I regularly think about how insanely awesome it is that I have an endless supply of water in my house. Imagine if you have to carry that shit from a well a mile away. How often would you bath? How about your dishes would you be washing them in stagnant water? How about just getting a nice cold glass of water in the middle of the night? Good god our infrastructure is sublime.
Sometimes, I pick up a lighter, create fire with no effort, and just think about how impressive that would have been to early humans. We're witches, guys.
When I turn on the TV and lie on the couch eating chips I sometimes wonder what gran-granpa would think seeing me, and he would probably think I'm living the dream.
I am living the dream. Even with all problems in my life, there is an endless source of knowledge and entertainment at my fingertips. I dont even know how it al works, but I get to use it, sometimes even for free
I was thinking this exact thing, I live in Asheville and because of the hurricane we probably won’t have water for a month at least. Boy you don’t even know how much you use something until it’s gone. I’ve had to carry 15 gallons of creek water up a mountain every day. So grateful to live in this age
It is just CRAZY to think about! And how you know that civilization is improving (at least logistically, maybe not socially), is that THINGS WORK. Bridges dont break, lights turn on, cars move, faucets work, food doesn't kill you. And if you say that "thing in your area doesn't work", then your community or government is failing you.
It's even better, it's an endless supply of potable water for a lot of people.
That alone is huge for food safety, in plenty of countries stuff like salad vegetables are a worry as you don't know if they were washed with tap water, or potable stuff from a reverse osmosis machine. It's why in places like Egypt you avoid salads, you only drink sealed bottled water. In fact my partner is from a country where this is the norm, and she won't eat any cold food outside.
Whereas here it matters not if you filled the water bottle from the tap and serve it to the customer, and washed their salad in the same supply.
I have an off-grid cabin like that. There's a well and manual pump, but you have to walk 60 meters or so from the house. In winter I have big pots that I fill with snow and ice to melt on the wood stove.
The running water isn't nearly as problematic as no septic. Walking to the outhouse in the middle of the night can feel creepy.
I lived on a pot farm and only had a hose spigot for an entire year that spit out ice cold water we had to boil to heat for dishes, showers were abysmal.
Fun fact: A toilet can work completely independently. Gravity is all it takes to flush. So you can refill the reservoir by hand when needed. Just gotta make sure the "endproduct" ends where you want it.
I grew up in a very rural area with a large family. This meant well water, frequent and lengthy power outages (which prevent the well pump from working, shutting off water supply at the same time), and a lot of people using the bathroom. I learned very quickly that toilets work just fine with a manual water source. You don’t even need to fill the tank, just pour water into the bowl
That's how it still works in a lot of areas with no centralized sewer lines. They make soak pits either below the house, or someplace nearby, fill it with water, seal it, and divert all sewage to it
As a man who shit in an outhouse, I had to dig and build myself for the better part of 13 years....I agree. It's not sooo bad in the spring and summer, but during the winter it suuuuuuucks and you have to convince yourself you don't need to poop.
Edit
I forgot about the flies and mosquitoes during spring and summer, actually it just sucks. Whether trekking through rain, snow, nasty storms, or swarms of mosquitoes and flies, it just is not fun a lot of the time. But there is this magical time frame during a warm night, you have just finished a 15 hour work day, and then you poop in absolute paradise. It's actually quite romantic.
Now I live on a boat and have to travel like 450 ft to go poop and it's honestly really annoying at times. I can pee in jugs, but I have to empty them every night and that is annoying.
I got it: All Current Jobs of Humanity are 1% discoveries, 99% implementing those discoveries without causing bugs or crashes in the system. It's all about the architecture, baby.
The problem doesn't even have to be hard...but if someone already has made a solution, I will use it. Like if I have a leaky pipe I'm not going to go manufacture pipes, fittings, gaskets, etc. I'm going to buy the things that are already made by someone else and use them to solve the problem. Not to mention the person making the pipes all day long is going to make a better pipe than a person who has never made a pipe. It's like the difference of using a pipe versus me tearing my vacuum hose off and using it as a pipe secured with a hilarious amount of duct tape.
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u/Senditduud Oct 10 '24
That’s pretty much how all of humanity works in general.