Plague!

Discussion in 'Off Topic International' started by -frog-, Mar 13, 2020.

  1. Red Ant

    Red Ant Well-Known Member

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    Eerie! Love the music, though!
     
  2. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    Music's great.
    I love the way Poles can discipline themselves during hard times.
    We're a bunch of freedom lovin' freaks, who would readily oppose any unjustified restriction to our broadly understood freedoms.
    Yet when times are worse, we can also mobilize, and do better... and that jointly.
    Went for a walk today, with Frau and children (and the dog). Met not a single person... well, we've seen freaks like us, pushing around baby prams (sun is great in producing Vitamin D), but we kept astronomical distances to each other.

    I've heard Belgians (who are facing restrictions now) go to the Netherlands to visit pubs and cinemas... nice one! Never heard of Germans doing the same... you're pretty much like us, when it comes to "those things" (i.e. freedom lovin', yet disciplined).
     
  3. Red Ant

    Red Ant Well-Known Member

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    I don't know about that. Poland acted a lot faster than Germany. Germans always love to argue too much about every damned thing. Every god damned opinion has to be heard and weighed before we finally get off our asses and take the steps we should have taken weeks ago.

    P.S. Well, at least we didn't cripple our healthcare system with cost reductions quite as thoroughly as Italy seems to have done.
     
  4. Red Ant

    Red Ant Well-Known Member

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    This is actually one of the positive things I hope will come from this crisis: that we realize that healthcare should NOT be a for-profit operation.
     
  5. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I think there are people that would have one crucified for saying that.

    Ant, I don't know if you live among easterners or westerners now. I live among easterners and many times i stumble upon these fanatics of the cruelest form of capitalism. The most amazing thing is these people would have nothing to gain from the things they are advocating. Au contraire. But they certainly think they would, overestimating their security, like they don't understand antyhing of how society works
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2020
  6. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Human civilization is infested with rackets.
    I have no answers.
     
  7. Red Ant

    Red Ant Well-Known Member

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    I live in Erlangen, Bavaria; so westerners mostly, although there are lot of folks here from former socialist countries as well. But yes, we have a lot of those folks here as well that argue taxes should be lowered, the "nanny state" be abolished and everyone fend for themselves. I can't help but think of this quote: Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
     
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  8. Uncles

    Uncles Well-Known Member

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    Undoubtedly true, RedAnt! As a German-American, I was thinking about this stuff a lot, watching Babylon Berlin on Netflix over the weekend. But my family were monarchists (and worse, in some cases, during the bad times), so these days I try to remain absolutely neutral (an impossibility, of course).

    In university I was an avowed socialist. Weren't we all? ;)

    But let's all get together and hope/pray that this virus thing dies off or is destroyed soon. I only have enough beer for four(4) days!
     
  9. Uncles

    Uncles Well-Known Member

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    Hezzey, you gotta shave that beard. For the correct fitting of an N95 respirator those bushy beards simply won't do. I'm only half joking, man.
     
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  10. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

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    We all love you too Hez !!! Stay safe and warm! Remember: moderation in all things.... welllll most things but don't [deleted] too much or you'll wear out your [deleted]....
     
  11. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

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    YIKES!!!(kurwa!!!) Almost as bad as here in Silicon Valley ! Stay safe frog !!!!!
     
  12. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

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    Hopefully it will never come to that....
     
  13. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

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    Lets hope youre right McCloud.... but I think it will get worse before it gets better.... I hear they are preparing a bird flu attack right after this !!!!!
     
  14. looseleaf

    looseleaf Well-Known Member

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    Some say it the NWO plan to get rid of the old ones and reduce the pension payments.... be safe and survive this Hez.... Low profile...
     
  15. Uncles

    Uncles Well-Known Member

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    Warsaw looks amazing. Has it changed extraordinarily from a civil engineering point of view since Soviet times? Seems so. When all of this pandemic shit is finished I hope I can visit Warsaw (my pathetic one year of Polish language learning will not help me, but I expect that many there speak excellent English as do you, and my faults will be forgiven).
     
  16. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I think you're too nice, Uncles :)

    The area in the film looks like a mix of ugly functionalist communist blocks and ugly capitalist office buildings. There are also some even uglier buildings, towards the end of it, that look like 2000'ish blocks of flats, those with very simple, flat facades. Am I right? Anyway, that's how the 2000'ish buildings look here, absolutely awful.
    We have an even bigger problem here, overcrowded areas in the cities, buildings popping up in the already narrow spaces between the existing buildings, taking the light and view of their inhabitants. Some of the inhabitants have won in court and some of those buildings are going down, but these success stories are quite few.
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2020
  17. Uncles

    Uncles Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps, perhaps. But I'm an old timer and my childhood impressions of Warsaw are all tied to the War. To see anything arise from that devastation brings me joy. The same goes for all of the cities devastated during WW2. In other words, my standards may be quite low, and my optimism high.

    But to be honest, I haven't given much thought to what it's like to actually live there. I live in a little town with a lot of historic buildings and now... many horrible monster creations that tower over the originals. But as to the aesthetics of the Soviet-era architecture -- I'm really not opposed to what they call brutalist architecture in general. I really liked Oscar Niemeyer's stuff in Brazil. Seeing his museum in Niteroi, a ferry trip from mainland Rio, is really something. (Now I am being sentimental, but please indulge an old man. We're all gonna keel over from the virus ;)
     
  18. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    Well - the socialists are responsible for the design of postwar Warsaw as such... they were starting with a blank page... literally.
    So the layout is that devised by socialists, yet the "tissue" has been largely replaced and modernized ever since.

    You can see most of the locations (apart from the newly built Skyliner building, due to be completed at the end of the year) using Google Maps.
    The clip starts in the Wola district at Prosta 51 (headquarters of the "Rzeczpospolita" daily, among numerous others) and continues north to Rondo Daszyńskiego (where we see the newly built Skyliner).
    The next short bit is with camera pointed south from Rondo ONZ towards Aleje Jerozolimskie. To the right you've got the Ilmet tower (the one with Mercedes logo on it - built in 1997 and standing just 103 m high). To the left there's the Rondo 1 building (short of 200m, completed in 2006). The unfinished structure to the right is the Varso, which once completed will dwarf the two former, standing some 310m high. The socialist development between Ilmet and Varso is the "Za Żelazną Bramą" housing complex, built between 1965 and 1972, and state of the art at that time.
    The two interesting bits are the high-rise office buildings in the background.
    They're socialist :)
    Elektrim tower (currently Ch8 or Chałubińskiego 8) was constructed in 1978, the other (with Marriott and Samsung ads) is the LIM - started in 1977 and completed in... 1989 (that's what an economic crisis means).
    Then we go on to see the windows of Q22 building (same street - aleja Jana Pawła II) reflect the residential area of ulica Grzybowska, to later enter Grzybowska between the Q22 and PR1ME office buildings.
    The subsequent part is, again, the Skyliner construction site. Then back to the corner of Grzybowska and Jana Pawła... back to the Rondo ONZ location...

    To sum up - the clip presents some good socialist architecture (cheap as it was to be built), and normal office buildings... including over 1/3 of Warsaw's high rise buildings (yet not the most interesting ones). I, for example, find the Złota 44 residential tower by Daniel Liebeskind far more interesting than all the ones I listed above.
     
  19. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    Of course, Uncles, you are right and it's good to see that some don't forget the horrors of the history.
     
  20. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    Well - Uncles probably saw Warsaw as it was... in 1950s, 1960s, or even 1970s... full of scars.
    The whole city was to be razed to the ground, on Hitler's order, following the October 1944 fall of the Warsaw Uprising.
    Germans managed to destroy (not simply demolish, as they burnt everything to the ground, making sure not a stone was kept untouched) some 70% of the city (and over 90% of the midtown).
    The Old Town was rebuilt in 1950s (making it the youngest UNESCO World Heritage Site) the Royal Castle was not fully rebuilt until 1984.

    Note the scene at 1:22... desert... desert full of rubble.