• chris@l.roofo.ccEnglish
    30·
    3 days ago

    I have used the Chinese high speed rail and it’s awesome. Better than flyingnand and so cheap. I am so jealous.

    • mech@feddit.orgEnglish
      14·
      3 days ago

      At the time of the early railroad barons, China still had an Emperor and was ravaged by Opium addiction.

      • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Ravaged by opium addiction because the Europeans realized they could make huge profits by getting people addicted. Fun fact, when China decided they would ban opium Britain sent the war ships and bombed the fuck out of them and ripped entire cities away from China, put them under British rule, and gave all Europeans total immunity from Chinese law within those cities so they could be full blown hives of scum and villainy with official clearance by the crown.

  • Mihies@programming.devEnglish
    18·
    3 days ago

    Hyperloop has been dead for years now, actually it was from the start, just nobody was actually thinking or they have other interests, like grab as much money out of it as possible.

    • elucubra@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      Hyperloop is an idiotic concept. The investment needed to build a network of functional hundreds, or thousands of miles long vacuum tunnels, and the maintenance needed, makes it unviable.

      Much easier and cheaper to build high speed rail.

  • Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    14·
    3 days ago

    Same with power generation/grid. The EU is finally realising that if they want everyone to go electric they are massively fuckt in terms of clean electricity generation and power distribution. Meanwhile we had china’s power grid as a case study in uni because it’s way ahead of ours.

  • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    3 days ago

    I am from the United States and while I think that we used to lead the world, I have to acknowledge that China has us with our pants around our ankles. American exceptionalism is dead.

    • pdxfed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      4 hours ago

      Many, many vested interests have tried to stop, deflect, delay, refund or shape the project and work into whatever will be least used and successful. The auto industry and oil industry, now also the ev companies including Tesla have a huge stake in not having Americans experience how dependable, useful, quick, clean and pleasant HSR is.

      Once you try it you can’t go back to short and mid-range car and plane trips.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    USA isn’t even talking a big game. It’s just the usual racism, patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, etc.

    • amorangi@lemmy.nzEnglish
      8·
      3 days ago

      Dunno, but of the stuff I’ve heard of lately, the bridges that randomly collapse or planes that fall out of the sky because of design defects were American.

    • freagle@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      No. They have a massive incentive to keep infrastructure working, whereas the US can just let bridges collapse and never even bother rebuilding them because there is no incentives. The primary source of questions are from Western news media asking “but at what cost?”