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The drinking fountain button

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Re: The drinking fountain button

#61

Post by greenhearth »

piskov wrote: post #11
082349872349872 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me that 1960s Moscow had drinking fountains with shared glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F68bbzOOOdY&t=1850s What were they thinking?

These are not fountains but glorified watercoolers with sparkling water and, sometimes, lemonade. Most of the time they were not free although very cheap: 1 copeck. These survived up to the 1995, several years after the fall. And yes, most glasses have never been stolen. Shared glasses were quite safe because every machine had special button to clean the glass with pressurized technical water (several calibrated jets…

They would dump excess oil from Siberian drilling straight into rivers. This was even documented in a Vladimir Vysotsky song.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#62

Post by reisse »

ch4s3 wrote: post #42
piskov wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second account to post this link: say what you will about the bots and — god forbid — someone saying something good about soviet union :-)

Destroying the Aral Sea was hardly "green". The list of environmental disasters caused by the USSR is pretty impressive, in a sad way.

Blaming Aral Sea disaster on USSR was/is mostly a PR stunt of post-Soviet Uzbekistan government. The largest part of the drying happened in 1990s and 2000s, because Uzbekistan was farming cotton and wheat in crazy amounts trying to offset massive imports in its new independent economy.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#63

Post by SoftTalker »

chrsw wrote: post #14

Where I'm from those fountains rarely even worked.

When I lived in Chicago the public water fountains just ran all the time. There was no button. The city is right on Lake Michigan so they have an abundant supply of fresh water. As I understand it, for many years they did not even meter water for residential service, you just paid a flat fee every month.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#64

Post by BobaFloutist »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #57
tichiian wrote: post #2

I wish Europe had any drinking fountains. Even extremely-high-traffic public areas such as airports and train stations have but a few or (usually) none.

In morocco, we have restaurants with sinks near the front, exactly like a sink you might find in a bathroom in a house, and next to that sink is a copper cup attached by a chain to the wall. And people are free to come in and drink from that. I always wondered why the humble fountain wasn't more popular

Maybe the water waste in fountains feels worse in drought-prone regions? Even if the amount is comparably tiny, watching a precious resource just vanish down the drain might be hard to stomach?

I'm basing this on nothing, by the way, but it feels like a fun hypothesis.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#65

Post by DiggyJohnson »

piskov wrote: post #40
lambdaxyzw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s only after the fall of the Soviet Union that shit with plastic poured into. As well with the fall of recycling, morals, etc. Soviet Union was green not because of morals, but because it was poor and couldn't afford single use packages. I remember when Nutella entered my country, the empty Nutella jars were washed, kept and used as glasses for drinking - because buying new glasses was hard or expensive. >And yes…

> the empty Nutella jars were washed, kept and used as glasses for drinking - because buying new glasses was hard or expensive. You do understand that sand is one of the most common things on earth (hence the glass is dirt-cheap). Just as an example of those mentioned faceted glasses: their price was 7 or 14 copecks (good thing every one of them had the price stamped on the bottom). It’s less than the price of bread.…

There's almost never a reason to start your comment with "You do understand..."?

There's a lot that goes into the cost of a good rather than the value of the raw ingredients.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#66

Post by alistairSH »

tichiian wrote: post #2

I wish Europe had any drinking fountains. Even extremely-high-traffic public areas such as airports and train stations have but a few or (usually) none.

What countries do have them?

In the US, they seem to exist in offices and schools. Airports tend to have them, and often with a bottle filler on the side, which is great since we can't carry water through security.

But, just walking down the street, truly public water? Is that a thing anywhere in the US, or elsewhere?

Re: The drinking fountain button

#67

Post by DiggyJohnson »

numpad0 wrote: post #49
piskov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not fountains but glorified watercoolers with sparkling water and, sometimes, lemonade. Most of the time they were not free although very cheap: 1 copeck. These survived up to the 1995, several years after the fall. And yes, most glasses have never been stolen. Shared glasses were quite safe because every machine had special button to clean the glass with pressurized technical water (several calibrated jets…

> Meat was wrapped in paper. Milk, butter and sour cream were poured into whatever container This type of arguments are still as annoying as the first time I've heard it. Reusable containers just don't satisfy modern day safety standards. If they could get away without paying for packaging they will happily do so. They can't because chances of poisoning followed by lawsuits becomes real at scale, causes including not…

Should we rethink modern safety standards? Seems like we might have over-corrected in the direction of sanitation.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#68

Post by kube-system »

sdwr wrote: post #38
2024throwaway wrote: post #3

The headline is click bait, nothing about it is misunderstood. I generally enjoy esoterica, but can’t believe I just read a whole article that amounts to “those buttons are buttons”.

While we're complaining, does anyone else think the button mechanism is too complicated? That diagram has 50 annotations, which seems like too many for a button. I know nothing about fabrication or physical engineering, but surely it can't be that hard to make it simpler, like a safety pin or a . Not a joke. Thanks.

It has a lot of annotations because the diagram is detailed, not because the item is particularly complicated.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/EZ-FLO-Drinking-Fountain-Univers...

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/27/1d/b6/2f0ca95...

Re: The drinking fountain button

#69

Post by progman32 »

alistairSH wrote: post #66
tichiian wrote: post #2

I wish Europe had any drinking fountains. Even extremely-high-traffic public areas such as airports and train stations have but a few or (usually) none.

What countries do have them? In the US, they seem to exist in offices and schools. Airports tend to have them, and often with a bottle filler on the side, which is great since we can't carry water through security. But, just walking down the street, truly public water? Is that a thing anywhere in the US, or elsewhere?

Maybe not at every intersection, but almost all parks around me have at least one. At least that's my experience in California and Washington State.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#70

Post by kube-system »

alistairSH wrote: post #66
tichiian wrote: post #2

I wish Europe had any drinking fountains. Even extremely-high-traffic public areas such as airports and train stations have but a few or (usually) none.

What countries do have them? In the US, they seem to exist in offices and schools. Airports tend to have them, and often with a bottle filler on the side, which is great since we can't carry water through security. But, just walking down the street, truly public water? Is that a thing anywhere in the US, or elsewhere?

It is not uncommon for public parks to have them in the US
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