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What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

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Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#301

Post by rileymat2 »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #299

we seriously need a better solution for toilets. toilets use huge amounts of water. if you want to have a toilet in a moving vehicle, or anywhere that is not directly connected to a sewage line and a giant water treatment plant, then you are just out of luck because all the mobile toilet solutions out there suck. it amazes me that a good solution has evaded us for so long. when considering how to travel where-ever i…

I would be curious if all this plastic in your plan actually saves resoures over water.

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#302

Post by Antifragile1 »

reolbox wrote: post #300

For 22 years I used toilet paper until I traveled to South East Asia where every toilet has a seperate sprinkler. After a few toilet visits I decided to give it a GO. Man, toilet paper feels strange and plain stupid now. Water is way cheaper, doesn't hurt your "behind" and I feel cleaner afterwards. Paper seems an invention to sell something we really don't need (by Mad Men :-)).

You don't only feel cleaner. It IS cleaner. Developed parts in asia and the middle east have toilets with sprinklers. I don't understand why Europeans and Americans love their stinky butts so much. It's disgusting!

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#303

Post by irrational »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #159
__s wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's regulations on minimum gap size (had a client in the industry) https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/26620/why-do-publ...

Ok, so cost and cleanability might be incentive so have doors like that, but not incentives to make regulations. Those regulations likely there for "decency and safety". E.g. to discourage people having sex, or to make it more obvious if someone passes out. That is: the regulations really are there to make reduce privacy. There might be good arguments for reducing privacy, but that is still the proximate goal of the…

Who in their right mind would have sex in a public restroom? That's just disgusting. I very much doubt it has anything with reducing privacy.

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#304

Post by irrational »

tyingq wrote: post #193
bambax wrote: post #54

> To ancient Romans, the practice of sitting on a shared toilet in an open room full of people was entirely ordinary. That's a funny thing to say for an American, because, to Europeans, American toilets are much too public: doors don't go to the floor or ceiling, and even "walls" are thin sheets of wood/plastic loosely joined together with huge spaces between them. It seems, Americans don't trust one another to sit a…

Perhaps NSFW, but being frank so it's clear what I'm saying. There's cultural differences the other direction. German toilets catch feces on what we called a "shit shelf" instead letting it fall and submerge in water. Which, of course, made for a pretty bad odor situation. And in Turkey, the "toilet" was a hole in the ground. Even in the Hilton, it was a fancy carved marble and gold leaf "4 inch diameter hole in the…

I read somewhere that the shelf was there so people could examine their crap for health reasons (is there blood in my stool? has the consistency changed? etc.) I have no idea if that is true, but it makes more sense that it exists to break up the poop before it's flushed.

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#305

Post by gautamdivgi »

matte_black wrote: post #220
davidw wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from America, lived in Europe, and definitely prefer European toilets at the office. It's an actual room that gives you real privacy.

This notion of privacy probably results in people taking way longer to do their business. Americans don’t have time for that shit.

lol - that reminds me of the quote from the boss baby justifying wearing a diaper.

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#306

Post by jacobolus »

lisper wrote: post #270
tyingq wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate the details, but disagree strongly with "You get the odor anyway, that difference is quite negligible" . Submerging it in water made a huge difference. Maybe some chemical engineer can confirm my layman observation.

Native German who has lived in the U.S. for many decades here. I agree with you, tyingq. Also, when I try to squat with my feet flat on the floor as shown in that video, I invariably fall over backwards.

People who need to squat multiple times per day to poop throughout their lives have much better ankle flexibility than western office workers who spend their lives sitting on chairs, car seats, and chair-style toilets and never squat ever.

I also fall over when I try to squat flat on my heels. Friends who do yoga and friends from countries with squat toilets have no trouble with it though. All children under about 10 years old can squat just fine. Lesson: get your kids a squat toilet if you want them to have standard human levels of ankle flexibility when they grow up (also very helpful for improving jumping skill, if they plan to ever play sports). ;)

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#308

Post by Terr_ »

baddox wrote: post #75
baumandm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also easier to mop the floors since you can go under the partitions.

That makes sense, but it would still be a huge improvement to eliminate gaps everywhere but the floor. The cost argument makes sense, but it doesn’t explain why it’s ubiquitous in the US but not in Europe, since the cost-saving incentive should be roughly the same in both regions. Perhaps it started in the US because of safety or puritanism, but has now simply become a de facto standard in the US building industry. I…

> but it would still be a huge improvement to eliminate gaps everywhere but the floor

It would, but then in larger bathrooms you'd have to be able to hang some of the weight off the ceiling, and you'd still have issues with things swinging or bending.

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#309

Post by toastermoster »

It was funny to see this HN post tonight. This week I'm doing upgrades to the DCS (distributed control system) operator stations at one of the largest tissue manufacturing sites in the US. I was just telling my fiancé how funny the security is here. You would think they were enriching uranium.

When I first got into the paper industry, which resulted from coming out of grad school during the Great Recession, I thought i would be a top performer within six months. I have to admit though that it took me longer to be proficient in my current position than it did in my former position as a metrology engineer in a semiconductor fab. There is more technology in the paper industry than one might assume.

Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

#310

Post by [deleted] »

whatyoucantsay wrote: post #242
purple-again wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt diversion of purpose clashes as well. I don’t particularly care what the owners thought HN would be or how they think it should be run. I found a better reddit (because tech and politics was already most of what I was interested in) and so I stayed here doing what I did on Reddit. The whole ‘SV startup’ thing is just an annoying undertone I have to filter out (yes I know what ycombinator does) as I navigate…

Thank you for your comment! It confirms so much of what I've been thinking for the past few years that someone with your stated interest in politics and disinterest in "The whole ‘SV startup’ thing" would see this site as a "better reddit". The HN I once loved is well and truly dead. May this site serve its current demographic well.

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