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Do you prefer the extended summer thread format? This poll is closed. |
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| I'm Scottish |
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Failed Imagineer posted:Though it's a common trope, IKEA manuals really are incredibly straightforward, even if you are illiterate as hell. It's just that the product QC is usually so crap that any big flatpack piece will have a few steps that require some extra shimming or drilling a new hole or something or else it sits a bit wobbly. Usually not a big deal either way though, and our corner sofa/pull out bed did well for years and is now our guestroom bed They're fine for simple box-with-door stuff. For anything more complex - particularly when they for some reason decide to save money by using the same manual for several different, but similar, products - they're loving *terrible*. They almost never give an indication of orientation changing, they make it very unclear which fasteners are which (seriously would it kill them to print them 1:1 in the parts inventory?), and never clarify relatively simple stuff like "make sure this hinge is open when you install it because otherwise it will never, ever fit together properly afterwards" (the cheap pot metal they always make their hinges from deforms a lot under the spring tension - securing them fully with the hinge closed stops them opening fully).
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Jul 5, 2021 21:05
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goddamnedtwisto posted:They're fine for simple box-with-door stuff. For anything more complex - particularly when they for some reason decide to save money by using the same manual for several different, but similar, products - they're loving *terrible*. They almost never give an indication of orientation changing, they make it very unclear which fasteners are which (seriously would it kill them to print them 1:1 in the parts inventory?), and never clarify relatively simple stuff like "make sure this hinge is open when you install it because otherwise it will never, ever fit together properly afterwards" (the cheap pot metal they always make their hinges from deforms a lot under the spring tension - securing them fully with the hinge closed stops them opening fully). Their sliding door mechanism for the big PAX wardrobes a few years ago was the perfect example of this. If you follow the manual you will never be able to fit the doors. You have to make sure the clamp at the top is wide open which it makes no mention of at all to get the door to seat.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:09
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goddamnedtwisto posted:They're fine for simple box-with-door stuff. For anything more complex - particularly when they for some reason decide to save money by using the same manual for several different, but similar, products - they're loving *terrible*. They almost never give an indication of orientation changing, they make it very unclear which fasteners are which (seriously would it kill them to print them 1:1 in the parts inventory?), and never clarify relatively simple stuff like "make sure this hinge is open when you install it because otherwise it will never, ever fit together properly afterwards" (the cheap pot metal they always make their hinges from deforms a lot under the spring tension - securing them fully with the hinge closed stops them opening fully). For velux windows and the like, they generally expect 99% of the people fitting them to never open the manual anyway and just fit it on autopilot. Why go to the expense of printing bespoke manuals if the only person likely to open them is not the kind of person who should be fitting it anyway?
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Jul 5, 2021 21:10
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serious gaylord posted:Their sliding door mechanism for the big PAX wardrobes a few years ago was the perfect example of this. If you follow the manual you will never be able to fit the doors. You have to make sure the clamp at the top is wide open which it makes no mention of at all to get the door to seat. Hah yes I remember figuring this very thing out by myself. Fun! Twisto, sometimes they indicate the orientation changing by the tiny holes having moved, or maybe a subtly hatched area to indicate an unfinished (or finished) edge. Obviously!
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Jul 5, 2021 21:12
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Brendan Rodgers posted:Windows with future hellword DRM: If you don't pay the subscription in the summer, the temperature in your house increases every hour. The Platform made manifest.
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Jul 5, 2021 21:13
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Bobstar posted:2010-era political commentary here goddamnedtwisto posted:this is a centre-pivot window
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Jul 5, 2021 21:14
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lmao
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Jul 5, 2021 21:15
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oh i can still remember the sound of that  that guy broke his pelvis for sure imo
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Jul 5, 2021 21:21
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Jul 5, 2021 21:23
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My partner is working a retail job and wants to join a union. Her workplace doesn't have one already, are there any particularly good ones to go for? USDAW seems like the obvious choice but I don't know really.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:03
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sebzilla posted:My partner is working a retail job and wants to join a union. Her workplace doesn't have one already, are there any particularly good ones to go for? USDAW seems like the obvious choice but I don't know really. I've heard USDAW are a bit suss. But I've never had much to do with them, so I might be wrong.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:11
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Guavanaut posted:The UK has been poo poo at productivity since at least the 2008 crash, and low skills from writing off working class youth outside of the South East does seem to be a part of that. Another part seems to be the reliance on 'productivity' being a measure of selling the same hundred thousand houses to one another rather than anything of actual use, and a long tail of unproductive companies. Yeah I've noticed before that the FT has been whining about low productivity in the UK, apparently serious economists think it's a real issue etc etc. Well, let's look at some statistics. Compare UK to, say, Finland. Official productivity figures (over time) look like this (data source):  Meanwhile, unemployment in UK vs FI looks like this (source):  Now I'm no economist, but to me it looks like there's a reason why UK has both low productivity and low unemployment, and Finland is the opposite. In Finland there are very few immigrants (including EU immigrants), very few refugees, not many "foreign" people in general, and nobody wants to do the lovely jobs. For example, when I lived in Finland it never occurred to me to have someone else wash my dress shirts. Why would I want to pay I dunno 150 euros or some poo poo to get a few shirts washed and ironed, when I can just do it myself?  Well here in London there are literally like 7 different laundry places a five minute walk from me, the cheapest one was charging £1.60 per shirt, washed and ironed real nice. Many people don't earn that much. Unemployment is low. I'm not 100% on what "productivity" means, but I think it's defined with some stupid, over-simplified metric like "revenue generated per hours worked". Well, when people talk about productivity being low, what exactly do they wish would happen? If all laundry places suddently start charging £19.50 per shirt, productivity goes way up instantly, but guess what, employment goes way down - how much demand do you think there would be at that price level? Is the goal to somehow throw out all non-white people and all eastern Europeans, in the hope that the low-paying jobs then also disappear and only the "high productivity" jobs are left, just like in Finland? Nah, I think it's probably dumber than that, since economists are not (afaik) usually white supremacists or Brexiters. What is it though?
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Jul 5, 2021 22:18
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Automate all the low productivity jobs and let the market decide what to do with the economically unproductive.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:31
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https://twitter.com/davies_will/status/1412092588937650177
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Jul 5, 2021 22:39
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Guavanaut posted:Automate all the low productivity jobs and let the market decide what to do with the economically unproductive. Really does beg the question of 'what is productivity?' In my last Proper (TM) Job, there was one woman in my team who no one would have picked out as highly productive (and without a doubt her job could have been automated - maybe not then, maybe 5 years from now), but not the 'human interaction' skills. Basically, she was solid, reliable, did as she was asked, never came up with any genius ideas to change things, but OMG did my team need her! She was very much a 'process orientated' person. I had a quantity of 'prima donnas' in my analyst team who would come up with great ideas for new, meaningful reports 'if the muse came upon them', but you can just imagine them flouncing off holding the back of their hands to their foreheads. Much more 'project orientated'. The prima donnas could only be highly productive because of her solid, steady underpinning of that particular team group, so how would you measure that contribution to 'productivity'? You have (un) productive individuals or groups - an individual may be productive because of the team they are in, the team may be productive because of a few highly productive individuals.
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Jul 5, 2021 22:41
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Productivity is output per hour worked (usually) so it's not a direct relationship to revenue although given how a lot of things are only measured by price there's a strong connection. Capitalist economics stresses its importance because it's basically the font of abundance for their political theory - when firms make more product with the same labour cost then it means there is more money available so it can raise profits and wages which means everyone is happy and capitalism is fine as there's a glorious spiral of higher paying jobs creating more demand everywhere and higher taxes getting paid to fill in all the gaps. Economic problem? Increase productivity. Social problem? Increase productivity. Environmental problem caused by the landscape clogging up with all the new stuff you're making? Increase productivity! Unfortunately productivity is really hard to completely explain, partly for individual reasons like Jaeluni Asjil points out and also because changes to industrial processes in general are hard to disaggregate. The UK had 2% productivity growth from the 80s until 2008 which was used reliably for economic forecasting before 2008 and still used unreliably after 2008 because there was never any analysis into what was really causing that rate of growth and what part of it broke in the Great Recession. The general rule of thumb is 'more technology = more productive' as the speed of machinery is not bound by the limitations of humanity and also has a disciplining affect on the workers using it because they cannot work much slower than the machine does (i.e. the conveyer belt speed sets the pace of the worker, not the worker themselves) so there's a technical and political rationale behind the relationship between machinery and productivity. So you can crudely determine future productivity growth from capital investment in certain industries and you can tell a lot closer by the amount of capital used compared to the amount of labour - if you have lots of workers then that's lots of work hours and unless they're all on the best machinery then on average their productivity is going to be lower than a smaller workforce that only uses the best machinery. Unemployed people don't work at all so they don't affect the calculation. So if you have a lot of workers not using a lot of machinery what do you get? You get the UK - a de-industrialised nation where the only significant investment is in non-productive capital sectors like real estate and finance (because while they make money they don't make anyone better at making any actual things so don't help productivity) and instead the workforce makes commodities through the application of its labour which is the most profitable arrangement for the capitalist as due to the weak collective organisation of the working class and the weak industrial base of the country allow a significant amount of surplus value extraction, more than enough to not need to start introducing capital back into production. There's way more angles to this like value being imported from the exploited third world to allow labour to subsist on such low levels of the value it creates but I'm tired and you should just read about imperialism and third worldism.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:00
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serious gaylord posted:Theres been a few people who've posted that they've got some issues with their homes but are too anxious to do anything about it. This is a very kind offer
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Jul 5, 2021 23:06
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serious gaylord posted:Decking is actually very difficult to do correctly and also incredibly expensive right now due to the soaring cost and scarcity of pressure treated timber. Tell me about it man, I've got the quote for the timber, but I'm not gonna wait another year of having no deck to save a couple hundred quid max, the thing is probably only gonna be there 10 years tops. And that's presupposing that materials costs return to pre-hosed levels in the next year, which is far from certain
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Jul 5, 2021 23:24
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namesake posted:There's way more angles to this like value being imported from the exploited third world to allow labour to subsist on such low levels of the value it creates but I'm tired and you should just read about imperialism and third worldism. This is a good post. It seems that productivity as a concept might, in fact, make sense as an object of study I was thinking about my (oversimplified) laundry shop example and I guess for jobs like that, I would love to just legislate to increase minimum salary by like 20% or more (but not tenfold), this would cause not too much unemployment due to price rises but it would drastically improve workers' lives and put money into the economy, increase tax revenue, etc. I'm not sure whether this would increase productivity, how is "output" measured there? If it's something like "price paid by customer" then that would go up since the higher salaries would be offloaded to the customer prices. If it's "number of shirts washed" or something then that wouldn't increase much at all... and I think you're saying "productivity" refers to the latter kind of thing. It seems then that the purpose (or one purpose) of people whining that productivity is too low is that they think there's not enough industry? Especially automated industry? As in, these low-productivity jobs are too "low quality" since the shirts are not washed by (sufficiently advanced) robots? Or maybe the point is that the City and such produce nothing and the balance right now is too far on the side of that kind of bollocks, rather than us making tangible goods.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:35
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Jonathan Bartley - Green Party co-leader has resigned: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jonathan-bartley-green-party-leader-progressive-alliance-b1878422.html quote:
Must admit I had missed the bit about the FTPA being abolished being in the queen's speech.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:42
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Tarnop posted:This is a very kind offer Echoing this. Babby's First DIY Disaster was when I snapped the stopcock lever off and created a leak that could not be stopped. Fortunately the plumber was already there to do something else, hence me trying to turn the water off. Once Severn Trent had confirmed that it would be three days before anyone could come and show me where the street stopock was, he managed to work something out. If the stopcock had snapped at any other time I have no idea what I would have done. As we're on the subject of Big Projects: I never got my patio done last year because my boiler failed its inspection and now I'm struggling to get anyone to come out and quote. In the meantime, yet more sealant has peeled itself off my windows, so they're becoming less watertight in bad weather, yet they only open 4 inches so provide no cooling breeze in hot weather. Would I have more luck finding a tradesman for windows? How long would it take and how messy would it be? I have no idea where to begin.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:49
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Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general.
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Jul 6, 2021 00:01
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HopperUK posted:Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general. That's nice. I didn't know you could get kits for things like that. I sometimes fantasize about having a doll's house and making small things for it because I never had chance as a kid. However, being completely ham-fisted (my corn-dollies when forced to make them as a kid took on the semblance of the worst WickerMan nightmares) and having a flat so small I would not be able to hide my endeavours from visiting family who would mock, I never tried.
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Jul 6, 2021 00:06
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HopperUK posted:Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general. that is sick although i am not entirely comfortable with making GBS threads in front of everyone on the sofa possibly
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Jul 6, 2021 00:10
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HopperUK posted:Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general. Oh that looks just lovely!
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Jul 6, 2021 00:21
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That's cool, but also reminds me of somewhere I stayed ages ago where the bed area overhung like a mezzanine without a proper separator and I used to vaguely worry I'd roll over too much at night and wake up having fallen in the lounge. Rural wooden farm building but can't quite place it.Jaeluni Asjil posted:I sometimes fantasize about having a doll's house and making small things for it because I never had chance as a kid. However, being completely ham-fisted (my corn-dollies when forced to make them as a kid took on the semblance of the worst WickerMan nightmares) and having a flat so small I would not be able to hide my endeavours from visiting family who would mock, I never tried. I got to learn about joinery and sawing balsa beams to length with my grandad but also that boys shouldn't express any interest in where things go in said house once it's actually built, because genders or something. Given the past year and a bit if you want to put together a scale Georgian townhouse and make a tiny Wodehouse diorama or something just go for it imo. XMNN posted:that is sick although i am not entirely comfortable with making GBS threads in front of everyone on the sofa possibly
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Jul 6, 2021 00:37
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HopperUK posted:Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general. This like, makes me feel good to look at
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Jul 6, 2021 00:56
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HopperUK posted:Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general. You should post all of them in the Scale Modelling thread because we love that poo poo over there.
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Jul 6, 2021 00:57
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serious gaylord posted:Theres been a few people who've posted that they've got some issues with their homes but are too anxious to do anything about it. Our flat has those awful electric storage heaters (essentially a big rock that gets hot overnight and then heats the flat during the day). I want to rip them out and replace them with modern electric radiators (we don’t have gas), but: 1) They’re bolted to the floor under the laminate/carpet 2) They’re bolted to the wall 3) Some storage heaters contain asbestos, though I looked up a list online and I’m reasonably sure ours don’t I can imagine tradespeople might not want to chance it …so getting these out also entails getting new flooring in and probably getting some replastering done, and then painting the new walls, before I even attempt to install new radiators. So I *think* I want to go remove heaters > replaster walls > paint walls > replace floor > install radiators (and at some point also change our electric tariff to non-Economy 7 and have a timer switch fitted on the hot water) I feel like I have at least five tasks I need help with, and I want each task to be clearly defined before I call people for quotes. But I won’t know e.g. how much plastering needs doing until the heaters get taken, but I also don’t want to wait for each task to get finished before starting on the next one in case there’s a wait or delay and winter comes around before we get new heating in. And I don’t know if there’s other potential problems I haven’t even thought of or how much all this will cost. I guess this is why these bastard things have been here for 50 years or whatever 
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Jul 6, 2021 01:08
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TACD posted:My thing is I think an order-of-operations problem or a project management issue I need to solve before I start calling people. https://www.electricradiatorsdirect.co.uk/news/how-to-replace-storage-heaters-with-wall-mounted-electric-radiators/ has useful info on what needs doing to remove them and cost. (Also, the asbestos position).
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Jul 6, 2021 01:13
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Thanks all!Jaeluni Asjil posted:That's nice. I didn't know you could get kits for things like that. I get em on Amazon (I know, I know), if you search 'cutebee' or 'diy house kit' they're in there. They make tiny ones you make in tins that you can hide from everyone's eyes if you still feel worried about that. You'll need to buy glue (I suggest one PVA glue and one superglue and just be careful not to attach yourself to anything) and you'll want scissors and tweezers, and maybe batteries, depending. If you decide you wanna do this and you're not sure, hit me up in PMs and I'll drop some recommendations. 
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Jul 6, 2021 02:39
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Lol, boris says UK must live with virus and gently caress all regulationd Hope you guys have your socialist revolution before britain kills the brightest and best members of the working class again.
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Jul 6, 2021 03:51
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HopperUK posted:Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general. Since my dad's retired he's started building 00 gage model railway houses. He started off making kits but then started printing out custom stuff and sticking it to card. He's built models of our last 2 houses and has been working on the victorian shops at beamish. It's nice - most of his working life he went to work all day, came home and fell asleep in front of the telly, and at the weekends just did DIY and fixing the house. Now he seems to be having fun making stuff and it's really nice to see.  WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Hope you guys have your socialist revolution before britain kills the brightest and best members of the working class again.
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Jul 6, 2021 04:14
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My brother was looking for someone to repaint his wooden windows on his house a few years back - he bought the house from new and he'd had it ~5 years and that's the point they generally need a light sand down and a new coat of paint. Can't remember how many windows he's got but I'd guess about 15, nothing too special. Obviously some of them are on the 2nd floor etc. Anyway this one guy came out and gave him a quote of 5 grand. Now you could almost certainly buy new windows for 10 grand, so obviously this was a massive piss take. Should really be doable for about a grand, if not less. Anyway my brother basically tells the bloke "why would you even bother giving me a price like that? If you don't want to do the job just say." and the guy fucks off. My brother does a bit of research on the guy and it turns out that as well as running a home maintenance business, he offers "business coaching". He finds a vid by the guy on YouTube where he's (in not so many words) basically just saying "Yeah, start a business, quote the customers shitloads of cash and there are enough stupid people out there to just say 'OK'", and that's the whole extent of his business coaching. Once I realised that this guy existed and was giving his business advice to others out there, a lot of things started to make sense about these kinds of tradespeople. Obviously this one guy didn't have all that much reach but nevertheless his philosophy of "charge ridiculous prices and fleece people who don't know better" is ubiquitous.
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Jul 6, 2021 05:08
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There's a lot of left-wingers on Twitter right now predicting a brand new lockdown come the autumn, which may or may not be correct but I wish they wouldn't sound quite so drat gleeful at the prospect. It turns it into another culture war issue where they cheerfully dance into the roles that the Tories have prepared for them.
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Jul 6, 2021 06:47
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Hard really to blame people for being able to see the blindingly obvious while the entire media class and government just go "who can possibly say what might happen we just don't know" If "having basic pattern recognition capability" is a culture war issue I think I don't want to be a part of the culture that lacks it. You can only have so much patience with people before you conclude they're just wilfuly believing whatver they feel like. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Jul 6, 2021 |
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Jul 6, 2021 06:49
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Pistol_Pete posted:There's a lot of left-wingers on Twitter right now predicting a brand new lockdown come the autumn, which may or may not be correct but I wish they wouldn't sound quite so drat gleeful at the prospect. It turns it into another culture war issue where they cheerfully dance into the roles that the Tories have prepared for them. i don't go on twitter, but i haven't really seen any of this elsewhere, only that maybe this month is too early. what's the reasoning for expecting another lockdown? i know there's the possibility of a vaccine resistant variant, but right now that's a hypothetical, right? if deaths are around 20 a day from near 30,000 cases, then a peak of 50k cases would mean about 40 deaths a day, right? i don't think that's going to prompt a lockdown. it might not even be that many when more the double vax rate is above 80%.
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Jul 6, 2021 07:44
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People are understandably concerned that skyrocketing infection rates will eventually translate into much higher hospitalisation and death rates. I mean they haven't, yet, but it's not a completely unreasonable worry. We've never relaxed a lockdown in these circumstances before - rising cases but also high vaccination levels - so it's a bit of a guess how it'll play out. The culture war aspect is definitely a thing also: I was skimming the right wing press earlier and they're very much hammering at the divide between sensible, freedom-loving Brits who just want to get back to normal and 'hysterical', 'fearmongering' lockdown fanatics, who've lost all perspective and want to retain harsh restrictions, effectively forever.
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Jul 6, 2021 07:57
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HopperUK posted:Here is my big project! ...I've been doing a lot of these tiny house kits. Absorbs me for ages in the evenings. I do get glue everywhere but that's one of the hazards of being clumsy in general. Congratulations on your new "passive income" renting that out in London for £300 a week.
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Jul 6, 2021 07:59
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I get the divide between lockdown/ease restrictions agruments, but it really baffles me why some people are so anti-mask wearing. It's such a minor thing that probably has a significant benefit yet apparently its now because of endless cluture war, if you wear a mask you're a virtue signalling marxist. https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1412309650985426944
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Jul 6, 2021 08:22
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