Just yesterday, I went to Kohl’s because I need new jeans. I walked over to the women’s jean section, gaped for a minute at the insane and utter chaos of brands, styles, & sizes, then turned around a walked back out of the store again.
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Nope. It picks your pocket.
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Oddly, it is rather hard to sell colours to Americans or British in kitchens and bathrooms. The European mainland is much more adventurous. If I want to sell our house I’m going to have to replace the stuff in two bathrooms with white.
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EXACTLY THIS![quote=“agies, post:16, topic:100941”]
you’d only notice that it wouldn’t fit on your toilet once you brought it home.
[/quote]
(Hence the event in my earlier comment. I could see small differences so side-by-side was the rational approach.)
Slight variations, designed for manufacture on the same machinery with small variations on tooling. And a designer somewhere who is deeply frustrated that her skills have been reduced to this.
Now, what interests me about this is that I misunderstood (I think) the original post. I thought it was drawing attention to the fact that in this case the appearance of choice isn’t a real choice, just like there are many, many options for a Fiat 500 but you still have basically the same not too reliable car at the end of it. Whereas when you consider a product which is sold in many millions every year and which everybody comes into contact with quite frequently, you’d hope for lots of variation from different companies, from the basic pressed PVC to the artisanal and amusing. Capitalism seems to result in convergence to the mediocre. Umberto Eco had a piece about this back in the 1980s, about how workers were conditioned to see machinery as stuff they used to do their jobs, rather than things they could buy to be creative with themselves.
In fact the selection of one or two variants is part of the same capitalist process. It isn’t communism. People you never get to see determine what products are advertised to you. The biggest phone company in the world restricts the number of models as much as it can while trying to lock you in via services. An apparent huge choice of models worldwide turns into a very restricted choice in the US because those “wonks” want to steer you in the direction of the product with the biggest margins. That’s how monopoly capitalism is supposed to work, just like the epipen fiasco. At the other end of the scale with commodities you are offered a very restricted choice made up to look like a wide range, to minimise risk of products with low margins.
The Soviet Union had a restricted range of goods partly because under their system there was no way to find out what anything was worth to people, and partly to conceal the fact that they were a low income country trying to look like a rich one. But that wasn’t communism. Under actual communism, impossible as it is, people were supposed to decide freely, based on their shared social values, what they were going to make {sarcastic laughter off}. It works in communistic villages in Thailand, and to a degree among the Amish, but so far nobody has found a way to make it work for big societies.
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The wonderful thing about capitalism is capitalism is wonderful things. Their tops are made out of rubber. Their bottoms are made out of springs.
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I think you might have missed the point.
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We had a family meeting in San Antonio and my sister -in- law made an appointment for all of us to visit Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum. Decorated and displayed nicely. Free Admission. Here below is the information.
Leila
Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum
Address:
239 Abiso Ave., San Antonio, TX
Directions:
Due south of the airport. I-410 exit 22. South on Broadway a little over two miles. At 6021 Broadway (Jefferson State Bank) bear right onto Townsend Ave., then make the second right onto Abiso Ave. Drive two blocks, then make a right on Arbutus St. The address is 239 Abiso, but the garage is around the corner on Arbustus.
Hours:
Call first, please give Barney enough time to get ready. (Call to verify)
Phone:
210-824-7791
Admission:
Free
RA Rates:
The Best
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This may meet your requirements:
https://www.amazon.com/Comfort-Seats-C1B3E4-OS-00-Premium-Elongated/dp/B001AHMDRA
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Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, full of fun!
The most wonderful thing about capitalism is…
[edit]…all the money belongs to me!
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You ain’t experienced flimsy until you’ve sat on some of the seats in China. I travel to and from China enough, I convinced my boss to pay for an apartment here. That first apartment had one that was maybe 1/8" thick plastic. Maybe.
Capitalist Home Depot to the rescue! Back home in the US, I bought a new seat for my house, washed the old one, and smuggled the the old one into China. I’ve tried to declare stuff when entering China and have always been told to get lost. This time I didn’t bother and enjoy having a toilet smuggling story.
The seat fit perfectly here. Unfortunately, I had to move apartments (rentals are often owned by speculators looking to flip). But I get a chuckle knowing that some lucky person in China has a fine (if used) American made toilet seat!
The next place had a better seat with an interesting feature: built in toddler seat. The regular lid was replaced with a smaller seat for little people. It had it’s own tiny lid. If my kids were of potty training age, I totally would have unbolted that one and smuggled it to the US.
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The proverbial Thunder Mug…
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Living the good life at boingboing.
Sure there’s lots of shapes, sizes, and colors. But could any of them talk?
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Exactly. Communism and/or libertarianism only work up to the tribe/clan level; herding monkeys is hard, and human nature is what it is.
Now, socialism? Sure, no problem! In fact, every national government ever has/had some sort of “socialist” core, for good and/or ill. Which makes sense, because governments are supposed to enable society.
I’m pretty sure communism, libertarianism, and general non-violence are things our species simply is not able to accomplish, in our present form. Hoarding things (violently) in small groups is how we do things, throughout history, since before history.
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I only buy all titanium tactical toilet seats. For the zombie apocalypse.
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And then decide to spring for the premium model assuming it is built to a higher standard… only to later realize it is exactly the same low-quality crap.
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Yes, yes, yes! (especialy if you have kids)
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I find they’re a bit cold on your bum. I prefer the ones with the neoprene coating. Might as well by comfortable during the apocalypse…
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