Things you often Wonder

[sidcow]

11 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

I thought maybe the hot grease on my lips and down the throat (ooo er sailor)

Well you asked for it

 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by sidcow

[Ingram85]

Just now, sidcow said:

Well you asked for it

 

 

 

[Stevo985]

On 26/03/2021 at 21:53, Mark Albrighton said:

Considering the increase In contactless payments, I think about how much longer we’ll see charity boxes on shop counters, whether it’s for RNLI or those dog shaped coin boxes that you get for guide dogs. Or those charity boxes where you put a coin in and it spins round and round before dropping in. 

I would guess over the past year, they’ve moved significantly closer to being a thing of the past. I don’t know how feasible it would be to have a contactless point to stick in a quid as you’re buying something or whether it would take as swiping your card over another reader is a bit different to sticking a quid in a cancer research box because you personally can do without the change.

I think a system where you could voluntarily round up your purchase and it would go to a charity of the establishment's choice would be a good system.

So you buy a coffee for 3.40 and you're given the option to make it 4.00 with the extra 60p going to whatever charity costa or starbucks or whoever has nominated.

I think certain shops and coffee shops etc have done something similar in the past. And there are apps that do it for your own personal money (i.e the same thing but the extra goes into your savings). But I think if it was more widespread it would actually be more effective than the traditional charity boxes

Don't know how hard it would be to set up

Edited March 30, 2021 by Stevo985

[chrisp65]

The Screwfix website offers a rounding up donation to charity.

Cart comes to £12.97 you get the option of £12.97 or £13.00 but its the charity of their choice.

 

[bannedfromHandV]

4 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I think a system where you could voluntarily round up your purchase and it would go to a charity of the establishment's choice would be a good system.

So you buy a coffee for 3.40 and you're given the option to make it 4.00 with the extra 60p going to whatever charity costa or starbucks or whoever has nominated.

I think certain shops and coffee shops etc have done something similar in the past. And there are apps that do it for your own personal money (i.e the same thing but the extra goes into your savings). But I think if it was more widespread it would actually be more effective than the traditional charity boxes

Don't know how hard it would be to set up

McDonald’s already do this 

[Stevo985]

Just now, bannedfromHandV said:

McDonald’s already do this 

Ah, there you go then. Hopefully that kind of thing can become a bit more widespread and hopefully make up for any deficit

[HanoiVillan]

The end of cash is going to be terrible for the homeless though . . . even if businesses decide to choose charities focusing on homelessness (they probably won't), then the money raised will need to go to running the charity before an individual homeless person sees any of it, and what they see will both be less and doubtless accompanied by fussy rules and shaming.

[Mark Albrighton]

It’s good to hear there are some places that are doing this already. Haven’t ordered anything from screwfix personally and not been in McDonald’s for years. I occasionally see more personalised charity boxes. Typically a local family have someone who needs an operation, and the donation box is sat on the counter at my local Co-op. I guess that could be maintained in a similar manner as suggested above. I don’t know, but I would assume you’d know beforehand that the donation is directly going to someone in need, rather than an official charity.

38 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

The end of cash is going to be terrible for the homeless though . . . even if businesses decide to choose charities focusing on homelessness (they probably won't), then the money raised will need to go to running the charity before an individual homeless person sees any of it, and what they see will both be less and doubtless accompanied by fussy rules and shaming.

Yeah, the homeless had crossed my mind when I was originally posted, but didn’t outright say so. I know there’s the reasoning in not giving a quid or whatever to a homeless person, buy them a sandwich or something instead if you feel inclined. But people do give money to them, I feel I have done in the past few years. It’s going to have a massive impact as you say. 

Buskers, I sort of feel a bit glib mentioning them, but they would presumably suffer massively too? I initially wondered about Big Issue sellers, but a quick search tells me they now accept card payments. Although I haven’t ever read the Big Issue, I regularly would give a quid to a seller and just not take the magazine. To be honest, I feel like I’m less likely to do that by card, but then I’m not exactly out and about to test that theory.

[HanoiVillan]

13 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

It’s good to hear there are some places that are doing this already. Haven’t ordered anything from screwfix personally and not been in McDonald’s for years. I occasionally see more personalised charity boxes. Typically a local family have someone who needs an operation, and the donation box is sat on the counter at my local Co-op. I guess that could be maintained in a similar manner as suggested above. I don’t know, but I would assume you’d know beforehand that the donation is directly going to someone in need, rather than an official charity.

Yeah, the homeless had crossed my mind when I was originally posted, but didn’t outright say so. I know there’s the reasoning in not giving a quid or whatever to a homeless person, buy them a sandwich or something instead if you feel inclined. But people do give money to them, I feel I have done in the past few years. It’s going to have a massive impact as you say. 

Buskers, I sort of feel a bit glib mentioning them, but they would presumably suffer massively too? I initially wondered about Big Issue sellers, but a quick search tells me they now accept card payments. Although I haven’t ever read the Big Issue, I regularly would give a quid to a seller and just not take the magazine. To be honest, I feel like I’m less likely to do that by card, but then I’m not exactly out and about to test that theory.

I don't want to go too strong on the 'oh you should' angle, because not working in the city centre I haven't bought it for a few years either, and so I can't vouch for it today; that being said, it certainly used to be the case when I bought it a few years ago that the Big Issue was surprisingly good for what it was. They often covered issues that don't make it into the other papers (not just homelessness), and they're often a starting point for new journalists and writers, or an entry into the industry for writers from non-typical backgrounds like blogs, and so you tended to get writers when they were still sharp and interesting, rather than predictable and bloated.

[Seat68]

I used to work for an epos company and via the card machines a lot of the customers were adopting this but had the functionality turned off, perhaps they will now turn it on. 

[bickster]

I don't get why people would donate to the charity of someone else's choice. For me it's a very personal decision and there are also many charities I really don't have any truck with, any religious aspect to the charity and that's already a big red flag for me

One thing I will miss after the pandemic is over is the lack of charity bag packers in the supermarkets, reason enough never to go shopping at the weekend. Can I pack your bags badly? In return you can give us some money for something you don't agree with bah

[tonyh29]

What sort of conditions these scummers that left litter all over the local parks yesterday live in

Do they open the fridge , pour themselves a glass of juice and then just chuck the carton on the floor and walk away leaving it there

I'm not normally a  preachy person , i leave that to you leftie  lot here on VT , but these pictures from various parks yesterday are pretty disgusting 

[bickster]

6 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

What sort of conditions these scummers that left litter all over the local parks yesterday live in

Do they open the fridge , pour themselves a glass of juice and then just chuck the carton on the floor and walk away leaving it there

I'm not normally a  preachy person , i leave that to you leftie  lot here on VT , but these pictures from various parks yesterday are pretty disgusting 

I believe Toblerone wrappers and odd flavoured crisp packets were involved 

[BOF]

An actual bona fide thing I often wonder is ... what is humanity no longer able to do that we used to be able to do. Lost technologies, processes and knowledge. We often assume that human knowledge is always cumulative, always growing and never retreating, and for the most part it is. But there have been plenty of times when, for various reasons, we've completely lost skills and have still yet to re-discover how we did it.

I find that fascinating and a little sad.

I know we've only recently re-discovered how to make Roman concrete after nearly 2,000 years. Concrete used in the construction of sea walls and jetties etc which for some reason never eroded from sea water and we couldn't figure out why, or reproduce the effect (spoiler : turns out part of the secret was they used sea water for the mix, meaning the sea salt didn't need to equalise/leach into the structure).

I also remember seeing a very elaborate jug or vase in a museum in a documentary and the narrator commenting that no-one has any idea how they would go about re-making it if it broke, because all the processes have been lost. I found that remarkable - both that they could do that in the past and that we could lose that knowledge.

And of course the more famous example of the Antikythera mechanism which only this past month they think they've figured out how it does what it does, but still have absolutely no idea how on earth they managed to make such a thing back then.

Anyway, here's another example of not being able to do something we used to do, although they're trying their damnedest to bring it back and they do at least in theory have the 'how to', just not the skills or the material, or even the ambition to get anywhere near the original's quality, yet.

Quote

The ancient fabric that no one knows how to make

Nearly 200 years ago, Dhaka muslin was the most valuable fabric on the planet. Then it was lost altogether. How did this happen? And can we bring it back?

The full process involved 16 steps, each of which was so specialist, it was carried out by a different village around Dhaka, which was then part of Bengal – some in what is now Bangladesh, some in what is now the Indian state of West Bengal. It was a true community effort, involving the young and old, men and women.

First, the balls of cotton were cleaned with the tiny, spine-like teeth on the jawbone of the boal catfish, a cannibalistic native of lakes and rivers in the region. Next came the spinning. The short cotton fibres required high levels of humidity to stretch them, so this stage was performed on boats, by skilled groups of young women in the early morning and late afternoon – the most humid times of day. Older people generally couldn’t spin the yarn, because they simply couldn’t see the threads.

 

[chrisp65]

39 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

What sort of conditions these scummers that left litter all over the local parks yesterday live in

Do they open the fridge , pour themselves a glass of juice and then just chuck the carton on the floor and walk away leaving it there

I'm not normally a  preachy person , i leave that to you leftie  lot here on VT , but these pictures from various parks yesterday are pretty disgusting 

 

12 months of local individuals litter picking bits of plastic off the beach, followed by one day of car parks being reopened so the mouth breathers do their thing.

 

[Seat68]

I don’t know if this is true and I know at least one forum member can answer me, I read when I was very young that not even aerospace engineers know for certain why planes stay in the air. As a kid I accepted that but now as an adult I think, well thats bollocks. 

[BOF]

55 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

What sort of conditions these scummers that left litter all over the local parks yesterday live in

Do they open the fridge , pour themselves a glass of juice and then just chuck the carton on the floor and walk away leaving it there

I'm not normally a  preachy person , i leave that to you leftie  lot here on VT , but these pictures from various parks yesterday are pretty disgusting 

 

[mjmooney]

14 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

I don’t know if this is true and I know at least one forum member can answer me, I read when I was very young that not even aerospace engineers know for certain why planes stay in the air. As a kid I accepted that but now as an adult I think, well thats bollocks. 

It is indeed bollocks. 

[bannedfromHandV]

I think we need to accept that there is going to be lots of mass gatherings this summer and unfortunately wherever there are mass gatherings there will be litter.

Its not okay but then this is why the council employ people who’s job it is it pick up litter.

[Stevo985]

3 hours ago, bickster said:

I don't get why people would donate to the charity of someone else's choice. For me it's a very personal decision and there are also many charities I really don't have any truck with, any religious aspect to the charity and that's already a big red flag for me

Because rounding up your purchase by 40p to give that extra charity is still a good thing to do even if you haven't personally chosen the charity. If you went to McDonalds and they were doing that for, I dunno, Teenage Cancer, you're hardly going to be "**** that, I haven't specifically chosen that charity so **** 'em!"

If it was a charity you really didn't want to give money to then you have the choice not to. You can still go and donate to the charities you have as a personal choice. Nobody is stopping you