Rings and distributive lattices can both be considered as semirings with commutative regular addition. Within this framework we can consider subdirect products of rings and distributive lattices. We may also require that the semirings with these restrictions are regarded as algebras with two binary operations and the unary operation of additive inversion (within the additive subgroup of the semiring). We can also consider distributive lattices with the two binary operations and the identity mapping as the unary operation. This makes it possible to speak of the join of ring varieties and distributive lattices. We restrict the ring varieties in order that their join with distributive lattices consist only of subdirect products. In certain cases these subdirect products can be obtained via a general construction of semirings by means of rings and distributive lattices.

The lattice of all tolerance relations (that is, reflexive, symmetric compatible relations) on a lattice is investigated. For modular lattices some examples are given which show that such relations do naturally occur.

Every poset with 0 is determined by various semigroups of isotone selfmaps which preserve 0. Two theorems along these lines are given and applied to some recent results concerning relation semigroups on topological spaces.