If anyone wants to explore the bidet space without replacing an entire toilet, I can recommend the Neo line of products from https://luxebidet.com/ They sell kits for under $70 USD that attach to existing toilets, using the space between the seat and bowl, and attach to the toilet's water supply with a tee fitting and one-way valve, either at the wall valve, or at the bottom of the tank. Installation should take less than 30 minutes for anyone handy with a screwdriver and a crescent wrench.
Their bidets are surprising effective, and do not require any electricity or hot water, as the water volume needed to be effective is small, and the water has usually been sitting in the pipes in a home's walls at ambient temperature. 10/10, would spritz again.
Agreed. I’ve got one at home too. Was cheap, easy to install and works pretty well. Admittedly things don’t get very cold where I am, so YMMV.
I do dream of installing a legit Toto with the warmed seat and self cleaning, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of buying the unit and then having to hire both a plumber and an electrician.
The only real problem is my son has grown up spoiled with a bidet at home, and now hates using the bathroom at school or out in public. I mean, I get it, but when nature calls, she ain’t askin’.
From a plumbing perspective, the Toto is no different from one of the basic units, you just attach the valve to the toilet’s water supply. For electricity, it depends on your situation but if you have an outlet nearby (eg. where you would plug your hair dryer or electric toothbrush) you can just plug into that. The plug doesn’t need to be directly behind the toilet, you run a cord to it.
Get an outdoor-rated, thick gauge extension cord and plug it into a GFCI outlet. There is a teeny-tiny chance of electric shock during thunderstorms, but GFCI will shut the circuit quickly, usually. Consult an electrician before doing this. Or just get a GFCI outlet installed near the toilet. That's safer!
We thought about getting a bidet installed and two electricians said that the (maybe freshly revised?) code explicitly demands a new circuit. It cannot branch off a "countertop" outlet that is meant to feed a hair dryer or something.
Really don’t need an electrician. Just plug in to an outlet on the wall or an extension power strip. Don’t need a plumber as well. It’s really easy to install.
Careful with this advice. There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet.
The safest thing to do is always to get that outlet installed.
> There is a tiny risk of electric shock if you use an outdoor-rated extension cord, a bigger risk if you use an indoor-rated strip, and a pretty big risk if you use indoor without a GFCI outlet.
Citation needed. There is certainly not a “pretty big risk” of electric shock. Outdoor vs indoor rated cords should have no bearing on safety inside. Also, if the extension cord is wired to an outlet in the bathroom, the bathroom outlet is almost certainly GFCI unless it’s an extremely old house. If it isn’t, that can be fixed for less than $30 as well. The only thing you’d need to be worried about for an extension cord is the power rating, since bidets can consume a decent bit of power… but most don’t really pull a ton (maybe 600W on full tilt), so almost any extension cord should be able to handle that load.
I'm not able to install anything like this in my current home but if you live somewhere reasonably warm (so it's not super unpleasant to get a wet bum) I can hugely recommend something like this. (I want everyone to get one since I can't).
Living in Asia where the "bumgun" (bidet on a hose) is popular made me realise how barbaric toilet paper is. It's really quite disgusting and also very uncomfortable!
In India it's relatively common to see these retrofitted bidets that fit under the seat. Personally I think they're inferior to the hose but that's a personal preference, these things still work great, and they are less intrusive and probably easier to install. One of my Indian colleagues has one at his home in Europe too.
Kohler has manual ones with a lever arm that can swing the nozzle which I find more effective. Twist for pressure. I have no hope for JP software, waiting for PRC/SV AI powered bidet with brown eye recognition that cleans without aiming.
Manual ones can also have... stupid water pressure depending on your plumbing... which some will find addicting.
I meant the pressure of manual can be relative to the pressure of your plumbing, i.e. eye openning water jet cutter tier pressure. Closer to hose style, can absolutely blast water. Fancy electric Totos cap pressure, feels like trickle in comparison.
> hypoxic tents, which lower oxygen levels in the air
I wonder if the shorter time at altitude also reduced the chances of slower-to-develop high-altitude cerebral edema and pulmonary edema (HACE, HAPE). Some climbers have been sleeping in camp in small tubular pressurized tents to reduce daily apparent density altitude.
The real tragedies with acetaminophen are "cry-for-help" situations where someone thinks it is the same as aspirin, and swallows a handful, perhaps washing it down with alcohol. What might have been a suicide hesitation mark becomes an entry on a liver transplant list - if they are lucky. If you have children, make sure they know which one can be deadly, especially before going off to college.
While the "weather gage" and heeling does have an effect on cannon range, the more important issue is that the upwind ships (that have the weather gage)
thus have more maneuverability, and can more easily pursue a ship trying
to flee downwind. Of course, one could always:
"Never mind manoeuvres, go straight at 'em”
The article is a massive oversimplification of the importance of the weather gage, to the point it's not accurate at all.
A ship with the weather gage can choose when and how to engage.
> This was technically inferior since the lower gun ports could often be underwater (see image) and because the downwind (leeward) position made it easier to flee if needed.
This is reductive to the point of error. The ports of the lower gun deck MAY be unable to be fired in very heavy seas, but that doesn't affect frigates, or the upper deck of a ship of the line.
Additionally, if a leeward ship attempts to flee from the windward ship, the leeward ship would risk exposing its stern to the windward ship's raking fire. The stern of a ship is the least armored, least armed and also contains the essential steering elements of a ship. A stern raking fire could pierce the hull and fly the entire length of the ship, causing tremendous damage, in addition to potentially crippling a ship's ability to steer.
Finally, the encouragement to engage with the enemy has an advantage the article omits - massive career incentives - it's a chance for British Navy lieutenants and commanders to earn promotion. Many a commander was made post after a successful engagement with the enemy and many a lieutenant was promoted to commander after a successful battle. Beyond glory, a lieutenants would make roughly half what a commander made, and a post captain could rely on additional pay based on seniority and ship. Since promotion to admiral was almost solely due to seniority on the post captains list, naval officers felt urgency to win promotion and to get on the list as soon as possible. An admiral took a share of any prizes won by vessels under his command and was the true way to gain wealth in the Navy.
Finally, Byng's case is an extreme outlier and relying on it to make arguments is dicey at best.
> paying your dues. Its more about that than aptitude it seems to me.
Yes, paying dues, both in the sense of putting in the time to learn the trade well, and very likely for a good paying career in the trade, paying union dues.
People have been doing this since the rise of professional guilds in the middle ages.
Today's kids can show aptitude, capability, and interest by doing well in shop class. An employer can take that interested teen or tween on at an entry level, add to their skill level, and make a profit on their labor. The worker can protect their labor value through a union, and probably should if only for the side benefits apart from negotiating contract labor rates.
Should they just go to college instead? Sure, if they have that interest,
and can get out without a student loan debt bigger than some mortgages.
Unions are not magic. I have a friend who did belong to the local sheetmetal workers union and she was... not positive. Moved into a non-union shop and was a lot happier.
Similar experience here. Family member went into a union job and discovered that it was great for the old guys at the top who had been there for 3 decades, but it was rather repressive for the new people starting at the bottom. Much easier to pivot into a different job where union seniority wasn’t the defining factor of your entire career.
Sure, but a union is supposed to work better, so if it isn't, by definition it's to some degree corrupted. So it's important to remember that the union itself isn't a bad thing.
A union is supposed to provide for workers in the same way that a software company makes software. If either of them don't, there's something fundamentally corrupt about each org, not with the concept.
The state of software is the state of the structures
of primitive societies: some in cave shelters, some
under roofs of sticks and leaves, some in mud huts.
We talk of Cathedral and Bazaar, but there are very
few carefully designed Cathedrals of software,
and those probably have plenty of barely hidden flaws.
The Bazaars are all around us, jammed together, spreading
for miles and miles, tent walls
and roofs billowing in the breeze, all awaiting a strong
zephyr to carry many of them away, and leave most of the rest in ruins.
What software needs is building blocks. Bricks of uniform size,
easily joined together. Concrete masonry units. Tilt-up walls.
Trans-oceanic shipping containers (connex, seabox).
Solid, composable, engineered, units. We should be able to
pull a well-known and heavily tested package or function to use,
just like a contractor would call for a delivery of 200 8x8x16"
CMU blocks, and be able to expect they will get just that,
with no gaps, weak spots, or broken webs.
But, no , all of us software crafts-folk want to carefully create
our very own artisanal version of whatever library functions,
that are needed for the project at hand. In a world that could be
made of solid concrete blocks, we are crafting our very own adobes,
with our own special blend of straw and mud, and we think we have advanced far beyond the folks living in mud huts.
Some of us will say they are master masons, crafting cathedrals out
of hand cut stones, each carefully measured and chiseled, and each
stone unique. We're still duplicating effort when we could be using
commercial off-shelf libraries. And all the while the project deadlines
go zipping past as we try to craft our way to local perfection.
All I can suggest as a solution is a multi-government and
multi-corporate effort to design and build fairly universal
functions, libraries, and packages that are robust,
exhaustively reviewed by humans,
and tested thoroughly. I won't ask for provable correctness, yet. :-)
Would the result be an Ada on steroids?
Depends on who is involved.
Choice of language should not matter.
The APIs would matter, a lot.
A few competing teams would be a possibility.
Passing several existing functions to an AI, with a
"do like these, only perfectly" might be useful, or useless.
And yes, then we would have 15 competing standards.
https://xkcd.com/927/
(Well, we probably already have at last 1,500, so, go figure.)
Various live animals, queen bees and up to 8 attendant bees by air, but bee hives by ground only. Fair warning: the recipient of mailed bee hives may get a phone call at any time of day or night to "please come get them ASAP".
Their bidets are surprising effective, and do not require any electricity or hot water, as the water volume needed to be effective is small, and the water has usually been sitting in the pipes in a home's walls at ambient temperature. 10/10, would spritz again.
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