thelastaxolotl [he/him]
Slop.https://x.com/AraucoXolotl/status/2043504095948870019
On Xiaohongshu, I see the opposite, where some Chinese people refuse to believe that the US has a homeless problem, or thar our cops are beating innocent people.
What's their reasoning? Liberal brain worms?
Generally it boils down to, "no way it's actually that bad lmao" and "that's just our state slandering its enemy" which are fair perspectives have imo. I'm envious that the reality of American social violence is absurd enough to be unbelievable to them.
Back during the TikTok/Redbook silliness last year, I heard the quip: "The US Government tells lies their people believe are truths, while the Chinese government tells truths their people believe are lies."
There's a lot of "just comply" sentiment on XHS.
You don't need comparisons with China. The argument that one's country is too big and expansive for rail only works when a) that country is poor, which the US is not; and b) when that country doesn't already have the largest rail network in the world, which the US has.
American States often have an economy that is nominally larger than that of comparable European nations. Those States have rail for freight. The lack of good rail for passenger is a political choice.
It's insane to have to remind people that cars didn't always exist and the main way that people traveled before them was by rail. Like idk how most Americans picture the period between the current era and the oregon fucking trail but it sure seems like most of them think we were fording rivers and dying of dysentery right up to the day Henry Ford (the proud and outspoken nazi) invented the assembly line (added a conveyor belt to the process) and thereby bestowed mankind with the gift of the mass-produced automobile (the conversion of a public good into an industry that made him privately wealthy).
The politicians have been bribed to keep rail for freight as much as possible. The rail companies push to have longer and longer trains so that the passenger trains, which are supposed to have right of way on tracks, have to take the bypass tracks to let freight trains pass. Freight also has one of the highest profit margins in a business at close to 50%, mostly b/c of them cutting every possible corner they can while maximizing load and shipping frequency. The rail industry is need of regulation, overhaul, and infrastructure development.
"If the data gives me cognitive dissonance then the data must be wrong."
- liberals all of the time
My sister's boyfriend did this to me when we went for a drive together. I wasn't even showing my tankie side but any oblique mention of china that wasn't explicitly negative was instantly met with "they lie about all their stats"
And any negative stat is consumed and regurgitated as truth, regardless of how dubious the source is.
Bro, 20% of the US is in the northeast and another 10% is in California. Just build regional HSR’s. Don’t tell me you think a fucking train is literally impossible.
Florida was supposed to start building a high speed rail system years ago. Then Rick Scott got elected governor, and unilaterally cancelled the program, something he never mentioned when he was campaigning.
He later replaced it with a standard rail system that he had a 3% ownership stake in, because that's how Rick Scott rolls.
You're dumb for saying this but I won't say why
I must have imagined riding all over China on their high speed rail
I've been on various Chinese HSR routes, consistently going at ~250kph. I'm not exaggerating when I say they were all the best and fastest trains I've been on. The UK's train network is absolutely laughable in comparison, and somehow the USA's is even worse than that.
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they're not doing it
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if they did it, they're not doing it right
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if they say they did it right, they're lying
- and if they actually did do it, then AT WHAT COST?
China fudges their numbers on this the way they do on everything else
yeah they're actually in their own replies going "no no no your argument is terrible, just be racist, that will actually persuade me. c'mon."
Whenever they have nothing left to go on, critics of China pull out "well they're lying about their numbers".
But no one dares accuse them of lying about how much consumer products in American houses are made in China.
aKKKschtually we DO have high speed rails, they just go in loops
America doesn't even have the fastest roller coasters anymore, because of woke.
I cannot in a million years imagine the kind of hubris needed in order to go in a 250 kph ride in a steel car built by literal slaves. Class Action Park seems more sensible to me than that
It is very funny to post the UK, whose only high speed rail is between London and Paris. Nothing domestic at all.
If I was living in the UK I'd want to get out of the country as fast as possible too.
every day the hatred i feel for the amerikkkan ruling class wanes in comparison to the hate i feel for the amerikkkan people
If you drove through 90% of that UK-sized landmass, you'd see nothing. Pure, blissful, mind-numbing nothingness. The American West fucking stunned me when I saw how much open space there is. Maybe five cities across that entire area would make the route economical. I still want it more than anything else for the region though.
"We can't have HSR cuz big empty"
You should have HSR because big empty
HSR is astronomically easier to build through big flat empty
Everyone always forgets that the cities develop around the trains, not the other way around.
Back in the day it was the rivers, because that was the major method of transport.
People just like, don't know how things develop at all.
you build a settler in a city and send them over to a big empty area, check the yields and just plop down a city. Name it: EagleScreech or some such
Big mountainy empty is a bit harder, but China's done that too
But what if that big flat empty was filled with cow demons and corn demons who feed the cow demons for beef that most of the people in the big flat empty can't afford now?
they literally genocided natives just to do nothing with most of the land. it's pathetic. but i'm supposed to be in awe because of cowboys or something
Think of what we've done for the cows. They hate us because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak.
Okay, to be fair, Wyoming should be empty because that shit is insane. One time, I had my HEAVY WINTER COAT in the back seat when I went to fill up gas and thought, "I'll hop out of the car real quick and put it on". Buddy, that coat got raptured. It was in Nebraska before I knew what hit me.
https://youtube.com/shorts/5MpDl7wzpxE
Driving through Wyoming is so uniquely terrifying that I don't do it unless the weather is perfect. I-25 to Cheyenne is considered tame by their standards and the winds are so high that it throws your car around while tipping over 18-wheelers. There are a lot of Colorado roads that I only travel seasonally, but we are so tame compared to Wyoming's obsession with wind. They need to stop with that shit.
I have a vivid memory of driving in whiteout conditions in Wyoming but sandwiched by semis that I couldn't even see, so I couldn't afford to slow down. I could only rely on google maps to make sure the road stayed straight. 20 minutes later, absolutely beautiful day. Unhinged state
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
One of the fundamental issues is coming to terms with the fact that if one person is stacking bricks it takes a while, if two people are stacking bricks it goes faster.
If 300.000 people are stacking bricks they can build a high speed railway across huge distances.
I intentionally made a huge leap to demonstrate how impossible it is for many people to imagine. It just doesn't seem possible you need communism or slavery I'm sorry there's no other option for such a huge problem and if you do slavery they're going to burn the bridges you force them to build.
(Just to be clear I don't propose that you can magically make 300.000 westerners collaborate, you need to actually build social fabric for conditions to meet, to allow for such a project. The more you accelerate the more problems you will face, which might be necessary if you are dealing with an enemy. Doesn't justify the methods, but there is literally sometimes no other option :/ )
Can be done by socdems also. Hiring people by the government and it gets done. But hard to find a good example this millenium.
It's because they have self-destruct protocols in their projects. That's the oxymoron of Democratic Democracy
It's either dictatorship of the many or rule of the few. You can't have two contradictory things at once. You either solve the contradiction or cope with irrationality
Spain
The UK also has a shitty rail network lol. But you can travel from Seville to Berlin on HS. It'll cost you a fortune, but that's privatization for you...
the guy i got my info on this was wrong
Oh wow, he has a guy
Wrap it up folks!
The guy:
My guy is asking Grok leading questions to get it to hallucinate fake info that supports my premise.
even if it was all "their version of acela" they'd be fukken styling on us
What we need to do is convince chuds that cars are woke and communist gay items and that public transport is trad and hecking based
Witchhunt for "historians" when? Of all liberals this type is the fucking worst.
so why isn't there regional hsr
I mean to be fair we do have a high speed railline on the northeast corridor that goes all the way from Boston down to DC, I suppose it could extend down to Florida but the money would be better spent making a high speed corridor on the west coast.
Only like 60 km of that is actually high speed.
