China is a smog-filled hellscape

User avatar
Lyrai
Posts: 617
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:34 pm

China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Lyrai » Wed Jan 22, 2014 5:36 pm

http://mashable.com/2014/01/20/no-beiji ... pollution/

Apparently those giant sunrise screens aren't a smog joke waiting to happen, but merely some tourism ad.


User avatar
François
Posts: 1708
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:00 am

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby François » Sun Apr 20, 2014 6:48 pm

Aaaaand this "heavily polluted" term is in relation to their euphemistic use of "lightly polluted" for 70% of their farmland, which is pollution twice over the national standards, whatever those are.

Environmental deregulation would be so good for the economy, am I right?

EDIT: Maybe I misread that, and the 70% is a portion of the contaminated segment, not of the overall farmland. Which is still pretty horrifying.

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mongrel » Tue Apr 22, 2014 12:03 am

Chinese court seizes Japanese ship over ships lost in the 1930's

Uh, this seems like a really stupid escalation.
Image

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mongrel » Sat Nov 29, 2014 7:41 pm

This could go in the State Censorship thread too I guess, but it's a necro either way.

China bans puns

Image

Good luck with that!
Image

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby sei » Sat Nov 29, 2014 9:08 pm

reddit post wrote:Yup. This is the real reason [China is cracking down on puns].
The popular "cao ni ma" (fuck your mother/grass mud horse) is the most well known example of what the Chinese government wants to prevent.
This article makes it sound as if the Chinese government is going mad about the Chinese language and just arbitrarily wants to crack down on people not using Chinese properly. That's false. The government has nothing against wordplays. It has something against the public use of idioms by dissidents.
If people don't get it, they should just watch this:
http://youtu.be/3D2eh4xehc4[1]
http://youtu.be/wKx1aenJK08[2]
This wordplay was propagated by well known Chinese anti-government activist Ai Wei Wei:
http://youtu.be/Nsk-KgD0aOM[3]
Here is Ai Wei Wei "riding" a Grass Mud Horse:
http://i.imgur.com/j18FYs9.jpg[4]
This is part of a photo series titled "草泥马挡中央" (a Grass Mud Horse covering the center).
Which - when read aloud - can also be understood as: "Fuck your mother, Communist Party Central Committee"
Additional reading here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse[5]
So... yeah. That's why the Chinese government wants public media to crack down on wordplays. And it's targeting specifically that type of wordplay, it couldn't give a rat's ass about those wordplays promoting tourism.
Image

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mongrel » Sat Nov 29, 2014 9:23 pm

I don't think any of us have any illusions about why the the CPC is doing it; and even if we did, the article says as much.

But those are some cool YouTube links (and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way), which I had not seen!
Image

User avatar
Friday
Posts: 6264
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:40 pm
Location: Karma: -65373

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Friday » Sat Nov 29, 2014 9:54 pm

Man who goes through airport turnstile sideways is going to Bangkok
ImageImageImage

User avatar
Mothra
Woah Dangsaurus
Posts: 3963
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:12 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mothra » Sun Nov 30, 2014 1:06 am

Friday is now illegal in China

User avatar
sei
Posts: 1074
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:29 pm

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby sei » Sun Nov 30, 2014 1:59 am

And Thailand.
Image

User avatar
Caithness
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:45 pm
Location: Mint is a vegetable, right?

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Caithness » Sun Nov 30, 2014 10:41 pm

That means the work week never ends!

User avatar
Bal
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 9:13 pm

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Bal » Thu Aug 13, 2015 6:53 pm

Significant part of Chinese city blows the fuck up

They're reporting the explosion a bit on the small side for the actual effects, but that could be innocent enough, it's early in the investigation. What is clear is that there was an initial explosion followed by a fucking huge follow-up explosion as seen here (do not watch of POV camera crew getting killed will upset you)

Here's a death fr-... remote view

And here's a bunch of them together including at least one death view all time synced

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mongrel » Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:09 pm

Jesus, that's enormous. The story was reported on in most regular news places this morning, and was described as an explosives or munitions shipment going off somehow, but in most cases the damage (and blast) were described as much smaller, with about 50 people dead.

The only way that's only 50 people, is if the epicentre was really empty with a huge buffer zone around it. Which IS possible in a port facility at late night. Maybe? But it wouldn't surprise me if that number turns out to be a lot higher...
Image

User avatar
Bal
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 9:13 pm

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Bal » Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:18 pm

The story out of China is pretty contradictory at the moment. Apparently there were over a hundred first responders trying to put out the fire and wrangle people, but only 50 official deaths. Given that there were actually THREE explosions, and the second one was the first of the roiling death blasts that incinerated most everything in a huge area, I can't see how that's possible.

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mongrel » Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:30 pm

I think that even in countries where information flows freely, disaster numbers almost always go up over time as people are accounted for.

That's a huge port too - this is big enough to fuck up logistics on a global scale. There is for sure going to be some economic fallout from this.
Image

User avatar
Grath
Posts: 2387
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Grath » Thu Aug 13, 2015 9:38 pm

Mongrel wrote:Jesus, that's enormous. The story was reported on in most regular news places this morning, and was described as an explosives or munitions shipment going off somehow, but in most cases the damage (and blast) were described as much smaller, with about 50 people dead.

The only way that's only 50 people, is if the epicentre was really empty with a huge buffer zone around it. Which IS possible in a port facility at late night. Maybe? But it wouldn't surprise me if that number turns out to be a lot higher...

Government of China Official Approved Story is 50 people dead. There are unconfirmed reports (someone talked to some police officer at the scene, who said...) of 200-300 dead, among them 120 firefighters.

User avatar
Mothra
Woah Dangsaurus
Posts: 3963
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:12 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mothra » Thu Aug 13, 2015 10:00 pm

Bal wrote:The story out of China is pretty contradictory at the moment. Apparently there were over a hundred first responders trying to put out the fire and wrangle people, but only 50 official deaths. Given that there were actually THREE explosions, and the second one was the first of the roiling death blasts that incinerated most everything in a huge area, I can't see how that's possible.

Apparently the blast radius was fucking 2 miles. I can't wrap my head around that.

User avatar
Mongrel
Posts: 21290
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mongrel » Thu Aug 13, 2015 10:13 pm

Mothra wrote:
Bal wrote:The story out of China is pretty contradictory at the moment. Apparently there were over a hundred first responders trying to put out the fire and wrangle people, but only 50 official deaths. Given that there were actually THREE explosions, and the second one was the first of the roiling death blasts that incinerated most everything in a huge area, I can't see how that's possible.

Apparently the blast radius was fucking 2 miles. I can't wrap my head around that.

Man, where did you hear that? Legit question.
Image

User avatar
Grath
Posts: 2387
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:34 pm

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Grath » Thu Aug 13, 2015 11:14 pm

Here's a source for 2km damage radius.

Latest theory I've heard, via Reddit that originally got it from some form of Chinese social media and I can't follow the source for the Chinese social media: There was a fire at a warehouse containing calcium carbide, and they were trying to douse it with water - which makes acetylene gas, mix enough with air and ignite and you can easily get an explosion this big. (Think: Oxy-acetylene welding torch.) Some of the videos, you can see a whole bunch of firetrucks next to the fire just before the blast, and there's footage from the blast zone that shows destroyed fire trucks.

Do not read this unless you want to be sad. Translation of texts between a firefighter and a friend of his.

User avatar
Mothra
Woah Dangsaurus
Posts: 3963
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:12 pm
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape

Postby Mothra » Thu Aug 13, 2015 11:24 pm

Mongrel wrote:
Mothra wrote:Apparently the blast radius was fucking 2 miles. I can't wrap my head around that.

Man, where did you hear that? Legit question.

NPR:
"The first one was equivalent to 3 tons of TNT," NPR's Frank Langfitt reports, citing Chinese media. "The second: 21 tons. Satellite photos suggest a blast radius of nearly 2 miles."

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 16 guests