Mildly Infuriating

Sounds like the problem is people leaving plugs lying on the ground? Otherwise known as user error.

Yo, what’s wrong with your goats?

Oh look that's something ninjas spread on the road when they run.

You just brought back memories of my siblings and I walking around outside barefoot to the point these things penetrated our shoes more easily than our feet.

In rural southern Utah these things are literally everywhere. If you go out with cheap foam flip-flops, the entire bottom of the shoe will embedded with dozens of these seconds after you start walking around lol

Kind of oddly satisfying to pull them out of the soles of shoes tbf

I’m glad they’ve never managed to puncture my sneakers while hiking, because god knows I’ve had enough embedded in my soles when I check.

I've always heard them called sand spurs, and they're the devil. Nothing in nature needs to be that sharp, ffs.

At least chestnuts have the decency to be really localized and large, despite being spikey balls of evil. These little fuckers are miniature, everywhere, and can hide in carpet for a solid six months before you notice them the one time you decide to go barefoot.

I'm so glad we don't have these where I live.

I think the switches are nice but in the modern world you really don't need to unplug a vast majority of things. Even my $30 120V USA space heater shuts itself off if it tips over or gets too hot. My cell phone charger pulls functionally 0W while idling.

I have, but it was a foot-safe surface mount package

Having switched outlets wouldn't make US plugs any safer, at least not in any meaningful way.

The individual switches on UK outlets don't really add significantly to safety, they're mostly just a convenience feature, because for an electrical plug/outlet to even be considered safe in the first place, it has to be always safe, whether it's powered or not. You can't rely on people switching off unused outlets instead of doing actual safety design.

The main factors that make US plugs less safe than UK ones is the potential for exposed metal contacts with a closed connection to the outlet, the lack of internal fuse and the lack of polarisation, and, particularly in combination with the first point, the comparatively weak grip strength and protruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.

Yeah, I think brits and other europeans can generally agree on american plugs

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So how does it work in the US then? Is there a law that everything needs to be isolated very well, no metal shells allowed or people just getting electrocuted from time to time

No, the cable comes out perpendicular to the pins (ie parallel to the wall).
Which pretty much guarantees foot-pain orientation

That's from a power brick that came with attachments for different regions.

I've handled normal plugs as well and they tend to orient themselves prongs up too.

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