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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15322 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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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.

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