Stupid questions you always wanted answering

[buzby]

I kind of know the answer to this nowadays but when I was younger I really wanted to know how cranes got to wherever they were. You never seem to see a half-built crane and I'm still not sure how they get those huge concrete balance slabs in place.

All the components are brought to site on trucks. The base, cab, jib and counterweights are all assembled on the ground using a mobile crane, which then lifts the jib onto the first section of the tower. From there, the jib is jacked up a section at a time and lifts it's own sections up to be fitted into the space created by the jacks. Once the section is secured, the jacks climbs up to the top of the new section to jack the jib up again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB91Sm-kGJ8

[NJ Uncut]

Why do shoe repairs and keymaking go hand in hand?

Always visualised some kind of mad locksmith / boot-fixer contraption in these little shops or stalls. And I've seen these do phone screen repairs too!

If they're not all the same tools why are these retail concepts so intertwined? "Ahhh, new soles for Kickers. Makes you think of keys, dunnit?"

[Cuellar]

Those professions were traditionally limited only to Seventh Day Adventists, and they were actually prohibited from holding other professions.

Now of course it's a free for all but the infrastructure was already there.

[imitationleather]

Harry Hill has also wondered about this very thing.

[jobotic]

Those professions were traditionally limited only to Seventh Day Adventists, and they were actually prohibited from holding other professions.

Now of course it's a free for all but the infrastructure was already there.

I'm sorry but that is cobblers. Lock the thread.

[Paul Calf]

/\ *polite applause*

[Cuellar]

I appreciate the pun, but it's actually true. Look it up!

[NJ Uncut]

Those professions were traditionally limited only to Seventh Day Adventists, and they were actually prohibited from holding other professions.

Now of course it's a free for all but the infrastructure was already there.

Ahah! (plus it generated a boss pun)

So I should basically view the following business as jack-of-all-trades chancers jumping on a bandwagon? Should be a hashtag for that! #MeToo

CHESTER SHOE REPAIRS, AUTO LOCKSMITHS, KEY CUTTING, TROPHIES SUPPLIED - ENGRAVED, & DRY CLEANING

Business like that may as well just be called The Lot

[NoSleep]

I appreciate the pun, but it's actually true. Look it up!

When I look it up it doesn't verify this. What I did find was:

John Timpson, whose shops are synonymous with shoe repair and key cutting, answers that question in a Telegraph interview:

Q Cobblers repair shoes. Why do they also cut keys? Locksmiths cut keys. Even my local cobbler can't explain what mutual skills or machinery is common to both trades to explain why locksmiths don't repair shoes.
A Good question! Fifty years ago shoe repairers stuck to cobbling. With most people wearing all leather shoes, made in the UK, cobblers were easily able to satisfy the economic law of shoe repairing – as long as your repair costs no more than a third the cost of a new pair you are in business.
In the 1960s shoe shops started to sell synthetic imports at half the leather prices and shoe repair demand dropped by 15pc for three years running.
Cobblers tried all sorts of things like to make up the loss: knife sharpening, hosiery, leather goods, rubber stamps and hosiery – the one that really worked was key cutting
The new service was introduced at a time when more people were moving house and ironmongers (who all used to cut keys) were disappearing from the high street.
Key cutting is now 35pc of our turnover (nearly as much as shoe repairs) that's why cobblers cut keys.

[NJ Uncut]

! Still seems convoluted as to why its pretty widespread and uniform. Do other countries do this?

This calls for a BUZBY!

[NoSleep]

The other bit of info I discovered that might explain the uniformity was on Quora, where I found the above:

I spent more time googling this than I care to admit.  Besides a lot of hogwash, the only two arguments I could find that hold any water are:

Both require similar equipment (some kind of grinding tool, I guess)
Both belong to a dwindling set of specialty skills (along with watch repair and a few others) that aren't part of any trade/regulatory body.  Which I guess makes them accessible to the, uh, bootstrapping entrepreneur.

[NJ Uncut]

The other bit of info I discovered that might explain the uniformity was on Quora, where I found the above:

Hmm. Ta for the graft, it is a bloody vague thing innit?

So I'm still going with

- Similar tools
and
- Worked for some cunt and others said "I'm havin some o DAT" and it became a thing as it worked

What was Harry Hill's no-doubt hilarious answer??

[touchingcloth]

There's a trope in American film and TV of the maître d' who acts as a restaurant's gatekeeper. Perched behind a ledger on a lectern and refusing to seat people because their name's not on the list or the restaurant is full, only changing their mind after money is furtively passed, unless the amount of money is small enough or the suggestion that they can be bribed offensive enough that they shout the customer on their way.

Is this just a trope, or are these people really that ubiquitous is US restaurants?

[beanheadmcginty]

Why do so many blokes spit into the urinal before they have a piss in a pub? I've been going to pubs for over 20 years and using urinals throughout and at no point felt the need to spit. Do some men use it as some sort of piss starter signal for their brain?

[touchingcloth]

Why do so many blokes spit into the urinal before they have a piss in a pub? I've been going to pubs for over 20 years and using urinals throughout and at no point felt the need to spit. Do some men use it as some sort of piss starter signal for their brain?

I lubricates the porcelain better.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Why do so many blokes spit into the urinal before they have a piss in a pub? I've been going to pubs for over 20 years and using urinals throughout and at no point felt the need to spit. Do some men use it as some sort of piss starter signal for their brain?

I've done this when I've had a greeny occupying that bit between nose and throat and hacking it up in the pub would be disgusting.

[gib]

I do it to intimidate younger men who only have 20 years of pubbing under their belt.

[NJ Uncut]

Facial hair question:

When and why did the moustache solo - no beard accompaniment - go out of fashion?

I asked colleagues and one said it is a bit creepy. I agree, I think it's the nonce look.

How and why did the solo moustache get unpopular? Or is this a false perception by a load of facial hairists?

Ian Botham closes browser disgusted

[touchingcloth]

Facial hair question:

When and why did the moustache solo - no beard accompaniment - go out of fashion?

I asked colleagues and one said it is a bit creepy. I agree, I think it's the nonce look.

How and why did the solo moustache get unpopular? Or is this a false perception by a load of facial hairists?

Ian Botham closes browser disgusted

It's still in fashion in places outside of the Western world and among hipsters. In fact I would say it's mainly out of fashion with white men in the English-speaking world.

[NJ Uncut]

It's still in fashion in places outside of the Western world and among hipsters. In fact I would say it's mainly out of fashion with white men in the English-speaking world.

I was going to qualify my question with White but it seemed a bit more wind-up merchanty than my genuine question really is

Even though basically I said if you have one you look like a nonce...

But yes, yes yes, your definition of where it's like that is right (I live there!)

Another odd uniform thing.

[Sebastian Cobb]

What is point of the little plastic sub-lid in the lid of my blender? Just another fiddly little deely to wash.

[imitationleather]

What is point of the little plastic sub-lid in the lid of my blender? Just another fiddly little deely to wash.

So you can drop stuff in while it's on?

[touchingcloth]

So you can drop stuff in while it's on?

Yep. My blender has a hole in the lid where you can chuck extra bits in without things splashing all over the shop. I think it also came with a now lost stick which could fit through the whole buy with a canny little blocker to enable you to stir stuff as it whizzed without inserting the stick far enough to mince it on the blades.

[a duncandisorderly]

In those dirty grumble vids all the kids watch on the internet these days, why do the gentlemen sometimes pull their todger out of the fray mid action and tap it a few times on the lady in the manner of Sooty casting a magic spell?

& what's with all the grollying & drooling?

[Sebastian Cobb]

So you can drop stuff in while it's on?

But I can do that with the normal lid

[touchingcloth]

But I can do that with the normal lid

I think we need pics.

[a duncandisorderly]

When I do sex my main move is tapping my todger on her, but I sometimes break off mid fray to slip it inside for a moment.

I think we need pics.

[touchingcloth]

You can't have pics. Remember my post up there about my missing blender stick? Well I tried using my todger instead, and now: no todger :(

[weekender]

You can't have pics. Remember my post up there about my missing blender stick? Well I tried using my todger instead, and now: no todger :(

I think we need pics.

[touchingcloth]

I think we need pics.

We all need dicks, mate.