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Inescapable Duck posted:Postmodern architecture must be stopped. It always results in ugly, space-wasting death traps. gently caress, look at Grenfell. I'm not sure I'd call Brutalism postmodern.
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Aug 22, 2017 11:29
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Inescapable Duck posted:The whole point was that the ultra-flammable cladding was put onto the building at the request of its rich neighbours to make it look less brutalist. Ah, sorry, I get what you mean now.
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Aug 22, 2017 11:53
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FCKGW posted:Baby Registries have probably been keeping them alive for the last decade. The TRU division has been a walking corpse for 15 years now, it's all been about the baby stuff. I imagine that to other retailers, this felt like the moment in a movie where someone sells out the group to the villain and then Amazon turns to Toys R Us and says "You have served me well, and now you will be rewarded as a traitor deserves".
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Sep 7, 2017 00:08
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:It's because sales tax rates are incredibly localized and retail chains aren't. The prices are set by headquarters and the tax is programmed into the registers. Sure, stores could print price tags locally, but a lot of products have the price printed directly on the packaging. Arizona Tea doesn't want to print thousands of slightly different cans to cover all the municipal tax rates. This actually still seems a bit strange to me because in the UK, for example, where the tax is even across the whole country, the same chain can and does charge different prices for the same product in different parts of the country, often in different parts of the same city. Items generally are more expensive at the Tesco near my work than they are at the Tesco near my house, even though they're a 20 minute drive apart, because the Tesco near my work is in the town centre. And the Tesco in my town centre will be more expensive than a Tesco in the town centre of Paisley, but cheaper than a Tesco in the town centre of London. Tesco HQ sets the markup for each of these stores individually, transmits the prices to the stores electronically, who then print the price tags onsite. Does that not happen in the US?
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Sep 9, 2017 10:34
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Star Man posted:There is no federal sales tax in the US. States have their own sales tax laws and not all states have a sales tax. On top of that, each county can have an additional sales tax and then each city can add one to it. Sales tax increases are voted on and their durations last for as long as stated on the ballot. And then, here in Wyoming we don't have a sales tax for non-prepared foods. But that only seems to be a shitload easier if the corporate office doesn't already manage all the prices across the country and keep track of every two-bit town's cost of living (of which sales taxes would be a part). So what I'm asking is, does that not actually happen in the US? Does a loaf of bread from Walmart cost the same pre-tax in The Walmart in North Bergen, New Jersey as it does in the Walmart in Freehold, New Jersey, or the Walmart in Rawlins, Wyoming? EDIT: and if the answer is no, is that because the local store sets the pre-tax price or because the head office sets the pre-tax price? Reveilled fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Sep 9, 2017 |
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Sep 9, 2017 11:42
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Funnily enough, in countries with VAT, there can be situations where if you're buying an items don't actually need to pay the VAT. A common one would be if you're buying it for a business. How do shops which have a mixture of business and personal customers (e.g. An office supply shop) handle this? Well, they just put both prices on the label. Would everyone be OK with that?
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Sep 10, 2017 10:07
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fishmech posted:So you want consumers to have no idea what the price will be until they go into a store. Got it. Doesn't seem very consumer-friendly to me. You are deriving this argument from the premise that the price of an item is the number on the label and not the amount of money you pay, which is not a premise others accept. If the price is the amount of money you pay, then what you're describing isn't a new problem created by putting the amount of money you pay on the label, it's a problem which already exists that simply would not be fixed by changing the labelling rules.
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Sep 11, 2017 18:40
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twodot posted:You'd rather both are true I get that, but given that preference why accept a system where advertising and price tags disagree on price? Your options are: You do also have the option of just printing both prices on the price tag, which is how shops in the EU with a mix of taxed and tax-exempt customers handle this.
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Sep 11, 2017 21:12
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How do the lenders make money off these? If the hedge fund sells everything of value, does the liquidation actually make the lender back the loan they gave to the hedge fund in the first place?
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Sep 27, 2017 12:36
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dbukalski posted:said people about every invention ever(personal computers, cell phones etc) There's a difference between a new invention providing a popular alternative to an old way of doing things, and a new invention replacing the old way of doing things. Look at washing machines and tumble dryers. The former completely replaced the old way of washing clothes, the latter did not replace the old way of drying clothes, it's just a possible alternative to hanging your clothes up. If someone in the 1910s said "the automobile won't replace good old fashioned horses" they'd be wrong, if someone in the 1960s said "the microwave won't replace good old fashioned conventional ovens" they'd have been right. It's not really possible to say at this point if online shopping will completely replace brick and mortar stores or end up in an equilibrium where both exist.
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Nov 12, 2017 09:17
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learnincurve posted:
Yeah, I don't think the claim that "american bread tastes like cake" (while being certainly hyperbolic) is coming from an unfair comparison of breads in the UK and the US. Here's the list from earlier for US bread: quote:Bread flour 55.4 Here's the list of ingredients for Warburtons white bread, the most popular brand of bread in the UK (no percentages sadly, but per UK labelling laws the ingredients are listed in order of weight): quote:Wheat Flour One has sugar, one doesn't. If you go your whole life eating unsweetened bread, bread with twice as much sugar in it as salt is going to taste a lot sweeter than you might feel comfortable with.
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Nov 13, 2017 22:39
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fishmech posted:Yeah once you refuse to count the sugars in your ingredients, suddenly one kind doesn't have sugar. Don't be disingenuous. We're talking about sugar as an actual ingredient, not any natural sugar which might exist within the other ingredients.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:13
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fishmech posted:Right, because if we talk your way we can be prissy little euro-twits who can pretend there's no sugar as we lie to ourselves. Come off it, clown. Fishmech, I really wish that just once in your life you'd try to have a good faith discussion.
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Nov 14, 2017 07:52
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The ikea near me has a secret super-shortcut that's ridiculously hard to spot. In addition to the usual signposted shortcuts, near the end of the showroom there's a fire door in the corner that's completely unlabelled and has no signs or window on it. Even if you notice it, you'd assume it's a staff only door, even though it's not labelled. If you actually go through, you step out onto a walkway which has a staircase leading down to the cash desks. Using it feels a bit like cheating, it's fun.
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Nov 22, 2017 12:11
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I think it's more that a pizza is made out of like 8 ingredients total and all of them are basically the cheapest things that exist. You can make a pizza to feed a family for like 2 dollars of ingredients. some sort of pizza was always going to end up being super cheap. I have a cousin who owns a pizzeria/chip shop. He once told me that every day he gives thanks that Pizza Hut and Domino's managed to convince people that a large pizza should cost £15. Meanwhile, a pizza place opened up right across the road from my local Domino's which does traditional sourdough wood-fired pizzas for £7, and honestly I don't think I'll ever get a Pizza Hut or Domino's at my house ever again, the difference in quality is staggering and it's practically half the price.
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Dec 30, 2017 22:52
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Goa Tse-tung posted:why is everyone taking the "its from 1935 btw" joke serious? “The premise of this anecdote is ridiculous, chickens don’t haven have a conceptual understanding of ‘sides’, it’s more likely it was just wandering without specific intent and so happened to end up crossing.”
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Jan 31, 2018 12:59
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learnincurve posted:My favourite joke ruining thing is to explain that joke. My understanding is the earliest recorded usage of the joke is from 1847, where it was given as an example of a non-joke in the same way we use it today, so the claim that it was clever in the Victorian era seems spurious, except in that victorians probably had people back then too who would try to ruin the joke by “explaining” it. Sorry for ruining your joke ruiner!
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Jan 31, 2018 18:47
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Paul.Power posted:Honestly I think the vast majority of ATMs I use are side-button based. Granted I live in Wales, so basically the back of beyond, but at the same time if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Never seen something that takes an impression of a card, though. I don't think touch screen ATMs ever caught on in the UK, I don't think I've seen one anywhere in the last 15 years in any part of Britain I've visited.
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Mar 31, 2018 09:50
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learnincurve posted:Meanwhile in the U.K. I give you the saga of Homebase. It wasn’t just that, of course, Bunnings picked up Homebase right as the recession started, but they certainly didn’t do themselves any favours. I remember the adverts for Homebase used to feature Neil Morrissey and Leslie Ash, to emphasise that the store was the preferred choice of men and women, as well as being clear that it was focused on average homeowners rather than clued up DIY enthusiasts. I think Homebase would still have been in trouble with the recession, I’m not sure Sainsbury’s would have sold if they didn’t see a challenging future ahead of it. Honestly Argos really seems like the miraculous survivor of the collapse. In retrospect you can quite easily rationalise it as “it’s like if Amazon had five to ten warehouses in every city and you could collect same day” but I imagine if you were to ask analysts fifteen years ago which types of shops would have been most at risk from online retail, catalogue and warehouse retailers would probably have been top of the list. I think it’s interesting to compare Maplin (for Americans, Maplin sold electronic and AV equipment) and Argos side by side. People use to complain about Maplin being much more expensive than Amazon, and it was, but before Prime existed the cost of next day shipping would often even the price out. So Maplin’s logic was that you were paying a premium to get it now. But it turns out you can’t run a business on just the people who realise they’re short a cable on a day they can’t wait. Meanwhile Argos focused on basically being the same price as Amazon but you can collect the same day if you don’t want to wait for delivery. I’m sure the cost of the warehouses built inside retail units means they make less money on each sale than Amazon does, but at least it’s a popular and sustainable business model that lets them grow.
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Aug 15, 2018 16:50
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learnincurve posted:John Lewis, the UK’s largest department chain store, and owners of Waitrose the supermarket of the middle classes, just posted a yearly profit of a whole One Million Pounds. Someone told me part of the reason for this is the company is focusing on paying off it's debt to put in in a better position for all the uncertainty that's coming with Brexit, so some significant part of its revenue is going to repayments instead of profit. I haven't seen any articles which actually confirm that though.
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Sep 14, 2018 19:14
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Foxfire_ posted:Prescription lenses aren't really made in any sort of handcrafted way where you'd even expect a local place taking their time to do a better job. When I worked in an opticians we didn't do any of that grinding stuff, if you had a +1.75/+0.25 prescription in one eye we'd literally just open up a packet with a +1.75/+0.25 lens, align the cyl at the correct angle and then cut the lens to the frame shape. I worked for a chain but even the independent opticians used a similar system and just ordered the lenses from a company. I'm not sure how much on-site CNCing even happens anywhere any more (though it might be different in the US).
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Dec 6, 2018 23:56
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Decius posted:Sure, but if you have weird eyes like mine they can't use standard lenses (as Reveilled says, that's the fast and cheap thing), but have to grind them specifically for that specification. And that poo poo gets rather expensive, since any production of unitsize = 1 instead of unitsize=10,000 usually is, regardless if some dude handcrafts them or a machine makes them. I remember we had a guy in once who had the most insanely high prescription I’d ever seen. Plastic just straight up did not have sufficient refractive power to take his prescription. We had to order him lenses made of actual glass direct from Zeiss in Germany. I imagine they were still machine ground but those lenses started at £900 retail and only got pricier from there, and that’s before you price in frames. He got them free because he was an NHS patient, but gently caress me, if he ever dropped them...
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Dec 10, 2018 13:45
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