Lots of interesting stuff baked into this one. Personally I really enjoy the bitching about the cashier who weighs the vegetables as if slow checkout lines don't exist in the west
Hahaha I saw that one in the wild, pure fucking cope. It's also funny that once you break it all down, they're just complaining about treats and other selfish things in that comment.
Waiting in line, big deal.
LED crosswalks. Who cares about ped safety, I need to get to where I'm driving to FASTER.
The OS complaint is just chauvinism. "Cheap CHINESE OS"
Trains vs "Private Property" suburbia. I mean, do I need to?
I fucking wonder why there's such a massive gulf in carbon emmisions per capita between the west and China? Western culture has actually devolved entirely into how many treats you have and how quickly you can replace the ones you already have with new ones.
I think the OS comparison was him saying they're using US-made OS'es (though I'm pretty sure they mainly use Android with the google parts replaced with homespun stuff)
Could be. But surely he is aware the major phone brands in China have been working on their own os' for awhile now?
Whatever it doesn't matter. Let them cope.
Even then, Android sans Google is an open source project. It's not the US's "IP" to steal, it's literally in the commons
Android is a Linux distribution and most of the rest of it is based on Java largely, neither of which are American. I'm sure they wouldn't call Huawei's Android spin-off Chinese though.
Well yeah but it's Google™ brand Android™ - an American company built a fence around it and that's good enough for him
Xiaomi made a lot of people very angry by ripping off open source projects and not sharing the code like the license demanded. Their version of Android is made to look as much like Apple's interface as possible.
I actually had a Xiaomi for a while, it had the strangest process for unlocking the bootloader, made me use that default Apple ripoff interface for a couple weeks before it would let me install LineageOS. It was genuinely pretty slick though.
That also is a common problem with Chinese companies, idk if it's a language barrier or what but it's tough to get them to publish their changes
Gotta love the ones that are basically "yeah, we could do good things, we have the technology, but they're stupid actually".
I wonder if weighted intersections are actually detrimental to pedestrians, as it only weighs the cars so if there are no cars on the other side of the road but a lot of pedestrians are trying to cross it's just always a green light for the cars.
Do those buttons actually do anything? Everytime I use them they don't do jack shit lol
Depends on the city you're in, and sometimes the specific intersection. There are a lot that don't do anything at all and are just there to make pedestrians feel better, but there are also some that actually do function.
There’s one light I go through often on my moped and I will have to hop off, run to the pedestrian button, and run back because the sensor doesn’t detect my moped and that’s the only way to get the light to change 🙃
I would double-check this instead of just listening to me, but I understand that the law for motorcycles is that it's legal to run red lights in those situations, if you do it safely. I would imagine it's similar for mopeds.
This actually reminds me, there's an intersection that I used to go through regularly that used a weight sensor and didn't have buttons. The sensor was placed in an unintuitive place and sometimes you'd get stuck behind a car that hadn't stopped in the right spot to trigger it, and one time my at the time girlfriend and I sat in a 10+ car line (usually only 2-3 cars max on that road) for like 5 minutes because the person at the front wasn't figuring it out or running it.
I think one of us got out and had to go talk to them, but it's been like 6 years so my memory could be fuzzy.
I guess I've just gotten unlucky with my intersection buttons
In Helsinki they definitely do. I've sometimes waited for entire minutes at a crossing before realising I hadn't pressed the button, upon which the light turned green very quickly
There's nothing more annoying than coming to a crossing on a bike and noticing there's no button on the bike lane's side so you have to get off to press it. It's even more annoying if there's a pedestrian on the other side too busy on their phone to see that the button hasn't been pressed yet so you still have to get off :agony-turbo:
Those buttons aren't connected to anything at all. They're just there so people can push them and feel better.
Some of them do. Some crossings don't change at all unless someone pushes the button or stops in the spot that has a red with a car.
why do I always wait minutes on end at empty intersections in the most densely populated suburb in the northeast US? it smells like bullshit
It's great. Sometimes the light even turns red to encourage you, and if maybe a little tear creeps into the corner of yor eye while you salute it in return, that is nothing to be ashamed of!
new radical praxis: putting hammer and sickle stickers over red traffic lights
This never happens in the U.S. It's also something that's built in to the intersection permanently. There isn't any newer technology that's being tested or deployed by either country to improve intersection traffic flow (just trust me).
Ah yes, China has a working mass transit system that promotes social mobility and fights against climate change, but what about all these tiny inconveniences?
I'm genuinely confused about what the point about phone operating systems is even supposed to mean.
I guess "Chinese phones suck because they have inferior software" meanwhile every app on my phone siphons 20% of the battery every time you open it and requires access to your camera, photos, contacts, location, notes, and the music app because why not
but what about all these tiny inconveniences?
even those inconveniences are made up. Traffic lights in the US suck, and I live in a densely populated northeastern area
I go to Texas, the grass looks dead and white (lol) even though it's April. In California, it will be literally impossible to touch grass within 2 decades. Meanwhile every part of China is getting greener.
keep malding indeed.
well that's because no one should be trying to grow grass in a desert
yes, but that ruins the "durr I need to see grass" argument
tbh I would bet Chinese people see more greenery on average, since literally 98% of their population lives in very water-rich areas. It's just that they don't privately own as much green land--what a tragedy.
As we all know nature is only pleasant when you own it and it's hyper suppressed to look like the shittiest lawn in europe
hang on you were worried you'd get in trouble because you damaged a car when you were hit by it as a pedestrian what is wrong with America
only see grass once a month
Bro, most (every?) major city in east Asia has large public parks.
You see he thinks the poor's and undesirables exist in parks, instead he must drive to his datcha in the countryside in order to touch grass
I cannot conceive of any way to throw a ball or build a structure with my spawn, other than a limited enclosed area.
I will imprison myself in a quarter-acre space, and enslave myself for 2+ hours of the day, and be thankful for such a state of affairs.
yeah go to the park and let your children play with the other children
I don't know what a "park" is, must be something countries without freedom use instead of a yard, where they have to share it with 10,000 other people.
I seriously only see grass like once a month and I miss it like hell
so you live anywhere west of Iowa?
Says you can't blanket compare countries
Lived "in Asia" as a blanket comparison of China
You can't compare Asian countries to Western countries. Western culture is when you have privately owned grass, and the more you have the more westernier it is
I dare say this is a good rule of thumb for western culture
"Lived in bad Korea for six months and took weekend trip to Hong Kong once" is what I'd guess that means.
are they saying theyd rather not have a phone than use android? What on earth is that comment
CHINA LITERALLY MAKES THE IPHONE YOU DUMB FUCK. THEY ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST CONSUMERS OF APPLE PRODUCTS
America invented weighted intersections whereas in most of China they're timed.
I feel like most intersections in the US are on timers too, and where there are sensors aren't they some electromagnetic thing to detect a giant piece of metal over them, not any sort of scale since scales have moving parts that would wear and break in short order?
Or do they mean the timers are weighted to favor the busier road?
Just toss it all out and go with a fucking roundabout instead.
I realize this isn't universally applicable, but holy shit, everywhere in my area where they recently replaced big intersections with roundabouts has been a clear and significant improvement.
Everything I've ever seen, including stats I trust, says the exact opposite, that roundabouts are significantly safer both in terms of number of accidents and the severity of the ones that do occur. A quick search seems to confirm this.
Roundabouts are good because they force people to slow down and pay attention
Roundabouts are safer because they reduce speed. They also have higher capacity than intersections.
Car-brained people tend to dislike them though. They don't like the idea of having to slow down or something.
What. You actually go faster through them because you don't have to stop.
What I've seen is that the severity goes way down, but the number goes up (which may be limited to places like North America where they aren't as common) which would be fine anyway.
where there are sensors aren’t they some electromagnetic thing to detect a giant piece of metal over them, not any sort of scale since scales have moving parts that would wear and break in short order?
That’s right. Induction sensors, not weight. It’s just a big coil of wire set into the asphalt.
Not sure what the plan is in Chinese cities (I could probably guess), but even in the U.S., computer vision is being tested to make this even more accurate than the coils, and you don't even need to dig up the road.
The weighted thing is true, but it's kinda useless if you're on a motorbike. (I think it's kinda like one of those things at the gas station that ring the bell rather than a real scale). Regardless you only really need those on rural roads where there's no real traffic anyways.
They are induction sensors. Just a big coil of wire set into the asphalt. The reason why motorcycles often don’t trip them is a combination of the use of non-ferrous materials to save weight (aluminum doesn’t induce electromagnetism as well as steel) and the significantly smaller amount of ferrous material on the vehicle (smaller engines, frames, etc).
you can get magnets that you stick on the bottom of your bike to trigger the sensors just like a car
You know what grocery store cashier technology exists in other parts of the world but not in America? Fucking chairs for them to sit down on.
and on that note, are there any other countries so fat that the malls have to provide mobile scooters for the customers?
Yeah, why wouldn't it be?
Why do you think so many americans are fat? Do you think they're all untermenchen or something? No, capitalism has decided it is more profitable to feed people garbage. Buying healthy food is expensive and getting to a far away store with good options takes more time. Everyone is overworked as shit so no one has enough time to cook healthy food or exercise. There are no parks or even walkways, everyone drives everywhere in their own cars.
I'm not shaming individual fat people here, personal fat shaming is just one more example of liberalism/conservativism pretending their country is perfect and everyone is personally responsible for fundamental societal problems.
- America is what happens to pampered treatboys in suburbia. Precariously employed workers in tiny studio apartments or internally displaced persons in makeshift homeless encampments doesn't matter.
- A three-hour commute on a jammed twelve-lane highway is the only way to live in a house with a garden. Self-contained walkable neighbourhoods of modest townhouses with small gardens and good transit connections are simply impossible.
'We built hellscape cities with no green spaces so I need to own a car. Checkmate China' :very-intelligent:
