In retrospect… yes.

I offered the story as a kind of parable (except not because I didn’t make it up) or random data point if you will, on pissing standing up.

I’m afraid I really have no answers for you… but then again I don’t think I’m your survey pool.

But I did once stay at a small hotel in Germany that had a sticker imploring male guess to sit and pee. I pissed all over that poor toilet before we left.

15 years later I feal guilt but also righteous indignation. I really hate being told what to do apparently… even when there are good reasons like another human being, asking you to not make their life hard 😞

Yeah, as I said, most factories closed by the end of the 70s, but some operated till the USSR dissolved.

My mind is suitably blown :-) I remember seeing some of the “newer” segmented style tubes in a train ticket machine (probably late 70’s erra manufacture) here in Oakland, California, USA back in the late 90s or very early 00s. Probably not of Russian manufacture, though ;-)

The system wasn’t that bad to be honest… at least not in Yugoslavia. USSR was a different story. We had all the perks of the west with none of the obligations. Of course, you can’t compete with the western tech markets (yes, we did try that, look up Zastava, Yugo, Iskra, Gorenje)

Don’t sell yourselves short, Yogo’s were very well known here! ;-) … yeah, it’s still rigged pretty well.

There are other open forums, free for registration. I could look up the URLs if you want, I have them in a plain text file on my PC (I’m on my phone right now), some are also good, like vinafix for example (not ex USSR, but still good, it’s Vietnamese). I haven’t visited them in years though, things might have changed. I started working in IT and just lost interest in that… no money, no point in doing it. Hardware is dirt cheap nowadays.

Yes please, but feel free to do it at your convenience. I have yet to check out the first few you offered — although I will by weeks end. To many projects, as always :-) I’m going to look up the other big companies you mentioned as well. I was born in ‘77 so I missed the coldest days of the Cold War… but I have an irresistible fascination with the evolution of technology… especially these parallel worlds that developed in countries on both sides. Objects that are both instantly familiar but also “alien” in design, not the greatest example but phones are probably the most familiar examples.

Anyway… it’s been delightful chatting the last few days. I hope we can keep the conversation going, but for now I have one or more work tables to excavate ;-)

Really? It just seems like the NOS stockpile is endless… though I had read somewhere that there was still a factory operating in the early 90’s… guess you did say most.

Doorknob operators, love it! 😊 And thanks for the explanation, Mr. Ellness (which I’m almost certainly misspelling) really couldn’t articulate the reason behind it, nor did his “minder” offer any explanation.

Hopefully I didn’t come off as glorifying the system, it certainly wasn’t my intention to do so.

Thanks for the recommendations! I vaguely remember Louis Rossman video (back when you made repair videos) where he sort of flashed the watermark on the screen for a second. Always thought I would go back and find that video, never did :-)

IDK… I would have liked to visit in the 80’s or something like that; peek Soviet propaganda, factories still churning out Nixie tubes by the truckload because it was part of the last 5 year plan. Jr. Highschool history teacher visited, said they employ old ladies in the Moscow subway to watch the escalators just because everyone needed a job.

So uh… what Soviet electronics forums should we be visiting OP?

The assassination attempt was a just a pretext to sell everyone a (check’s notes) Mercedes-Benz, micro mobility concept test vehicle No. 523… come back to me. I can do better 🤔 

You can get it in a can, just gotta’ pour it off before you toss all the beans. Or get one of those big boba straws… pro tip: buy a few cans, there’s just not enough in one.

I’m like that :-) Going to have to give it a try.

I kinda want to see one of Microsoft’s websites having a javascript seizure trying to recommend you switch to Edge 😂

O.G. Status ;-)

I always grab a user agent switcher right after uBlock, comes in handy… makes me feel like Hackerman ;-)

Sounds logical.

Unless your toothpaste has no fluoride ;-)

I’m going to give those another try. My mouth is tiny and my fingers are stubby (thanks dad! ;-) But you get way more crap out with floss.

A toothpaste that restores your enamel. It’s prescription in the US but you can get Apagard Premio off Amazon.

It’s probably a good idea to get some extra fluoride since the Apagard doesn’t have any. I use purple Listerine, but I kinda hate it, so find something you like.

You should floss, which I’m shitty at, so I use a water pick a few times a week. All kinds of nasty crap comes out, even after brushing, so it’s gotta be better than nothing.

I use a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, no need to get the fancy ones, it’s mostly extra accessories. There are probably less expensive ultrasonic toothbrushes out there that work well… doing it twice a day manually is probably better for you than once a day with a fancy toothbrush.

Hang in there, clinical trials of a drug that regrows teeth are underway and the results are promising.

LOL. Thanks for your service. I think you should let yourself off with time served ;-)

So just a personal theory then?

There was definitely a time when I would have called this seriously tinfoil-hat… but given the stuff that keeps coming out, the industries support for community recycling programs that they knew would never work, etc. I’m giving it a 7/10 for probably and a 10/10 for creativity ;-)

Personally I tend to believe that generally well meaning people thought that paper straw technology would continue to improve, didn’t involve PFAS or microplastics… or that we’d all carry around a personal straw. But I do love the smoke filled room of mad men architecting a masterful conspiracy propped on the plastic shoulders of the humblest of columns.

Got any more info on the plastic straw plot? Because I’d love for that to be true, but I’m just getting craploads of articles saying the opposite.

1x40P Male L-11.96mm or the next one should work.

“Machined pin 0.1 headers” are the fancy kind. Just get the males from the same listing, I’ve never seen them sold loose.

So cool!

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