josefMay 1, 2025
something that makes me feel surprisingly emotional is stories about some kind of 'system' which successfully does the job it was designed to do and significantly helps those in danger. compared to people, a faceless and technical process nevertheless accomplishing an altruistic or even heroic act seems like a miraculous event to me. the idea that the world contains elaborate rube goldberg machines built by people you'll never meet, which may one day save your life, is really weird and powerful
Show threadtechnomancy

@jk when I was visiting Hong Kong I was puzzled to see "slope registration" plaques absolutely everywhere

I wrote it off as a bizarre bureaucratic quirk, but after I left I went to look up what it was for

apparently the city was ravaged by deadly landsides until at one point in the 1970s they just decided they had enough and that landslide deaths were preventable, so they established a well-funded geoengineering office that catalogued and reinforced every slope on the entire island

they just straight up said "no one has to die from this" and made it happen, and it works; the last landslide death was in 2008

it seems like such a simple thing but I admit I was awestruck by what they did

May 1, 2025 at 4:41pmWeb
Show threadbabble encatMay 1, 2025
@technomancy @jk nifty 👀
Show thread"Mediocre Bunny" EvelynMay 1, 2025

@technomancy @jk That is so cool.

My rescue cat became a rescue due to a deadly landslide that killed 41 people, her former humans among them, (Which, I love her and that she's my cat; but I would also have loved her being happily unbeknownst to me while still living with her former living people who, in this scenario, would still be livingly alive.)

The slide was human-caused: no one should ever have logged that slope, and no one should ever have built a town at the foot of it. 41 people would be alive today if Washington state had as much sense* as Hong Kong.

*and as few politically-entrenched logging interests

Show threadAlex Celeste, Princess Consort of BurnoutMay 4, 2025

@technomancy a family member worked on this project! 💙 i didn't really understand the descriptions at all, but it was extremely cool work. visited HK several years ago and as we went around the city on the bus it was a lot of "yeah i needed to shotcrete that slope... and that one ... that one's actually stable as-is even though it looks bad ... we had an argument over the work here ..." etc
felt like they rebuilt half the mountain

@jk

Show threadtechnomancyMay 4, 2025
@erisceleste that's so cool that you got to hear the insider story behind it
Show threadTim RuppertMay 6, 2025
@technomancy @jk
Outstanding! So happy to see good government and sound engineering teamed up to produce such impressive results and lives saved. We can take risk reduction seriously, AND, we can still have nice things!
#CivilEningeering #geotechincal #SoilMechanics
Show threadSK53May 6, 2025

@technomancy @jk I've seen workmen maintaining one of these on Mount Davis Road. Vegetation and any soil are hosed off and a fresh layer of concrete sprayed on. Looking at the location on Google Maps there seem to be other geotechnical slope stabilisers there too https://maps.app.goo.gl/CsiTjYhr2cqq5K6j8.

It may keep slopes stable, but there must be tremendous surface run-off during typhoons. I'd expect they need high capacity storm drains as well.

Bevor Sie zu Google Maps weitergehen

Show threadRashMay 7, 2025
@technomancy @jk
Watch "The World of Suzie Wong" to see why this legislation was enacted.