Something else I've noticed, garbage cans are disappearing.
I had some trash in my car I needed to get rid of: McDonalds? None outside, Tacobell? none outside, CVS? none outside OR inside, The entire rest of that shopping center? nope.
Luckily gas stations still have them but its sad to see these community service type things disappear.
This reminds me of a story I heard (read?) a long time ago. At Disney World they had a rule about a garbage can being within a 10 foot distance of basically anywhere in the park. The logic was that when a garbage can is nearby, there is additional social pressure not to litter, and the result was that they were able to save money on park cleanup because people used the cans.
When I see lone overflowing garbage cans in big cities I think about this.
One of the primary goals of the pandemic and lockdowns was to eliminate cost centers for every business.
If you notice how courtesy services disappeared, and many facilities were closed, because of a lack of staff or funds to clean them and maintain them.
It has actually been difficult to get into a restroom at certain restaurants, even now; sometimes I will find a handwritten sign there like “Employees Only” which is against health codes.
I rode a scooter to a “Drive-In” burger restaurant last month. Not a drive-thru, mind you, but a place where folks pulled up in cars and carhops served them, and they ate while parked. And this place had picnic tables, so I ordered a burger combo and tried to wash my hands.
There was no restroom available, and I contacted the order-taker guy and asked to confirm, and then I asked to cancel my order. He said “Your order is ready!” and I said hell naw, if you don’t have a restroom then you’re not serving anyone, so I got my refund...
In city centers it's usually counter-terrorism: it's easy to throw a timed bomb in a metal garbage can and flee the scene, so they got rid of them (London did because of IRA, and of course now they have Islamic terrorism). Outside of city centers it's about (lack of) recycling: it's easier to check if you're recycling correctly in your home bin than public bins.
It was pretty common with the IRA, apparently. They hid bombs in metal garbage cans and used the shrapnel as a damage multiplier. I think they did that at a commercial center and killed several people.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23695239
> More than 2,000 bins were cleared from the Square Mile after a truck bomb killed one person and injured 44
While I'm not intimate with the difference between British English and American English, I'm pretty confident "Truck Bomb" does not mean a bomb inside a rubbish bin.
But yes, vehicles are a great vector for terrorism and I'm honestly surprised at how few instances there are of people just running other over. But it's also one of the reasons in the US basically every government building has large concrete planters around them (can't ram a truck through it).
Explosion resistant trash receptacles do exist but they’re pricey so it makes sense London didn’t replace theirs. The most common place to see them is in airports.
Easiest way of doing it is to just hang a clear plastic trash bag from a simple metal hoop - that's what is commonly done at stations in London.
Weirdly, bins were never removed from train stations in Northern Ireland. Bin bombs were never really a thing there, it was generally easier to shut down the railway by setting something on fire at a level crossing (often a hijacked police landrover)...
> I usually don't have to walk more than a block or two to find one.
That is not the situation in most of the city, whether it be "nice" parts or "nasty" parts. Restaurant districts tend to have more trash cans than anywhere else, but the presence of a restaurant district is no guarantee of good trash can coverage. Source: I've walked around so much of San Francisco in my ~fifteen years here.
In the places I frequent that have reasonable trash can coverage, I've found that trash cans are very slowly disappearing and never coming back. Maybe they get fucked up beyond usefulness and don't get replaced? I really have no idea.
Agreed. It was never my intent to suggest that they would be doing so.
So move up the management ladder, if you will, until a party that is responsible for making this kind of decision is reached. That's the class of party of which I was speaking, and where I suggested that irrational decisions are being made.
Someone -- at some point -- did make a decision to eliminate outdoor trash cans at these establishments. They used to be present and no longer are, and they didn't disappear on their own.
I'm not sure that anyone in the management ladder is affected. People don't generally choose a fast food restaurant or convenience store based on the cleanliness of their parking lots, so sales isn't going to be affected. Nor is staff, already cut to minimal levels, going to be given additional hours to keep the parking lots clean.
There even might be a disincentive to have garbage cans if they can't be maintained. People who don't litter will either take the extra step of going indoors, or they might leave it in their own car to throw out later. Whereas people who do litter will do so regardless of when there are trash cans. By removing outdoor trash cans, you've "saved" the staff the time to monitor and clear out those trash cans.
People do chose fast food by the neighborhood. When I was at McDonald's - 30 years ago so this may have changed - corporate policy was you would clean your parking lot and everyone for one block. We were encouraged to paint any abandoned building in the one block range at our expense just to ensure the area looked nice.
If that's really your take on this then I have no option but to accept it.
Let's move forward.
What incentivized them to provide the trash cans to begin with, might you suppose? They aren't cheap to buy, or to maintain, or to keep emptied daily (or as they fill up, or whatever). But yet: They were things that existed, and their existence was definitely deliberate.
What motivates companies that still provide outdoor trash cans to continue to do so?
It's probably part of the initial franchise standards, required and signed off by the fast food corporation. Or the shopping center design. We know as a society, that we need garbage cans, so they are budgeted for and installed.
But owners are always looking for ways to save money. If the garbage can works fine, it gets maintained. But if it gets hit by a car, or the wind blows it away, it might not be at the top of the list of things to fix. The remnants of the garbage can are removed. The expense gets put off for another month. And slowly the lack of garbage cans becomes normal, and staff can remove another responsibility from their list.
Now the situation becomes, who wants to spend a bunch of money to put in garbage cans, and also add onto the staff's workload? It's not like customers are asking for the manager to install garbage cans.
Every single time we interact, it becomes increasingly clear that you aren't picking up my words at all.
I feel like I'm chatting with ChatGPT 3, as I was years ago when it would just articulately weasel its way around everything I asked with a profundity of deflective nonsense in response to any query.
Or at least: That's what it did when it wasn't confidently introducing hallucinations as rote facts.
> It's probably part of the initial franchise standards, required and signed off by the fast food corporation.
Why were they required? What motivated this requirement?
Someone, somewhere, at some point: They decided that there shall be trash cans. This is a thing that happened. What compelled them to make this decision, might you suppose?
(If you don't have an answer, then that's fine by me. It's a rhetorical question at this point. I've already internally rejected your reasoning for the trash cans becoming gone while outwardly accepting that your opinion is simply inflexibly the way that it is. It is unlikely that I can be further swayed by a lack of an opinion for why the trash cans originated to begin with.)
I thought that was obvious. Stores specify garbage cans outside for the convenience of their customers. People generate trash, especially while eating. But also when they buy stuff. So we have garbage cans so they don't have to carry it with them, and the trash is contained. But they're not entirely necessary, just like public bathrooms.
We seem to be just talking past each other, so maybe we should just agree to stop wasting each other's time.
> So move up the management ladder, if you will, until a party that is responsible for making this kind of decision is reached. That's the class of party of which I was speaking, and where I suggested that irrational decisions are being made.
No matter what, big or small, it's always a Republican's fault, huh.
I also feel this way with brands. I hate going to a hotel and the signs trying to be cute "Welcome home". No I'm not home.
Theres definitely a psychological gag reflex built in us when something foreign is pretending to be human/friendly. A version of the uncanny valley that sends warning signals in our brain that they are lying and therefore dangerous.
Same I was expecting to see the materials all ready to be purchased at Home Depot, that would actually be useful. One click buy all the stuff we just talked about.
Ah, but that’s something different. “Agentic commerce”: using agents to buy things. I suspect there’s a different team working on monetization via affiliate programs, and it’d be early to let people just buy their way into it at CPM/CPC rates.
Honestly they could implement both of these things. Help the user DO an action that requires a purchase (referral link, or pay to be suggested source) and advertise on related searches.
Yeah reminds me of how Kick seems to be winning over the Twitch creators. Now Kick isn't a shining beacon by any means, its got gambling issues for one, but I do think this is one area the big companies are vulnerable in: Rev share.
If a new incumbent can raise some money, offer creators some money and a path to a higher cut than their competitors, they can win big.
I think this is the only way for new platforms to ever rise in this space.
A video sharing website is not a social media platform, it's a streaming platform. The real competitors to YouTube are not PeerTube or whatever, it's Netflix and HBO.
This is why Nebula also managed to find a niche and be relatively successful: the issue is not ads or a monthly subscription or something, the only problem is: people want to watch high-quality content. Find a way to get them high-quality content. If you cannot do that, everything else is meaningless. In Nebula's case, even a few high-profile YouTubers in the same niche uploading exclusives on a platform is better than a thousand nobodies uploading low effort content.
I am a great example of how true this is. I wanted an electric car, I wanted a BMW for a long time, I tried to convince myself to buy one for months but couldn't get over how ugly they were. Why do companies destroy their iconic designs when they go electric? So sick of "space car" designs for electric.
The screen cut ins, typographic headlights, and crystal scroller wheels scream "teenager escaped room due to Bitcoin". BMW has many timeless designs to pull from in the last 30-40 years, but chose to pass the mature confident adult torch to the likes of Volvo and Rivian...
For me the last generation, F-series, was pretty much e46 3.0. You can only iterate so many times.
Neue Klasse is a bit odd but I thought the same thing about the F and G model runs. I’ll need to see it in person.
BMW is dethroning Mercedes and continually beating Audi sales in the US. I’m surprised so many people would buy a car if they thought it was ugly. Benz reliability has tanked and Audi is lackluster as usual.
I finally gave up on bmw last year (after 15 years and 4 models) due to their reliability and cost of repair. I don’t think I’d touch them after spending thousands chasing down coolant repairs due to poor design (plastic parts, high labor cost location to inspect and replace).
It's also just a ginormous hunk of metal. Which also makes the long range kinda moot, strapping a bigger battery will of course result in a bigger range. I'm guessing the car doesn't make any improvements on the efficiency?
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't people still ultimately accountable? You may be able to sue your lawyer for malpractice or they may lose their ability to practice (report them to bar) but in the end no matter where you get your advice from, you are accountable. Question is: who do you trust with it?
Like you said, its a no brainer to use both. Use it as a tool to expand, deepen, or teach. Same with doctors and AI. There may be a point where you build enough trust in the outputs and your understanding of them but until then its best to use it as a tool not put your whole outcome in it.
Yosh is that you?
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