Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I've mentioned it before but at work the two kitchens on our floor each had mixer taps but they were mounted on different sides of the sink. so pulling the handle all the way towards you got freezing cold water in the one kitchen but boiling hot in the other.

also must point out that a lot of the cold water also comes from a feed tank, see that episode of Fawlty Towers. kitchen tap (and toilet cisterns!) are generally rising main and potable

“Mixer tap” is the kind of phrase I imagine Alan Partridge murmuring approvingly when touring a prospective rental

Change of topic, sorry, but I only learned yesterday that "buttermilk" in French is called "babeurre"

Considering "I speak French" and "I cook regularly in a country where ingredients are plainly labelled in French" this surprised me that I didn't know that

I’ve never heard that before either tbh

They rarely if ever use it, is probably why

The French I mean

Never heard that one either, but I am not quite as close to the language as you two gentlemen. Perhaps I can email your compatriot Sund4r, fgti, and see what he has to say. Come to think of it, there was recently another, Québécois, word we discussed recently.

Un œuf miroir. Have you come across that one?

Btw, we tried a French language subboard but it failed. Wonder if we have at least a French vocab thread on this borad.

The other two countries I've lived in (France and Australia) don't have them.

tell that to the two taps with separate faucets still in my childhood bathroom sink to this day 😠

It's one handle. All the way to the left is hot. Pointing it to 10 o'clock is kinda hot. Straight up is warm, and the same positions to the right give you the same kind of cold water.

tell that to the two taps either side of the faucet installed in my current flat in March 😠

Yep, I know oeuf miroir. I just LIKE "babeurre", it's cute. I'm getting into "homemade ranch dressing" so I'm using more buttermilk

I remember bathroom sinks in a couple of my first apartments with two taps, and, you could buy a thing to attach to them to combine them. This was in Pennsylvania, houses probably from the early 1900s.

Which, it looks like you can something similar on UK Amazon.

> gently curving motorways
> is this as opposed to ramrod straight motorways, or motorways with insanely sharp bends?

In the US prairie, for sure. We're always falling asleep at the wheel.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Streeter,+ND+58483/@46.3914495,-98.7884629,8.96z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x52d0ee94ba40fb4b:0x5836a15a6c2f81a5!8m2!3d46.657026!4d-99.3582177!16zL20vMHlycXk

Sic, you're not really 😠 about this, are you?

tbf my kitchen/bathroom sinks had separate taps until circa five years ago

the bathtub taps remain separate, and glitchy

My guess is that seperate taps were common everywhere until the 60s, at which point all countries other than the UK gradually switched to the single tap. My feeling is that the UK is pretty much the only country left where it's common. For reasons unknown.

https://em-content.zobj.net/thumbs/320/samsung/45/angry-face_1f620.png

classic sic

classic sic

does seem a bit predictable

Consensus amongst my Portuguese friends living in London is we've seen more single taps in the UK than back home.

It's also agreed that double taps is somewhat old fashioned but it was still the default for us in the 90's and I'd imagine we're prob not the only ones so "rest of the world got rid of it in the 60's" feels chronologically off.

Hmmm. I've been going to Lisbon regularly since 1990 but I have to say the status of that great city's taps has never been top of mind. But I think I hold by my feeling that in 2023 at least, the only developed country where seperate taps seems a relatively normal state of affairs is the UK.

certainly grew up with both combines valve taps and two taps in Philadelphia and its suburbs, but the houses are old here, which might explain

I work in three university buildings in London, the main one has shiny new mixer taps, the other two still have little sinks with two taps. the AC in all three buildings is laughable, as are the electrics. on the plus side I found a room with an old OHP machine the other week, psyched to try it out now.

In the late 80s I had a lecturer who had a frame with a long reel of acetate and a takeup spool. She clipped it on the overhead projector and wrote her lecture notes in a continuous stream, had the whole course on there and would occasionally wind it back to revisit earlier points.

baller move

My childhood bathroom sink (built 1980) had two taps/faucets. Still does! I think I see double taps/faucets all over the place, really, maybe it's ultimately just a style/choice/preference/affectation.

I had heard you let the water run for a bit before drinking not because of bacteria but because of the potential for lead (and nickel) contamination; the longer it's been sitting around (warm) the more lead it might get from the pipes, if you have lead pipes around.

Actually, come to think of it, the bathrooms in my current house all have two taps, lol. Wait, are we talking taps or faucets? One faucet, two taps. Is faucet vs. tap a regional distinction?

Tap is UK English, faucet is American English

But I assume we’re talking about two separate streams of water - not 2 taps/1 flow

OK, so we're talking one tap/stream/faucet for hot, one tap/stream/faucet for cold? In which case, no, I don't recall seeing that too often, maybe more often in bathtubs than in sinks. I do think my sister (in the UK) has a powder room with two taps/faucets, but it's a pretty old house.

I think you just described the same thing I did yesterday. One outlet, 2 controls. UK style is 2 separate water releasing units, one hot, one cold. So I think you are stuck mixing heats in the receptacle, sink or whatever rather than as it comes out of the outlet. So you can see why it would be something people would progress away from

which should have come with an xp since you just described the difference. But I was typing while holdiong my stereo which is in the way but has hopefully just been corrected a bit

So does that mean one outlet that only releases water at its hottest and the other water at its coldest? Must be uncomfortable to wash your face/hands!

that's what the basin and plug are for.

Yes I think the original distinction is the number of outputs ie 2 valves each with their own output (“two taps”) vs 2 valves leading to a single output (“one tap”). And then there is the truly single unit that pplains mentions where you sort of adjust it like a joystick to control both temperature & pressure

& yes I’d say the first kind is easily the most common (particularly in houses, particularly old houses) but the other 2 are far from unheard of

in practice you just turn on the hot tap and wait for it to warm up and then wash your face and hands quickly before it reaches its blistering apex

The worst is public toilets in pubs or wherever that don’t work properly & have a sign on them that says “CAUTION WATER EXTREMELY HOT” meaning “no seriously this water is way too hot to use and will scald you”

How am I supposed to exercise this caution except by not using your broken tap?! How is the sign a solution to anything?

Public toilets often have those taps you push down and which, once pushed down, take ages to stop running and so waste a shitload of water.

I work in a state of the art of 1995 green building, and the faucets are the ones with the little optical sensors that only turn on when you put your hand under them. And I’d say about 30% of the time they don’t turn on for me at all, and I briefly have thought “am I a vampire, am I a ghost, who just doesn’t know…?”

Re: optical sensors

The time clock face scanner at work also takes temperatures. If the weather outside is below, say, 60°F, the scanner reports my temperature as something like "Invalid temperature: 85.6°" It rarely happens to other people. So I'm probably undead.

It's nice to know there's ways of finding out if you're unsure like.
Liminality such a nice word.
But I'm sure immortality must get boring after a while.

during the first wave of covid I started using an electronic thermometer and found out I've got a permanently hypothermic/undead body temperature. But I thought fuck it, it'll be reet - there is enough other stuff to worry about etc..

This latest exchange reminded me of the last stanza of Ian Duhig's poem, 'Goths' - appropriately, since it is, apparently World Goth Day

Black sheep, they pilgrimage twice a year to Whitby
through our landscape of dissolved monastery and pit,
which they will toast in cider’n’blackcurrant, vegan blood.
They danse macabre at gigs like the Dracula Spectacula.
Next day, lovebitten and wincing in the light, they take
photographs of each other, hoping they won't develop.

curiously there are multiple goth books out at the moment

does seem a bit predictable

looking fwd to Mystic Stevo’s further predictions of things I’ll post

I'm looking forward to you copping onto what a complete douche I think you are..

Lads

Tom D otm.

XP I think I need to get around to reading that book on emotional vampires I picked up a few months back

The time clock face scanner at work also takes temperatures...

― Hideous Lump, Sunday, May 21, 2023 5:14 PM

The what?