Interesting Links for 30-10-2023

[andrewducker]

1. I'm glad I'm reading this article about renovation hell when our extension is almost finished rather than when it's all beginning

(tags:housing renovation )

2. Why some women get demotivated from sharing their work

(tags:women patriarchy abuse )

3. 'The best thing about me': Matthew Perry wanted to be remembered for his work on addiction

(tags:addiction death celebrity friends TV )

4. How well do colonoscopies work?

(tags:healthcare cancer research statistics )

5. Anti-Israeli mob' storms airport in Dagestan 'searching for Jews' forcing flight from Tel Aviv to divert

(tags:Israel Jews bigotry Russia )

6. I love Japan's Mundane Halloween tradition

(tags:Japan Halloween costumes )

7. Michael Crick is shining a spotlight on would-be politicians before they reach Westminster

(tags:UK politics transparency )

Comments

[mountainkiss]

That account is very good on colonoscopy. Really accessible writing but great science.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I was impressed at how well they broke it all down. And very even handedly I thought.

[simont]

#1: I'm having a slight renovation awkwardness, as it happens. And it's not resolved yet, so I hope it doesn't turn into one of those disasters!

I had my whole bathroom torn out and refitted, because more or less everything in there was broken in some way and also disgusting.

The fitters were doing a great job until the last day, when they were going to actually fit the new toilet on the mountings they'd prepared – and they found that the company that shipped it had left a vital bracket out of the box.

So I'm still using a makeshift setup involving the old toilet minus its cistern (I have to flush it using a bucket of water), and hopefully this week they'll call me back to tell me the missing part has arrived and they can come and finish the job!

[andrewducker]

Oh no!

Fingers crossed that it all turns out okay.

This was my house about a month ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQe2GdKyAos

[simont]

Nearly a month later, it is done!

The missing toilet fittings turned up promptly, and the fitters came back and installed that. But the really hard part turned out to be the radiator / heated towel rail, which was shipped with the wrong size of bleed valve, and the provider sent two more of the wrong size before finally managing to send one of the right size. I have no idea how that happened.

So, as of about an hour ago, my bathroom is complete, and also heated. Phew!

[andrewducker]

Hurrah for not having no/an unheated bathroom!

(And that really is a rubbish level of incompetence)

[simont]

It could have been worse. The bathroom company I was actually dealing with (separate from the manufacturer who shipped the wrong thing) were seriously starting to consider the possibility that the radiator might have been incorrectly manufactured, with a hole the wrong size, so that there was no such thing as a valve that would fit it at all, and I'd have to return the whole thing for a replacement, which would take a further 6 weeks.

(I assume the hypothesis was "assembly line worker picked up wrong tool for making a neat screw-threaded hole" or some such.)

So I'm mostly relieved it didn't go that way, and there was such a thing as a correct valve after all!

[andrewducker]

That would have been spectacularly annoying.

That it takes 6 weeks to ship you a (presumably fairly standard) radiator seems ridiculous.

[simont]

My guess is that the company makes them on demand, so as not to have to pay for a giant warehouse full of them. But it's only a guess.

[simont]

Also, looking at the bleed valves, they don't look that complicated. Each one is just a short screw-threaded bolt, with a rubber O-ring around the base of the shaft so that it makes a watertight seal when it's fully tightened. So perhaps machining a custom one might have been another option!

[andrewducker]

If you have access to a machine shop then giving it a go could be a massive timesaver, definitely!

[simont]

Unrelatedly, a friend pointed me at this extremely serious piece of scientific writing yesterday, which strikes me as a thing your link log might appreciate.

[andrewducker]

Thank you!