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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8939 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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I mean im not convinced that most people have a singular self in the sense that they have a core. Identity forms quite often from reactions to things or events, roles taken on, etc. so it seems one can use those deliberately by finding a not terrible set of identities and using them.

One example of a fairly sane YouTuber is a woman in her thirties who has turned her life into what life would have been like in 1940. Of course she’s very well aware of tge LARP, she mostly does the aesthetics and trying out the fashion and lifestyle. She’s pretty grounded. It’s obviously apolitical, which I think helps because it seems once political stuff enters the equation, you’re going to end up radicalized in one way or another.

Can you link? I enjoy that sort of thing; there was another couple who did the Victorian version with an icebox instead of a fridge etc.

I tried it myself once but it turned out that lighting even a small room with candles is surprisingly hard. You need a fairly serious candelabra if you want to be able to read a book after dark.

I tried it myself once but it turned out that lighting even a small room with candles is surprisingly hard.

Which is why you use oil lamps. Really easy to regulate light levels with as well.

This would have been my next step but a relative (who had used them in anger) told me that they stank and to use electric lights and be grateful for them.

In…in anger?

He hated them :P

But no, it’s a phrase about using weapons for their intended purpose (“he owned an antique blunderbuss but had never fired it in anger”).

The phrase is often extended to non-combat items. In this case, what I mean is that he used for its intended purpose in its intended context (making light in a place without electricity) rather than as a LARP.

Apparently it’s a British English phrase: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30939/is-used-in-anger-a-britishism-for-something

I can't remember this ever being a problem and I even tried lighting a lamp i had at home and tried to see if I could detect any notable smell, which there was only a very mild one.

Googling a little it seems like kerosene can have a pungent smell when burning but that the oil that is sold for indoor lamps is purposefully made to smell less.

Perhaps your relative got the wrong kind of oil or used a bad lamp where the oil didn't burn clean?

Quite possibly - this was in a remote area in the 60s.

Thanks for doing the hands-on research, I’ll give it another go when I can.

Bright oil lamps (with a mantle) are very late Victorian -- they're actually slightly newer than the incandescent electric light.

Wick based lamps are plenty bright and the only kind of lamp oil lamp I've ever used, and those are earlyish Victorian.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=A5A9RSHS7es?si=_-o10eeIryBiuOsV

It’s called vintage dollhouse.

What do you mean tried it yourself? Tried going without electricity or tried going full Colonial Williamsburg?

I was going to spend a week without electric lights (plus no PC etc.). Partly for the romance of it, partly because I thought I might sleep better and be perkier if I let myself go with the natural day/night cycle.

I bought a lantern and some slender beeswax candles, and didn’t realise that this was good enough for mood lighting but not nearly enough for anything practical.

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