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Of all the reviews of the visually disturbing movie adaptation of the musical CATS, Jen Yamato’s is my favorite.
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Who’s the unfortunate employee who has to do the “smell check”?
(In case you need context, here’s the story: Company Creates “Smell Check” Policy For Employees Who Take Too Long In The Bathroom.)
Recommended reading
- In other toilet news, here’s my previous article: How sloped is that sloping toilet? Here’s a little perspective.
- Nerdist: Sloped Toilet Aims to Curb Employee Bathroom Time
- Inc: Tilting Toilets and Smell Checks Don’t Solve Your Productivity Issues
The internet’s abuzz with discussion of the new toilet design, whose goal is to reduce employee time in the bathroom. Created by the late stage poop capitalists at StandardToilet.Net, it’s a toilet whose seat is at a 13° downward angle, requiring you to use your legs just to stay on the seat. After sitting on it for just a few minutes, most people will find it uncomfortable.
A 13° degree angle may not seem like much, so think of it this way: That’s a 23.1% grade (a 45° angle is considered to be a 100% grade). As a comparison, here’s a San Francisco street with a 25% grade, which means that it’s only slightly more angled than the new toilet:
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(If you’d like to see the grades of other San Francisco streets, see this article: San Francisco hills and grades.)
Here’s another street with a 25% grade, courtesy of the boostedboards subreddit:
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This toilet isn’t just an affront to employee dignity, but inconsiderate to people with gastrointestinal issues, people who need a little quiet time and privacy, and an outright violation of statutes for the disabled. I can also see it never being installed in executive washrooms.
I can see it getting an Ayn Rand Seal of Approval.
Recommended reading
- Nerdist: Sloped Toilet Aims to Curb Employee Bathroom Time
- BBC: Social media awash with scorn for ‘sloping toilet’
- The Engineering Toolbox: Slope — Degree, Gradient, and Grade Converter
- Forbes: Ten Unmistakable Signs Of A Bad Place To Work
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I took this photo back in October at my cousin Freddy’s house in Manila.
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’Tis always the season for math!
The seller says it works, comes with the Disk ][ floppy drive, and various manuals. It doesn’t come with a monitor, and in order to hook it up to a present-day display, you’ll probably need an RCA composite video to HDMI converter box. Still, if you want one of the original machines behind the home computer revolution of the 1980s and a piece of Silicon Valley history — and if you can get over to Madeira Beach to pick it up — this can be yours for $100.
This track appeared on music blog Said the Gramophone’s “Best of 2019” list, and I agree. Originally recorded by the band back in 1966, their then-manager and producer Kit Lambert rejected it at the time. Pete Townshend said that it may have had to do with the fact that back in ’66, well before a lot of their hits, they still had lots to prove:
“I have a feeling Kit may have felt the song sounded as though it was sung by an older and more self-satisfied man than I was in real life. That would have applied to Roger too, I suppose. Now it works. Back then, perhaps it didn’t.”
They took the original vocal tracks and replaced the instrument tracks with a 1960s soundtrack arrangement to, in Townshend’s own words, “make the song more interesting, but also to place it firmly in an Austin Powers fantasy.”
(This is odd praise, considering that ten years ago, he said that the Austin Powers character trivialized the London scene of the 1960s.)
That being said, the track is wonderfully shagedelic, and will be on high rotation on my sound system.