Smoke Detector Quotes

There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.

Kevlar wrist cuffs in place, smoke bombs in left cargo pocket, zip ties in the right, and my handy-dandy, military-grade, metal detector-defying, twin APS daggers snug in their sheaths and hidden inside my steel-toe Doc Martens. Nothing like a well-stocked pair of black cargoes to make me feel girly.

Here’s how I see your weight—it is your smoke detector. And we’re all burning up the best part of our lives.” I’d never thought of it that way before, but it was a true aha moment. My weight was an indicator warning, a flashing light blaring my disconnection from the center of myself.

Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while other are too numb to absorb new experiences – or to be alert to signs of real danger. When the smoke detectors of the brain malfunction, people no longer run when they should be trying to escape or fight back when they should be defending themselves.

Effectively dealing with stress depends upon achieving a balance between the smoke detector and the watchtower. If you want to manage your emotions better, your brain gives you two options: You can learn to regulate them from the top down or from the bottom up.

...so we could all burn in our beds with no warning?' 'Oh, you’d have plenty of warning, ma’am. The smoke detectors all work.

the smoke detector may or may not be an old frisbee.

The smoke detectors began to ring; for they were battery-powered and thus still functioned, just as a record can still be played after the death of every member of the orchestra.

I’ve never understood how doctors can smoke. It’s like a firefighter deliberately disabling the smoke detectors in her house and then setting fire to her couch.

Here’s how I see your weight—it is your smoke detector. And we’re all burning up the best part of our lives.

central function of the amygdala, which I call the brain’s smoke detector, is to identify whether incoming input is relevant for our survival.11 It does so quickly and automatically,

Although the smoke detector is americium’s great contribution to modern living, actinide chemists often joke that they are constantly looking for new ways to ‘make americium great again’.

Most people who die in fires don't burn to death; they die from smoke inhalation that kills the respiratory system. that's why the fire service is going on and on about smoke detectors. These little ten-dollar gadgets are one of the truly wonderful inventions of man. The wake you up from a deep slumber so that you and your family and your dog or cat or whatever can get out of the house in time to live and call the fire department. If this sounds like a public service announcement, it is. If you don't have one, buy one today. They make great Christmas gifts. Plus they're cheap. Give a gift of love to a loved one you love. End of announcement.

You know, Curt, there's risk in everything we do. We put on seat bells, but we don't quit driving. We install smoke detectors, but we don't shut off the breaker. We worry about keeping those we love safe, but we don't lock them in a safe.

The rise of Autism has coincided with: 1. Color televisions. 2. Double glazing & window coatings. 3. Insulated homes that are abnormally quiet. 4. Cell phones. 5. Satellites. 6. Affordable Jet Travel. 7. Home computers & video games. 8. Energy efficient light bulbs. 9. Immunizations. 10. Global Pollution. 11. Processed foods. 12. Adoption of cars by the masses. 13. Radioactive smoke detectors in the home. 14. Increasing television screen sizes. 15. WiFi. 16. Energy Star homes that are sealed up and lacking external fresh air ventilation. 17. FM stereo radio.

Here's a fact for you to ponder. This town can go weeks without a fucking fire. Weeks without even a malfunctioning smoke detector! And then suddenly? Thanksgiving rolls around, and my tiny, black heart starts to beat double-time with pure fear. Do you know why that is Joe? ...Because it means Christmas is coming. Christmas, as in the time of year when people purposefully bring highly flammable decaying shrubbery inside their homes, festoon it with electrical wires, place brightly wrapped kindling underneath it, and say "It's so fucking magical.

A. There are people who collect elements. These collectors try to gather physical samples of as many of the elements as possible into periodic-table-shaped display cases.1 Of the 118 elements, 30 of them—like helium, carbon, aluminum, and iron—can be bought in pure form in local retail stores. Another few dozen can be scavenged by taking things apart (you can find tiny americium samples in smoke detectors). Others can be ordered over the Internet. All in all, it’s possible to get samples of about 80 of the elements—90, if you’re willing to take some risks with your health, safety, and arrest record. The rest are too radioactive or short-lived to collect more than a few atoms of them at once. But what if you did? The periodic table of the elements has seven rows.2 You could stack the top two rows without much trouble. The third row would burn you with fire. The fourth row would kill you with toxic smoke. The fifth row would do all that stuff PLUS give you a mild dose of radiation. The sixth row would explode violently, destroying the building in a cloud of radioactive, poisonous fire and dust. Do not build the seventh row.

It was because of this that she had allowed herself to sleep in, and now it was half past twelve and she was standing on the tree lawn in her robe and a pair of her son Trip’s tennis shoes, watching their house burn to the ground. When she had awoken to the shrill scream of the smoke detector, she ran from room to room looking for him, for Lexie, for Moody. It struck her that she had not looked for Izzy, as if she had known already that Izzy was to blame. Every bedroom was empty except for the smell of gasoline and a small crackling fire set directly in the middle of each bed, as if a demented Girl Scout had been camping there.

Here’s an experiment worth conducting. Sneak into the home of a NASA skeptic in the dead of night and remove all technologies from the home and environs that were directly or indirectly influenced by space innovations: microelectronics, GPS, scratch-resistant lenses, cordless power tools, memory-foam mattresses and head cushions, ear thermometers, household water filters, shoe insoles, long-distance telecommunication devices, adjustable smoke detectors, and safety grooving of pavement, to name a few. While you’re at it, make sure to reverse the person’s LASIK surgery. Upon waking, the skeptic embarks on a newly barren existence in a state of untenable technological poverty, with bad eyesight to boot, while getting rained on without an umbrella because of not knowing the satellite-informed weather forecast for that day.

Brain imaging studies suggest that a couple brain areas in particular are involved in cognitive control: the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the lateral prefrontal cortex (lateral PFC). We’ll be referring to these together as the “cognitive control regions” of the brain. There is still some debate about the precise role played by each of these regions, but one plausible characterization is that the ACC is a kind of smoke detector, and the lateral PFC is the fire response team. Like a smoke detector, the ACC is in constant monitoring mode, waiting to detect a whiff of danger, such as an instance of cognitive conflict. In the case of the Stroop task, we’ve got two automatic processes that are in conflict: the identification of a typeface or color versus the automatic processing of a simple word (assuming you’re literate and it’s your native language). This conflict alerts the ACC, which then sends out an alarm to the lateral PFC to come deal with the situation. The lateral PFC is responsible for many higher cognitive functions, such as the integration of conscious and unconscious knowledge, working memory (the small spotlight of consciousness that allows us to focus on explicit information), and conscious planning. Most relevantly, when it comes to the case of the Stroop task, the lateral PFC also exerts control over other areas of the brain by strengthening the activation of task-relevant networks at the expense of other networks. By weakening certain neural pathways, the lateral PFC essentially tells them to stop doing what they are doing, which is the neural equivalent of fire-retarding foam. In the Stroop task presented above,

Dawson looked at him, his jaw clenched earnestly, and remembered when he thought Jared was the leader of the two of them. He should have been the leader—he was the older one, the more experienced one. But moment by moment, text by text, touch by touch, it had finally dawned on Dawson that Dawson would survive if their relationship detonated and dissipated in smoke and flames. Jared would be in the heart of the blast. Scientists with microscopes and DNA detectors wouldn’t be able to find him again.

Natural selection creates systems, like the brain, that are biased to minimize the costlier error. This built-in bias to avoid evolutionarily expensive errors is known as the smoke detector principle. Evolutionary psychologists Martie Haselton and Randy Nesse believe that natural selection engineered human judgment and decision making to be biased according to the same principle. Like a good smoke detector, our brain is rigged to sound the alarm even when there is no fire, forcing us to tolerate the inconvenience of false alarms to avoid potentially lethal misses. Because our evolutionary tendencies steer us toward avoiding costly errors, our decisions will result in more small errors. But we are disposed to produce little errors so that we avoid big mistakes.

British flight attendants warn you not to tamper with the smoke detectors in the aircraft toilets, whereas American flight attendants warn you not to tamper with, disable or destroy them.

Google, however, is far from done with its acquisitions, and in June 2014 it announced it was purchasing Dropcam, a large video camera security start-up, for $555 million. Dropcam makes high-definition Wi-Fi and Bluetooth security cameras that stream live video to mobile apps and send alerts based on predetermined activities sensed by the devices. With the purchase of Dropcam, Google now owns not only your Web searches, e-mail, mobile phone, maps, and location but also your movements inside your own home through live-streaming video feeds. As a result, your thermostat, smoke detector, and security system all come with lengthy terms of service. Could the privacy implications be any more obvious?

Meridith.” The sound of Jake’s voice startled her, made her heart jump into the next gear. Why was he always sneaking up on her? She turned, glaring. “Sorry, I—” He stopped a car’s length from her. She realized belatedly how she must look. Her eyes still burned, were no doubt red. She faced the shore, cleared the knot from her throat. “I—checked out the smoke detectors,” he said. “Batteries are old.” The wind whistled through the budding trees, stirred the wind chimes on the front porch. “Great. Thanks.” She rubbed her arms. “The ones upstairs are working.” His voice was closer. “Need to run to the store and get more nine-volts and some other things.” “Okay.” She wished he’d leave, go get the stupid batteries. She drew in a deep cleansing breath. Salt, grass, and Jake’s woodsy scent filled her nostrils. “Sorry if I was out of line in there,” he said. “I get testy sometimes—was having trouble with the porch spindles, shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” He thought she was teary-eyed because he’d snapped at her. If she were that sensitive, Noelle would have her in tears on a daily basis. She waved away his apology. “Don’t worry about it.” The

wailing entered my dream. Slowly, I shook off the warm breeze and sunshine from the catamaran and opened my eyes to my bedroom. It took a minute or two for me to determine the sound wasn’t from my dream, but coming from next door. From Maggie’s house. Her smoke detector was going off. From where he stood on

If you want to radiation poison a nation, just start shipping them cheap ionizing smoke detectors for the home with a little too much radiation in them.

As far as her parents could tell from their vantage point behind the spire, Psyche plummeted to her death. They never found her body, but that didn’t mean anything. It was a windy day, and they were too upset to launch a full-scale search. Besides, if Psyche hadn’t died, that meant the monster of the prophecy had taken her, which was even worse. The king and queen returned home, brokenhearted, convinced they would never see their beloved daughter and favorite tourism magnet again. The end. Not really. In the long run, Psyche would’ve suffered less if she had died, but she didn’t. As she fell from the rock, the winds swirled around her. Forty feet from the valley floor, they slowed her fall and lifted her up. “Hi,” said a disembodied voice. “I’m Zephyrus, god of the west wind. How ya doing today?” “Um…terrified?” said Psyche. “Great,” said Zephyrus. “So we have a short flight this morning, heading over to my master’s palace. Weather looks good. Maybe a little turbulence on our initial ascent.” “Your master’s palace?” “Please remember to keep your seat belt fastened, and don’t disable the smoke detectors in the lavatory.” “What language are you speaking?” Psyche demanded. “What are you talking—AHHH!” The west wind swept her away at a thousand miles an hour, leaving behind Psyche’s stomach and a trail of black flower petals. They touched down in a grassy valley blanketed with wildflowers. Butterflies flitted through the sunlight. Rising in the distance was the most beautiful palace Psyche had ever seen. “Thanks for flying with us today,” Zephyrus said. “We know you have a lot of options when choosing a directional wind, and we appreciate your business. Now, you’d better get going. He’ll be waiting.” “Who—?” But the air turned still. Psyche sensed that the wind god was gone.

In PTSD the critical balance between the amygdala (smoke detector) and the MPFC (watchtower) shifts radically, which makes it much harder to control emotions and impulses. Neuroimaging studies of human beings in highly emotional states reveal that intense fear, sadness, and anger all increase the activation of subcortical brain regions involved in emotions and significantly reduce the activity in various areas in the frontal lobe, particularly the MPFC.

While the smoke detector is usually pretty good at picking up danger clues, trauma increases the risk of misinterpreting whether a particular situation is dangerous or safe. You can get along with other people only if you can accurately gauge whether their intentions are benign or dangerous. Even a slight misreading can lead to painful misunderstandings in relationships at home and at work.

Mindfulness has been shown to have a positive effect on numerous psychiatric, psychosomatic, and stress-related symptoms, including depression and chronic pain.16 It has broad effects on physical health, including improvements in immune response, blood pressure, and cortisol levels.17 It has also been shown to activate the brain regions involved in emotional regulation18 and to lead to changes in the regions related to body awareness and fear.19 Research by my Harvard colleagues Britta Hölzel and Sara Lazar has shown that practicing mindfulness even decreases the activity of the brain’s smoke detector, the amygdala, and thus decreases reactivity to potential triggers.20 3.

Disabling your conscience is like disabling your smoke detector. It doesn’t stop a fire. It just leaves you ignorant of the fact that there is one.

When doing the property inspection, take note of the following things: • Mold and mildew • Undocumented pets • Broken window blinds •  Holes in doors or in walls •  Evidence of extra people living in the unit •  Smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors (if required)—make sure they exist, are up to code, and work •  Leaks under the kitchen and bathroom sinks •  Dripping water from the bathroom or kitchen sink • Dripping water from the bathtub •  Whether the toilet is continuously running • General cleanliness of the property •  Items piled against heaters or other fire dangers

Beeping smoke detectors means low batteries, not 'take them out and burn your kitchen down.' Fire Captain James Haskell failing badly at flirting over a smoky kitchen

YOU KEEP LOOKING at Sid like that, and the smoke detectors are going to go off,

sometimes i feel more like a house than a person with the way i decorate my body and my face to hide damaged walls and empty spaces; my heart is more like a door with changed locks because i've made multiple keys for people who walked all over me with filthy shoes, people who said they could live here, but they were just passing through. i hope my eyes are not windows, because i fear what the world might see— all of my flaws and insecurities on display like a coffee table or some shoddy love seat. sometimes i swear i left the oven on and forgot because my mind feels like a smoke detector with the way my apprehension never calms. i smell smoke, but i can't see it; i'm told things are never as bad as i make them, but every wildfire starts with a spark and it's easy to burn when you're a house made of straw.

Defensive mechanisms can make two symmetric kinds of mistakes: they can fail to activate in the presence of a threat (false negatives) or become activated when no threat is present (false positives). Even when defenses are functional and optimally calibrated, errors cannot be completely avoided; given the tradeoffs between the costs of different types of errors, the smoke detector principle suggests that defensive systems should typically evolve to commit more false positives than false negatives.

The central function of the amygdala, which I call the brain’s smoke detector, is to identify whether incoming input is relevant for our survival.11 It does so quickly and automatically, with the help of feedback from the hippocampus, a nearby structure that relates the new input to past experiences. If the amygdala senses a threat—a potential collision with an oncoming vehicle, a person on the street who looks threatening—it sends an instant message down to the hypothalamus and the brain stem, recruiting the stress-hormone system and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to orchestrate a whole-body response. Because the amygdala processes the information it receives from the thalamus faster than the frontal lobes do, it decides whether incoming information is a threat to our survival even before we are consciously aware of the danger. By the time we realize what is happening, our body may already be on the move.

I’m going to tell you a really important lesson I learned after Emily died. I thought I knew what it was to be part of a team. I was in the army, joined Delta, I trusted my team with everything, and knew they had my back no matter what. Then I lost my wife and was the sole parent to a newborn. Lolly was my responsibility, and I took that seriously. I tried to juggle everything myself. Funeral arrangements, caring for Lolly, taking care of the house, laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, midnight feeds, and a colicky baby. I thought I had to do it all and didn’t want to accept help from anyone. You know what eventually happened?” “What?” “I crashed. Two months after Lolly was born, I was cooking dinner, lay down for just a moment, and woke up an hour later to someone hammering on my apartment door. Dinner burned which set off the smoke detectors, the fire department came, and I realized that raising my daughter wasn’t a mission I could undertake without my team. I needed my parents, needed Bear and the rest of Alpha team, needed Prey and the Oswalds. So, I reached out for help.

It was clear that a smoke detector and fire extinguisher were not going to save people from the historic August 2023 Lahaina fire.

Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while others are too numb to absorb new experiences—or to be alert to signs of real danger. When the smoke detectors of the brain malfunction, people no longer run when they should be trying to escape or fight back when they should be defending themselves. The landmark ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study, which I’ll discuss in more detail in chapter 9, showed that women who had an early history of abuse and neglect were seven times more likely to be raped in adulthood. Women who, as children, had witnessed their mothers being assaulted by their partners had a vastly increased chance to fall victim to domestic violence.

At the time, the library's fire prevention consisted of smoke detectors and handheld fire extinguishers. There were no sprinklers. The American Library Association, known informally as the ALA, always advised against sprinklers, because water damage was even worse for books than fire damage.

It’s important to have an efficient smoke detector: You don’t want to get caught unawares by a raging fire. But if you go into a frenzy every time you smell smoke, it becomes intensely disruptive. Yes, you need to detect whether somebody is getting upset with you, but if your amygdala goes into overdrive, you may become chronically scared that people hate you, or you may feel like they are out to get you.

Ionizing smoke detectors unnaturally raise the background radiation levels in the human environment.

What in the—? My begonias!” he heard someone say behind him. Nick looked over his shoulder. A small but muscular woman in sweaty workout clothes was stepping out of a big shiny car in the neighbor’s driveway. She was gaping in horror at the chewed-up flowerbed and the smoking lawn mower. Scowling, she turned toward Uncle Newt’s house. And the scowl didn’t go away when she noticed Nick looking back at her. In fact, it got scowlier. Nick smiled weakly, waved, and hurried into the house. He closed the door behind him. “Whoa,” he said when his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside. Cluttering the long hall in front of him were dozens of old computers, a telescope, a metal detector connected to a pair of bulky earphones, an old-fashioned diving suit complete with brass helmet, a stuffed polar bear (the real, dead kind), a chainsaw, something that looked like a flamethrower (but couldn’t be … right?), a box marked KEEP REFRIGERATED, another marked THIS END UP (upside down), and a fully lit Christmas tree decorated with ornaments made from broken beakers and test tubes (it was June). Exposed wires and power cables poked out of the plaster and veered off around every corner, and there were so many diplomas and science prizes and patents hanging (all of them earned by Newton Galileo Holt, a.k.a. Uncle Newt) that barely an inch of wall was left uncovered. Off to the left was a living room lined with enough books to put some libraries to shame, a semitransparent couch made of inflated plastic bags, and a wide-screen TV connected by frayed cords to a small trampoline.

smoke detectors were a relatively new development and still expensive for

I have every expectation that if switched mode power supplies, radioactive household smoke detectors, radio frequency (RF) transmitters and satellites were banned, Autism would recede into a very rare disease.

Examples of slowification practices: using mock-ups, prototypes, simulations, scale model tests, offline problem-solving, land-based models, etc. §§ Examples of simplification practices: simple workflows, agile software development, modularization, just-in-time, pull systems, etc. ¶¶ Examples of amplification practices: stress tests, andon cords, smoke detectors, etc. to flag problems sooner rather than later.