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San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#721

Post by baud147258 »

mattnewton wrote: post #206

One of the reasons this toilet is so expensive no doubt, is that the new SF public toilets are self cleaning and will have attendants on duty to try to prevent this. The one on golden gate park and Haight closes after each visitor to spray the inside down like a dishwasher, and has an attendant on duty to make sure no one is inside while it does that (and to generally discourage people from shady stuff). It's not per…

How does it work? I mean in France I saw many self-cleaning toilets (you can find some in Paris) and they don't need an attendant to function; they just wait for people to leave before the cleaning start and if you get sprayed it's just on you.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#722

Post by programmer_dude »

qeternity wrote: post #705
programmer_dude wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M is not ambiguous at all it stands for mega which is 1e6 (which happens to be a million). Meters is lowercase m. And nobody uses Roman numerals as a suffix. MM is just unnecessary.

Well you're gonna be really disappointed to find out lots of people do use "mm" particularly in finance, and that Roman numerals have been used far longer than the SI system has existed. Just because you don't use them, or aren't aware they are used, does not make it unnecessary.

By unnecessary I meant the second M in MM is redundant (since M = Mega = 1e6 is enough). And yes I am disappointed, probably just as much as people's use of imperial units :)

Edit:...

>Roman numerals have been used far longer than the SI system has existed

Indeed it has. But has its use as a suffix existed for just as long? BTW I am also disappointed that the people still use Roman numerals :) (also completely unnecessary, the Indo-Arabic number system is "better").

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#723

Post by asow92 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #688
asow92 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it is our prerogative to protest it either way.

Yeah. God forbid poorer live next to me. You know who else has that mentality? People who are much better off than you and view you as the pots. You know what’s demonstrably shown to improve moral and connectedness of a society? Being forced to live next to people who are worse off than you so that your self-interest is to vote and advocate on their behalf so that you’re not living in a shithole.

As it’s their prerogative to see us as “the pots(?)”.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#724

Post by baud147258 »

Zanneth wrote: post #648
bsder wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it's perfectly okay for the poor to suffer terribly as long as it's out of your sight. Got it.

I'm saying that it sounds like they are suffering equally in both environments, so living in a place where it is hidden is a net benefit for everyone.

well, it is a net benefit for those who are not suffering from poverty, not everyone

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#725

Post by Redoubts »

1024core wrote: post #672
feoren wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big. Except this is SF, not the Federal Government, and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. Republicans want giant corporations like PG&E to have more power to hold the government hostage and loot it. Why do you pay attention to what they say, rather than what they do? They never actually shr…

> and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. One thing you'll see when you live in SF long enough (20+ years here) is that they'll come up with all sorts of crazy excuses to justify bad behavior. Blaming PG&E for the $1.7M cost is bullshit.

It's why I left. You can't even fix this.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#727

Post by david_allison »

navane wrote: post #711
david_allison wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 million. Slipped my mind that MM is industry specific. M is ambiguous between the Roman (M = 1,000), the SI prefix (M = 1,000,000), and metres (screen readers). $1MM (capitalized) or $1mn (more recent) reduces the ambiguity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM#Units_of_measurement

If M is roman, wouldnt MM equal 2000? As in this year, MMXXII. Thanks for the explanation though. Next we'll get into how a european billion is 1000 times more than a US billion.

Absolutely, but you're reducing the risk of communicating with people who may be using the roman suffix without writing in Roman numerals. In that situation, you'd see 2M rather than MM.

The British billion went out in 1974/5 (Wilson/Healy). One billion is 1,000,000,000 and you shouldn't expect ambiguity there.

In practical terms, it doesn't matter. It'd be extremely unusual to be at the scale of the old billion (1,000,000,000,000)

----

This is similar to a justification of using `i` as the variable for an iterator, or `x` and `xs` for head & tail. There are logical reasons, but it's mostly convention.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#728

Post by rayiner »

1024core wrote: post #672
feoren wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe the Republicans _are_ on to something: the government has become too big. Except this is SF, not the Federal Government, and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. Republicans want giant corporations like PG&E to have more power to hold the government hostage and loot it. Why do you pay attention to what they say, rather than what they do? They never actually shr…

> and part of the reason the costs are so high is because PG&E is holding the city hostage. One thing you'll see when you live in SF long enough (20+ years here) is that they'll come up with all sorts of crazy excuses to justify bad behavior. Blaming PG&E for the $1.7M cost is bullshit.

The nationalization of politics is a huge problem in blue states and cities—it totally eviscerates accountability. Pointing to republicans in Texas becomes a get out of jail free card to explain why a toilet costs $1.7 million in San Francisco.

It’s particularly a problem with the bread and butter of state and local governance: education and policing. Why are cops in Minneapolis—a city that has two greens on the city council and no republicans—murdering black people? Must be Trump’s fault.

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#729

Post by david_allison »

programmer_dude wrote: post #699
david_allison wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 million. Slipped my mind that MM is industry specific. M is ambiguous between the Roman (M = 1,000), the SI prefix (M = 1,000,000), and metres (screen readers). $1MM (capitalized) or $1mn (more recent) reduces the ambiguity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MM#Units_of_measurement

M is not ambiguous at all it stands for mega which is 1e6 (which happens to be a million). Meters is lowercase m. And nobody uses Roman numerals as a suffix. MM is just unnecessary.

> An expense of $60,000 could be written as $60M. Internet advertisers are familiar with CPM which is the cost per thousand impressions.

> The letter k is also used represent one thousand. For example, an annual salary of $60,000 might appear as $60k instead of $60M. [0]

k and MM are unambiguous. You don't want to stop & think, and you definitely don't want to be off by a factor of 1000. So it makes sense to avoid typing 'M' if you have any risk of being misinterpreted.

It's mostly about the reduction of risk, it's VERY rare to see M used in this way.

[0] https://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-does-m-and-mm-stan...

Re: San Francisco is spending $1.7M on one public toilet

#730

Post by Redoubts »

aliqot wrote: post #82
michaelscott wrote: post #49

> San Francisco, which is struggling with a troubling homelessness and public-defecation crisis, needs more public toilets. The irony in this statement, given the reasons why this toilet costs so much, is absolutely unreal. I had to check the date on this article to make sure it wasn't an old April's Fools skit or something, but it seems red tape and NIMBYism have escalated to such a degree in SF that (a) securing bu…

Red tape and nimbyism is hard to imagine from what I see of SFO in books, it seems like the most anti-diversity thing you can do. Can anybody from SFO relate their experience? Hard to tell these days what is editorial bias or sensationalism and what is true.

> it seems like the most anti-diversity thing you can do. Can anybody from SFO relate their experience?

Black people have been leaving SF steadily for 50 years. That's the experience.

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