When our ancient ancestors did have meat, they ate game, too. It was local, and possibly less fatty (so eaters of game have told me). I am sure many did die of poisoning from mushrooms and various berries, etc. The cavepeople had it rough, for this reason as for many others and it amazes me how humanity has survived.
On substantially every 120v power cord supplied with appliances, electronics, lamps, and even plain extension cords there is a warning label with a bunch of cautions. Sometimes attached to the packaging and sometimes attached to the cord itself.
On every one of those labels I’ve examined, one of the cautions amounts to “Do not use if the cord is frayed”. Where “frayed” is the magic operative word of the sentence.
The only sorts of power cords that can fray are those with a woven fabric outer covering. Which were last commonly sold in the USA in the early 1960s, so now 60 years ago.
Post ~1963 power cords with a flexible plastic outer sheathing can be cut, burned, abraded, nicked, melted, stretched, etc. But they cannot possibly be “frayed”.
So: Advice that was once sound that is still being offered today despite being totally obsoleted by progress in the design of the thing the advice refers to.
So a string walks into a bar and the bartender says, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve strings here.” The string walks back outside, rolls around in the street, and then twists itself so many times that it gets dizzy. Finally the string staggers back inside. The bartender says, “Hey, aren’t you the same string that just left?” And the string replies, “No, I’m a frayed knot.”
Inspired by the engine braking discussion in this thread, I started a new thread to keep from totally hijacking things in this thread:
I’m copy-pasting from that post the part that’s relevant to this thread, i.e. the advice (don’t use engine braking) that’s obsolete because of more knowledge and technology changes.
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As far as temps go, well, for gasoline or diesel, it’s not running any hotter than it is when it’s idling, because it’s doing pretty much the same thing as far as squeezing/expanding the air in the cylinders. In fact, for the case of the diesel using a compression-release brake, temps are actually very cool during the expansion stroke. Likewise, the loads on the machinery aren’t particularly large, unless you’re spinning the engine at ludicrous speeds.
Is engine braking hard on the gears in your transmission/gearbox? Not particularly. The modest deceleration of engine braking is no harder on the gears than accelerating at the same rate. The faces of gear teeth are extremely hard and will probably be the last things to fail. More to the point, the “front” face of each gear tooth is what racks up the wear as you drive 100,000 miles in the forward direction; the “rear” faces of the teeth, the faces that get loaded during engine braking, will only see a tiny fraction of the miles that the “front” faces do.
Is engine braking hard on the clutch(es) in your transmission/gearbox? If you’re a skilled manual transmission enthusiast, then when you downshift, you can rev-match the engine before you let the clutch out, resulting in minimal clutch wear. For automatic transmissions before the advent of electronic throttle control, downshifting meant that clutch bands inside the transmission had to briefly slip to drag the engine up to speed during a downshift, and yes, that meant wear. For at least some late-model cars, that’s a thing of the past: when you request a downshift, the computers that are actually managing your drivetrain for you will blip the throttle to rev match, resulting in virtually zero wear on the clutch bands in the automatic transmission (or clutch plates in your dual-clutch transmission).
My current car with a traditional manual also blips to rev match when downshifting. It’s a bummer because I put in 30+ years of getting good at the heel-toe braking and now I don’t get to use it at all.
All the cool (read: kitschy and expensive) housewares places out here have some variation on this for sale. The fabric and outlet box can be color coordinated to your decor.
Come to think of it, the last several usb cords of various flavors have all come with braided covers. They are much more supple and durable than the lowest-common-denominator plastic ones I’ve been buying.
I will manually downshift in my automatic when going down some of the mountains here in Colorado even on dry pavement. There is a reason they measure your rotor temperature and make you pull over if necessary for a mandatory break part way down Pikes Peak. I once had my brakes go away on me on a curvy mountain road and thank god I reacted immediately by pulling my ebrake (OK, it was pressing the parking brake but I’m a child of the 70s so in an emergency it is “pulling an ebrake”)