politically-loaded maps: sputtering flemishly

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > politically-loaded maps: sputtering flemishly

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

ChaseSP posted:

Plugs are the only area that the UK actually comes ahead in general safety in and it's hosed up

Tnega posted:

If you ever wanted 4 minutes of someone talking about the UK plug.

I'm sorry to crush your spirits but Schuko has all of these safety feature and more. The only thing it doesn't have are the fuses but those aren't needed outside the UK cause nobody else uses ring mains(and for very good reasons).

# ? Dec 14, 2019 09:25

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 06:23

Jippa: Feb 13, 2009

Rule brittania, brittania rules the plugs.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 09:28

galagazombie: Oct 31, 2011; A silly little mouse!

You'd think there'd be more plug standardization especially since the major industrialized countries are generally part of large blocks. Like a country as rich as Switzerland would just go to green for convenience. Or why those countries in Africa are using Blue when they they have to import so much of their electronics from other countries anyway.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 10:45

Xelkelvos: Dec 19, 2012

galagazombie posted:

You'd think there'd be more plug standardization especially since the major industrialized countries are generally part of large blocks. Like a country as rich as Switzerland would just go to green for convenience. Or why those countries in Africa are using Blue when they they have to import so much of their electronics from other countries anyway.

Voltage standards area bigger limiting factor than plugs, I think. With plugs of the same voltage, it's possible to just remove the old plug and splice the "correct" one in.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 11:18

Kamrat: Nov 27, 2012; Thanks for playing Alone in the dark 2.

Now please fuck off

Relevant to the current discussion:

# ? Dec 14, 2019 11:30

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

If they haven�t switched plug types now, they never will.

So many devices now have removable cords. They either use DC supplies and have something like a barrel jack or USB port to receive it, or they do use AC, but they have sockets for an IEC 60320 or other standard connector.

In Britain, for the longest time, appliances came with bare wires and the end user was expected to wire an appropriate plug on the end. Ostensibly, this was because not everyone used the familiar overbuilt plug, but it was really to cheat everyone out of a shilling. This practice was ended by law in 1994.

I can�t say I have much experience selling electrical appliances in southern Africa, but I expect they would do a lot of rewiring locally.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 11:46

Sereri: Sep 30, 2008; awwwrigami

Kamrat posted:

Relevant to the current discussion:

# ? Dec 14, 2019 11:55

Saladman: Jan 12, 2010

galagazombie posted:

You'd think there'd be more plug standardization especially since the major industrialized countries are generally part of large blocks. Like a country as rich as Switzerland would just go to green for convenience. Or why those countries in Africa are using Blue when they they have to import so much of their electronics from other countries anyway.

Yeah, you'd think so, especially for Switzerland and Italy it would be relatively easy to change, as their non-grounded Swiss/Italian (aka Europlug) plugs already fit into a Schuko socket. Not perfectly, but it would at least work in a pinch during the transition period. Even so, you'll never find a Schuko wall socket in Switzerland except maybe in a few fancy hotels. What people end up doing is owning a couple powerstrips that plug in 3-prong Swiss, and then you have sockets that are Schuko. It is kind of annoying because sometimes you buy equipment in Switzerland and it comes with a goddamn Schuko plug, like my Denon stereo receiver.

I think Lebanon had the worst plugs of any country I've ever been to. Randomly some people's houses would have Japanese/2prongUS style wall plugs, some would have Europlug, sometimes modern British (3 square pins), and sometimes even archaic British colonial (3 round pins) that my multiadapter couldn't handle. I've been to a lot of countries and Lebanon had by far the most baffling set of plugs.

E: Sometimes the sockets were combined though, like in the house we stayed in in Bsharri, the wall sockets accepted US 2-prong and europlug, which is definitely a bizarre socket type (the holes being directly overlaid -- it's not two separate and nearby sockets, but rather both stamped together)

Saladman fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Dec 14, 2019

# ? Dec 14, 2019 11:55

Toplowtech: Aug 31, 2004

Grape posted:

Very hands off yes.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 12:15

Blut: Sep 11, 2009; if someone is in the bottom 10%~ of a guillotine

SlothfulCobra posted:

Type H makes me angry because it's used over so small of a territory that you can't even see it on the map, and there's no good reason for it to be so isolated.

I've always found it very annoying that the British Empire didn't manage to standardize the UK plug across its territories. It would have been a distinct positive legacy if we only effectively had 3 worldwide plugs - US/EUR/UK.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 13:41

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Saladman posted:

E: Sometimes the sockets were combined though, like in the house we stayed in in Bsharri, the wall sockets accepted US 2-prong and europlug, which is definitely a bizarre socket type (the holes being directly overlaid -- it's not two separate and nearby sockets, but rather both stamped together)

This kinda things?

Yeah it looks weird.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 13:42

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Blut posted:

I've always found it very annoying that the British Empire didn't manage to standardize the UK plug across its territories. It would have been a distinct positive legacy if we only effectively had 3 worldwide plugs - US/EUR/UK.

Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia?

# ? Dec 14, 2019 13:59

Kobal2: Apr 29, 2019

Jay Rust posted:

I like Type K

Type B done seen some poo poo.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 16:25

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Kamrat posted:

Relevant to the current discussion:

127 V? What the gently caress, Mexico?

# ? Dec 14, 2019 18:20

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Tnega posted:

If you ever wanted 4 minutes of someone talking about the UK plug.

Disappointed it wasn't that guy who looks like a soulless murderer.

fe: John Ward

e: He's probably a perfectly nice soulless murderer.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 18:31

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Tnega posted:

If you ever wanted 4 minutes of someone talking about the UK plug.

I understand the reasons for those safety ideas, but there's just not that often when there is a danger of something getting in the outlet holes, and in places where there is, we have a special slightly-more expensive outlet with a breaker inside to prevent shocks. I don't know if we have any equivalent scheme to the wires inside the plug, since I've never seen an american plug hacked apart.

That's the thing about a lot of these independently developed hardware standards, there are a lot of equivalents that work well enough, it's hard to fully judge everything. I'm thankful that our plugs aren't giant monsters half the size of your fist at least.

Blut posted:

I've always found it very annoying that the British Empire didn't manage to standardize the UK plug across its territories. It would have been a distinct positive legacy if we only effectively had 3 worldwide plugs - US/EUR/UK.

That's the result of the technology being individually created and being adopted in little nonstandardized bits over time in a lassiez faire free market. Eventually bigger governments introduced standards within their territory, but long after there'll be a lot of friction from early adopters. They couldn't even keep rail gauges standardized throughout the empire.

The only thing they had success with was keeping everybody in the empire driving on the same side of the road, but France, Germany, and America all managed to spread their roadside preference much further. At least they managed to keep the Falklands on the left.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 19:52

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Cat Mattress posted:

This kinda things?

Yeah it looks weird.

A lot of plugs in China are sort of like that, they can take several different plug configurations.

# ? Dec 14, 2019 22:05

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

With that many possible configurations, I wonder if an idiot has ever tried plugging in their plug like diagonally?

# ? Dec 15, 2019 00:34

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

SlothfulCobra posted:

The only thing they had success with was keeping everybody in the empire driving on the same side of the road, but France, Germany, and America all managed to spread their roadside preference much further. At least they managed to keep the Falklands on the left.

Australia you're drunk. Go home

# ? Dec 15, 2019 03:21

Badger of Basra: Jul 26, 2007

SlothfulCobra posted:

Is there some advantage you get to being wider or narrower? Or was this just about which imperialist power various countries got to build their first railway? Although that doesn't really explain India, Pakistan, and Australia.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 03:48

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

Badger of Basra posted:

Is there some advantage you get to being wider or narrower? Or was this just about which imperialist power various countries got to build their first railway? Although that doesn't really explain India, Pakistan, and Australia.

All else equal, rails spaced more widely can handle more weight and more speed.

The catch is that they�re more expensive to build and they can�t take corners as sharply. This is particularly a problem in mountainous areas

# ? Dec 15, 2019 04:00

Kobal2: Apr 29, 2019

Fojar38 posted:

Australia you're drunk. Go home

I was gonna say. Anybody know what's up with that ?

# ? Dec 15, 2019 05:12

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Australia's real big and nobody thought to standardize rail lines throughout the administratively separate provinces of the continent until it was too late.

When you dig in there's a bunch of industrialists with dreams and hopes and schemes and coming from over here or over there, but it boils down to the same thing.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 05:21

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

Reddit posted:

It's a colonial thing. Most of the cities around Australia's coast were entirely separate entities when they first got their railways and so the railways were built with their specific needs in mind.

Broad/wide gauge allows you to run some absolutely massive trains, just look at the wide gauge networks in places like India, Russia and Pakistan, but that size also makes them expensive and locomotives on them tend to be so large they don't turn well. Which makes them great for places like Melbourne which had gold rush money so they could use massive freight locomotives to move stuff around instead of lots of much smaller ones.

Narrow gauge is the opposite. It's cheap to build which means you can build a lot of it without huge land purchases and the trains tend to be able to take much tighter corners and handle gradients better because of their small size. That makes them great for commuter rail and where you don't need large locomotives and the entire landscape nowadays is dominated by EMU's and DMU's anyway. That's why Perth, Adelaide and South East Queensland all opted for narrow gauge because saving money and moving people was the priority - the freight trains would have to make do with many smaller locomotives. Adelaide built lots of little lines in different gauges based on what that line needed to do at that time. Western Australia has lots of mostly unconnected railway networks which are either narrow or standard gauge for the same reason but with an eye on connecting networks that are close together - nobody's going to run a line from Broome to Perth so there's no need to make the freight network in Broome suffer with the narrow commuter network of Perth. Queensland Rail just built narrow gauge track everywhere. Even on networks that weren't connected at the time. They knew they eventually wanted to connect everything, the little network they had in South East Queensland was narrow gauge so everyone else had to be narrow gauge too - even the coal trains up North that would really have benefited from being standard or broad gauge. There are other problems with narrow gauge but they're mostly just something you work around. For example you are limited in the speed you can achieve on those lines, though that's not really an issue for Australia since Queensland's tilt trains are by not a small margin the fastest on the continent (though in practice they're limited to 160kmph just like the XPT or the Transwa WDA/WDB/WDC class railcars). Narrow gauge trains also tend to be better at gradients and varied terrain, though no train is very good at that, due to their high mass power to weight ratio. That's why you see them in places like New Zealand and Tasmania - lots of terrain to twist around and climb up. It's cheaper than flattening, bridging or blasting over everything like China and Japan have done with their high speed rail network.

Standard gauge benefits mostly from being standard. It's more expensive than narrow gauge but is large enough that early steam locomotives weren't lacking in grunt needed for heavy freight. Additionally it's what everyone else is building so you can license, contract or outright purchase old equipment from other countries to save money. Queensland's tilt trains are amazing pieces of engineering but when they tried to get India, a mostly broad gauge country, to build their narrow gauge NGR's under contract there were some issues that integrating them into the existing network (though they had fewer problems building Sydney's standard gauge metro trains on account of it being its own systems being built with the new EMU's in mind specifically).

Platystemon fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Dec 15, 2019

# ? Dec 15, 2019 05:27

ungulateman: Apr 18, 2012; pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is

Colonisation didn't hit Australia until after the railways had lost a lot of ground to roads as the primary form of industrial infrastructure.

As they say, "without trucks, Australia stops".

# ? Dec 15, 2019 06:05

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

ungulateman posted:

Colonisation didn't hit Australia until after the railways had lost a lot of ground to roads as the primary form of industrial infrastructure.

As they say, "without trucks, Australia stops".

...um... I'm not sure a 2000's marketing phrase really applies to colonies established in the 1800's.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 07:57

System Metternich: Feb 28, 2010; But what did he mean by that?

Platystemon posted:

I�m the Andoom-Weipa line

# ? Dec 15, 2019 08:56

Take the plunge! Okay!: Feb 24, 2007

# ? Dec 15, 2019 13:04

System Metternich: Feb 28, 2010; But what did he mean by that?

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

Germania going all the way to the Volga :thunk:

# ? Dec 15, 2019 13:22

Reveilled: Apr 19, 2007; Take up your rifles

System Metternich posted:

Germania going all the way to the Volga

I wonder, does this suggest the Netflix Chrismas Cinematic Universe is set in a world where Rome didn't fall? The barbarians all stayed east of the Alps and Rhine because they were too busy watching romantic comedies?

# ? Dec 15, 2019 13:42

Numerical Anxiety: Sep 2, 2011; Hello.

I'm mostly disturbed by the supposed presence of hippophagi in Sarmatia. Even a child should know that no Sarmatian, be he in the throes of desperation, would eat his horse.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 14:18

Kobal2: Apr 29, 2019

Platystemon posted:

Thank you (and previous posters) for the edumacation. Have a map. Vous n'aurez pas Landau.

Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Dec 15, 2019

# ? Dec 15, 2019 17:08

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Kobal2 posted:

Thank you (and previous posters) for the edumacation. Have a map
.

That image is behind a link with a broken security cert, and even when I ignore that the address itself returns a 404.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 17:13

Kobal2: Apr 29, 2019

Carbon dioxide posted:

That image is behind a link with a broken security cert, and even when I ignore that the address itself returns a 404.

Which it shouldn't ? IGDI. It worked for a while and then it didn't. Does that work better ?

# ? Dec 15, 2019 17:16

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Kobal2 posted:

Which it shouldn't ? IGDI. It worked for a while and then it didn't. Does that work better ?

This one works yes.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 17:18

Safety Biscuits: Oct 21, 2010

SlothfulCobra posted:

I'm the two-foot railways around Port Elizabeth and nowhere else in South Africa.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 17:21

Sweeper: Nov 29, 2007; The Joe Buck of Posting; Dinosaur Gum

Safety Biscuits posted:

I'm the two-foot railways around Port Elizabeth and nowhere else in South Africa.

It looks like there is some in eastern Australia?

# ? Dec 15, 2019 17:33

BrainMeats: Aug 20, 2000; We have evolved beyond the need for posting.; Soiled Meat

SlothfulCobra posted:

This map is literally the only thing we know about Western Sahara.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 19:57

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Reveilled posted:

I wonder, does this suggest the Netflix Chrismas Cinematic Universe is set in a world where Rome didn't fall? The barbarians all stayed east of the Alps and Rhine because they were too busy watching romantic comedies?

Impossible, Christmas only gained popularity from the barbarian invasion, and traditional monarchism only fully established itself from the absence of Roman rule (unless the Christmas Prince is pulling some first among equals poo poo).

Though normally I'd expect fictional nations to be a lot smaller, that's a pretty bold map. Independent and united Caucasus, a nation that sounds like Belgrade but located around where Belarus is (with bits from Latvia to Moldova), and a weird old-fashioned bad-land-survey map style that distorts everything so it almost looks natural for there to be a nation spanning the entire (extremely scrawny) Balkan peninsula. It must've taken a long time to draw up that map with all that detail and faux-cartography. I like that Asia calligraphy.

Probably the key thing to consider is the historical forces opposing christmas, like the orthodox celebrating it a month later or the muslims, who Aldovia seemingly shares a border with and probably has a long political history with. I wonder how much political strife there is with religious minorities.

# ? Dec 15, 2019 20:04

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 06:23

Byzantine: Sep 1, 2007

SlothfulCobra posted:

It must've taken a long time to draw up that map with all that detail and faux-cartography. I like that Asia calligraphy.

It's a real map, made in 1609 and of pre-Roman Europe.

https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/47616/europam-sive-celticam-veterem-ortelius

# ? Dec 15, 2019 21:35

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