You may never see the soda fountain the same again

This is why I always let the first second or so spray into the splash tray.

I've never seen either of these machines irl.
- You’ve never seen a pop fountain? They’ve got them in all kinds of restaurants and movie theaters. Do you not go out much?

On the plus side, you can often position your cup in the often un-mixed stream to get more syrup.

If you are drinking any of those drinks you deserve to drink from the cloaca. Just drink water, it won't hurt you.
- Oh boy, someone with a differing opinion on food/beverage that I can shame for liking things other than water

you can use pressurised air to clean the duct. Some verterbrates like to call it farts

~~Cloaca~~ master orifice

This hurts as someone who fixes both.

Nothing open to the public should have a touch interface. Has Covid taught us nothing?
- I use my semi erect pinky to push it just to be safe.
  
  Hey fellow semi erect pinky pusher!
- There’s also a QR code you can scan to control it via your phone. I’m sure no one has exploited that.
  
  And at least your phone has (mostly) only your own fecal bacteria on the screen.

I also remember when gas pumps had a separate hose and nozzle for each grade of gas.
- You don't have that? What are you?
  
  Most modern pumps in the US have one hose and buttons to select the grade. You’ll get a bit of the previous customer’s selection from what was left over in the line, but it’s not a huge difference if you’re getting 10 gallons. It can be a bigger deal for something with a small tank, like a motorcycle.
  Diesel still gets its own hose, as putting diesel into a gas car or vice versa can be very bad.

Cloaca-Cola
- ~~Soda fountain~~ (ancient)
  ~~Soda machine~~ (old)
  Cloaca-Cola dispenser (current)
  The Cloca-Cola ™ UIXperience (soon)
- There it is. That should have been the post title.
  
  You can edit titles on Lemmy
- A joke from Kingdom of Loathing.

That's rich coming from the "why not cum from where we pee?" Species
- If breathing and eating don't get separate holes, piss and cum certainly aren't getting that luxury
  
  At least in males they aren't getting that luxury.
- You say that like we're the only species who do that, which very much isn't the case.
- Birds also cum from the hole whoch they pee

It's also annoying to use, slower and can't serve multiple people at the same time.
- The self serve suck for high volume but personally I hate when people butt in while I'm getting a drink. Wendy's seems to do a pretty good job but they are Crew serve units(for drive through) upside is more than eight flavors.
- I think the extra annoyance is counteracted by the gains in customizability IMO
  Where else are you going to be able to get Peach Sprite or Vanilla Fanta?
  
  Or diet everything.
  
  Peach or strawberry Sprite is my go to
  
  Almost any gas station has those syrup pumps, and here in Utah, we have a soda shop (like Swig) on almost every corner.
- The only reason why I like them is because I can cherry all the things. Cherry Coke, Cherry Sprite, Cherry root beer... You get the idea.
  (I also like that cherry lime drink that several restaurants advertise under different names as their "exclusive" beverage. On the top of my head I know that Jack in the Box and Firehouse Subs both have it, with their own branding slapped on the name.)
  
  Five Guys has it too. Freestyle is the name I know. It’s fantastic.
  
  That's the reason I originally thought they were cool, however, in practice, they almost never allowed you to mix anything with anything, and it was purely a limit placed in the software. I couldn't cherry anything but coke and dr pepper on any of them I ever used. I couldn't add lemon to anything but the already raspberry flavored Fuze tea. I couldn't add vanilla to the root beer or have grape flavored sprite. Shit pisses me off, because it wasn't that they didn't have a certain flavor, the interface just didn't show the flavors available for every possible soda on the machine. Especially when I would see people elsewhere with them setup in the way you really want, where you could cherry everything. 😬
- I like them, but I'm always behind someone who looks like they've never used technology more advanced than a telegraph before
- The machines used to be relatively fast. But over time they've gotten slower and slower to the point it takes multiple seconds to respond to a touch.
  
  Where I am, they had popped up all over the place at first but have mostly disappeared since then and the ones that remain barely have any flavour customizations anymore.
  My guess would be that they came with predatory subscription fees or some shit like that that resulted in them costing more than they brought in and most businesses cancelled their subscription or downgraded to the basic version that just acts as a shitty version of the old style.
  Either that or they are difficult to keep clean and result in a lot of flavour syrup going to waste when the less popular flavours expire. Or a combination of the two, maybe with HP-style machine-enforced expiry dates on the syrups that are tuned for profit rather than safety/quality.
- Yeah, we had two of these replace the old school style drink stations at the hospital I work at. They had to bring back one of the old machines because the new machines were causing so much congestion in the cafeteria. Pretty sure the hardware in these predate blackberrys, they take forever to recognize any input from the screen.
  Plus if you are just trying to get water, it gets slightly contaminated from whatever beverage the last person got. Especially if it's blue powerade for some reason.
  
  Especially if it’s blue powerade for
  That's amusing, because it always seemed like blue powerade was the default nozzle for the 'water' option at the other style of machine, so it was getting that contamination there as well.
  
  why are you getting plain water from the soda machine when there HAVE to be semi-decent water fountains in a hospital? the powerade splashed water is on you at that point.
- Aren't those the ones made to collect data from users with a camera?
- So, NOT great at an orgy.

That's just plain science!

...do I want to search up what a cloaca is?
- It's the omni-genital.
  
  The Wikipedia article describes the biological act of a "cloaca kiss," which may or may not be exactly what it sounds like depending on an individual's imagination.
- I feel like the context of "the opposite of 1 hole per beverage" gives a good vague explanation. Another is "how I pictured women's anatomy before I took a health class."
- Even if you know what it is, it may surprise you that more that one species can breathe out of it.
  
  Even humans can absorb oxygen through the intestines
  https://scienceblog.cincinnatichildrens.org/ig-nobel-prize-awarded-to-takanori-takebe-for-butt-breathing-study/
- You do not.
  
  Ok thank you.
- It's one of those words where whatever you first think of when hearing it, is probably fairly close to the real thing
- As long as you're not studying biology, you get a pass on this one.

Cloaca-cola, as envisioned by Pininfarina!

I just want water man
- water man
  You can use the term "Aqua Man" to sound fancier.
  
  Nah, that's different. Water man is the grown up version of the water boy.
- And the water always tastes like shit out of these because they don't clean the tip. On the old style it was always sharing lemonade or Powerade and you could just run the line for a second or two to clear it
- Water fucking rules, man.
  
  ...well? What are the rules?
  Edit: These replies have a lot less rules about how to fuck water, or in water, than I expected.

I love those machines. Diet cherry decaf vanilla etc etc etc....
- You can find some unusual things on there!

Fun fact: the Coca Cola Freestyle machine is designed by the Pininfarina company, of the same Pininfarina legacy of classic Italian car design fame.

Counter argument: Vanilla Coke
- Also being able to get anything in diet instead of just one or two things.
  
  Or being able to get nothing as diet/zero because they never replace the non-hfcs BIBs.
  Half of restaurants seem to forget what backup is when they get these machines.
- Or like 3 different nonstandard fruit flavored sprites. At once
- Second counter argument: peach sprite
- Do you not have those syrup things? Pretty much every gas station has one.
  
  Very few restaurants have them (especially those without bars), and the ones that do never clean the pump head so it's always covered in dirt and bacteria. At least I know that the soda fountain nozzle(s) gets cleaned nightly at most restaurants. But nobody ever seems to sanitize the flavor pumps.
  
  Plastic pumps separate from the fountain? I’ve seen them once or twice but I couldn’t name a chain that I’ve been to which has those. But also you’d have to know the ideal ratio of syrup to base soda rather than have it pre-mixed.