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End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

theguardian.com

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Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#381

Post by sshine »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #36
sshine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Hating jews never went out of fashion in the muslim world. Anti-semitism is a European invention that had to be imported to the middle east. One could argue it never went out of fashion anywhere.

> Anti-semitism is a European invention

No, antisemitism was a thing in Rome, too.

The Europeans did reinvent antisemitism several times:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism

> One could argue it never went out of fashion anywhere.

Both Christians and Muslims vary over time between religious and racial antisemitism.

And it's never truly gone anywhere jews are a minority (anywhere but Israel).

In Europe and the United States after World War II, antisemitism did become less popular.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#382

Post by Ahmd72 »

ineverything wrote: post #269
Ahmd72 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add context, this is for the replies that I have seen on this thread for those people who are just assuming the worst of our people

[flagged]

Your account was created 2 hours ago, tells everything too

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#383

Post by Ahmd72 »

badosu wrote: post #375
Ahmd72 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add context, this is for the replies that I have seen on this thread for those people who are just assuming the worst of our people

While your comment had vitriol, it's not too different from most comments I see on the top of this page. Bizarre

[flagged]

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#384

Post by woodruffw »

geocar wrote: post #347
zaroth wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, because they are literal criminal prisoners, and exempt from the 13th amendment. The workers in SA aren’t criminals being jailed for some crime.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/constitution-check-do-in... The US believes the constitution ends at its borders and people; This is what the law is in SA. I can't say I like it either, but I think jailing human beings and enslaving them to the benefit of others is simply not Good. If you can agree then maybe we can work together to fix it in the US in a lifetime or two, but there's frankly little we can do about…

Morality isn’t a game of brinkmanship. It’s incumbent upon each country to improve itself, without resorting to their peers’ moral failures as a cheap response to observations of their own failures.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#385

Post by starspangled »

ctrw wrote: post #335
nairboon wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public executions and flogging > Let's not gloss over the fact that we in the west do the same. I'm curious where in the "west" you're from. At least in my part of the "western world", we absolutely don't do any of this.

Our executions are slower. We just call it homelessness.

What on earth are you talking about?

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#386

Post by zaphirplane »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #377
inslee1 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication of using "632 CE" appears to be a reference to the proliferation of Islam after the death of Muhammad (I didn't know this until I Googled) So if that individuals distrust towards the Arabian peninsula begins in the exact year Islam began to spread, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that OP is an Islamaphobe (and it would include a number of North African countries as well) TLDR: OP is using geography…

I have a problem when governments decide it is perfectly alright to interfere in how citizens should conduct their religion or even what religion they should follow, which I believe is a deeply personal affair. I have a problem when there is no separation of state and religion, and when said governments regularly criminalise (up to capital punishment) things like apostasy and blasphemy, which are decidedly mediaeval…

> delta_p_delta_x

> I'll be frank: I have a deep mistrust of any culture present in the Arabian peninsula since about 632 CE.

Enough said. This isn’t an informed opinion

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#387

Post by oefrha »

brazzy wrote: post #308
oefrha wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won’t comment on culture but it is a fact that the majority of working Saudis work in bullshit government jobs where they basically collect paychecks for free, and actual labor is overwhelmingly performed by cheap migrant workers, no? Or is my information out of date? That’s an arrangement you can’t find anywhere outside the Gulf, to my knowledge.

You have a bunch of weasel words there that are doing some heavy lifting: "majority", "actual" and "overwhelmingly". It's not possible to run a functioning country (which SA undeniably is) without a large number of people who are at least somewhat competent, at least somewhat hardworking, and at least somewhat loyal to the country. You may be able to rely on cheap migrant workers for the hard physical labor, but not…

According to https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/20/news/saudi-government-worke..., 70% of employed Saudis work for the government, and according to their civil service minister, "many" of them don't even work an hour a day. If you think they're structured like any other country and I'm merely singling them out with "weasel words" we can't possibly have a discussion.

The oil money printer can hide a lot of problems. A small percentage of somewhat competent people aren't guaranteed to be able to provide for a huge number of useless freeloaders if the gravy train stops. Look at Venezuela for a somewhat similar situation.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#388

Post by spacecadet »

ethanbond wrote: post #253
spacecadet wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Norwegians are people too, capable of evil. Thinking you are special? Thats a good starting point.

And as we all know, capable of == actually doing

Yeesh. History says otherwise.

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#389

Post by FabHK »

gherkinnn wrote: post #19

The whole idea of a linear city is daft. A circle is way more efficient at getting around. The dimensions of the Line are, of course, silly as well.

That's actually a neat interview question.

a) So you have people living uniformly distributed on a line of length 1. When you pick 2 at random, what's the average distance from one to the other?

b) How about if they live on a circle of circumference 1 (and you can only travel along the circumference)?

c) How about if they live on a disk of circumference 1 (and you can travel straight across the disk)?

Re: End of the Line? Saudi Arabia to scale back plans for desert megacity

#390

Post by The_Colonel »

woodruffw wrote: post #379
The_Colonel wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A linear city gives you more opportunities for expansion. A disc one needs to be planned well from the start, but it's difficult to account for future needs.

I don’t understand how this can possibly be true. You have one only degree of freedom in a straight line. Most cities develop a natural disc pattern because it allows for expansion at every degree.

The line is the initial city design. But then in 20, 100, 500 years you have two empty sides (equally accessible from any place in the line city) which you can use for more infrastructure (e.g. airports), industry, recreation, agriculture etc.

Meanwhile if you design a disc city, you can keep expanding outwards, but that's going to be increasingly far from the center. It's going to be very difficult to build a new airport into a middle of the city (if such needs arises), meanwhile it's much easier to do that for the middle segment of a linear city.

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