[Aptorian]

It's New Year's Eve and like every year in my country there's a debate about the sale and use of fireworks.

In Denmark fireworks are only sold in the weeks up to New Year's Eve and technically only legal to use on New Year's Eve, unless you're a licensed pyrotechnician

There's been more talk the last few years about whether fireworks should be banned all together. When you think about it, it's weird that most of the year, fireworks or explosives if you will, is banned but then for a few weeks every year you can buy all the "rockets and bombs" you want, while getting drunk on terrible champagne and blow your fingers off.

Not to mention that in Urban areas you have to accept that your idiot neighbors are setting off loud bangs at random times a day, for weeks before and after New Year's.

Seems like a strange and outdated tradition in these modern days, where everyone is so focused on health and safety.

What do you think?

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 31 December 2022 - 10:06 PM

[worry]

Only a few kinds should be commercially available ‘over the counter’ so to speak while everything else should be heavily regulated. But those few kinds are fine year round, and I’m not super stoked on policing people’s use of them, even though I personally find them annoying. I live in a neighborhood where people set them off frequently and well into the night, and it sucks, but there are probably already applicable noise and nuisance statutes that are suitable (but imo would still be a waste of everyone’s time to constantly enforce, not to mention needless increase in police-civilian interactions, which always have the potential to go really wrong in the US at least).

[Macros]

We were talking about this recently.
I forget what country someone was in, but fireworks banned all year but every Tom dick and Harry can buy and let off whatever they want on NYE and the next day.

I think licensed sale

[Aptorian]

I'm torn between thinking fireworks should be banned all together or just the stuff that makes loud booms. Rockets that make beautiful lightshows are nice but I hate the loud booms.

I've never really been that into fireworks. Maybe there was some period between the age of 12 and 15 where it was sort of cool to see how loud a boom you could make but the novelty ran out eventually. Maybe it was because I lived in a part of town where people were fucking maniacs. Either they threw fireworks after one another or competed for who could create the most insane homemade bomb.

[Mezla PigDog]

Thanks for making me look up UK firework laws. It's illegal to set them off after 11pm except Bonfire Night, NYE, Diwali and Chinese NY here when you can go to 1am. And you can only buy certain categories of fireworks from certain sellers near those times and even fewer sellers the rest of the year.

I love fireworks. When I was a little kid we had our own fireworks in the back garden on bonfire night. It was all very safe, kids never got close to them, my dad never blew himself up. Then as an older child after my dad started working away we went to the local church display every year. My kid is scared of them so I can't revive the tradition as a parent but if I was more organised, less scared of blowing my face off and upsetting the neighbours I would get some for Bonfire Night. Some families near us have displays and we watch them out of the window. The same families do NYE fireworks - they woke me up at midnight last night!

I get irritated by people with pets saying fireworks are irresponsible. Don't let your wimpy pets ruin fireworks for me.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Ban enall
Emalll
'Em all

[Tiste Simeon]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 01 January 2023 - 12:20 PM, said:

Ban enall
Emalll
'Em all

Bam email?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

My elderly father used to be obsessed with fireworks. And bombs. And poisons. Making his own... even after he 'blew his face off' as a teenager. (And accidentally poisoned his mother when she caught him trying to distill poison ivy to use against a classmate.) He tends to start up again around the Fourth of July, though he didn't say much about it this year as he knows my mother and I disapprove. A few years ago someone called the police on him for setting off fireworks.

IMO if people want to see fireworks they can either go to professional shows or watch videos (or ideally VR, if local educational institutions like museums can afford it---of course with VR there isn't the smell of burning or the danger of getting burned). Let people play with fireworks in realistic simulations supported by additional educational materials (and let them blow their fingers (and faces) off in simulations...).

They should be heavily regulated, and their sale in violation of those regulations should be criminalized. However criminalizing their use, or imposing heavy fines on people who can't pay them, may end up doing more harm than good.

[JPK]

Azath Vitr (D, on 01 January 2023 - 02:32 PM, said:

My elderly father used to be obsessed with fireworks. And bombs. And poisons. Making his own... even after he 'blew his face off' as a teenager. (And accidentally poisoned his mother when she caught him trying to distill poison ivy to use against a classmate.) He tends to start up again around the Fourth of July, though he didn't say much about it this year as he knows my mother and I disapprove. A few years ago someone called the police on him for setting off fireworks.

Azath, this reads like it came from one of those AI story generators. So pretty much on-brand for you.

[Aptorian]

January first the other gift of fireworks reveals itself. Mountains of spent fireworks boxes, soggy cardboard and dirtyplastic strewn everywhere, champagne bottles left on the sidewalk, the occasional colorful puddle of vomit.

[Mezla PigDog]

Aptorian, on 01 January 2023 - 06:30 PM, said:

January first the other gift of fireworks reveals itself. Mountains of spent fireworks boxes, soggy cardboard and dirtyplastic strewn everywhere, champagne bottles left on the sidewalk, the occasional colorful puddle of vomit.

You are saying this like it's a bad thing.

Now, every morning, nobody wants this. But once or twice a year?! C'mon - I know Apt knows that occasional debauchery is the yin to the elite couch potato lifestyle yang.

[Aptorian]

Oh there's a part of me that would love to go party in the street, double fisting champagne bottles and singing 80s songs off key.

Unfortunately the other part of me is old and it takes three days to get over a hangover now a days.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 01 January 2023 - 07:02 PM

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

JPK, on 01 January 2023 - 06:15 PM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 01 January 2023 - 02:32 PM, said:

My elderly father used to be obsessed with fireworks. And bombs. And poisons. Making his own... even after he 'blew his face off' as a teenager. (And accidentally poisoned his mother when she caught him trying to distill poison ivy to use against a classmate.) He tends to start up again around the Fourth of July, though he didn't say much about it this year as he knows my mother and I disapprove. A few years ago someone called the police on him for setting off fireworks.

Azath, this reads like it came from one of those AI story generators. So pretty much on-brand for you.

Life is stranger than fiction

[Maark Abbott]

I can't stand the things. Too easy for kids to get hold of as well - we've had fireworks set off directly outside our front door at the old place, and ours wasn't the only house targeted.

They're loud, annoying, and probably enjoy Stormlight Archive, so fireworks are not my friends.

[QuickTidal]

Aptorian, on 31 December 2022 - 09:38 PM, said:

It's New Year's Eve and like every year in my country there's a debate about the sale and use of fireworks.

In Denmark fireworks are only sold in the weeks up to New Year's Eve and technically only legal to use on New Year's Eve, unless you're a licensed pyrotechnician

There's been more talk the last few years about whether fireworks should be banned all together. When you think about it, it's weird that most of the year, fireworks or explosives if you will, is banned but then for a few weeks every year you can buy all the "rockets and bombs" you want, while getting drunk on terrible champagne and blow your fingers off.

Not to mention that in Urban areas you have to accept that your idiot neighbors are setting off loud bangs at random times a day, for weeks before and after New Year's.

Seems like a strange and outdated tradition in these modern days, where everyone is so focused on health and safety.

What do you think?

Idiots in Toronto will go down to a public park and use Roman Candles as "guns" hold them horizontally, light them, and shoot them at each other....risking injury to themselves AND everyone in the park.

Not to mention what they do to all the dogs in our life.

I would see them banned entirely if I could.

[Aptorian]

We've all gotten old and conservative.

[Maark Abbott]

Aptorian, on 03 January 2023 - 06:58 PM, said:

We've all gotten old and communist.

Fixed because I ain't no feckin Tory

[QuickTidal]

Maark Abbott, on 03 January 2023 - 07:55 PM, said:

Aptorian, on 03 January 2023 - 06:58 PM, said:

We've all gotten old and communist.

Fixed because I ain't no feckin Tory

Samesies. I'm old, and Progressive...but still, fuck fireworks.

I will never be a Conservative.

[Aptorian]

You people don't use the word conservative outside of politics?

[Tsundoku]

It's like in this country we have the Liberal Party - who are conservatives. So we tend to use small-l and Capital L to distinguish one type of L/liberal from the other.

I bet the Welsh would just have Lliberalls.