Who likes looking at maps?

[Lang Spoon]

Good old French Exceptionalism.

[Sporting]

[Lang Spoon]

The Catalan and Madrid figures being so comparatively low vs the visibility and prevalence of nosebag can only be from cops on the take.

[Antepli Ejderha]

[Lang Spoon]

Essence? Really? Don't remember that from Tour de France textbooks.

[ursus arctos]

[San Bernardhinault]

Massive nostalgia trip from Ursus's card.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

That petrol vocab map is fascinating. But I'm intrigued by Nigeria being shown as "other". What is petrol/gasoline called in Nigeria then? A quick bit of googling suggests that plenty of Nigerians actually call it "petrol". TG to thread!

[Discordant Resonance]

Similarly, I'd have thought Cameroon would be in the "essence" camp, given it's much more francophone than anglophone.

[ad hoc]

[Discordant Resonance]

If only Europe could agree on a common plug!

[3 Colours Red]

Can it be the Danish happy face, please?

[Levin]

Does the green two pin work in the blue three pin? Or am I imagining that?

[ad hoc]

Yes it does.

[ad hoc]

Plus that Italian socket is pretty rare these days I think. I never have had any problems using a normal Euro plug in Italy

[ad hoc]

I presume that the standard two pin works in Denmark too, but don;t know. Plus I don't recall any issue in Switzerland. So it;s only really the-islands-that-drive-on-the-left which are significantly different

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

We've been to pretty much every country on that map, Denmark included, with just our 3-pin (UK) to 2-pin (Europe) converter and I don't recall ever having a problem, no.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I'm guessing that in the cases where plugs of one of those designs "work" in a socket of a different design, what you all mean by "work" is that you get the power, but are not necessarily earthed, which if I'm right is a non-trivial safety issue.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Is "plugs" the only thing where actually the Brits are the best in the world?

[ad hoc]

The Aussie plug would also seem to be similarly as robust (though different from the British one)

[Lang Spoon]

I spent a bit of time in a Barcelona gaff where the voltage was still 110v in the building and there was a horrible transformer thing by the front door. 6 floors up, power would trip daily, I was sure we were going to burn to death. The over engineered Brit plugs are a thing of beauty.

[ad hoc]

Meanwhile, I'm going to say i like the flexibility of the standard two pin Euro plug. With the earthing being a function of the outer part of the plug, as seen in the picture below, this allows there to be smaller and less complicated plugs (which, yes, are unearthed), for things like phone chargers, making them smaller and more convenient

[ad hoc]

Though, for that feeling of complete safety, the UK etc plug seems hard to beat

[DCI Harry Batt]

Safety > convenience. I'd not considered Australia before, for obvious reasons.

Two-pin plugs are just rubbish, in my experience. Falling out / getting yanked out / wobbling etc. That might be a bit old hat, I guess - are there half-decent modern safe two-pin systems anywhere?

[ad hoc]

Two-pin plugs are just rubbish, in my experience. Falling out / getting yanked out / wobbling etc. That might be a bit old hat, I guess - are there half-decent modern safe two-pin systems anywhere?

The socket pictured, which is standard these days across the continent seems good to me. I never have issues with plugs wobbling or falling out. I think the UK one seems more robust, and solid, i think. But I'm not sure that it actually is. It just feels so.