

No one said they wanted faster horses, they wanted less horseshit - pessimizer
http://www.helloerik.com/no-one-said-they-wanted-faster-horses-they-wanted-less-horseshit

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kaizenfury7
The author starts off by asserting that Ford never said what is popularly
thought he said.

And then he starts his discussion with his own assumption: "Here are some of
the things people would have responded with if you asked a mid-late 19th
century city planner what he needed with regards to equine transportation:"

I think it would have been a stronger argument to just list a few sources of
information.

But besides that, I think the article raises some interesting points. For me,
I don't want a faster car, I want fuel efficiency. I want a car that doesn't
require too much maintenance and repairs.

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Mz
Googling isn't immediately getting me anything and I don't recall the source,
but I used to read a lot of urban planning books and I recall seeing a quote
from that era to the effect of "Mud! Mud everywhere!" and complaining about
it. "Mud" was a euphemism for horseshit. So that was a real complaint of the
time.

Though the internet did not exist at the time so I don't know if it is even
possible to find quotes/resources about it online. That may be part of why he
kind of speculated rather than listing a few sources of information.

~~~
danohuiginn
Here's a classic piece of data journalism on the topic:

'This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted...
“In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of
manure.”'

[http://www.historic-
uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-...](http://www.historic-
uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/)

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spodek
Now instead of the waste of transportation being localized near the person
using the transportation, we've dispersed it throughout the global atmosphere
and no one knows what to do about it.

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cryptoz
Slightly OT, but relevant: I _still_ want less horeshit. The Toronto police /
RCMP ride horses down the bike paths in Toronto, and sometimes they leave
giant shits in the middle of the path. The disrepect to cyclists and the rest
of the city is immense. It's dangerous, it's smelly and it's extremely rude.
They do this in Montreal too - the police horses leave giant shits all over
the Mont Royal paths. Please stop leaving horseshit everywhere Canada.
Seriously.

~~~
danielweber
"Look, I'm riding a horse! Isn't it pretty?"

In Boston we'd have cop-horses leaving their several-gallon-sized gifts all
over town. Once a coworker (known for paroxysms both inside and outside the
company) encountered some in front of our building and he got hopping mad on
the phone to start screaming. I cooled him down enough to say it was in front
of the fast food store on the first floor, not our business, because if the
BPD has any blacklist for assholes he was going to get us put on it.

