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Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

ianvisits.co.uk

51–60 of 92 posts

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legal penalties are not a reason Don't be ridiculous. If we throw enough vandals in prison for long enough, then yes, vandalism will drop. It's not fashionable to say it, but it's true: the way to get criminals out of society is to get criminals out of society.

The US has the largest prison population in the world (if I recall correctly both in absolute number and as a proportion of the population), it really doesn't seem to be working out for them. So no, it's not that simple...

[deleted]

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#52
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legal penalties are not a reason Don't be ridiculous. If we throw enough vandals in prison for long enough, then yes, vandalism will drop. It's not fashionable to say it, but it's true: the way to get criminals out of society is to get criminals out of society.

you can't jail alienation.

> you can't jail alienation.

Want to bet?

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> legal penalties are not a reason Don't be ridiculous. If we throw enough vandals in prison for long enough, then yes, vandalism will drop. It's not fashionable to say it, but it's true: the way to get criminals out of society is to get criminals out of society.

The US has the largest prison population in the world (if I recall correctly both in absolute number and as a proportion of the population), it really doesn't seem to be working out for them. So no, it's not that simple...

[deleted]

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree; I'd love to see it in the US, but it's really a shame that Americans are completely incapable of not destroying a vending machine that isn't under 24/7 surveillance...

I have never understood that compulsion, why do people here constantly vandalize anything unsupervised. What is the motivation of these people they don't get anything out of it. Why break something when it wont benefit you to do so. Why do people rub feces all over public restrooms, break vending machines or graffiti hate filled messages on others property. why make to world a worse place for everyone including yours…

[deleted]

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#55
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are looking for a serious answer, vandalism is generally explained as a response to a social hierachy. When you feel you are at the bottom of the pile in relation to others around you, it has a variety of psychological effects. One of the most notable is that it increases your impulsivity and irrationality, and also causes you to feel "judged" by other people simply being near you, even inanimate objects feel…

> vandalism is generally explained as a response to a social hierachy Japan is even more hierarchical than the US. Their vending machines are fine.

You would thinks so! But one time in the middle of Shinsekai in Osaka I've seen a trash can for drink cans full of regular trash - oh, the horror! ;-)

On related note, Shinsekai is nice - it remainded as a bit of back home & the hostels there are super cheap. :-)

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#56
post #3

Having lived in Korea and visited Japan, ubiquitous vending machines is an absolute game-changer. Especially with a choice of hot or cold drinks, vending machines really make life super convenient. Pretty cool to see the Victorians had this idea over a century ago.

Completely agree; I'd love to see it in the US, but it's really a shame that Americans are completely incapable of not destroying a vending machine that isn't under 24/7 surveillance...

Beverage (e.g. fancy dispensers that dropped a cup and filled it with your choice of juice, coffee, etc) and food vending machines (sandwiches, microwavable meals, etc) used to be much more common. I'm old enough to remember them from the 1980s and 1990s, albeit as a kid, and they seemed very common, though in the 1990s they began to look antiquated--very 1970s'ish. At some point I stopped seeing them altogether. One of the last beverage machines of that sort I remember seeing was in a university break room circa 1997.

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#57
post #3

Having lived in Korea and visited Japan, ubiquitous vending machines is an absolute game-changer. Especially with a choice of hot or cold drinks, vending machines really make life super convenient. Pretty cool to see the Victorians had this idea over a century ago.

Completely agree; I'd love to see it in the US, but it's really a shame that Americans are completely incapable of not destroying a vending machine that isn't under 24/7 surveillance...

Japan: Ubiquitous vending machines. UK: Vending machines widely defrauded with scrap metal in place of coins. US: Unsupervised vending machines immediately destroyed.

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#58
post #3

Having lived in Korea and visited Japan, ubiquitous vending machines is an absolute game-changer. Especially with a choice of hot or cold drinks, vending machines really make life super convenient. Pretty cool to see the Victorians had this idea over a century ago.

> Having lived in Korea and visited Japan, ubiquitous vending machines is an absolute game-changer

Having lived in Japan, I found the ubiquitous vending machines to be neat (and very photogenic), but I didn't use them more than once or twice a year. If I wanted canned coffee as a (wretched) backup if I slept in, I had a few bought from the super for 39Y a can rather than the machine at 100Y. When skiing, I opted for the (much tastier) 550Y soba from the shop rather than the 150Y corn potage from the vending machine.

Cold drinks when checking out tourist stuff in the hot summer was the key use I got from them. And they weren't as absurdly overpriced as north american vending machines (excluding the ones outside walmart and equivalent)

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#59

Coffee lamps, electric trucks, the Titanic, gigantic starship-like airships - what a time to be alive...! The future was then.

Hand held terminals giving you access to humanity whole knowledge, the ability to instantly pinpoint your location on a map and get directions to anywhere, logistic chains so perfectioned you can buy from the other side of the world and get your product in the week, vaccines engineered by direct manipulation of RNA chains, planes which can stay in the air for days using electricity, machines approaching a human level…

Hand held terminals giving you an addiction on par with heroin, the ability to instantly pinpoint your location on a map and get directions to anywhere your gig economy job makes you go, logistic chains so perfectioned you can't buy graphic cards cheaply because people from the other side of the world who mine bitcoin out bid you, dependence on biochemistry to difficult to grasp for the majority, planes that are to complex to be checked by third parties so one needs to just trust the manufaturer, machines approaching a human level of deception, meat grown in a lab without hurting animals is not possible/affordable at scale.

Re: Victorian gas lamps that sold cups of hot coffee (2012)

#60
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as someone who has been the vandal vandalism is the most accessible way to literally change the world. it's direct, visceral cause and effect before your very eyes, and it remains visible in daily life and to everyone around. i didn't have anything to lose, and it was more fun than sitting on a curb. in that position it did make the world a better place for me. if you want people to quit breaking shit give them a rea…

> legal penalties are not a reason Don't be ridiculous. If we throw enough vandals in prison for long enough, then yes, vandalism will drop. It's not fashionable to say it, but it's true: the way to get criminals out of society is to get criminals out of society.

We basically did that for several decades, and we now have more people in prison than the rest of the world combined, as well as a much larger population of second class citizens (try to get a job with a criminal record!). Many of them did not commit any crime at all. And all of the second-order effects that come from this carceral worldview: missing parents, broken families, generational poverty, and for those directly involved, tremendous suffering.

And you can look for yourself: our crime rates are comparable to, in many cases worse than, any other place that superficially resembles ours.

The way your comment is written makes it seem like you are sympathetic to this idea.

There is no "out of society." They're still here, we still have to deal with them. Not only with them, but also with the machine that we built to coerce them into living the way they live. In exactly the same way you have to deal with me, and I have to deal with you, and we both need to deal with seeing a vending machine vandalized. The question is, how do we deal with that?

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