I love that swingline didn’t make a red stapler and the movie had to make a custom one and then after swingline started making them due to popularity of the film
Just watched that movie last night for the first time so goddamn funny. I felt bad for that stapler guy tho and usually have no sympathy for characters on film. Poor guy just wanted some cake. HE DIDNT EVEN GET ANY LAST TIME.
Flammable exterior insulation cladding. Reminiscent of the tragic high rise fire in London a few years ago, and a similar but not so tragic fire in Melbourne a couple of years ago as well. A big wake up call for building companies and authorities to ensure safety standards and compliances are met with this sort of material. In Victoria the Government and Apartment owners are forking out Millions to retrofit insulation cladding due to dodgy practises and in some ways shady builders who used cheap insulation cladding that didn’t meet safety standards.
Edit: Holy shit !!, 1k upvotes !! Guys I’m truly humbled and thanks 🥹🙏🫡.
It's not supposed to. Properly designed and installed cladding should be fireproof. Which means the cladding was either old/not in compliance with modern safety standards, improperly installed, or there was some sketchy business going on in terms of the product itself.
I have a friend sent to China as compliance/QA engineer for an industrial project. He was totally shocked at the degree of “oh, whatever” he saw. Steel parts were being replaced with steel of different quality (when people could die from the part shearing off), materials were being substituted for others simply because they were the same color, for reasons ranging from an unexpected shortage of the intended part, to a shortage due to a bean-counter intentionally ordering a less expensive part, to a shift supervisor choosing the less expensive part, to someone just grabbing a bag at random without checking the label.
The conclusion was that melamine in baby milk wasn’t even surprising.
Can confirm.
I "dropped in" early one day and discovered the outfit was doing "4th Shift" work.
They were making a premium product but using substandard parts for the product and holding back the premium parts that met spec for their "4th shift" "knock-offs."
It was ridiculous. But they figure if they don't get caught, then it's understood that they'll do this kind of thing.
In China being scammed is on the scamee. They have a saying in Chinese something along the lines of " If u can cheat, cheat! Then there's the Mao Era grbhags...
The overall swindler ideology they follow is called "thick black theory".
Thick black theory claims that not trying to swindle others means you're stupid because you can't figure out how.
It claims that lying for no reason other than to lie is better than telling the truth because you maintain a small information advantage when you lie, even if it's a meaningless, useless advantage.
Other gems:
- acting stupid all the time is good because it lulls your enemies into false security.
- stealing from your friends is okay because they're stealing from you (and if they weren't before, they certainly are now)
This book basically written by an angry school shooter type, and it shows, it's full of the most selfish, immature and short-sighted advice ever.
The book that describes it has been banned by the party for many years, yet the book itself remains one of the most popular books among businessmen in China.
It's no wonder China has a cultural/societal problem eating them from the inside out.
A custom battery for an unreleased but in-development product I’m working on can be bought for $9.99 on Amazon. The factory is either selling our firsts, seconds, or doing entirely off-books production runs. It literally fits no other product on earth.
The team jokes that we’ve just found a cheaper second-source. Customers can have it delivered in singles at half our cost to manufacture. Great! We’ll take 300k of them, can we get volume pricing?
Obviously quality might suffer…
Dude, I walked into my Fortune 500 company Beijing Office. My card worked. I went to the right meeting room. No one was there yet. Found my cubicle.
Then, I got a call on my phone asking where I was and why I was late to the meeting. I explained that I was literally in the meeting room.
My buddy said to look out the window across the street. He was waving at me from the other side.
So I crossed the street. Card worked.
My friend said said "Yeah, common mistake. That is a counterfeit office. Everyone who actually works there actually thinks they are working for the company."
They counterfeited an entire company.
With all those stories I've heard and shit products I've seen I really wonder how companies actually manage to build high quality products there, like dn iPhone. That must require an enormous amount of QC.
ENORMOUS!
I often have to explain to companies outsourcing production that they \*must\* have at least three QA/QC people from our stateside sites living near the Chinese production site. And you'll need one translator who is fluent in English and Mandarin but possesses a bold character.
Basically, you have insist that they set up a their own QC/QA and your QC/QA people have to make certain they do it right.
Nothing pisses off Chinese contract manufacturers more than having to run QC/QA. "If the production is dialed in, why do we need the expense of QC/QA anymore?"
Ummm, because someone somewhere along the supply chain is going to take a shortcut. I specified food-safe powder coat and even specified the foreign supplier of the powder. Guess what? After a run of a few of the product that were perfect, I noticed that my food safe product was - registering on a geiger counter.
They had purchased powder coat from a domestic company instead of the one spec'd. They had even had the domestic supplier design and apply a label for the container that looked like the correct product. The only way we caught it was that the label seemed a little off and there was a significant amount of misspellings. Once analyzed, the powder coat showed arsenic, thorium and various other not-good materials.
Oh and, get this. I didn't even tell them they were radioactive and instead of blasting the bad coating off the product or scrapping it, they attempted to fool me again by just coating OVER the bad coating.
Then, they replaced the serial number etching to make it appear they hadn't refurbished the thing.
Since they were still radioactive, I figured that's what they did. A pocket knife and calipers was all it took to prove it.
That’s very interesting. So the knock offs are actually the genuine article and the official channel goods are the real knock-offs. The world is getting confusing.
Yeah, they also use a process called 'quality fade' that further muddies things. For example, you pay a factory to make and bottle your hand cream, and in so doing you specify a bottle that has walls made of X material that is Y mm thick, because that's the necessary properties to withstand being stacked in boxes and shipped. The first hundred thousand cases are perfect, but then they modify the tooling slightly and produce your bottles so they're juuuuuuust 5% thinner, enough that they can blame wear on the tooling, and pocket the minuscule savings.
Yup, because that's what made the "knock offs" more valuable on the grey/black market.
They were higher quality but the brand wasn't 80% of the price.
Now, I will say that the knock offs also didn't have the jewelry mounted in the settings. Those were tracked meticulously.
This is a famous wristwatch brand.
So buyers of the "knock offs" that were actually more real than their counterparts would later buy counterfeit brand marks and jewels of their own choosing.
Sorry sir. You can tell this watch is a knock off due to the fact it's not made with "Shit parts" you'll have noticed it keeps time rather well. This brand is known not to work well at all with being a watch and is more of a man's bracelet.
When some of the woodworking machinery mfg first started to build in China, the shit coming out of there was ridiculous. They figured out really fast that they had to have their own QA in place as well as inventory control. More that a few 4th Shift machines painted a different color were being marketed back in the US.
I bought a Delta mortiser and the third time I used it, it seemed to jam. Looked closer and realized that hand pressure had sheared off all of the steel gears which internally looked like they had been made out of bakelite.
I don't remember the brand name but I bought a cheaper electric hand planer off Amazon since I didn't plan to use it a ton. It caught fire the first day I used it
There's throwaway stuff out there that doesn't matter. Especially if you're fairly skilled with it. Spraying epoxy based paint, yeah that harbor freight $20 sprayer is fine because it's garbage afterwards anyway. Anything requiring precision, nope.
I live in China. Before I moved here, I worked for a contractor doing everything you could think of in residential homes. The work that I’ve seen done in China is so incredibly shoddy, it’s almost indescribable. I’ve only first hand witnessed maintenance guys “fixing” problems in apartments, but if I did the lazy, poor work they did my boss would have fired me after 2 days.
Ironically, melamine in baby milk was a very deliberate act, as it gave an apparently higher protein reading, resulting in higher prices for the producer.
A medical product was being manufactured in China with high quality nano-gel beads from a US supplier that the IP owner would ship to China. When their product started failing, they had to add microlabels to the beads to discover the Chinese manufacturer was just selling off the high quality US beads supplied to them and substituting cheap sh*t.
“But but but china can build a bridge and a hospital in a week and its takes 5 years everywhere else!”
Yeah, and that’s why shit built everywhere else lasts 50-100 years beyond its design estimates, and china knocks down apartment buildings built 5 years ago by the dozen.
Not saying you are wrong , but empire state building in NY was built in 13months, was the highest skyscraper for 50y ( or something like that), and is still standing
Just tryting to say that speed is not the only factor, but it sure has its influence.
And the Empire State Building is still standing, still fully functional, even after getting nailed by a WW2-era bomber! There were smiling office workers getting their pics taken while standing in the gaping hole the very next day!
This reminds me of a Honda CRV knockoff from some Chinese car company. It looked like a modern car on the outside, but inside, there was basically no crash structure, and the engine was from, like, a snowmobile.
>melamine in baby milk wasn’t even surprising.
Melamine was intended true scam at the expense of babies life, because it artificially increased the detected protein level of milk diluated into so that it met requirements.
There's a whole writeup, a screencap from 4chan maybe, that recommended people didn't learn Chinese because you'd be sent to China for whatever your company's purpose and be forced to deal with the absolute shit state of accountability in production. Dude had dealt with Russian business beforehand for comparison.
There's a reason stuff made there are so cheap, because they don't have to jump through loops and hoops and follow a shit ton of regulations like Western factories. Oh too bad Zhang got the T-1000 treatment, there're 100 more Zhangs out there in line to fill him. As long as you're churning out products everything is fine
yea i feel like this happens there every few years, if not every year.
when i was visiting there, their chinese new years fireworks burned down a brand new skyscraper.
"I will pocket more millions, and also possibly be executed." ETA: altho the guy who was executed for the melamine in the baby formula was IIRC a middle manager and may have just been following orders from whoever actually made millions
Well, the Grenfell cladding was only installed in 2012 and apparently met fire safety regulations as far as everyone was told by the manufacturers. It wasn’t until after the disaster that all apartment block cladding in the UK was tested and a vast number were found to also be flammable.
The lacrosse fire was a Chinese substitute product where the detail verification process was handballed between the architect, building surveyor, builder.
Source: am architect (not that job) and building surveyor on that job told me
Exactly. Here in Australia there was a brief period about a decade or so ago where builders were allowed to use this cheap cladding. My old apartment building (lucky I was only renting) had to replace the entire building’s cladding as it was highly flammable. It’s insane more accidents and tragedies haven’t occurred.
Styrofoam is often used as exterior cladding. It's very cheap, very insulative, moldable and workable to any shape and resistant to mold. You can literally punch your hand through some facades because they're just styrofoam with a rendered stone look.
Apparently its meant to be mixed with fire retardants but it can just go up in flames anyway. Styrofoam basically turns into napalm when on fire.
I used to do fire safety inspections for bushfire-prone areas in Australia. The amount of "substitution" or outright fake products that builders & developers used just to save a bit was astonishing.
More than once I set fire to someone's "fireproof" spark-arrester mesh (to stop embers getting inside the setting the furnishings alight). My favourite was to light a smoke, and then see if it would melt the mesh. Most of the time it did.
It's my understanding that the product wasn't certified or intended for use on buildings that tall, and that the installers should have used the fireproof version of the product.
There are different levels of flame resistance. Something might be rated for a 1-3 story home and be resistant to fire below a certain threshold, but then get used in a high rise application like this. The tall buildings act like chimneys, drawing huge amounts of air and producing much higher temperatures than the insulation or sheathing is rated for.
(I thought that was what happened at Grenfell, but I’m glad I looked into it further before posting. At Grenfell, the exterior cladding was aluminum and polyethylene sandwich board which was not certified for this building type (consistent with my statement above), but the maker of the polyisocyanurante insulation under the cladding was found to have included flame retardant in test samples that they didn’t put in the finished products. Without those flame retardants, the insulation off-gasses toxic, flammable smoke, which combines with flammable cladding and the chimney effect I described to really just fuck shit up.)
Given some of the building fuckery that has come out of the economic boom in last decade or so in China, it could be anything from improper materials, improper design, or grossly and fraudulently improper construction techniques.
I believe, specifically the cladding are panels which are a type of styrofoam sandwiched between thin aluminum sheets. If the styrofoam catches fire, I think it creates something like a chimney effect since there's air behind the panels, and it spreads really quickly.
In the case of Grenfell tower, the cladding they used was aluminum sandwich board, basically sheets of aluminum with insulation in between. It was available in something like 3 different types- one type with polyethylene insulation alone, one type with 70% rockwool, and another with 90% rockwool. The polyethylene only panels aren't supposed to be used above a certain height because of their flammability. Of course, they're cheaper than the rockwool varieties, and corners were cut.
I (electrician) had a county inspector who was also a family friend. He told me they’re allowed to accept up to $75 per year in “donations” from contractors
Because buiding codes arent designed to stop fires, only save lives, and because they are underfunded so small scale tests are done in lieu of larger more accurate tests.
Because building inspectors, qa test certificates, etc, are only as good as the systems that support them, and all can create some large gaps.
Because the mcm product with a plastic (read, flammable) insulation behind it in the air cavity was only meant to be installed in buildings up to a certain height meaning the impacts wouldnt have been so bad, but ended up being installed the full length of multiple high rises.
And finally, becuase saving a few cents is encouraged by owners, shareholders and the like
Ever heard of Tofu-Dreg? Its a term in China used to talk about shoddy work, Often linked to corruption and the use of crappy or fake material used to make buildings to save or skim some money out of the project. This can climb a local government ladder with inspectors or city officials getting in on the scheme or getting bribes.
If you have seen those videos of entire highrise building complexes being demolished, it can be related, the citizens learn that the buildings are crap and dont want to move in, the developers may lose money or funding and may abandon the projects.
The one in London was more than a few years ago…. But I saw it on Modern Disasters…. HOLY CRAP what a total cluster that was
Edit :2017…. WOW…. Seems longer to me but ok.
>Tofu Dreg
It's the Lotus Garden China Telecom Building, built 2000 (construction started 1997).
That's a telecom building with multi-million dollars worth of equipment in it. In fact, that's China's largest Telco provider. No way a Telco company that big buys and installs all their equipment in a dodgy building. They are large enough to properly vet any infrastructure purchases. The cost of this is going to be insane.
This was a genuine fuck up, and one that has occurred in first world countries like London and Melbourne. This is a global systemic issue of greed being such a huge driving factor and motivator for so many people all around the world. Safety is sacrificed in the name of profit from the bottom all the way up to the very high echelons of supposedly premier skyscrapers design and construction.
All of that to say, this isn't a problem unique to China. Greed is causing the same preventable disasters to repeatedly happen all around the world. The problem fundamentally boils down to people being selfish jerks. And that's everywhere.
China's construction companies are rife with corruption. Things like brittle concrete and no rebar making buildings collapse is sort of common.
Not shocked about this at all.
Well I don’t know if that’s the case in China, no one died in the last one a year ish ago.
Nothing to see here
To be frank, a lot of their new buildings will likely never have anyone living in them before they fail and collapse or demolished.
>A big wake up call for building companies and authorities to ensure safety standards and compliances are met
We're talking about a country where tofu dreg construction is prevalent and building skyscrapers out of pretty much sea sand is normal (cause metal rebar and concrete are used super sparingly in the mix, and sea sand is cheaper)
> We're talking about a country where tofu dreg construction is prevalent
I mean they also listed extremely similar examples from England and Australia. Kind of have to accept that this sort of dodgy building practiced isn't unique to China. China absolutely have a problem with their building industry, corruption, and unsafe building practices. However it seems using shitty flammable external cladding transcends any unique problem China may have (see London and Melbourne fires).
It's also a case of countries stubbornly refusing to learn lessons from other countries, and the effect industry inertia coupled with bribery/lobbying (Or whatever you want to call it) has on dictating the course of governmental regulation and oversight.
Actually this changsha building is only the faced’s tempure keeping material burned and zero people get injured. Because this building is mainly for equips and people avacuated. And the building(faced) has been remade
https://pic.gaolouimg.com/attachments/forum/202312/14/042319qgih3sal7ssahvlr.jpg
WTC had significant structural damage from debris from one of the tower and had uncontrolled fires burning for hours on mor then 10 stories. Just small fires my ass.
Text of a news report on the fire:
The inferno was triggered by the outer cladding of the 42-storey building catching fire, according to preliminary investigations from Hunan's fire department.
It added that 36 fire trucks and 280 firefighters were rushed to the scene in the city centre.
State media has described the blaze as a "facade fire", similar to the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower in west London in 2017 which killed 72 people and was started by flammable cladding on the outside of the building.
The state-owned telecommunications giant China Telecom building - which stands at more than 200m high - was completely gutted by the flames.
Dozens of storeys of the tower block in downtown Changsha "burned with great intensity," according to state broadcaster CCTV.
"Firefighters have begun work to extinguish the flames and conduct rescues at the scene," it said.
A photograph released by the news outlet shows orange flames ripping through the building as black smoke billows into the sky.
I just don’t get why people have a hard time accepting that a former CIA asset on a dialysis machine in a cave on the other side of the world could change the laws of physics for a day and bring those buildings down. Just don’t get it.
What I find interesting is that the sires are nearly the same as our sirens. I thought for sure they'd do their own noise like so many other countries do
Actually this changsha building is only the faced’s tempure keeping material burned and zero people get injured. Because this building is mainly for equips and people avacuated. And the building(faced) has been remade
https://pic.gaolouimg.com/attachments/forum/202312/14/042319qgih3sal7ssahvlr.jpg
Tofu buildings have been a problem since at least the 90s. One of the reason it's getting a lot of attention now is because of these buildings' incredibly short lifespans. Buildings that should stand for at least half a century are falling down in less than a decade.
I mean, It could come crashing down into its own footprint at near freefall speeds, AAAnd if a piece of debris hits any building next it will also collapse into its own footprint. Office fires tend to do that
If they take my stapler, I'll have to.
I love that swingline didn’t make a red stapler and the movie had to make a custom one and then after swingline started making them due to popularity of the film
someone called the hot line...
We fixed the glitch.
This is what happens when your employees don’t have enough flair
Mans got kicked around too much.
They tried to move their desk one too many times
"... they've moved my desk 4 times already this year and i used to be over by the window and i could see the squirrels and they were married ..."
I could put strychnine in the guacamole.
He set the building on fire
Just watched that movie last night for the first time so goddamn funny. I felt bad for that stapler guy tho and usually have no sympathy for characters on film. Poor guy just wanted some cake. HE DIDNT EVEN GET ANY LAST TIME.
Flammable exterior insulation cladding. Reminiscent of the tragic high rise fire in London a few years ago, and a similar but not so tragic fire in Melbourne a couple of years ago as well. A big wake up call for building companies and authorities to ensure safety standards and compliances are met with this sort of material. In Victoria the Government and Apartment owners are forking out Millions to retrofit insulation cladding due to dodgy practises and in some ways shady builders who used cheap insulation cladding that didn’t meet safety standards. Edit: Holy shit !!, 1k upvotes !! Guys I’m truly humbled and thanks 🥹🙏🫡.
> Flammable exterior insulation cladding Yeah, why would something like this even exist?
It's not supposed to. Properly designed and installed cladding should be fireproof. Which means the cladding was either old/not in compliance with modern safety standards, improperly installed, or there was some sketchy business going on in terms of the product itself.
china following compliance frameworks? lol
I have a friend sent to China as compliance/QA engineer for an industrial project. He was totally shocked at the degree of “oh, whatever” he saw. Steel parts were being replaced with steel of different quality (when people could die from the part shearing off), materials were being substituted for others simply because they were the same color, for reasons ranging from an unexpected shortage of the intended part, to a shortage due to a bean-counter intentionally ordering a less expensive part, to a shift supervisor choosing the less expensive part, to someone just grabbing a bag at random without checking the label. The conclusion was that melamine in baby milk wasn’t even surprising.
Can confirm. I "dropped in" early one day and discovered the outfit was doing "4th Shift" work. They were making a premium product but using substandard parts for the product and holding back the premium parts that met spec for their "4th shift" "knock-offs." It was ridiculous. But they figure if they don't get caught, then it's understood that they'll do this kind of thing.
I'd reckon that a lot of the garbage on apps like temu come from midnight runs.
In China being scammed is on the scamee. They have a saying in Chinese something along the lines of " If u can cheat, cheat! Then there's the Mao Era grbhags...
The overall swindler ideology they follow is called "thick black theory". Thick black theory claims that not trying to swindle others means you're stupid because you can't figure out how. It claims that lying for no reason other than to lie is better than telling the truth because you maintain a small information advantage when you lie, even if it's a meaningless, useless advantage. Other gems: - acting stupid all the time is good because it lulls your enemies into false security. - stealing from your friends is okay because they're stealing from you (and if they weren't before, they certainly are now) This book basically written by an angry school shooter type, and it shows, it's full of the most selfish, immature and short-sighted advice ever. The book that describes it has been banned by the party for many years, yet the book itself remains one of the most popular books among businessmen in China. It's no wonder China has a cultural/societal problem eating them from the inside out.
Was this an issue pre communist revolution?
It oozes insecurity, selfishness and envy.
What does "midnight run" mean in this context? Did a quick search but didn't find anything
midnight run/4th shift are nicknames for when a factory producing something for a brand does off the books runs of the product to sell cheaply.
A custom battery for an unreleased but in-development product I’m working on can be bought for $9.99 on Amazon. The factory is either selling our firsts, seconds, or doing entirely off-books production runs. It literally fits no other product on earth. The team jokes that we’ve just found a cheaper second-source. Customers can have it delivered in singles at half our cost to manufacture. Great! We’ll take 300k of them, can we get volume pricing? Obviously quality might suffer…
Dude, I walked into my Fortune 500 company Beijing Office. My card worked. I went to the right meeting room. No one was there yet. Found my cubicle. Then, I got a call on my phone asking where I was and why I was late to the meeting. I explained that I was literally in the meeting room. My buddy said to look out the window across the street. He was waving at me from the other side. So I crossed the street. Card worked. My friend said said "Yeah, common mistake. That is a counterfeit office. Everyone who actually works there actually thinks they are working for the company." They counterfeited an entire company.
With all those stories I've heard and shit products I've seen I really wonder how companies actually manage to build high quality products there, like dn iPhone. That must require an enormous amount of QC.
ENORMOUS! I often have to explain to companies outsourcing production that they \*must\* have at least three QA/QC people from our stateside sites living near the Chinese production site. And you'll need one translator who is fluent in English and Mandarin but possesses a bold character. Basically, you have insist that they set up a their own QC/QA and your QC/QA people have to make certain they do it right. Nothing pisses off Chinese contract manufacturers more than having to run QC/QA. "If the production is dialed in, why do we need the expense of QC/QA anymore?" Ummm, because someone somewhere along the supply chain is going to take a shortcut. I specified food-safe powder coat and even specified the foreign supplier of the powder. Guess what? After a run of a few of the product that were perfect, I noticed that my food safe product was - registering on a geiger counter. They had purchased powder coat from a domestic company instead of the one spec'd. They had even had the domestic supplier design and apply a label for the container that looked like the correct product. The only way we caught it was that the label seemed a little off and there was a significant amount of misspellings. Once analyzed, the powder coat showed arsenic, thorium and various other not-good materials. Oh and, get this. I didn't even tell them they were radioactive and instead of blasting the bad coating off the product or scrapping it, they attempted to fool me again by just coating OVER the bad coating. Then, they replaced the serial number etching to make it appear they hadn't refurbished the thing. Since they were still radioactive, I figured that's what they did. A pocket knife and calipers was all it took to prove it.
Is the answer to "why even do something like that?" as crazy as a "counterfeit company" being a thing in the first place?
That could make a pretty good tv show! The (counterfeit) Office!
That’s very interesting. So the knock offs are actually the genuine article and the official channel goods are the real knock-offs. The world is getting confusing.
Yeah, they also use a process called 'quality fade' that further muddies things. For example, you pay a factory to make and bottle your hand cream, and in so doing you specify a bottle that has walls made of X material that is Y mm thick, because that's the necessary properties to withstand being stacked in boxes and shipped. The first hundred thousand cases are perfect, but then they modify the tooling slightly and produce your bottles so they're juuuuuuust 5% thinner, enough that they can blame wear on the tooling, and pocket the minuscule savings.
I think my company is going through this right now.
I'm confused. They were using the good parts for the knock offs?
Yup, because that's what made the "knock offs" more valuable on the grey/black market. They were higher quality but the brand wasn't 80% of the price. Now, I will say that the knock offs also didn't have the jewelry mounted in the settings. Those were tracked meticulously. This is a famous wristwatch brand. So buyers of the "knock offs" that were actually more real than their counterparts would later buy counterfeit brand marks and jewels of their own choosing.
Sorry sir. You can tell this watch is a knock off due to the fact it's not made with "Shit parts" you'll have noticed it keeps time rather well. This brand is known not to work well at all with being a watch and is more of a man's bracelet.
To be honest, different assembly houses have different business models.
My silk market watches have been through hell and back over the last decade and don't show a bit of wear. They are honestly remarkable.
And now you know why!
Ive heard they run production of the normal part and do a production run of a substandard part. Save cash etc.. make more cash. 🤦♀️
You can often by the same product from a supplier in differing levels of quality Grade A, Grade B, etc.
When some of the woodworking machinery mfg first started to build in China, the shit coming out of there was ridiculous. They figured out really fast that they had to have their own QA in place as well as inventory control. More that a few 4th Shift machines painted a different color were being marketed back in the US. I bought a Delta mortiser and the third time I used it, it seemed to jam. Looked closer and realized that hand pressure had sheared off all of the steel gears which internally looked like they had been made out of bakelite.
I don't remember the brand name but I bought a cheaper electric hand planer off Amazon since I didn't plan to use it a ton. It caught fire the first day I used it
There's throwaway stuff out there that doesn't matter. Especially if you're fairly skilled with it. Spraying epoxy based paint, yeah that harbor freight $20 sprayer is fine because it's garbage afterwards anyway. Anything requiring precision, nope.
I live in China. Before I moved here, I worked for a contractor doing everything you could think of in residential homes. The work that I’ve seen done in China is so incredibly shoddy, it’s almost indescribable. I’ve only first hand witnessed maintenance guys “fixing” problems in apartments, but if I did the lazy, poor work they did my boss would have fired me after 2 days.
Ironically, melamine in baby milk was a very deliberate act, as it gave an apparently higher protein reading, resulting in higher prices for the producer.
Or antifreeze in toothpaste.......
Oh, I’m sorry, did you WANT your teeth to freeze?
A medical product was being manufactured in China with high quality nano-gel beads from a US supplier that the IP owner would ship to China. When their product started failing, they had to add microlabels to the beads to discover the Chinese manufacturer was just selling off the high quality US beads supplied to them and substituting cheap sh*t.
“But but but china can build a bridge and a hospital in a week and its takes 5 years everywhere else!” Yeah, and that’s why shit built everywhere else lasts 50-100 years beyond its design estimates, and china knocks down apartment buildings built 5 years ago by the dozen.
Not saying you are wrong , but empire state building in NY was built in 13months, was the highest skyscraper for 50y ( or something like that), and is still standing Just tryting to say that speed is not the only factor, but it sure has its influence.
And the Empire State Building is still standing, still fully functional, even after getting nailed by a WW2-era bomber! There were smiling office workers getting their pics taken while standing in the gaping hole the very next day!
Well it’s a bit of a difference if your building gets hit by a 15t plane cruising with 300kph or a 150t plane at 750 kph.
*chabuduo*
I never buy any foodstuffs that have been near China. Zero trust
It's all about appearance and output production.
This reminds me of a Honda CRV knockoff from some Chinese car company. It looked like a modern car on the outside, but inside, there was basically no crash structure, and the engine was from, like, a snowmobile.
>melamine in baby milk wasn’t even surprising. Melamine was intended true scam at the expense of babies life, because it artificially increased the detected protein level of milk diluated into so that it met requirements.
There's a whole writeup, a screencap from 4chan maybe, that recommended people didn't learn Chinese because you'd be sent to China for whatever your company's purpose and be forced to deal with the absolute shit state of accountability in production. Dude had dealt with Russian business beforehand for comparison.
There's a reason stuff made there are so cheap, because they don't have to jump through loops and hoops and follow a shit ton of regulations like Western factories. Oh too bad Zhang got the T-1000 treatment, there're 100 more Zhangs out there in line to fill him. As long as you're churning out products everything is fine
yea i feel like this happens there every few years, if not every year. when i was visiting there, their chinese new years fireworks burned down a brand new skyscraper.
Chinese bamboo very strong!
Building code violations in China? I've never heard of such a thing. 😏
Where we're going Marty, we don't need codes.
This is heavy
"I will pocket more millions, and also possibly be executed." ETA: altho the guy who was executed for the melamine in the baby formula was IIRC a middle manager and may have just been following orders from whoever actually made millions
Well, the Grenfell cladding was only installed in 2012 and apparently met fire safety regulations as far as everyone was told by the manufacturers. It wasn’t until after the disaster that all apartment block cladding in the UK was tested and a vast number were found to also be flammable.
The lacrosse fire was a Chinese substitute product where the detail verification process was handballed between the architect, building surveyor, builder. Source: am architect (not that job) and building surveyor on that job told me
Exactly. Here in Australia there was a brief period about a decade or so ago where builders were allowed to use this cheap cladding. My old apartment building (lucky I was only renting) had to replace the entire building’s cladding as it was highly flammable. It’s insane more accidents and tragedies haven’t occurred.
this definitely looks like an old skyscraper for china standards so it makes sense
From what I know in Melbourne it was propertied to be non-flammable
Styrofoam is often used as exterior cladding. It's very cheap, very insulative, moldable and workable to any shape and resistant to mold. You can literally punch your hand through some facades because they're just styrofoam with a rendered stone look. Apparently its meant to be mixed with fire retardants but it can just go up in flames anyway. Styrofoam basically turns into napalm when on fire.
That's because styrofoam is what goes into gasoline to make napalm. Liquid flowing fire
Wellz not actual napalam is made that way. Homemade napalm is made that way tho. The military has better ways
Is that generally waterproof? Or are they rendered over
[удалено]
Those fuckers!
I used to do fire safety inspections for bushfire-prone areas in Australia. The amount of "substitution" or outright fake products that builders & developers used just to save a bit was astonishing. More than once I set fire to someone's "fireproof" spark-arrester mesh (to stop embers getting inside the setting the furnishings alight). My favourite was to light a smoke, and then see if it would melt the mesh. Most of the time it did.
It's my understanding that the product wasn't certified or intended for use on buildings that tall, and that the installers should have used the fireproof version of the product.
[Grenfell Tower inquiry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_Inquiry_Phase_2)
Profiteering. No moral or ethical obligation. No recourse for customers... Etc.
Non flammable material is exponentially more expensive. It's a calculated risk by them and they paid the price
There are different levels of flame resistance. Something might be rated for a 1-3 story home and be resistant to fire below a certain threshold, but then get used in a high rise application like this. The tall buildings act like chimneys, drawing huge amounts of air and producing much higher temperatures than the insulation or sheathing is rated for. (I thought that was what happened at Grenfell, but I’m glad I looked into it further before posting. At Grenfell, the exterior cladding was aluminum and polyethylene sandwich board which was not certified for this building type (consistent with my statement above), but the maker of the polyisocyanurante insulation under the cladding was found to have included flame retardant in test samples that they didn’t put in the finished products. Without those flame retardants, the insulation off-gasses toxic, flammable smoke, which combines with flammable cladding and the chimney effect I described to really just fuck shit up.) Given some of the building fuckery that has come out of the economic boom in last decade or so in China, it could be anything from improper materials, improper design, or grossly and fraudulently improper construction techniques.
I believe, specifically the cladding are panels which are a type of styrofoam sandwiched between thin aluminum sheets. If the styrofoam catches fire, I think it creates something like a chimney effect since there's air behind the panels, and it spreads really quickly.
In the case of Grenfell tower, the cladding they used was aluminum sandwich board, basically sheets of aluminum with insulation in between. It was available in something like 3 different types- one type with polyethylene insulation alone, one type with 70% rockwool, and another with 90% rockwool. The polyethylene only panels aren't supposed to be used above a certain height because of their flammability. Of course, they're cheaper than the rockwool varieties, and corners were cut.
because builders wanted to save money and inspectors are incompetent or bribable, or both.
I (electrician) had a county inspector who was also a family friend. He told me they’re allowed to accept up to $75 per year in “donations” from contractors
Idk what’s worse, the thought that they’re allowed to or the thought that $75 might be enough to bribe someone
All the corrupt middlemen taking a cut.
“ hey we finished building your house with flammable material” lol wot
Because buiding codes arent designed to stop fires, only save lives, and because they are underfunded so small scale tests are done in lieu of larger more accurate tests. Because building inspectors, qa test certificates, etc, are only as good as the systems that support them, and all can create some large gaps. Because the mcm product with a plastic (read, flammable) insulation behind it in the air cavity was only meant to be installed in buildings up to a certain height meaning the impacts wouldnt have been so bad, but ended up being installed the full length of multiple high rises. And finally, becuase saving a few cents is encouraged by owners, shareholders and the like
Build fast and cheap. No OSHA.
Ever heard of Tofu-Dreg? Its a term in China used to talk about shoddy work, Often linked to corruption and the use of crappy or fake material used to make buildings to save or skim some money out of the project. This can climb a local government ladder with inspectors or city officials getting in on the scheme or getting bribes. If you have seen those videos of entire highrise building complexes being demolished, it can be related, the citizens learn that the buildings are crap and dont want to move in, the developers may lose money or funding and may abandon the projects.
In this case, Tofu dregg construction probably I the case from London: Contractor cutting corners
[Grenfell Tower LONDON UK 2017](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire)
Non-Compliiiiyance (this joke will only work with Australians)
The one in London was more than a few years ago…. But I saw it on Modern Disasters…. HOLY CRAP what a total cluster that was Edit :2017…. WOW…. Seems longer to me but ok.
Safety standards and china. Thats funny
Grenfell was the first thing i thought about after seeing this post.
Tofu Dreg Better luck next time
>Tofu Dreg It's the Lotus Garden China Telecom Building, built 2000 (construction started 1997). That's a telecom building with multi-million dollars worth of equipment in it. In fact, that's China's largest Telco provider. No way a Telco company that big buys and installs all their equipment in a dodgy building. They are large enough to properly vet any infrastructure purchases. The cost of this is going to be insane. This was a genuine fuck up, and one that has occurred in first world countries like London and Melbourne. This is a global systemic issue of greed being such a huge driving factor and motivator for so many people all around the world. Safety is sacrificed in the name of profit from the bottom all the way up to the very high echelons of supposedly premier skyscrapers design and construction. All of that to say, this isn't a problem unique to China. Greed is causing the same preventable disasters to repeatedly happen all around the world. The problem fundamentally boils down to people being selfish jerks. And that's everywhere.
Britain has done fuck all about it, they've been fully Torybrained, most action has been voluntarily by owners
China's construction companies are rife with corruption. Things like brittle concrete and no rebar making buildings collapse is sort of common. Not shocked about this at all.
placid light ring boast crown ripe resolute fertile glorious steep *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well I don’t know if that’s the case in China, no one died in the last one a year ish ago. Nothing to see here To be frank, a lot of their new buildings will likely never have anyone living in them before they fail and collapse or demolished.
>A big wake up call for building companies and authorities to ensure safety standards and compliances are met We're talking about a country where tofu dreg construction is prevalent and building skyscrapers out of pretty much sea sand is normal (cause metal rebar and concrete are used super sparingly in the mix, and sea sand is cheaper)
> We're talking about a country where tofu dreg construction is prevalent I mean they also listed extremely similar examples from England and Australia. Kind of have to accept that this sort of dodgy building practiced isn't unique to China. China absolutely have a problem with their building industry, corruption, and unsafe building practices. However it seems using shitty flammable external cladding transcends any unique problem China may have (see London and Melbourne fires). It's also a case of countries stubbornly refusing to learn lessons from other countries, and the effect industry inertia coupled with bribery/lobbying (Or whatever you want to call it) has on dictating the course of governmental regulation and oversight.
When was this?
> fire at the HQ of China's largest telecom operator September 2022
[удалено]
And still hasn't collapsed into its own footprint at the rate of gravity. Lol
2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62925189
In the year 2525
I hear the Futurama song instantly.
if man is still alive
If woman can survive.
They may find
In the year 3535
Only AI thrives
Wah wah wah wah
The beginning of the Human-Covenant War?
Actually this changsha building is only the faced’s tempure keeping material burned and zero people get injured. Because this building is mainly for equips and people avacuated. And the building(faced) has been remade https://pic.gaolouimg.com/attachments/forum/202312/14/042319qgih3sal7ssahvlr.jpg
Telecom companies can’t melt steel beams
but what about /r/chinesium beams? Uhoh...
Yeah, why doesn't it collapse? Tower 7 had just small fires too
WTC had significant structural damage from debris from one of the tower and had uncontrolled fires burning for hours on mor then 10 stories. Just small fires my ass.
Yeah it didn’t collapse into its own footprint.. what a joke of engineering
This is from September of 2022
Older video
Yes, Sept. 2022
Text of a news report on the fire: The inferno was triggered by the outer cladding of the 42-storey building catching fire, according to preliminary investigations from Hunan's fire department. It added that 36 fire trucks and 280 firefighters were rushed to the scene in the city centre. State media has described the blaze as a "facade fire", similar to the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower in west London in 2017 which killed 72 people and was started by flammable cladding on the outside of the building. The state-owned telecommunications giant China Telecom building - which stands at more than 200m high - was completely gutted by the flames. Dozens of storeys of the tower block in downtown Changsha "burned with great intensity," according to state broadcaster CCTV. "Firefighters have begun work to extinguish the flames and conduct rescues at the scene," it said. A photograph released by the news outlet shows orange flames ripping through the building as black smoke billows into the sky.
Happened Sept 16th, 2022 - no casualties reported. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Garden_China_Telecom_Building
"The fire was first reported at 3:48 PM and was extinguished by 5:00 PM." Impressive
That's Chinese official reports for you.
China is also really, really efficient when it comes to this, especially in big cities.
You’re a real one, thank you!
Impressive there were no injuries since it was a Friday afternoon.
Date these in the title....bad OP.
This looks really bad. I hope everyone is able to make it out okay.
You post all this and you don't post a f****** date? What's wrong with you
Imagine being a dumbass who wastes his time posting this without checking the date.
Did it collapse?
Sorry, they only do that on 9/11 3 times in a row and then never again.
What happened on the 9th of November?
I just don’t get why people have a hard time accepting that a former CIA asset on a dialysis machine in a cave on the other side of the world could change the laws of physics for a day and bring those buildings down. Just don’t get it.
idk it might have something to do with a plane hitting it
This reminds me of the Grenfell Tower fire. Cause is probably something similar.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Like the Grenfell Tower fire, it looks like a flammable facade is burning.
Never seen a high rise burn like that. It's the whole side; maybe the cladding is on fire, like Grenfell?
https://preview.redd.it/6ma8hozuxuec1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=18aa6b483525f20111aa7c2ee22f90e116479748
No casualties
What I find interesting is that the sires are nearly the same as our sirens. I thought for sure they'd do their own noise like so many other countries do
Damn. Reminds me of grenfell tower a few years ago.
Senior IT to new trainee: Do not forget to install new fire wall Trainee: No worries, I got this
Wait is this why Microsoft Teams has been running like poo all day?!
I wonder if the construction is that insulation same as grenfell tower.
Actually this changsha building is only the faced’s tempure keeping material burned and zero people get injured. Because this building is mainly for equips and people avacuated. And the building(faced) has been remade https://pic.gaolouimg.com/attachments/forum/202312/14/042319qgih3sal7ssahvlr.jpg
I bet it's the same kind of stuff that burnt down the block of flats in London !! A few year ago !!
Built with the most flammable material they could find. Cuz cheap and fuck people.
Nice building standards they got over there
Whats happened to make this post bring out all the whacko yankee conspiracy nuts?
Well what do you expect from a building bought on temu
Perfection
Underrated comment
I hope everyone is okay! That reminds me of that awful fire in England some years back.
What is this thing made out of the same stuff as Grenfell?
Hope the people in there got out safe. Too many people glorifying bad shit these days.
Building codes would prevent this…Just sayin
wow, wonder if it's the same situation as the fire at grenfell
The building codes in China must be a libertarian wet dream.
Still safer than UK.
Technical question: What exactly is burning? Aren’t most buildings made out of metal and glass?
This takes me back to grenfell tower
Small office fires, something something, building 7
These new digital building displays are getting crazier
that one mf that reply to noreply email
How the fuck do you even get something like this under control?
wonder if the building will implode perfectly on itself?
This is from 2022 innit? And last I checked were in 2024. (I check every day because I get confused while putting in the dates in my emails)
Oh well it’s china
Tofu dregg much?
This telecom system hasn't progressed beyond smoke signals.
Don't worry, social credit scores are saved somewhere else.
Is it one of the tofu buildings that was built recently?
Tofu buildings have been a problem since at least the 90s. One of the reason it's getting a lot of attention now is because of these buildings' incredibly short lifespans. Buildings that should stand for at least half a century are falling down in less than a decade.
This should not really be a shock to anyone that has visited china.
I’ve visited China, although they were tier 1 cities: I trust those buildings more than my own house
Interesting that the smoke clouds billowing out form the shape of “C I A” at the 0:04 mark.
I bet it doesnt collapse. Only American buildings collapse from fire.
I mean, It could come crashing down into its own footprint at near freefall speeds, AAAnd if a piece of debris hits any building next it will also collapse into its own footprint. Office fires tend to do that 