Ready for an anatomy lesson? Your cables are full of little metal wires wrapped with insulation. On the far end, they thread into a connector with a plug at the end. That joint is where things go wrong. It makes sense if you think about it. When you’re using a cable, the connector acts like an anchor, and all the bending happens right at the end of the wire.

Imagine a paper clip. Bend it at the same point over and over and it breaks. “On a microscopic level, bending beyond the elastic range makes the bonds between the atoms break and reform as they shift positions,” says Robert Hyers, head of the mechanical and materials engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the US. “You get this accumulation of defects called dislocations where the atoms don’t line up, like wrinkles in a rug.” Too many dislocations hardens the metal, then it snaps, and your paper clip is ruined. The metal wires inside a cable work the same way.

Hopefully you’ll feel bad enough for those atoms to avoid some of these common problems. “One thing a lot of people do, including me sometimes when I’m lazy, is just pull on the long part of the cable to unplug it,” Pecht says. “That’s causing additional stress where it wouldn’t if you just pulled on the connector itself.”

A key source of strife comes from cables that are too short for the job, Hyers says. If you’re stretching the cable out to make it reach a socket, you’re hurting it. Or, if you find yourself lying in bed (or anywhere else for that matter) with your phone plugged in, pulling the connector at a sharp angle to keep using it, you’re asking for trouble.

“Another thing we see people do is plug their phone in and then stick it in the cup holder in their car to prop it up,” says Weins. “So, the phone is sitting on the cable and all the pressure of the phone weight, including bouncing as you drive, is right on that point.” Stop it. That’s just cruel.

Veteran Nollywood actor Roy De Nani has spoken about his painful experiences in the film industry, as well as the personal struggles he has endured over the years of his life.

Speaking on the ‘Where is the lie’ podcast, the actor alleged that at a point in his career, he was unofficially blacklisted from getting acting jobs.

According to him, “A man gave an order that nobody should give Roy De Nani a job again. For years, even when I was already recording, a producer would come in and say, ‘No, cancel it. Stop.’”

Roy De Nani also recalled the pain of losing his brother, saying that no Nollywood actors or actresses supported him during this time.

“I have a brother from the same father. When he died, not a single actor or actress showed up,” he said.

The veteran actor further revealed that he later suffered an even more devastating loss when both his son and daughter died after he could not afford the blood transfusions they urgently needed.

According to him, the children were living with sickle cell disorder and required regular transfusions to stay alive.

“I lost my son, I lost my daughter because they needed blood transfusion so they could continue living, but there was no money to buy the blood, and they died,” he said.

“Nollywood never came to assist me. Not that they don’t care, but they have not been touched. Let it be said that way,” he added.