, in the form of 12V DC LED.

The charger runs off the grid.
When there's a commercial power failure, the charger shuts down. BUT

I don't have to wait for the relay to kick in, etc.
Not even a flicker.

Due to recent storms, we had two commercial power failures here that lasted over 48 hrs.
The UPS handled it without a flinch.

"Not just generators - people die from using charcoal grills to heat their homes as well" S2 #43
Chlorine for the gene pool?
 
Indeed.
I've chosen the UPS route. I've got a multi-fuel auxiliary generator, runs on propane / LP.
But my UPS are simple & reliable.

APC makes versions for home use.
But I have a bank of eight deep-cycle AGM batteries, each weighing about 70 lbs.

Simple:
This battery bank feeds a sine wave inverter which runs the A/C equipment I run.
The rest, like lighting I run direct from the UPS, in the form of 12V DC LED.

The charger runs off the grid.
When there's a commercial power failure, the charger shuts down. BUT

I don't have to wait for the relay to kick in, etc.
Not even a flicker.

Due to recent storms, we had two commercial power failures here that lasted over 48 hrs.
The UPS handled it without a flinch.


Chlorine for the gene pool?

The generators I had were cheap, so could not do the whole house.
I then had to wire just the refrigerator and furnace on a separate circuit I could manually throw a switch on, after I started the generator with the pull rope.
Not ideal, but outages were not common.
I have seen Generac generators fairly cheap, like $1200.
 
Generac seems popular around here.

I was visiting in the lower Hudson Valley. From indoors, I heard an engine start. My thought: - Who's running the lawnmower? -
It seems my host's Generac was programmed to automatically start once a week, just to keep it in operating condition.

note:
Generac now offers whole house UPS. I think they're Li-ion.
 
I do know a couple of people with whole house home generator systems.

And one of the large grocery stores near where I used to work has a massive generator - obviously they can't afford to lose thousands of dollars worth of frozen and refrigerated goods if the power goes out. And it does run for about half an hour every Sunday morning.
 
"And one of the large grocery stores ..." S2 #47
Grand Union ?

"... near where I used to work has a massive generator - obviously they can't afford to lose thousands of dollars worth of frozen and refrigerated goods if the power goes out. And it does run for about half an hour every Sunday morning." S2 #47
I haven't figured supermarket refrigeration out. The open bin style is easy enough. Cold air is denser, sinks, puddles down there. But
above the open bins are shelves with ostensibly refrigerated food. Not sure how it stays below 40F up there.

"... it does run for about half an hour every Sunday morning." S2 #47
Don't know if it's changed much, but around Y2K I read supermarket profit margins are quite thin.
A generator powerful enough to run all that refrigeration would have to be a big deal.
- Expensive to buy.
- Expensive to maintain. BUT
- Even more expensive to neglect.

glad I'm retired
 
"Pretax supermarket profit margins are in the order of 3-5% of gross sales." S2 #49
Thanks S2.

Contrasting that to other categories of retail may not be as simple as some may think. Many people eat once or more per day.
But not everyone buys a shirt, or a book, or a washing machine that often.
 
This is the cartoon:

260102a.JPG
A cartoon for the Buffalo News depicted a drowning Trump supporter in Texas.

And this is a MAGA reaction:

@TheBuffaloNews ran a cartoon mocking Texas families who lost loved ones in a tragedy, just because they might’ve voted Republican. Twisted, vile, and shameful. They owe those families an apology and should pull this filth immediately.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ny-pa...pearing-mock-trump-voting-texas-flood-victims

And this is a reaction to the reaction:
https://x.com/makracker
https://x.com/makracker/status/1942955439487955106/photo/1
Image

The cartoon could be interpreted as "mocking Texas families who lost loved ones in a tragedy, just because they might’ve voted Republican."

But an emotionally less delicate, scientifically more discerning view is that Texas has earned a reputation for ignoring scientific evidence, and then suffering the consequence.
Texas' commercial power grid is not connected to the rest of the nation, because Texas didn't want to comply with federal standards.
As a result, Texans suffered days without commercial power.

Trump & MAGA tend to dismiss anthropogenic global warming, one affect of which is progressively more severe weather events, including such floods as that depicted by the cartoon.
Certainly the satire of Texas' political folly can be deflected by mischaracterizing it.
But to do so merely compounds the injury to Texas & Texans.

You've made your bed Texas. Sleep in it, even if / when that means six feet under.
 
Global warming is not just TX, but when I lived in TX I was surprised how far away everything was deliberately distanced, and no light rail.
 
1767447226359.png
“I could make a dating app profile and lose my virginity by dinnertime,” claimed this devoted champion of President Donald Trump. “But very few people alive have ever actually had *sex*,” he continued. “They’ve slapped their damp, clammy body against another damp, clammy body, like the wriggling of a suffocating fish.” Sólionath then attempted to wax poetic about how he would be different if “I ever tried to make love.” Because unlike people who have done the deed, he would “reveal the deepest and most primal aspects of myself to a woman,” and in the process, “she [would] be mine in totality and no other human even think of her existence.” He also promised to impregnate this imaginary woman.

"https://www.salon.com/2025/12/31/the-right-hit-peak-incel-in-2025/
 
If only there was a vaccine ....

1767530928647.png

This story about a healthy 16-year-old dying from the flu is a heartbreaking reminder that serious illness does not only happen to people with pre-existing conditions. Ryleigh’s condition went from typical flu symptoms to sepsis, double pneumonia, and brain death in just a few days, even though she was previously healthy.

Some people (especially a certain pro-diseaser politician) respond to tragedies like this with ugly statements like “if she died, she wasn’t healthy,” or try to twist it into a political talking point. That is not only insensitive, it revictimizes families while avoiding the reality: flu and other viruses can cause severe complications and death in otherwise healthy young people.

Flu can lead to pneumonia, sepsis, brain inflammation, respiratory failure, and death, and those complications can happen in anyone, not just the elderly or people with chronic illness. Getting vaccinated each year is one of the best ways we have to reduce the risk of these outcomes.

No parent should have to bury a child. Using these tragedies as political fodder disrespects their loss and ignores the real science about how serious infectious diseases can be.

SOURCE
 
If only there was a vaccine ....

View attachment 3632

This story about a healthy 16-year-old dying from the flu is a heartbreaking reminder that serious illness does not only happen to people with pre-existing conditions. Ryleigh’s condition went from typical flu symptoms to sepsis, double pneumonia, and brain death in just a few days, even though she was previously healthy.

Some people (especially a certain pro-diseaser politician) respond to tragedies like this with ugly statements like “if she died, she wasn’t healthy,” or try to twist it into a political talking point. That is not only insensitive, it revictimizes families while avoiding the reality: flu and other viruses can cause severe complications and death in otherwise healthy young people.

Flu can lead to pneumonia, sepsis, brain inflammation, respiratory failure, and death, and those complications can happen in anyone, not just the elderly or people with chronic illness. Getting vaccinated each year is one of the best ways we have to reduce the risk of these outcomes.

No parent should have to bury a child. Using these tragedies as political fodder disrespects their loss and ignores the real science about how serious infectious diseases can be.

SOURCE

There are over 200 different pathogens we collectively call flu, and it takes 3 years to grow vaccines, so the flu vaccine is usually fake.
 
"Some people (especially a certain pro-diseaser politician)" #55
- hmm -

"immunity information has to be appended to T-cell DNA so it can be retained even after cell reproduction.
That means adding too many new immunities wipes out older immunities." R5 #58
Oh?

"That's why every year they determine what strain of flu is going to be prevalent and then produce the appropriate vaccine." S2 #59
Part science, part art. Reportedly it's to some degree a guess, which strain will proliferation after the vax is administered to the population.
I don't make predictions, I never did, & I never will. TrogL O'dyte
 
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