What store is this, Just Toilet Seats?
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Most of the UK toilet seats use the same terrible hinge design.
The threaded bit fits into a very short tapped hole in the base. The hinge top is secured using a very short bolt coming upwards from the base. If this comes loose, you can’t tighten it without taking the whole seat off. If you try and unfasten the seat, the top end of the threaded rod always comes off first. The threaded rod is off-cents, which makes getting the two hinges in a straight line difficult. The chrome top is often brass on the inside which makes a better when connected to the mild steel threaded rod. The screws holding the toilet lid have to be really short. If you don’t have a wooden seat, the hinges can be the pin-and socket type, so if either half moves they come apart. It is rather impressive that one small thing with so few components can be awful in so many ways at once.
My best repair was to drill out the top of the hinge and put in a long metal bar. I then screwed vine eyes onto the seat and cover, so they threaded onto the bar. Worked for years, it did.
My granny had an early flush toilet in her house. It dated from about 1860, I think. It was still working with the original seat and hinges as far as I know over 120 years later. I guess you can’t make a business selling one set of hinges every 120 years.
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It is next to Spatula City
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The Funky Academic did a great YouTube video on liberalism (in the economic sense) and succinctly described how choice doesn’t equal freedom and that having many kinds of Crap to choose from is not freedom as it’s all Crap…
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Not only that, titanium is hypoallergenic. And you can sterilise it with a blowtorch. Obvious kickstarter.
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previously on BoingBoing
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I say that second pic is photoshopped. He is not gurning, pouting, grimacing, shouting, frowning or any other of his weird looks. In fact his face looks almost normal. Almost thoughtful and benign (wait … need to take a tablet… phew, that’s better) … nah - still looks like an asshole.
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I totally agree!
I’ve counted the number of different kinds of just Colgate toothpaste that are available: 22. Got junk mail from Stash Tea, with a big fold out of all their different kinds of tea - at least 100 of 'em. I get so sick of seeing that – and how many kinds of presidential candidates did we ultimately have to vote between last November? Two kinds: conservative and narcissistic arrested-adolescent bat-shit crazy.
I think people are so overwhelmed at the grocery store that they have no thinking left over for important things – which is probably the whole point.
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That was great.
I was about to say something similar in terms of shopping, i.e., that when people go to the store, they don’t care how many choices there are—what they care about is whether the item they want is available. It seems to me that manufacturers/retailers offer so many choices in hopes of hitting a wider swath of consumer-desires. But, having too many choices is exhausting and off-putting for the consumer (as @faithnomore relates above, post #22). So the manufacturers/retailers try really hard to convince the consumers that consumers want more choices, but it’s really the manufacturers/retailers that want there to be so many choices. But maybe they would actually make more sales if there weren’t so many choices.
I really like how The Funky Academic applies the idea to the bigger things in life/society. It’s not just about getting what you want when you go to the store, but literally about being able to survive and thrive in life. Thanks for posting that video.
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Defensive much? Nobody said anything about a bureaucratic command economy except you. It often seems like the best argument capitalists can muster for our economic system is “well it could be worse!”
The Soviet Union is long gone. The bar is a little higher these days, and “Your choice of 16 different rationally-priced toilet seats” is not quite what most people were imagining when they signed up for Team Freedom.
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More than one reply to lollipop_jones appears to assume it was a serious/literal comment. But I read it as sarcasm. So… whoosh! But whose head did it go over? Was it mine?
Two words: cavity search.
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It’s true. I’m a salesman by trade, and I find that nothing is gained if I offer twenty choices. If I offer three, and then explain why you need the one in the middle, everybody is happy.
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For added fun, print full page image of Marty Feldman as Igor and tape to bottom of seat peering upward / outward.
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This was Jobs’ approach upon return to Apple from his NeXT days:
Also, the iBook always struck me as having more than a passing resemblance to the topic at hand.
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Plus you could chose to not get a Mac.
I still think this is not an unreasonable number of toilet seats to choose from.
Stay out of Home Depot?
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