• EndOfLine@lemmy.worldEnglish
    201·
    6 days ago

    You’re having a rough day. Seems like everybody wants a piece of you and they aren’t kind about it. So you put on some ear protection, grab your leaf blower and step outside. Nobody bothers you out there. The leaf blower yells nonstop the way you wish you could and even though you aren’t doing the yelling, there is still something cathartic about the noise. It creates a bubble where you are left alone. As the minutes pass and the debris collects into neat little piles, you can slowly regain your calm. The urge to explode, unleashing your anger and frustration, in an irreparable way ebbs and you feel like you can hold your shit together for a little while longer.

    Or they are in a feud with their neighbors and are trying to piss them off.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 days ago

      Huh…apperently I have natural leaf blower bubble going on.

      See, the trick is, other people try to push me around, and try to tske their anger out on me, and I look them dead in their eyes, with my cold dead inside eyes, and I say…

      “You could die tomorrow and I wouldn’t even notice that you left”.

      See, the trick to life is to not cause hassle for others, but otherwise not give a shit about anyone or anything. To truely become at peace with the idea that none of this matters. Your life, others lives, the elections, the results of things, none of it matters. People don’t matter. Media doesn’t matter. Life doesn’t matter. And once people realize that you are an unfeeling, uncaring, enempathetic to anything miserable piece of shit who wouldn’t feel a thing if an atomic bomb went off, they generally tend to leave you alone. Because you don’t want to piss off the guy who doesn’t feel anything, with nothing left to lose, and nothing to gain. I am the Milton of my universe, and one wrong move could cause me to burn this tinderbox to the ground. Then walk away without remorse.

      • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        Help is available. I mean it and I will help you find more help. You don’t deserve to suffer in the way you’ve described.

          • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            Every moment of their lives is filled with hatred, fear, misery and self-loathing though.

            It is not possible to make the following statements and have them both be true: “I feel nothing” “I’m miserable”. So it’s clear they are in a world of deep emotional pain and burden, and that simply existing is a form of relentless torture.

            Nobody deserves to feel or live that way. There’s nothing “centered” :(

            edit: But JOY! It doesn’t need to be that way. I’m living proof that internal change is possible because I used to feel the way that man feels.

      • ReadMoreBooks@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        There’s a “black hole”, humanity’s beyond the event horizon, and barely anyone even acknowledges the existence of any of it.

        But, no matter how hard one tries to sink into the void they cannot deny the human paradigm. Complex communication of the hypothetical us all that defines our species from the other animals. A human’s meaning-of-life is, at the root, the same as everyone else’s.

        Above:

        Ecclesiastes by King Solomon

        “All we need to do is make sure we keep talking” by Stephen Hawking, British Telecom advertisement (1993)

        Continuing:

        Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton

        Interstellar directed by Christopher Nolan

        If any of this resonates with you then I’d be happy to have a conversation. This account should be active until March-ish.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    106·
    6 days ago

    If a genie told me I could erase all land-mines or two-stroke leaf-blowers, I’d choose landmines, but the silence while I considered would be uncomfortably long.

  • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works
    31·
    6 days ago

    I just got a 765cfm battery-powered leaf blower and…

    …it’s so much fun. Mindlessly entertaining. I don’t even care if I just blow the leaves back and forth, it’s just…weirdly fun.

    Also fun to blow random things around the house until someone gets mad.

  • YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca
    33·
    6 days ago

    One of my neighbours sometimes hoses down her driveway in the pouring rain. Who knows why neighbours do the things they do.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
      27·
      6 days ago

      Are they ex military? Are they an ASVAB waiver? Did they used to get told to mop up the rain too?

    • RBWells@lemmy.world
      10·
      6 days ago

      Yeah we saw one of our neighbors watering the storm drain. But also recently she drove from her driveway to ours - literally got in her car, backed out the driveway then immediate turn into ours, to come ask a question. Then got back in her car, backed out of our driveway and immediate turn into hers. So I think she is just crazy.

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
      8·
      6 days ago

      I once inquired about this very practice. I’ve been told it’s because:

      • Water restrictions are generally lifted when it rains
      • Easy rinse/prepped surface

      That all make sense to me if these idiots had a pressure washer, but its always a normal hose with a nozzle…

  • FoxyFerengi@lemm.ee
    21·
    6 days ago

    My neighbor will blow them into my driveway (which is higher than his so it’s a never ending battle) and then he’ll walk between my house and the house on his other side blowing leaves to the other side of the street. He wastes so much gas every day, I would find it funny if it weren’t infuriating. Like, who the heck even buys gas leaf blowers anymore?

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      who the heck even buys gas leaf blowers anymore

      Gas blowers are about half the purchase price. And in this ‘first thing I looked up’ match up, are slightly better speced and higher rated.

      • FoxyFerengi@lemm.ee
        7·
        6 days ago

        I’ll take the one with less maintenance anyway. I wouldn’t even need to buy the battery for this because that’s the same one my lawnmower uses

      • SnausagesinaBlanket@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 days ago

        The issue I have with these is the parts and batteries are awful for recycling. An engine is all metal and once the oil is drained there are no hazardous to nature parts. Plastic is made from oil so are these environmentally friendly? Especially if the batteries only last a few years?

        • enbyecho@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          You are overlooking the pollution the emit while running, which is considerable, especially 2-stroke ones. A gas leaf blower used for an hour emits the same air pollution as driving 1,100 miles (source).

          And the fact that that oil has to be changed periodically. They also have many plastic parts AND small engines have a notoriously high failure rate when used with ethanol fuels.

          Meanwhile, the electric motors in battery ones basically run forever and properly cared for the batteries last many years, after which they can be recycled.

        • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
          4·
          6 days ago

          I just get corded electric. Never have to worry about it running out of juice that way. Though, it does mean there are limits to what you can get.

  • RedWeasel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    6 days ago

    Are you in IL? I just saw my neighbor doing that, but he has dementia. I think there are to many people who want a manicured lawn. Personally I don’t see why so many people like that.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      For a while I had retired neighbors on two sides of the house who insisted on mowing multiple times a week. Their grass would be so freaking dead and brown by late summer even with watering, meanwhile my lawn which I mow every 2-3 weeks depending on the season (late summer it grows slower so I give it longer) never needed a lick of extra water and is still green today

  • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    6 days ago

    Honestly, it’s just fun to blow leaves or snow. It’s a mindless puttering activity that lets you improve your home area and be mildly active.

    Unfortunately what happens is people’s general tendency to think about themselves and nobody else. So they’re self-satisfied in their reasons for being out there, not thinking about the dude next door that works nights and can’t sleep, and even his construction-grade noise headphones don’t help. Or the dude that just wants to listen to jazz quietly.

    The leaf blower people are well-meaning people with mild mental illness who are just selfish enough not to realize their home/self care is annoying others. e: A lot of times the guy just needs to get the F away from their spouse. I’ve lived near leaf blower people and they’re invariably older married (sometimes retired) men. Never women.

      • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        A leaf blower is far superior for getting leaves out of corners and other spaces smaller than a rake, especially if the leaves are small or falling apart.

        I have an electric one that isn’t that loud, and I generally use it for edges and then rake up the open spaces.

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    13·
    6 days ago

    As it happens, it’s about 10 C (50 F) near me and raining, and I did actually think about using my leaf blower for a very specific purpose: blowing the leaves clear of the road gutters.

    I saw outside my window that the autumn leaves formed a dam in the gutter, impounding an amount of water which started diverting onto the asphalt and the sidewalk. From what little I know about road construction, water intrusion is the greater enemy so I didn’t want to let the small pond sit there.

    In the end, I just picked the leaves up by hand to remove the obstruction. But if I had a lot more streetfront, leaf blower would be the first tool to come to mind. But it would take no more than 10 minutes total.

    • stinerman [Ohio]@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      I find this is often the case. People want to make noise because they want other people to notice them or because they have oppositional defiant disorder and like to piss off people.