141–150 of 206 posts
I use one and I enjoy it oddly enough-- its quick but just enough time to get some reading done or people watching.
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Interesting. For a generally rich country the economics seems odd. In contrast, my grandmother was definitely not a wealthy person and she could still put aside the money for the washing machine in the height of the communism. There were no laundromats anywhere. I do wonder where are the differences coming from.
I guess government is sometimes better able to provide basic services (a place to connect your washing machine) than private landlords. A failure of the market.
In fact, building the network of government owned laundromats would be better fit for centrally planned economy of the USSR. My guess the only reason it never happened is the inability to build a reliable heavy duty automatic washing machine.
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It's not only in cities. In the USA, public facilities outside of exclusive areas are usually associated with those considered poor and personal failures. Combined with the resentment that most people have towards subsidizing public facilities and services used by/built for those who need them (even though in the USA, it's a fraction of what's used towards foreign interventions), there's little if any incentive in ma…
I highly doubt the causation goes in this direction. I think it's just a matter of culture. People in the US litter way more than people do in Japan, for example. I agree with the other poster that it's really just a small minority, maybe even less than 1%, of Americans that just ruin public facilities for everyone. But this minority does exist. You could argue that we are just using coded language for homeless peopl…
I was waiting for the subway, and this guy leaning against a trash can throws his trash on the ground. If I didnt see things like this nearly every day I would write it off as a one time occurrence.
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This U.S. resident agrees with you. It's a definite downside to our individualist priorities and inability of law enforcement to do much about public nuisances.
There is also a huge emphasis on being a "taxpayer." "I paid taxes this year, therefor I am entitled to do whatever I want with public property." It's one of the reasons something like the autobahn can't work in the US. Some Americans just love to drive 20 mph under the speed limit in the left lane because "I'm a taxpayer and this is my road! I can do what I want." A no-speed-limit highway in the US would require one…
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I've never waited 3 hours for our dryer to dry anything - in fact even a heavy blanket doesn't take more than an hour.
Do you live in a humid climate? I wonder if that impedes on the dry time at all (having to dry out the air before drying out the clothes drying in the air).
Maybe it's the 240V mains supply?
I live in a house with a washer and dryer. After we had our first child there was a stretch where my wife and I were both sick for about 2 weeks and the laundry ended up building up significantly. We had probably 10 loads worth to catch up on and it was going to take all of at least one day, maybe two. Threw it all in the car, went to the laundromat and had it done in 2 hours. Laundromat's are now how I explain "the…
Borrowing from your analogy, I have large on-prem servers so I don't need the scalability of the cloud.
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As a Dutch chauvinist, I beg to differ. We generally take excellent care of public places. This is a combo of culture and government services actually cleaning stuff up every once in a while. Of course, this is HN, so cue some replies about horrible stinky places in the Netherlands, but as a general rule I stand by this. SF is a pile of poo compared to an average Dutch city. And then I haven't even mentioned Luxembou…
>We generally take excellent care of public places. This is a combo of culture and government services actually cleaning stuff up every once in a while. Ok, I've gotta take issue with this. Dutch people litter. All the time. People rarely seem to clean up after their dogs. People place their trash bags out on the curb (where there aren't underground bins) far earlier than they should, resulting in trash-strewn street…
I live in a house with a washer and dryer. After we had our first child there was a stretch where my wife and I were both sick for about 2 weeks and the laundry ended up building up significantly. We had probably 10 loads worth to catch up on and it was going to take all of at least one day, maybe two. Threw it all in the car, went to the laundromat and had it done in 2 hours. Laundromat's are now how I explain "the…
Does this only make sense for small machines? I bought a gigantic washer/dryer and have no problem working through a large buildup that results from some disruption in life. Borrowing from your analogy, I have large on-prem servers so I don't need the scalability of the cloud.
One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article or here: a good laundromat typically has machines you wouldn't want to squeeze into your house. For instance, the one close to me has washers that accept 70+ pounds of laundry at once - great for washing blankets & other large items. Having that machine at home wouldn't make any sense, given that it's really only needed a couple times a year for an individual person.
And if you have the extra capacity, you'll use it more often than you would if you had to go to the laundromat for the annual duvet cleaning.
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I don't mean to offend but I suspect it's because people in the USA, at least in cities, just can't take care of public places. There's urine in the train stations (either visible or smellable), elevators shut down by faeces, people shouting, yelling and preaching in the streets, also, toilets, often even in private restaurants, are disgusting. I don't mean to say that things are always like this, all the time or in…
Agreed but this isn't just a USA thing. Many countries have a culture not taking care of public places. All of Europe comes to mind. As does China.
As a Californian, of course, they have far fewer homeless people there :)