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Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live New York. 5/7 years I’ve been here I haven’t had a wash. In my experience, an apartment with in-unit goes for 10% more than one without. My rent is 1850/mo and my local friendly laundromat does wash-and-fold for $0.90/lb. The math works out that an in-unit wash just isn’t worth it to me. Even if you’re lucky enough to afford rent in New York you probably can only afford one or two luxuries. For me I‘ve chosen…

The time savings from using a wash and fold service aren't to be denied, either. You just drop off a huge sack of laundry once every week or two before work, and you pick it up on the way home nicely washed and folded, better than I, at least, would have done it. By the time you buy detergent and fabric softener and dryer sheets, and factor in the time derping around waiting for it to do its thing, especially in a sk…

> 'By the time you buy detergent and fabric softener and dryer sheets, and factor in the time derping around waiting for it to do its thing, especially in a sketchy coin-op laundry or a dank shared basement washroom, it's a little silly to do it yourself.'

By the time you factor in all of the insanities of living in a city, there's a lot of things that are a lot silly about it.

Seriously. You pay people to do your damn laundry, and brag about it? And I bet there's a social aspect to it also--those people are considered to be lesser than your type, in your eyes, right? I'm guessing I shouldn't bother asking if you can change oil or unclog a toilet?

[EDIT: Let me just take this opportunity to shout out a warm, heartfelt "FUCK YOU" to whatever faggot Nazi mod who of course will see this post and get his panties in a twist about it, because he is a pathetic beta loser living in a toxic commie shithole, taking it up the ass daily from his communist boyfriend. All of you and your fellow faggot mods can eat a dick, or a bullet; I don't care which.]

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#582

Hand washing. Modern disease control and prevention is borderline magic. Hand-washing is clearly the most important lifesaving and disease preventing invention in modern times. Materially ... Well, "yourself" precludes anything computerized, unless you mean "program". It also precludes a huge range of materials science advances. Technically, you can make steel and concrete yourself with enough real-world minecrafting…

The benefits of washing your hands depends on a fairly large set of other improvements and inventions. For most of history the water available was frequently contaminated with human and animal waste, along with whatever your local tanner was dumping in. Fixing that was a prerequisite to making hand washing useful. And then there is the soap issue. While soap certainly has a long history, it was often unavailable or p…

Alcohol might be easier than soap in those cases.
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