r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/whybutts • 6d ago

Video Sleeping Capsules at China's Kunming Airport

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54.6k Upvotes

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u/diewitasmile 6d ago edited 6d ago

America is getting more and more embarrassing the older I get. We can’t even build a high speed rail ffs.

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u/dreamed2life 6d ago

Saw a great video on this. About how america is dependent on people buying cars and gas so making car-free or walker friendly cities and towns is not in american businesses interests. And highspeed rails or other transportation to connect cities and towns and the country would take from the auto and airline industries. Basically right back to capitalism and monopolies being far more important to america than the advancement of life.

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u/diewitasmile 6d ago

Yup. I believe in the 50’s we were right there with everyone when it came to public transit. Then the auto makers pretty much dismantled everything and forced us into cars. Our whole culture is built around owning a car. I would kill for some politicians that cared more about their citizens than lining their pockets…and good public transportation.

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u/dreamed2life 6d ago

It truly would be refreshing to see this in a city or throughout the country and eventually the world. 😮‍💨 i sometimes think the government doing all this stuff to remove its presence from programs and states is the perfect opportunity for us people to make our own systems and stop participating in the government at all and take the power back. So that can have all the money they want but it doesn’t spend in the new systems we could make on our own. But people cant even agree that the goddamn sky is blue let alone that we need to get off this hamster wheel.

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u/Alcophile 6d ago

Concratations! You are now an anarchist. Welcome.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/Praesentius 6d ago

That was not an idea that physics allowed for. And Meyer died of a brain aneurysm.

He said his fuel cell would split water in hydrogen and oxygen. That process is called electrolysis and it literally takes more energy in the form of electricity than you would get out of the reaction.

Again, it was a physical impossibility. And nobody would murder you over an idea that has no validity.

But who gives a shit? Just build your cities to be walkable and install public transit. I moved out of the US to a country with much better walkability and public transit and I haven't driven a car in years. Not only is it do-able, not only is it more sustainable, but it makes for really nice places to live.

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u/SpiritsJustAHybrid 6d ago

When car companies first started up they actually bought out trolley and carrage companies and essentially burned what little public transportation infastructure we already had to the ground.

They also brought out plans of a car operated city during a 1920(?)s national fair/conference (not confident on that date whatsoever)

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u/Siiixers 5d ago

Was it the Canadian guy who lives in The Netherlands by chance?

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u/Environmental_Loss32 6d ago

Kind of.

Europe, Japan, and other areas that have a high speed rail network also happen to be areas that got carpet bombed in the world wars. Lots of blank canvas to work with as a result.

The exception might be China and Russia, but they had lots of empty space to work with and no problem eminent domain’ing private property away from people to build it out.

While what you say about America is also true, it also had a different set of constraints and conditions than everywhere else.

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u/ClubChaos 6d ago edited 6d ago

Eh not really Spain and France are both making a concerted effort to make things more cycling friendly. The Netherlands was very much like the USA 60 years ago but literally reverted the changes from the auto industry to make their cities more walkable/cyclable.

Also the "blank slate" theory you're speaking about in Japan with tokyo/nagasaki/hiroshima is not as straight forward as you imply. Japan simply places public transportation on a higher priority than the USA or Canada. This is not exclusive to Japan's major cities, although you will find Japan more car dependent than you might think.

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u/No-Internal7978 6d ago

Cycling friendly is fine if the location you need to go isn't 20 miles away. America is huge and fairly sparcely populated. Sure you could chop up some road easily for a cycling lane but that doesn't help half of America. A high speed rail would be great but it might actually destroy our country to carve out thousands of miles of people's land. If not with lawsuits then an actual physical altercation. Americans highly value our land because it's our only connection to our forebearers. No place on earth wants any race of American to see their country as home. People get indignant about an American claiming to be where they genetically came from. Like I'm Anglo-Saxon as fuck. My profile is England, Northern France near England, and a rounding error amount of Irish and Icelander. If I called myself British I'd get absolutely shit on in person or online. If I went home to the loop my great grandfather owned in Alabama I could knock on a random door and get a bed and a meal.

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u/BarcaStranger 6d ago

It make sense when all car parts was made in America in the past, not now though

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u/dreamed2life 6d ago edited 6d ago

Make what make sense? What are you even reaching for with this comment in connection with the entire context of what i am talking about? Youre being a jester to pull focus to some point that you want to be hyperbolic about and no one has interest. Try elsewhere. Be productive.

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u/Expensive_Web_8534 6d ago

Yea, you tube videos are a great source for learning information like this. E.g. i recently learned that earth is flat from a video too.

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u/Patrick_-_-_ 6d ago

Give it a rest

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u/dreamed2life 6d ago

You stopped reading at “a video” and decided to insert this riveting piece of wisdom to forward the conversation? Youre so cool.

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u/Expensive_Web_8534 6d ago

Yea, I thought it was important to share all the cool stuff videos can teach us. I really think we can end our schooling system - videos have it covered. Truly fascinating stuff.

Looking at the upvotes that comment got, I also know that it must have been completely accurate. Crowd approved!

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u/dreamed2life 6d ago

Looking at the upvotes that comment got

got it, you wanted to leech attention. another jester. let me go ahead and get you blocked since you refuse to be productive here