• take_five_moments [any]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    love how “big finance buildling” is the marker for success in a nation; says nothing for quality of life, access to medical care, ability to start a family, freedom from the boot of capital stepping on your neck etc

  • piccolo [any]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    I fucking hate these comparisons. Why don’t they compare like with like? How’s Cuba doing compared to other Caribbean island countries like Jamaica or Haiti or Dominican Republic? Before the recent escalation of the siege + oil crisis, it sure seems like they were doing a lot better for the essential life things. And that’s in spite of a blockade by the biggest trading partner in the region.

  • AstroStelar [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    Alongside the obvious, Japan also had nearly a century of Western-assisted industrialisation prior to WW2, while Cuba was either a Spanish colony or US-backed banana republic during that time

  • orlando [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    this is a common flaw in their moral philosophy: only the maximum level of money in a vague all-of-society-in-one-gdp-statistic way makes for a valid society. in reality the cubans aren’t and were never suffering from a lack of skyscrapers. if their preferred mode of existence is low rise then so what?

  • OffSeasonPrincess [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    Quaranteed there are 100s of places in Japan that look like the bottom photo

    Photos of like, “depressing eastern bloc commie blocks” are funny for the same reason, those places just look like our house w worse upkeep

    • RandallThymes [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      9 days ago

      Japan has both the extremely old / run-down multi generational housing (just look at most of the victims of the New Year’s Day earthquake 2/3 years ago) and plenty of “commieblocks” that frequently contain built-in green spaces and daycares etc. The former will be shown for it’s traditional aesthetic and the latter won’t be seen at all.

  • Horse {they/them}@lemmygrad.ml
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    9 days ago

    i wonder what japan would look like if it was smaller and cut off from international trade by a significant military power ~150km off its coast


  • Looks at Cuba: “Wow, these people with our military’s boots on their necks for generations still have beautiful architecture and better healthcare than us”

    Looks at Japan: epsteingelion and pingu-horny and lots of boring developer-driven corporate-architecture crap and salarymen with no social lives who want to kill themselves

  • Euergetes [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 days ago

    i don’t even like skyscrapers? who actually does?

    sure, it was impressive and artistic for maybe a decade just to flex on gravity, but we’ve had these things for a century and no real-life utility has been found. office towers are ridiculous hubris that coasted on structural inertia decades after the ‘conveinience’ of having these offices so close together was outdated. the vaunted “space-efficiency” is grains to the heap of overall city density, cut the towers and add one floor to the surrounding couple sq km. same deal.

    fuck towers mario-finger