nickmeister posted:

As it got closer to the end it made less and less sense. But the action scenes were pretty good I suppose. lovely ending though.

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

Start forwarding them the "Dear Contracts" emails from the Confused Indian Men thread and see what happens.

Punkin Spunkin posted:

Wait is there really a whole thread??? Need that in my life, link please

Ups_rail posted:

Tell me china goons what should I ve expected, and done when faced with the writing on the tile box?

Ups_rail posted:

Cool dog working in china

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzzQlZZpBX4

Baronjutter posted:

I just remembered a gross personal asia story to fill the void in this thread.

I was in Malaysia because I had hooked up with a chinese girl and she was showing me off to all her friends. She took me to her rich friend's house which actually had a western style toilet. They didn't really use it, but it was a status thing to have one at the time. I always get blocked up when I travel, and I was not ok with the squat toilets, but days of chinese food and this familiar looking bathroom combined for a bowl destroying poo poo. The problem is, the drat thing wouldn't flush, I jammed the thing up. Since they didn't really use this toilet there was no plunger or anything. To make matters worse we HAD to go that second, we were already late when my guts decided it was time. I told my girlfriend and she told her friend who told us she'd take care of it and we need to get moving or we'd miss what ever we were going to. This poor girl had to deal with a massive 4 day western poo poo that had clogged the toilet to that dangerous will it or wont it overflow zone. I felt very embarrassed.

Ups_rail posted:

Tell me china goons what should I ve expected, and done when faced with the writing on the tile box?

DACK FAYDEN posted:

Come And Take It

Darkest Auer posted:

You're a molon for buying asbestos tiles

Grand Fromage posted:

This is the country where I got fake pyrite, so.

Barudak posted:

I know it wont be, but part of me hopes they sent you real gold instead.

nickmeister posted:

So I saw a movie called 贪狼 or Paradox today. It was set in Thailand but had six different Chinese production companies and two of the stars were Chinese. It was never explained why they lived in Thailand. As it got closer to the end it made less and less sense. But the action scenes were pretty good I suppose. lovely ending though.

Grand Fromage posted:

Sadly, no. I have no idea what metal it is.

Grand Fromage posted:

Sadly, no. I have no idea what metal it is.

Grand Fromage posted:

Sadly, no. I have no idea what metal it is.

Grand Fromage posted:

JaucheCharly posted:

Wouldn't hold it in the bare hand or have it anywhere near you if I were you.

DACK FAYDEN posted:

Come And Take It

ladron posted:

I want you to know I get this and appreciate it

quote:

Wrapped in Plastic, China's Farmland Is Suffering: QuickTake Q&A

Covering soil in plastic has been a boon for agriculture around the world, especially in China, where an area half the size of California is under polyethylene wrap. Farmers cover their land in razor-thin sheets of the translucent white film to trap moisture and heat and to prevent weeds and pests. The so-called plastic mulch has been shown to boost cotton, maize and wheat yields by a third, while widening the area in which crops can be grown. That has spurred a huge expansion in its use, but one that has come at a cost: Scientists say the practice is causing environmental pollution on an epic scale.

The view of farm land with plastic soil cover in Hanyuan county, Sichuan province.

1. Why is plastic mulch a problem?

The plastic isn’t biodegradable and scientists predict it could persist in soil for centuries. It’s a worldwide issue, but one that’s especially acute for China, where about a fifth of arable land contained levels of toxins exceeding national standards, according to 2014 government estimates. Further, the film used in China is less than 0.008 millimeters thick — about half that of sheets used in the U.S., Europe and Japan. That thinness makes the material less robust and more difficult to recover after use. China is predicted to increase its use of plastic mulch by 38 percent to more than 2 million metric tons a year by 2024.

2. What harm does plastic mulch do?

Heaps. Over time, film residue can decrease soil porosity and air circulation, change microbial communities, and potentially lower farmland fertility, scientists have found. Fragments of plastic film have also been shown to release potentially carcinogenic phthalate acid esters into the soil, where they can be taken up in vegetables and pose a human health risk when the food is consumed.
3. Is that all?

There’s more. Film fragments left in fields can also accumulate pesticides and other toxins applied to crops. This is a special risk for sheep, goats and other livestock grazing on crop stalks because of their potential to ingest plastic material or the chemicals that leach from it. When cotton crops are grown in plastic-contaminated soil, the lint risks being contaminated and the quality downgraded because traces of plastic can interfere with the coloring process. And then there’s the plastic pollution that makes its way into rivers and oceans, which can be toxic for aquatic life.

4. Can the plastic be recycled?

It takes about 16 hours to remove polyethylene sheets from 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of farmland in a process that requires manual labor, even when machinery is used. It’s such a time-consuming and costly process that plastic often is left in the soil after harvesting, risking its breakup into pieces when land is prepared for the next crop. The pieces that are collected are often contaminated with too much dirt and debris to be recycled directly from the field, so they are usually discarded in a dump or burned, emitting toxic substances.
5. What is the government doing about it?

The Ministry of Agriculture published an action plan in May that requires farmers to recycle plastic film and use sheets that are at least 0.01 millimeters thick. Meantime, the National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislative body, is seeking public comment on a draft of the country’s first national soil-pollution control law which includes stiff penalties for offenders. By the end of 2018, the government aims to complete a detailed nationwide survey on farmland pollution that will identify heavily contaminated areas; they will be prohibited from growing crops.
6. What other options are there?

While the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other groups are exploring ways to address the residue problem, solutions face technical and economic challenges. Alternatives to polypropylene include biodegradable polymers, or mixtures with biodegradable synthetic materials, such as polypropylene carbonate, and polyethylene-based oxo-degradable polymers to which additives are incorporated to accelerate degradation. Bast-fiber mulching film, made from tree bark, is another option that’s been shown to have good thermal insulation and moisture retention, but is expensive and loses its strength when wet. More recently, non-contaminating liquid membranes have emerged as an alternative. The approach involves bonding soil particles together to form a black solidified film after mixing with water and spraying onto the soil surface. The downside is cost. Biodegradable polymer film is about 1,350 yuan ($206) per hectare more expensive than polyethylene film. Scientists in Spain may have an another answer: wax worms. Larvae of the wax moth Galleria mellonella are able to biodegrade polyethylene, researchers at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria showed in a study published in April.

7. What will happen if nothing is done?

The more polluted China’s farmland becomes, the more difficult feeding its 1.4 billion citizens becomes. It takes about 1 acre to feed the average U.S. consumer. China only has about 0.2 acres of arable land per citizen, including fields degraded by pollution and contaminants. Government studies in 2014 found that some vegetable plots were dosed with high levels of heavy metals such as cadmium, just one of a series of poison scares that has made the public wary of domestically produced food. China is increasing its grain imports, even though the government has targeted self-sufficiency in staples, such as wheat.

quote:

Another problem is that you have these 农民 who are being sold fertilizers that they have never used before (your run of the mill nitrogen/urea solid granular stuff). So they are told to set their spreaders to one of the lighter settings to get a 500p/m coverage. Their yeild of corn comes in, they have had plenty of rain, lots of sun and heat, and it's a bumper crop and they make 25% more this year than previous years. Well the next year they set it up to 700p/m and it's just amazing conditions with the perfect blend of sun/rain and lots of heat. The corn yield increases by 15% from last year, and the farmer decides to buy an apartment in a nearby city as an investment property. The next year conditions are not great, the rain came too early, it was an overly wet spring, and seeding was delayed nearly a month. The farmer plants his corn, and this time he ups the coverage to 1000p/m. His reasoning is that the extra fertilizer will counteract the late planting, and he will still have a bumper crop. The growing season wasn't nearly as hot and wet as the previous years, and the 农民's crops come in, and they are about the same as his pre-fertilizer yields. He figures the fertilizer saved him from disaster. The next year he sticks with 1000p/m and has a decent yield. This is two times he has used this setting on his spreader, and both times the corn grew. 1000p/m is his new default, and if he figures it is going to be an ideal summer, he pushes the coverage even higher. After another 2-3 years he is seeing a steady decline in his yield. He never considers soil testing, as he thinks he is getting poor seeds, so he orders them from somewhere else and ups the coverage more than he has before. His corn comes in looking like it was sprayed with weed killer, and decent stalks are scattered throughout the field (areas where there was better drainage or where soil saturation of fertilizer wasn't as bad. For some reason the insects are just demolishing what looked like healthy stalks, and even if they only nibble on a leaf or two, the corn stalks seem to drop their cobs for no reason. The year after that pretty much nothing grows, but he notices that weeds and plants around the perimeter of his field are massive, and his neighbour's field just below his is starting to show increased growth in areas closer to his field. When looking around some of the low areas of his field, he notices a white crusty substance in areas that were once puddles. "It looks like . . . that spot where I spilled some fertilizer and it killed the grass. . . OH poo poo!"

The realization came too late (if it comes at all) and this field has just been taken off the market for a good 5-6 years or so. Depending on how desperate he gets (planting too early and further taxing the soil, or adding more fertilizer), he might delay it's recovery up to a decade. I've seen ~40 fields like this driving between Shenyang and Changchun, and even got out near Panshi to take a closer look. The growing season was really nice that summer, but having grown up on a farm, I could tell that the corn wasn't healthy. In Fujia I saw a guy spreading fertilizer (well after he should have) and he was using a jury-rigged spreader that someone obviously made themselves, which was giving the ground almost a solid coating of some sort of Nitrogen mix. I made a point of going there when it rained as it was only a short bike ride away, and his field looked like it had rabies there was so much foam.

Now spread this all over China's farmland, with lots of farmers doing this. Now add to that polluted water, bad growing seasons, and soil contamination from industry, and you have massive food shortages on the horizon. Add to that the increased use of, and decreased supply of clean water, and mad max might be a near utopia compared to what China has in store for them in the next few decades.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Also Blistex posted this like a year ago but I never understood the chemistry of it all, what is the nitrogen doing to the soil?

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Grand Fromage posted:

My guess is aluminum. They're pretty light. I got them for mineral testing in geology class so them being fake is bad but I spun it into a lesson about reliability and trusting the data.

Pirate Radar posted:

The Taiwanese staff gave the foreigners a geography quiz today (blank map of the island, label the cities/counties). I got bonus points for drawing arrows in the corners to label the Diaoyu Islands and Taiwan's tiny little airstrip-island in the SCS.

Collateral Damage posted:

I'm the confused policeman.

Pirate Radar posted:

The Taiwanese staff gave the foreigners a geography quiz today (blank map of the island, label the cities/counties). I got bonus points for drawing arrows in the corners to label the Diaoyu Islands and Taiwan's tiny little airstrip-island in the SCS.

Atlas Hugged posted:

"Dokdo is Japan" is like the only Korean I try to remember.

Atlas Hugged posted:

"Dokdo is Japan" is like the only Korean I try to remember.

Atlas Hugged posted:

"Dokdo is Japan" is like the only Korean I try to remember.