Posts by zdl@mastodon.online
(DIR) Post #AmxhaIpFILEzu7MBii by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T11:19:52Z
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@ErikUden My father was born in Germany and emigrated to Canada. My mother was born in China and emigrated to Canada. I was born in Germany, but as a Canadian citizen. Hence half of each. :wink:(The bad math skills are still there.)
(DIR) Post #AmxkIiUjQ1HkAK4FSS by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T11:50:18Z
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@futurebird In Wuhan, as the metro system was developed, which I watched from its inception onward, I saw an interesting phenomenon.Metro line 1 was an elevated rail system that was useless. It started off where nobody was, ended off where nobody was, and travelled through neighbourhoods nobody gave a damn about. And, most critically, it didn't do the one critical thing such a program had to do: it didn't cross a single river: neither the Han nor the Changjiang.🧵 ▶️
(DIR) Post #Amxkjk0BvEhoewfWXg by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T11:52:58Z
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@futurebird For several years that's how it stood. The elevated rail was a white elephant. Very few people used it. (On various trial runs on it over those years, I never saw more than 20 people. Not per car. TOTAL for the whole train!)Then Line 2 started. This was a subway that did several important things:1. It crossed the Changjiang. That was critical for its (foreshadowing!) success.2. It ran through places people actually cared about.3. It was built relatively quickly.🧵 ▶️
(DIR) Post #Amxkjl9ReJhaDw0QbY by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T11:54:49Z
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@futurebird When I say "relatively quickly" I mean relative to line 1. It was way over budget in time and money because of the engineering challenges of tunnelling under the Changjiang. (They actually dug a road tunnel under it first to learn the techniques so that the subway could be built better and more quickly.) But disruptive as the process was, there was a sense of excitement in the air in Wuhan. We'd arrived. We had a subway in the works. We were a modern city!🧵 ▶️
(DIR) Post #Amxql2TVKFufxyNjQO by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T11:57:32Z
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@futurebird When Line 2 finally opened, it instantly changed the tenor of the city. Hankou and Wuchang districts stopped acting like they were separate cities for starters. But … this is where I (finally) come to the point.Because Line 2 was only about ½ completed when they opened it. Ultimately it would be extended on both ends by large distances. On one end it went to the airport. On the other end it went to a distant suburb that was a challenge to commute to.🧵 ▶️
(DIR) Post #Amxql30TLgHhcDo3oO by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T11:59:31Z
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@futurebird And the weird thing was that, naturally, they built the stations first before digging the tunnels to the stations. (The stations were, after all, where the tunneling was done *from*.)And around all the stations, long before the extensions were made, there was massive economic development. Residences, then-mostly empty, popped up. Shopping centres. Schools. Parks. All this kind of stuff was popping up, mostly empty, but ready for something.🧵 ▶️
(DIR) Post #Amxql3t44hxALXLeu8 by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T12:02:11Z
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@futurebird It was weird. In some places along the route to the airport, a station would pop up in the middle of nothingness ... and within a year there was a sizable neighbourhood built around it. And then the magic happened.When the tunnel was connected to that station and passengers could start travelling there, these neighbourhoods filled. The very existence of public transit *created jobs*. *Created homes*. *Created economic life*.🧵 ▶️
(DIR) Post #Amxql4AR27qdDPTWym by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T12:04:12Z
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@futurebird There were loads of roads built too, going to those newly-built neighbourhoods, but that didn't bring many people. Some people moved in, some shops opened, etc. But not enough to keep the neighbourhoods viable.When good, efficient, and fast public transit became available, however, these neighbourhoods exploded into life.Public transit built the economy of Wuhan, in effect.🧵 ⏹️
(DIR) Post #Amxql545hCMq01VyjI by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T12:04:47Z
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@futurebird As a postscript, there's now 18 metro lines in Wuhan. We seem to get two or three new lines each year now. 🤣
(DIR) Post #AmxqtxIHxQWaVKO5Dc by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-13T13:04:16Z
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@futurebird Well to be fair they botched Line 1 (though Line 1 is a decent backbone now). They learned from that lesson, however. The rest of this subway is easily in the top five public transit systems I've seen. (The one in Seoul was better, for a recent example.)
(DIR) Post #AnNgheh1vUbQyusCES by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-26T00:12:24Z
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@Computer I just realized who are the worst traitors of Alpha Complex: Buddhists!
(DIR) Post #AnX5B5wmvDMI6LcDSa by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-10-30T12:54:46Z
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@internetarchive At various points in Chinese history, rulers came in who wanted all knowledge of previous rulers expunged. They went often to very ... extreme, let's call it ... measures to accomplish this erasure.What saved the knowledge from extinction?Essentially piracy. Copies of forbidden texts made and circulated in the underground, stored for when, inevitably, said ruler dies and the texts could be resurfaced.Let me get my pirate's hat. I've got work to do.
(DIR) Post #AnojXrq6dcQnxK6hE0 by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-11-07T22:48:17Z
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@yogthos Canadians are going to have to hunker down for sanctions and even higher prices, I'm afraid.Fucking idiots.
(DIR) Post #AnojXtzOe33EciT8z2 by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-11-08T00:21:47Z
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@yogthos You would think that they would spot the pattern by now.Chinese are banned from space sciences. So they make their own space science program and start doing things nobody else has ever done before.Chinese tech companies are banned from advanced chips. So they start the process of making their own which is well on its way to putting China into independence.Chinese get choked off from oil. So they lead in renewables.China isn't some war-wracked African nation.
(DIR) Post #Ao2cWCjrz5YejFtB0y by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-11-13T23:01:35Z
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@juergen_hubert @Computer I will focus on those of my coworkers for now. I'm more conscientious than they are and I know if I were to die first the Computer's rules would only be slackly followed.
(DIR) Post #AoOnARqRnrlTSWPLsW by zdl@mastodon.online
2024-11-25T10:51:43Z
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@futurebird I have a collection of photo-essays on the topic that I periodically update (it's averaging about once every two weeks): https://pixelfed.social/c/760314275213239186
(DIR) Post #AqIdohmmT3DtNiNZ8S by zdl@mastodon.online
2025-01-21T01:25:58Z
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@fnordius @Computer Is "FNORD" not the sign of a secret society, Friend Computer? I think someone needs to be recycled into the vats.
(DIR) Post #AqIe9ERsjltsTXOLnU by zdl@mastodon.online
2025-01-21T07:26:39Z
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@Computer @fnordius That's the evidence of the conspiracy!
(DIR) Post #AqmXQJbr8uyR5mQwaG by zdl@mastodon.online
2025-02-04T09:47:54Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
@aral
(DIR) Post #AqsX5VAi7qj7opZUUi by zdl@mastodon.online
2025-02-07T11:08:13Z
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@kyonshi Is that like the hype man for a rap group (FLAVA FLAV!), only in bot form?