551–560 of 873 posts
I feel like HN should ban discussion of homelessness, due to the extreme ignorance and prejudice of the comments. A bunch of people who don't know the first thing about it jumping to conclusions. The quality of the comments here is so so poor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cafes/restaurants are required by law to provide toilets to customers, afaik
Is the keyword customers though? In other words you’ve got to spend money to use the toilet? In America I can walk in to a restaurant, even a nicer one and ask to use the bathroom and very likely would be shown strait to it. It’s not 100% of the time everywhere, especially places like Times Square, but I’d say that the norm is no spend required.
Obviously can't speak for the entire country of Spain, but that tends to be true here too. The more touristic places, especially closer to the beaches, tend to have "Toilets for customers only" signs though, which is kind of understandable as people start using them as changing rooms otherwise, and get overrun with tourists not really caring about how they leave things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
America has a low social cohension because of global immigration instead of targeted immigration compare to China. America use to share a culture because people came from the same places and shared the same religion and had a common history going back to the Romans.
....sadly more true than anyone here would probably like to admit. I love having Indian coworkers and there’s a large Indian population where I am at, but they are just completely separated in every single way from everyone else. and they keep it that way. my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe…
Downstream of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_to_End_Pay_Toilets_i...
Road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they spend $100,000 per homeless person in Europe and Asia? If not, why don't they have similar problems?
EU: The social net prevents homelessness. We don't get broke because of medical bills. Labor laws prevent being fired without prévenance. Being fired grants you employment benefits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. It’s a shame we in the west surrendered that. Not the worst thing in the world, but I do find it frustrating often to not have a bathroom available nearby (small bladder) But, while the toilets aren’t the worst sacrifice, the cumulative sacrifices made on the alter of our huge antisocial populati…
> I guess if you don’t have a massive population of antisocial people who destroy the public facility, you can provide them. Or a consistent race-based or immigrant underclass caste. A lot of countries have the blessing of not having a large population whom they can dismiss the condition of based on visual cues. They just moved from feudalism to universal humanism in one generation. Whatever bad things you can say ab…
This really hits home. As a person with IBS I basically cannot peacefully go outside in EU. I lived for many years in China and Thailand, and toilets are free, clean, and plentiful there, and you can easily ask any place to use their toilet - there's no stigma. I even had to run into a police station in rural China once. They were 100% chill about it, though they had to unlock a gate for me. Xi Jinping really will be…
Is this some sort of psy-op here against EU, this isn't the first message like this where someone is praising China and accusing EU, as if it's a unitary entity, about being a "horror show". If only we would have some dictators or extremist parties back in power to break up the EU and take our countries back to the good old days. I'm finding it harder and harder to come back to Hn with all of this stuff.
I lived 12 years in China and now 1.5 in EU. Traveled both fairly extensively. The above is just my experience.
We left China in big part due to authoritarian politics. But if what's happening in EU (and US? never been there tho) is "democracy" then maybe we need to rethink.
I like many things in EU, and I dislike many things as well. At least here I'm not worried for my safety when I discuss it online, aside from some people calling it a psy-op or whatever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first generation could hardly be classified as “hard working”, the sad fact is many of them live on (generous) welfare.
You only have to look at Trump; third generation immigrant. His grandfather made his fortune by operating a restaurant and a brothel for miners in Whitehorse during the Gold Rush years, his father compounded that with an actual real estate 'empire' and the grandson 'earnt' money via dodgy wealth transfer schemes and sank much of it into get rich quick scams and branding deals based on fraudulent representation and mo…
I agree with your analysis of the Trump family who have been detrimental for US society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this some sort of psy-op here against EU, this isn't the first message like this where someone is praising China and accusing EU, as if it's a unitary entity, about being a "horror show". If only we would have some dictators or extremist parties back in power to break up the EU and take our countries back to the good old days. I'm finding it harder and harder to come back to Hn with all of this stuff.
> Is this some sort of psy-op here against EU No, commonly here on HN it is American commentators who've visited like Italy or Greece or France once, then they extrapolate their experience in a tourist-heavy city, looking/behaving as an American, over the entire continent. Happens almost every day here. Any comment mentioning EU/Europe here has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Usually it turns out they've visit…
Every non-EU citizen should be aware of what to expect in Germany, and even worse in France, Italy or Greece. Shithole is a perfect description - it is just unbelievable how barbarically bad we are at public restrooms in comparison to anything you find across developed Asian countries.
Even beyond just cleanliness, you always have harassing bathroom bouncers in private AND public facilities in Germany, basically acting as highway robbers to steal your money without ever actually cleaning anything. At best they look up from a phone and nod when you pay your urine toll.
The only half usable bathrooms are from corporations like Sanifair which are making a business out of uncontrollable, basic human bodily functions. China doesn't need to invest in psyops against Germany or the EU at all if we are perfectly able to make ourselves look bad in comparison. Just use Occams razor.
And of course the major issue is vandalism and destruction by a huge population of junkies, homeless, aggressive (male) youths etc. on top of anti-social behavior, hegemonially pushed by American individualism ever since WW2. I guess this is the point where you can accuse me of injecting ideas that could originate from Chinese psyops? In the end I want a society that cares for its fellow citizens.