RIP WC

Pictures of urinals was not what I was expecting on HN on a bright Sunday morning but fantastic article!

Even more surprising for me, as Havant was my home town until university — that station was my main way of travelling to and from family right up until my mother's Alzheimer's (a few years after my father's death) meant she had to move out.

Whenever Havant pops up like this, my reaction is surprise that it's relevant on more than a local stage.

If you liked these there's also a cool set of Victorian era toilets in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute: https://www.britainexpress.com/scotland/Bute/rothesays-victo...

As I was scanning the page to make sure it had a couple of nice photos I even learned something - the origin of the slang "steaming" for being drunk ("Davey was steamin' last night..."):

Why were there originally only male toilets?

The answer begins in 1853, when a law was passed banning the sale of alcohol in Scotland on Sundays. However, paddle steamers were exempt from this ban. The result ought to have been predictable; Scots intent on a drink took to 'steaming', which became popular slang for getting drunk.

Old stuff is cool, but we shouldn't keep old things around just for the sake of it.

Old stuff tends to be harder to maintain, not meet modern expectations, be less energy efficient, be incompatible with newer things, potentially toxic or dangerous, etc.

If you plan to actually use the old stuff, then it will gradually wear out, and the expense of repairing a crack in a 100 year old thing tends to be higher than repairing/replacing something modern.

You'd think so eh, that would certainly be the case nowadays.