things / observations / questions that have been bugging you…

Why do people borrow close to or more than their yearly income to buy a depreciating asset vehicle that spends most of its life sat in traffic? And why are these vehicles capable of up to 155mph when the speed limit is half that?
I fail to grasp the car/ego thing and often wonder what it replaces in people’s lives? Hundreds of years ago people possibly coveted a stout horse or natty suit of of armour or a nice herd of cattle? Either way the car has far too much significance for people.

I fail to grasp the car/ego thing and often wonder what it replaces in people’s lives? Hundreds of years ago people possibly coveted a stout horse or natty suit of of armour or a nice herd of cattle?

Yes they did (the horse more than the herd of cattle) – after your house, your means of transport would be the next most expensive and most aspirational thing you’d buy – a fine horse, a fancy carriage. Travel/transport has always been a status symbol.

Why do 4×4’s slow down for speed bumps?

Even now, the ‘helmets’ worn in modern fighters are mostly for attaching oxygen masks and other equipment, because they don’t really go for ‘crash landings’ that’s why they’ve got ejector seats and even if you’re wearing a helmet and you eject into the canopy you’ll die*

Glad that was qualified. In fact, many aircraft have frangible canopies, sometimes with explosives to help the pilot through when (s)he ejects, but in some cases not.

Interesting example – Eurofighter Typhoon initially couldn’t be flown by wimmin as in order to achieve the best possible visibility, it had been designed without any exploding bits. Making one that didn’t snap a typical woman’s neck on ejection but that also could take the wind loads during flight was a tricky exercise, apparently. You’d be needing a helmet to eject through that.

I see people in queues to get into a local retail park on a weekend, surely there is more to a weekend than walking around a packed retail park trying to buy something that is more expensive than if you click a few buttons on your computer and let somebody do all the work until your doorbell goes?

Keeps all the idiots in one place at the weekends though.

Why do retired people still go grocery shopping at the weekends?

I fail to grasp the car/ego thing and often wonder what it replaces in people’s lives?

I’d imagine it’s the same thing that coffee gives you in yours. When folk realise that they’re not really the special snowflake their parents always told them they were and they are in fact (as part of a western industrialised society at least) going to live an uninteresting unremarkable life that will be largely (given the history of humanity) long lived and luxurious, they’ll get a bit depressed, and in a bid to overcome that, they’ll grab at something that they think will sooth it.

For a lot of folk that try not to think too hard that will be materialistic goods, hoping, against evidence, that it will make them happy.

Or they’ll get existential angst…

Why do we have the word “demolish” to knock things down, but don’t have the word “molish” for building them back up again?

Why do we have the word “demolish” to knock things down, but don’t have the word “molish” for building them back up again?

Theres a difference between demolition and deconstruction, the latter is take apart as an opposite of put together, but demolish isn’t an antonym – its related to words like defeat and destroy.

but don’t have the word “molish” for building them back up again?

why I am doing this…

Comes from Latin I think; Moliri (to construct) so there sort of is…

Why do people borrow close to or more than their yearly income to buy a depreciating asset vehicle that spends most of its life sat in traffic? And why are these vehicles capable of up to 155mph when the speed limit is half that?
I fail to grasp the car/ego thing and often wonder what it replaces in people’s lives? Hundreds of years ago people possibly coveted a stout horse or natty suit of of armour or a nice herd of cattle? Either way the car has far too much significance for people.

+1. I totally understand having nice things, and a nice car would fit into that idea. And I understand some people just need a basic utility vehicle for stuff. I really don’t get why anyone would spend thousands of pounds more just to have a slightly more powerful engine etc in an already shit car. Or indeed why anyone would buy such crappy motors new in the first place. 😯 I suppose someone’s got to though. Mugs.

Why do 4×4’s slow down for speed bumps?

Why did the lady in the Landcruiser this morning swerve into oncoming traffic on wrong side of the road to avoid a 3″ deep puddle? 😯 🙄

Comes from Latin I think; Moliri (to construct) so there sort of is…

But we don’t specifically have the word “molish”, which is a shame, because it’s nice.

I’m going to go and molish a sandwich now… And them demolish it.

Why do 4×4’s slow down for speed bumps?

Why did the lady in the Landcruiser this morning swerve into oncoming traffic on wrong side of the road to avoid a 3″ deep puddle?

..because you should never drive your 4×4 through a body of water without wading through it first to check the depth and to identify any obstacles which may be hidden beneath the surface?

LET’s OFF ROAD!

I’d imagine it’s the same thing that coffee gives you in yours

but that costs me about £100 a year in beans and i have a £150 machine £300 grinder. machine is 6 years old and grinder 2, i expect a set of burrs needed in another 2. so how is that spending/borrowing my yearly salary to spend on an indulgence? granted i could bulk buy those huge tins of nescafe instant but i’m not really seeing the correlation between my coffee and car buying usage?

i like coffee but i’m not having coffee rage if somebody has a better machine than me or see it as a threat to ego or a penis extension when comparing my coffee to somebody with less coffee paraphernalia.

i get your point and agree but i think it’s my wristwatch obsession thats closer to the car one but that will not depreciate and it’s the cost of a 5 year old diesel estate.

Why whilst listening to the STW Playlist on Spotify am I left wondering just how warped, perverted and bastardly twisted you lot really are……

What do other people do at cash machines that takes so long?

why dont we have Belgian style furniture ladder things? they have town houses like us but you can easily remove a window and then wiz everything up yet we struggle with narrow twisty victorian stairs.

Why do 24hr shops have locks on the doors?

why dont we have Belgian style furniture ladder things? they have town houses like us but you can easily remove a window and then wiz everything up yet we struggle with narrow twisty victorian stairs.

This could have been extremely useful to us, when we recently had a massive sofa and antique sideboard delivered. The only way was to winch it up and get it through the window. Fortunately, we were having new windows fitted at the time, but it still involved having to use a scaffolding tower and winch gear. Something like £300 or so just to get some old furniture into the house. 😆

Neither item will now be removable without destruction.

Why is Henry the ‘hoover’ fitted with wheels so tiny that they are unable to roll over the kind of objects you might find on a floor – like a rug or even his own bloody cable?

How do they get the eggshell out when they make scotch eggs?

fail to grasp the car/lego thing and often wonder what it replaces in people’s lives?

Seriously? What don’t you get? It’s Lego and cars! Something I can go “vroom, vroom” with after I put it together from small, modular, standardised plastic pieces. Hits so many man needs at one time!

i get your point and agree but i think it’s my wristwatch obsession

didn’t know about that! but remembered you were ‘keen’ on coffee from a couple of threads on it. 😆

FWIW I mostly agree with you, spending vast sums on a car to sit in the same traffic jam as me seems odd, but doubtless they look at my mountain bike habit with incomprehension as well.

The earth pin does sod all on pretty much every modern appliance.
Unless you’ve still got an old fuse box with wire fuses then thats about the only reason to have them.

The Earth pin is for safety in the event of a leak to Earth in an appliance with a metal chassis. Without the Earth wire, the power would short to ground through you instead. It’s irrelevant on appliances in plastic cases.

The insistence that brown MUST be live and the blue MUST be neutral is another load of crap too.

Wire it backwards and the fuse would be after the appliance rather than before it; a blown fuse would potentially (ho ho!) leave the appliance live. Euro plugs can go either way round because they don’t have fuses.

Why do 24hr shops have locks on the doors?

When I lived in Portsmouth our local 24 hour corner shop didn’t have a door at all for a complete summer after it ‘fell off’ in a student’s hand.

Ah yes I see. We never use white domestic, plastic shattering crap. It’s all Black rubber duraplug or 16amp ceeform even in poverty spec venues. You might see them in an amdram venue but they will be burnt or snipped off by me and binned.

graham s doesn’t alter the point that you can get perfectly legal taps which mix cold mains with hot gravity fed supplies. They just mix at the nozzle. And euro plugs are way better than ours, smaller, and the euro ones pull out of walls more safely without risking partially pulling the wires out and don’t ever break when you drop them.

It’s all a matter of habit and custom and British stupidity.

Why FFS doesn’t the UK use km instead of miles…

[edit… Had this the wrong way round… ]

Why FFS doesn’t the UK use miles instead of km?

Kinda does, doesn’t it?

Why do 4×4’s slow down for speed bumps?

I don’t.

Why did the lady in the Landcruiser this morning swerve into oncoming traffic on wrong side of the road to avoid a 3″ deep puddle?

Don’t know, but I bet the BMW driver that was following too closely behind me and couldn’t avoid the puddle might have wished that I had. 👿

pp oops

Why whilst listening to the STW Playlist on Spotify am I left wondering just how warped, perverted and bastardly twisted you lot really are……

Good init!

Would you have it any other way?

On a more serious note, why hasn’t a cure been found for diabetes* yet? Would seriously change my life

*yes, and cancer, heart disease, etc.

But then you might fall down a submerged manhole that the cover had lifted off