cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/19798927
Sure, the whole world is on fire right now, but there are also little things to be upset about. ☝😉
There was a time when blue LEDs were the white whale of electronics, always out of reach and everyone wanted to figure out how to make them work. When someone finally did it, it was considered a massive breakthrough, and rightly so. Now they have somehow become the default cheapo LED, moreso than red or green. Could it be an industry-wide ‘fuck you’ to physics? “You tried to keep us from making blue LEDs, hah! Now look at us!!!”
And when blue LEDs just started being available prop designers for scifi loved them because LEDs work much better on screen than incandescent bulbs, and as blue lights were something people didn’t have yet in their household objects they looked new and interesting. Look at the Doctor Who and Torchwood props from the mid 2000s, everything from the iconic Sonic Screwdriver to alien zappers and bleepers and greebles of all kinds were full of tiny blue lights because it screamed “scifi” to the viewer.
Very quickly, though, blue LEDs got cheap enough for everyday junk and manufacturers immediately shoved them into every consumer product because they were new and interesting and, thanks in part to the scifi trend, made stuff look like scifi future tech you could have in real life.
Now, a couple decades on, we’re still kind of stuck there.
You even see them in Christmas lights. They’re so retina piercingly stark, like not a chill light at all (though obv on the “cool” end of the spectrum). I’m out here walking my dog looking at the nice twinkly warm lights - no one wants to see your damned pinprick holes into the Tron dimension
At one point, blue LEDs were super expensive because of their difficult production.
So any product that has a blue LED was considered premium. I guess they were also considered futuristic and high-tech.
Somehow, this is still in the mind of some manufacturers.
All I want is a barely-visible-in-soft-daylight diffused/frosted red or amber LED.
But no, it’s always some 5w lensed blue LED at somehow produces a tighter beam of horrendous blue light that’s brighter than most flashlights.
Reminds me on a German proverb “to add your mustard to it”, which apparently came from a time at which mustard was rare and exquisite. So they added it to any kind of food just to “up it’s prestige”.
What a great origin. I Googled it, and it now means “to add your opinion”.
- Seinen Senf dazugeben
Literal translation: To add your mustard to it.
Actual meaning: To give your opinion on something./To give your two cents.
Where there are sausages, there also must be mustard. If you want to ask someone for their opinion and sound like a fluent speaker when doing it, you better invite them to add their mustard.
https://www.mondly.com/blog/german-idioms/
In the process, I found some other great German proverbs with hilarious literal translations.
Literal translation: To talk around the hot porridge.
Literal translation: To ask for an extra sausage.
Literal translation: I believe I spider. (Edit: I believe I spin, see comment).
Literal translation: To have tomatoes on one’s eyes.
Literal translation: I can only understand ‘train station.’.
Literal translation: You’re walking on my cookie.
Literal translation: The bear dances there.
Literal translation: Everything has an end. Only the sausage has two.
But, I guess that’s always the case with idioms. Their literal translation/meaning is useless. Regardless, I find German ones particularly titular
](https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/a4e9867e-4954-49a3-bf1f-e7b659dceca7.jpeg){kind=link}
Veritasium did a bit Why it was almost impossible to Make the Blue LED