this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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all critical locations have huge DC batteries specifically design to take over during a short outage. Then generators.
There would always be a risk any backup systems fail. As another commenter pointed out, in other countries it would be illegal to cut power like that for that kind of reason. And that's a good thing. Power is literally keeping people alive and shouldn't be turned off because it seems mean to leave it on.
But a better point is, no one discussing this knows what downstream effects could happen if they killed the power. Seems kind of crazy to me to pretend we do.
A backup system that isn’t tested regularly is not a backup at all, just the illusion of one.
If you can’t turn the power off with 24h notice then nature will turn it off with zero notice at the most inconvenient moment.
They should indeed do regular tests of their backups. They should also ensure technical staff is on-site during those tests.
I do not follow the logic of people being so blinded by their love of cats that they literally think they can become electrical grid engineers and know all the risks, just because they want to know them.
It does not matter if every single vulnerable building has backups and tested them yesterday (obviously none of that could ever be close to true), it's still a non-zero risk to human lives, for one cat.
It's amazing because electrical grids are designed to be able to have sections shut down at any time. The intended purpose is literally to prevent a catastrophic shutdown.
Imagine pompously stating that your suggestion is somehow more logical on the basis of 1) there's a good likelihood you aren't an electrical engineer and 2) that there's some kind of genuine risk here (because apparently this guy thinks the whole lynchpin to the fucking grid happens to be this exact pole).
Dunning Kruger, at its finest. Glad to see you still have your head on straight.
It is a sentiment that treats potential loss of life like rounding errors instead of tragedies (big and small).
Tolkien's words live in my brain
It is easy to choose not to care about anything, it is very hard to care about everything. I myself am dealing with having learned to turn my heart off to certain things. Things that would just be too overwhelming to carry.
A friend of mine died recently and it was incredibly shocking. He was much younger than me, I guess he was driving too fast on his bike. One of my first thoughts was that I could have been kinder to him. Maybe if I'd reached out more, stayed more consistent in his life, maybe he would have stayed more tempered.
We can't know what will happen to us nor the people around us. We can only dictate our words and actions. I, however, am much less kind than you — I hope that those who can't be bothered to exhibit the slightest bit of empathy are cursed to suffer in the ways they've been overtly willing to ignore. I hope they experience what it is to decay and have the world fade around them.
It would be poetic. Aneurotypicality is not an excuse for callousness.
I think it's easy to associate adhering to values with being unkind (those values could easily exhibit kindness, depending on what they are).
I just don't believe you're unkind. If you were, your values wouldn't tell you that we should shut down power to a neighborhood for a cat. You would just think something like 'glad that's not my problem' and move on. I don't think that people who are unkind are bothered by things like this, because again 'not my problem'. You have made it your problem by caring, and are thus precluded from being unkind (in my opinion).
Damn, now i want to see them comments
Sure go ahead and assume I want the cat to die. Which I didn't. What the fuck.
The cat was rescued apparently anyway.
The cat isn’t part of the equation, I gave no opinion on that. The risk of never testing your failure response is much higher than the risk of testing your failure response.
If a test happens to save a cat? Lucky cat. If not, they’ll still have to test it at some other point anyway.
I never remotely commented that backup systems shouldn't be tested. Bizarre.
No you're just trying to suggest that a test can't be pushed up because you hate cats.
Unless you genuinely just do not understand what they mean, which is likely.
Since you're going to assume the worst possible reading, I will assume projection on your part.
So you genuinely don't understand, ok got it.
If their back up system fails then it’s their fault for not keeping it up to date. Seriously, my husband is an engineer who designs these battery systems. They do not “fail” if they are maintained and replaced properly.
Patently absurd. Technology often fails regardless of what you do. Inviting that failure would be negligence and should be illegal.
The one thing I know for sure about any engineer is that we are intimately familiar with the concept of things failing when it's least convenient.
We've got the Lemmy/Reddit worldview out in force. We should shut down vital infrastructure, risking life safety of many, for a cat. I say this loving cats: that's silly.
Yeah, I knew when I commented it might get some backlash, but the strength of it is somewhat depressing. Isn't Lemmy supposed to be mostly rational intelligent people?
I guess it just tells us how commonplace it is for people to declare a risk either worth it or non-existent without a fucking clue about the actual risk they are talking about.
In any case, thank you for demonstrating that there are still some sane people left out there.
I want going to be so forthright, but nail on head.
Apparently, yes.