Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Shonus]

EDIT: btw "$10,000 (in 80s money!)" is actually more money, not less. $10000 now is worth less than then.

That's why I emphasized it. 10,000 seems like a lot of money now, but when the accident happened it was far worse. I remembered the case wrong - it was '94, and her medical bills approached $20,000. That's over $35K today. Which emphasizes how serious the injuy was, but also explains why the final punitive judgement was so high - all she originally wanted was her bills covered, and they refused to do so.

[Reelya]

Oh I see my mistake.

My mistake was I assumed you were highlighting how small an amount it was for McDonald's to pay that, rather than how high it was in terms of medical bills.

I made that error probably because it followed "McDonalds flatly refused to pay ... $10,000", whereas they ended up being awarded $2 million, which would highlight how small an amount that was on the scale of McDonald's.

EDT: BTW if you want to know why McDonald's refused to lower the temperature of their coffee, it's because apparently neal-boiling hot coffee last longer in the machine before you need to change it out. It was to save literally pennies per cup, by serving people coffee that had been sitting there for longer.

[Lord Shonus]

I remember the claim back in the day being "Nobody drinks it right away, they wait until they get to work and want it to still be hot then!"

[Yoink]

I was on the can just now, and since I'd neglected to bring a book I was instead scrutinising some of the newspaper covering the toilet floor (not entirely sure why, I think it's to catch the water that goes everywhere when someone washes their hands in the tiny sink).   

Well, I think it was out of a newspaper, but these pages were part of an appliance catalogue. The particular page I was idly reading involved refrigerators. First, I was puzzling over the difference between "top mount" and "bottom mount" refrigerators, thinking with confusion that perhaps people were wall-mounting their fridges now, before realising that it simply meant where the fridge-freezer divide was on that particular model.   
Barely was that mystery solved before I noticed something even more bizarre.   

Looking down the page over the array of home cooling units, there were bottom mounted ones (freezer below fridge) with reversible doors, top mounted ones (freezer above fridge), and finally 'french door' ones, where the freezer and fridge each had two doors, opening outwards from the middle.   
Amidst that last category, at the very end of the page, was the InstaView^_TM. At first glance it just appeared to be a fridge with a window in one door. Neat enough, I supposed, if a bit gimmicky. Upon closer inspection, however, the smattering of details described the InstaView^_TM technology as "knock twice, see inside".   

...What?   
So it's not a permanent window, it just turns transparent when you knock on the damn thing. Never mind that doing so would require about the same level of effort as just opening the damn fridge. I wracked my brain trying to think of an explanation. As far as I could see, the aperture only covered the one door, since the other would have been blocked by the ice dispenser. Besides, they apparently don't all turn transparent at once, anyway - to get a look in every compartment, is one supposed to stand there bashing on every part of the door like a cop with an arrest warrant?! Even someone trying to snack on the sly wouldn't benefit from it, since knocking on the fridge would presumably make at least as much noise as opening it.   

Maybe I'm too much of a Night Person to get it. Why someone would pay about six grand extra just to be able to peek through part of their fridge door - not from a distance, mind, you gotta knock on it - is beyond me. Unless they simply want to be able to brag to their peers/rivals about purchasing the absolute most expensive fridge on offer, I suppose.   


At least this disturbing line of thought distracted me from my IBS for a moment.   

[Greiger]

Hazarding a guess I imagine it's less power consuming than opening the door and letting all the cold air fall out on the floor and the thing having to recool everything, kinda the reason why those freezers that open with a lid on top are so efficient, heat rises so you lose less cold air to the door being open.  If you can do the midnight snack browsing without having to open the door at all, that keeps the inside even cooler.

If it helps anything there have been wifi refrigerators with cameras inside them to let you look at the inside of your fridge with a phone for a while now, I imagine it's a similar concept to that, but with a slightly more readily available method than finding your phone in the middle of the night, unlocking your phone while half asleep, and opening the app.

[scriver]

I don't see how a camera is going to help. As we all know, there is no light on when the door is closed

[ChairmanPoo]

Maybe it's an infrarred camera

[hector13]

Maybe it's an infrarred camera

This was the hook that made me read about fridges on the previous page.

Never in a million years would I have guessed it was in relation to cameras inside fridges.

Also, I think it’s a joke, so my brain is ready for the day.

[Yoink]

Hazarding a guess I imagine it's less power consuming than opening the door and letting all the cold air fall out on the floor and the thing having to recool everything, kinda the reason why those freezers that open with a lid on top are so efficient, heat rises so you lose less cold air to the door being open.  If you can do the midnight snack browsing without having to open the door at all, that keeps the inside even cooler.

If it helps anything there have been wifi refrigerators with cameras inside them to let you look at the inside of your fridge with a phone for a while now, I imagine it's a similar concept to that, but with a slightly more readily available method than finding your phone in the middle of the night, unlocking your phone while half asleep, and opening the app.

But... but... WHAT KIND OF HALF-ASSED, CONTRADICTORY RICH BASTARD BUYS ONE OF THESE GIGANTIC EXPENSIVE FRIDGES TO SHOVE IN THEIR NEWLY-BUILT MCMANSION AND THEN GOES ON TO GIVE A CRAP ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT and/or THE POWER BILL?!   


I'm sorry for shouting hysterically. I just find this whole situation strangely hilarious.   
I don't think my mind has even begun to process the absurdity of an internet-capable refrigerator decked out with CCTV cameras, yet.   

[MrRoboto75]

Why couldn't it just have a big glass door like the supermarket freezer aisle?

[Reelya]

Those are expensive and actually burn through a lot more electricity than a normal fridge.

[Maximum Spin]

Yep, it's heinously inefficient, because uninsulated.

[Reelya]

Yeah, to give an idea, even if it was 100% insulated against heat loss through contact, the very fact that you can see through it means that infrared heat radiation is passing through it unimpeded too.

[Maximum Spin]

Yeah, to give an idea, even if it was 100% insulated against heat loss through contact, the very fact that you can see through it means that infrared heat radiation is passing through it unimpeded too.

Welllll, no.
Case in point: you can see through atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Some glass is IR-transparent and some is IR-opaque, so it'd be possible to make a refrigerator that leaks or does not leak heat as desired. I don't know why you'd want to make a leaky refrigerator but you COULD.

[Rolan7]

I don't know why you'd want to make a leaky refrigerator but you COULD.

To cool your home!