5 ms·

The photos look like something out of a 3rd world country.

rootusrootus 5y ago
It is a mess, for sure. Somewhere I read they clean it up every few days. It's been happening for years. But also, those pictures were taken with a long telephoto lens from quite a ways off, which compresses distance and makes it look like an even bigger mess than it really is.
- caf 5y ago
  Yes, the foreshortening is easy to see in this case because of the apparent spacing of the railway sleepers.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  A news report posted elsewhere in this thread[1] says the mess goes on for "miles" and thieves are there "daily". It doesn't seem to me like this is a visual distortion caused by lens type. Anecdotally, in the past few months I've had five or six packages just never show up from Amazon whereas in all the years prior that happened so rarely I don't recall any such thing. 1. https://youtube.com/watch?v=zN0CXUEMwjg https://youtube.com/watch?v=zN0CXUEMwjg
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Even close shots and shots across rather than down the tracks show tremendous amounts of packaging. John Schreiber's original Twitter thread shows plenty of cross-track, close-in, and overhead shots from both bridges and drones all lacking telephoto compression and revealing abundant strewn packaging: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html
walrus01 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throwawayay02 5y ago
Most of the US is.
- humaniania 5y ago
  lol what? Weird comment comrade.
john_moscow 5y ago
Well, for the past few decade or so, the country has been gradually destroying the underlying mechanisms that made it different from the 3rd-world countries, so you can hardly be surprised by those actions starting to bear fruit.
- gfdgfdgfdgf 5y ago
  What policies are you talking about? The urban decay is happening in cities like LA, SF, NY and not places like Texas or Florida.
  - narrator 5y ago
    Subtle troll, or Poe's law? :D
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    The growing disconnect between the person's decisions and their economic output. Imagine you wake up at 10am and make $1K, and your neighbor wakes up at 6am and makes $2K. You could be happy with it (extra $1K not worth 4 lost hours of sleep) or could force yourself to wake up at 6am as well, or would find some compromise in between. The main thing is that if you yourself pick the tradeoff between the level of inconvenience and the pay. On the other hand, if your neighbor makes $500, while you make $450 regardless of when you wake up, you'll be extremely irritated by the unfairness. And would not notice that your employer makes $750 off each of you, while you are busy quarreling about who's more privileged. Most of the jobs in the cities are just that - standard work routine, standard pay, little room for decisions, little growth, little personal responsibility, little chance becoming financially independent. Brought to you by low interest rates fueling endless acquisitions and consolidation of bargaining power in fewer and fewer hands. 2008 was the end of the previous economic cycle where the big players got too greedy and too dumb, made stupid decisions with big money, and were destined to crash and burn, allowing the new wave of smaller companies to take their place. But the government decided that too much was at stake, and just bailed them out. Around 2012 people started noticing that something is wrong, which took the rather silly form of Occupy Wall Street. The corporate response to it was shifting of the focus to social justice and equity - term that was supposed to take into account historical inequalities, but is so loose and unquantifiable, that every person would see it slightly differently, creating endless opportunity for division. So now we have an entire generation that does not aspire wealth through personal responsibility and hard work, but rather blames someone else on having an unfair advantage and is dreaming of taking it away. That's how 3rd-world countries and dictatorships function. People are busy fighting over the leftovers from the feast left by the ruling class, and feel accomplished when they manage to steal the extra bag of potatoes their neighbor was hiding under the stairs.
bmitc 5y ago
There are many parts of the country I would consider so, including parts of cities, such as we see here. This is what growth optimized capitalism looks like.
- solveit 5y ago
  Does 'capitalism' even mean anything any more? No self-respecting capitalist would allow theft in broad daylight.
  - _dw7s 5y ago
    unless it's wage theft. That's pretty much a constant for a lot of self respecting capitalists.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    At certain scales, small losses don't concern growth capitalists. It's just like companies taking fines rather than fixing the issue or doing things legally, because it's cheaper in the end.
    - hnfong 5y ago
      Problems can "grow" too. I guess people implicitly assume businesses grow faster than their problems, but given the broken window effect etc etc I'm not sure ignoring the issue here is what a capitalist should be doing..
rasz 5y ago
Its LA so yes. Also look up Skid Row.

It is a mess, for sure. Somewhere I read they clean it up every few days. It's been happening for years. But also, those pictures were taken with a long telephoto lens from quite a ways off, which compresses distance and makes it look like an even bigger mess than it really is.

caf 5y ago
Yes, the foreshortening is easy to see in this case because of the apparent spacing of the railway sleepers.
ALittleLight 5y ago
A news report posted elsewhere in this thread[1] says the mess goes on for "miles" and thieves are there "daily". It doesn't seem to me like this is a visual distortion caused by lens type. Anecdotally, in the past few months I've had five or six packages just never show up from Amazon whereas in all the years prior that happened so rarely I don't recall any such thing. 1. https://youtube.com/watch?v=zN0CXUEMwjg https://youtube.com/watch?v=zN0CXUEMwjg
dredmorbius 5y ago
Even close shots and shots across rather than down the tracks show tremendous amounts of packaging. John Schreiber's original Twitter thread shows plenty of cross-track, close-in, and overhead shots from both bridges and drones all lacking telephoto compression and revealing abundant strewn packaging: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html

walrus01 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

throwawayay02 5y ago

Most of the US is.

humaniania 5y ago
lol what? Weird comment comrade.

john_moscow 5y ago

Well, for the past few decade or so, the country has been gradually destroying the underlying mechanisms that made it different from the 3rd-world countries, so you can hardly be surprised by those actions starting to bear fruit.

gfdgfdgfdgf 5y ago
What policies are you talking about? The urban decay is happening in cities like LA, SF, NY and not places like Texas or Florida.
- narrator 5y ago
  Subtle troll, or Poe's law? :D
- john_moscow 5y ago
  The growing disconnect between the person's decisions and their economic output. Imagine you wake up at 10am and make $1K, and your neighbor wakes up at 6am and makes $2K. You could be happy with it (extra $1K not worth 4 lost hours of sleep) or could force yourself to wake up at 6am as well, or would find some compromise in between. The main thing is that if you yourself pick the tradeoff between the level of inconvenience and the pay. On the other hand, if your neighbor makes $500, while you make $450 regardless of when you wake up, you'll be extremely irritated by the unfairness. And would not notice that your employer makes $750 off each of you, while you are busy quarreling about who's more privileged. Most of the jobs in the cities are just that - standard work routine, standard pay, little room for decisions, little growth, little personal responsibility, little chance becoming financially independent. Brought to you by low interest rates fueling endless acquisitions and consolidation of bargaining power in fewer and fewer hands. 2008 was the end of the previous economic cycle where the big players got too greedy and too dumb, made stupid decisions with big money, and were destined to crash and burn, allowing the new wave of smaller companies to take their place. But the government decided that too much was at stake, and just bailed them out. Around 2012 people started noticing that something is wrong, which took the rather silly form of Occupy Wall Street. The corporate response to it was shifting of the focus to social justice and equity - term that was supposed to take into account historical inequalities, but is so loose and unquantifiable, that every person would see it slightly differently, creating endless opportunity for division. So now we have an entire generation that does not aspire wealth through personal responsibility and hard work, but rather blames someone else on having an unfair advantage and is dreaming of taking it away. That's how 3rd-world countries and dictatorships function. People are busy fighting over the leftovers from the feast left by the ruling class, and feel accomplished when they manage to steal the extra bag of potatoes their neighbor was hiding under the stairs.

bmitc 5y ago

There are many parts of the country I would consider so, including parts of cities, such as we see here. This is what growth optimized capitalism looks like.

solveit 5y ago
Does 'capitalism' even mean anything any more? No self-respecting capitalist would allow theft in broad daylight.
- _dw7s 5y ago
  unless it's wage theft. That's pretty much a constant for a lot of self respecting capitalists.
- bmitc 5y ago
  At certain scales, small losses don't concern growth capitalists. It's just like companies taking fines rather than fixing the issue or doing things legally, because it's cheaper in the end.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    Problems can "grow" too. I guess people implicitly assume businesses grow faster than their problems, but given the broken window effect etc etc I'm not sure ignoring the issue here is what a capitalist should be doing..

rasz 5y ago

Its LA so yes. Also look up Skid Row.