The melting pot is a way of integrating people into our country. It has been criticized as being too homogenizing; and now I think (for the better) most people see it as a nice lumpy stew. We shouldn’t ask people to give up all their traditions or change completely to become American, it is a give and take communication process that we both benefit from.
WRT toilets, I think it has been shown that squatting actually reduces the strain when using the toilet; I think those signs reflect the fact that we are integrating new toilet information. They are part of the natural back-and-forth pushing process. Hopefully we’ll converge on a toilet that is lower to the ground but doesn’t have accessibility issues.
> WRT toilets, I think it has been shown that squatting actually reduces the strain when using the toilet; I think those signs reflect the fact that we are integrating new toilet information. They are part of the natural back-and-forth pushing process. Hopefully we’ll converge on a toilet that is lower to the ground but doesn’t have accessibility issues.
Squatting toilets are fine, maybe they are even better. But the signs are about people squatting with their feet on the toilet bowl on a sitting toilet. That is dangerous (the bowl can easily break from the pressure of your feet) and dirty (you are very likely to leave the area around dirty, and there are typically no ways to clean the outside of the bowl in typical western bathrooms).
What I wanted to highlight is that this confusion, people coming to the toilet with different assumptions and misusing it as a result, is part of the process of improving by integrating additional information. Sure, they are being misused, but the way they are being misused gives us a chance to reflect on how they could be better.
If we want to be obnoxiously neutral, haha, we could just say there’s a mismatch between the design and the user expectations. Maybe we could look at retrofitting some of these toilets with a retractable foot platform, or something along those lines, instead of a sign.
WRT toilets, I think it has been shown that squatting actually reduces the strain when using the toilet; I think those signs reflect the fact that we are integrating new toilet information. They are part of the natural back-and-forth pushing process. Hopefully we’ll converge on a toilet that is lower to the ground but doesn’t have accessibility issues.