A glass paperweight, a wax-soaked cardboard fruit box, and sun at 10am on an autumn morning - I noticed smoke and took pics (this was ~14 years ago, but re-found the pic today)
It caught alight right after I took the photo. easy to put out with fingers, but damn... if I hadn't been there....
@NanoRaptor
Similar thing happened to us once when our pet bird was standing in the sunlight near a full glass of water - her tail started smoking 😱
@3TomatoesShort Oh wow! Fire danger is everywhere 😬
@3TomatoesShort aww little one!!!
@NanoRaptor
She was very quickly popped under the kitchen tap, which was one of her favourite places to have a bath in any case 😁
Oct 10, 2026, 12:50 AM@NanoRaptor a cautionary tale in one picture.
@NanoRaptor
"Always keep your crystal ball covered when you're away."
"Oh! Why, because of... spirits?"
"No because if the sun hits it, it'll burn your house down."
Oct 10, 2026, 5:53 AM@mrencyclopedia @NanoRaptor i remember the ancient times when Anthony posted this
@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor Apperently the #1 cause of deck fires is glass pet food dishes
"I predict you will face a terrible tragedy" hands customer a crystal ball.
Oct 10, 2026, 4:12 AM@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor Same thing can happen with VR glasses, except it very quickly burns tracks in the display. Always store them with the lenses facing away from possible sunlight, or ideally covered.
@TomF
Camera viewfinders too.
@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor
Oct 10, 2026, 8:31 PM@vxo
Btw same for phone screens: amoled and similar will lose brightness and colour calibration + a led (which they're made out of) are solar panels in reverse so they can also build charge and can short the screen drivers.
LCD are more resistant but they will also suffer
@TomF @Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor
@Noxie
Oh so that's why OLED displays were noted to fail faster in sunlight. Wild.
@TomF @Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor
I don't think this equally applies to smartglasses. Those should be stored/put away in open fire IMHO.
😉
Oct 10, 2026, 9:29 PM@Datterich @TomF @Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor Storing them underwater also helps.
Oct 10, 2026, 8:41 PM@TomF @Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor 😭I found this out the hard way when we moved and my desk got direct sunlight in afternoons.
@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor Same thing applies to concave mirrors too. If you have a makeup mirror by a window, store it with the magnifying side facing down or away from the window.
Oct 10, 2026, 5:24 AM@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor I was at a flea market about a month ago and some vendor did this. Smoke started coming from the wooden shelf he mounted it on. I quickly picked it up and let them know they were lighting things on fire.
@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor I have a new refrigerator, and in addition to the normal icemaker it has in the door, the freezer also makes IceOrbs™.
I stopped using them, partly because it only made 3 per day (or 6 if you wanted to sacrifice quality), but also because the Orbs™ were not much smaller than the diameter of my water bottle, and the water dispenser is a rather high pressure. So when the water level got toward the top and the top Orb™ floated up, the water would hit it and ricochet off in a predictable but no less catastrophic angle.
@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor
This happened to me. Got home just in time to put out the fire
@Plan_A_to_Y@furry.engineer @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social I see people have it on their dashboard sometimes 😂 and think exactly the same thing. Miraculously nothing ever happened
Oct 10, 2026, 12:48 PM@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor "Ah! Got it. Evil spirits that burn down your house."
@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor I always keep my crystal ball thing in a dark-ish corner. Maybe I should get one of those velvety sheets for it. Might help with the smudges...
@Plan_A_to_Y @NanoRaptor Our fire department got paged out to a small store once, because someone saw smoke. Turned out to be one of those magnifying mirrors in a window sill, and the sun had reflected off that to scorch a little black track across the sill. Could have turned into a real fire for sure.
Oct 10, 2026, 3:30 AM@NanoRaptor now imagine you built one skyscraper sized and used it to melt cars.
https://www.constructiontimes.com/articles/4016/20240620/glass-skyscraper-building-melting-cars.htm
Oct 10, 2026, 3:40 AM@NanoRaptor oh lol, that was actually the 2nd building by that architect to do that.
https://abcnews.com/Travel/las-vegas-hotel-pool-sunlight-swimming-tourists/story?id=11739234
The sun is a deadly laser.
@NanoRaptor
Accidental Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder
@NanoRaptor This is why I'm always really cautious about leaving glasses of water out, or even clear flower vases. It's pretty wild
@NanoRaptor @purplepadma I have that same, exact paperweight 🤔
@NanoRaptor I had almost exactly this experience with a kid's plastic snowglobe left on a bed by a window that only gets sun later in the day. I smelled the smoke, picked up the globe before anything caught fire... but "if I hadn't been there..." doth resonate.
