Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for February 15, 2024

The back room is stocked with old fashioned incandescent light bulbs. It ticks off some people. My response: What do you want — for me to throw them away and go to waste?

Actually, the LEDs don’t use 60 watts; that’s one of the reasons we use them.

I have a degree in electronics engineering, and I have trouble buying light bulbs.

Home Despot???? LOL Pastis! Good point on the light bulbs, no more simply getting 40, 60, 75 or 100 watt bulbs anymore and mainly deciding if you wanted a Sylvania, GE, Westinghouse or generic store brand variety…..

And don’t forget that modern 60 watt bulbs only use 10 watts.

Over the last several years we’ve gone to garage, yard and estate sales… and when I find 100W incandescent bulbs for anything under $1, I buy them. Which means I have about a dozen for when I need the heat.

Light bulb light bulbs went out with coffee flavored coffee.

I have a box of them, the old incandescent ones, I bought them for spares years ago, but when the curly-cue lights came out I started to use them, and now I use the LED ones! I am too cheap to throw the old ones away!

The lights I’ve bought there have IP addresses. I bought three. I’ll bedogdarned, they work as advertised. I queried my LAN and the buggers are there and I can control them. Brightness, warmth, on/off times. I’m old, this is like magic! We lived in an old house in the 50s that had a light in one room that had a logo “Edison Light Company” and it was working still in 1956. The house had gaslighting but not hooked up. What’s next?

He forgot halogen.

Eh me see only LED these days.

In our quest to make all things comfortable, we’ve made things more complicated!!!

And what size socket? Regular? Candelabra? Etc.

Remember Coffee, just Coffee?

It’s illegal to sell them, not to use them.

Blind people don’t need light bulbs.

The Count feels Rats pain! Went to get a 3-Way bulb to replace one that had burned out at the local Home Despot and all they had were these ridiculously big and expensive things that would not fit into the harp of the lamp. The Count orders five old ones from Amazon to hoard.

Yes. He also remembers three speed stick shift on the column.

I remember their short lives and hand and planet-cooking heat output.

Color temperature is very important, too. I mostly prefer the warmer temperature bulbs, 2700K.

I want the one that contributes to global warming, raises the sea level, and triggers the end of the world as we know it.

Our middle son put “smart” bulbs in his front porch lights. As “smart” is a synonym for “hackable”, he had to replace them, because someone kept setting them to alternate on/off opposite each other.

Those energy saving bulbs last a lot longer.

I think it might be an old-man thing where you dislike something just BECAUSE it’s new. (Full disclosure: I also suffer from that disease.)

I finally switched to LED when I had no choice, and it turns out that they look about the same, and the equivalent wattage is right on the box. So what’s the big deal?

My last real 100 watt bulb finally gave out so I got the LED equivalent. Looks kind of green and weird.

My hummingbird feeder heaters use 15-w incandescents and a 40-w i the oven.

The place I worked at had to replace hundreds of light fixtures because they were fully enclosed and LEDs would burn out in months.

So many varieties of everything.

Sounds the same as going to StirBlucks and asking for “a coffee”.

Technology sometimes outruns comprehension.

It’s thanks to capitalism that we have the choice of lightbulbs. Why, are you saying capitalism is not as good as it’s cracked up to be? :-)

Darn light bulbs are so expensive and confusing now days. Just give me a ding dang light bulb for heaven’s sake.

All I have around my house are teen age “dim bulbs”!

I know one farmer who has a horde he uses for keeping the faucet box below his well-fed water tank warn enough to keep from freezing in the winter

By the way, how do EasyBake Ovens still exist, if they do?

Well, it’s 9 W for LEDs replacing 60 W incandescent bulbs, but the LED bulbds come in 5 different “temperatures”. Maybe they get sick and have fevers, too!

I remember buying six lifetime energy savers. One lasted almost two years! Wow, progress.

I replaced most of the light bulbs in the house and my electric bill dropped significantly. Had to change some switches for LED rheostats. It took a while to find the right wattage. And the print on the bulbs is minuscule, need a magnifying glass! ;:))

It’s not just light bulbs. Have you tried to buy a package of, let’s say Oreo cookies? There are more varieties of them than I can name. (E.g., double stuffed, mint, etc.) Of the several dozen packages on the grocer’s shelf, only 2 or 3 are the original, simple Oreo we grew up with, and they are hidden among all the others. Many other products are the same way. I think I’ll just by the house brand generic!

And what Temperature do you want that light to be?

So, did you finally get a light bulb, Rat?

And if you’re looking for an LED, is it for an enclosed fixture so you have to get one with special electronics so it doesn’t burn out in a couple of weeks?

I love the Home Despot sign

‘Despot’ Hee!

Wow, Rat is really living in the past.

A friend’s garden box froze because they replaced the warming bulb with a led.

Exactly! Not the equivalency in watts of what it uses (which is a low number with LEDs) but the light output expressed in watts!

Refrigerators are ok with LEDs, but old ovens only work with appliance incandescent bulbs.

A helpful person at the Home Depot is harder to find than a old fashioned light bulb.

Despot, huh? Clever.

The funniest thing about this comic is the store sign.

Amen

My wife is in this category of “where are the real light bulbs?” people. Give me LEDs every time. After all, I’m the designated light bulb changer in the house. Let me have this one.

looking for a replacement for my 150W floodlight led me to try the ‘equivalent’ power saver which resembled a candle next to the good one still in the double lamp fixture, finally found one of the old ones and can light up the back yard for a little while yet.

We used to get 4 “free” light bulbs from the power company when we paid our electric bill at the hardware store.

right?

I understand that (and have suffered myself from) way-too-bright auto headlights. This is an increasing problem in the US. It turns out it’s because the limitation on car lighting was done back in the day: 55 Watts max.

Of course, with LED lighting, 55 W is enough to spot-weld oncoming cars to each other.

That hits home EVERYTIME I go there.

Got a 100-watt oldie in our kitchen lately—Mom’s eyesight not so good and she has to see what she’s doing

A smart bulb … I’m a dimwit.

How many Pearls Before Swine characters does it take to change a lightbulb?!

“Home Despot”! LOL!

I love the sign, ‘Home Despot’!

The OLD style, REAL light bulbs!! Certainly not those curly Q’s! Over the summer months, people were putting them in cones and eating them like ice cream! Provided good roughage for the diet and it lit up their days, no doubt!

I think what Rat needs is the equivalent of a 60 watt bulb. If he got an LED bulb that actually used 60 watts, it would be seriously bright.

It took getting away from CFLs for me to abandon incandescents. I really miss being able to tell how bright the light will be just from the wattage, though. Too many light tone options and I need a watts-lumens conversion table.

I’ve been calling it Home Despot for so long I can’t remember when I started. Glad to see I’m not the only one.

When CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) came out I bought 3 for a chandelier to save energy. I did not realize they have to “warm up” to reach their full brightness which could be any number of seconds. I swear when I flipped the light switch on, the room got darker! I replaced them with LEDS as soon as I could.

Up here in the Upper Midwest, the Dept of Transportation decided to save money by switching the traffic signal-lights from incandescent lamps (23 Watt, IIRC) to LED. OK, it worked… except in winter snow/ice storms. The incandescents gave off enough heat to keep the lenses ice/snow-free. The LEDs produced nowhere near the necessary heat. Incidents ensued. Soooooo, being thoughtful stewards of public safety, they kept the cost-saving LEDs and installed heaters to keep the lenses clear. No word on how much more electricity it takes to power them all. And, to be fair, they are only used during times when the lenses could be obscured. Yet still, I wonder.

You can’t use an L.E.D. bulb in your oven.

I expect a “60 watt” LED to be about 800 lumens. My problem is the color temperature. I prefer the “warmer” color temperature of 2700K, but every time I look at LED lights, the color temperature has gone up toward bright white and heading into blue.

Watt’s that you say?

Pretty appropriate name for that business. I made a vow never again to walk into a Home Depot store after I found out that the head of the chain supports and has made contributions to The Man Facing 91 State And Federal Counts.

Given how much they lie about the longevity of the new light bulbs, one could be forgiven in thinking they lie about the energy savings as well. My experience is they last, maybe, twice as long as incandescent bulbs, cost four to five times as much and my power bill sure as heck hasn’t dropped any.

They went the way of coffee.

CFL bulbs contain mercury. If you drop one and it breaks, get everyone including pets outside for at least a half hour. And they shouldn’t be disposed of in landfills (please don’t) or mercury will end up in groundwater. I’ll stick with good-ol incandescent please (except my plants get LED :)

My wife & I call it “Home Despot” too! :)

THEY GO IN THE HAZARDOUS HOUSEHOLD WASTE COLLECTION, NOT LANDFILL.