Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/11/farmers-in-china-raising-pigs.html
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The ventilation system is designed to prevent air from circulating between floors or to other buildings. Air enters through ground channels and passes through ventilation ducts on each level. The ducts are connected to a central exhaust on the roof, with powerful extraction fans pulling the air through filters and pushing it out of 15-meter high chimneys.
They might have a slightly easier time selling the idea if they can work in some kind of biofuel angle, methinks. [Insert Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome clip.]
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Lab grown meat cannot hit the market fast enough.
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Tastes like…despair.
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I grew up in the American Mid-West only a few miles from pig farms. The smell can be quite intense for miles.
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Hogs are very similar to humans genetically. This could be a step towards a world-wide disease event.
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This is exactly what this is.
Swine Flu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swine_influenza
Maybe not day 1. But by year 3, there will be cracks in the construction, leaks, broken stifling ventilation, porcine carcasses etc.
This is most certainly a factory for disease.
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As good a use for China’s ghost cities as any.
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That was a great sitcom, ahead of its time.
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The best SF show that didn’t realize it was an SF show.
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Came to see if anyone posted about whether, from 13 floors, something, something, pigs might fly.
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Good point about how things will deteriorate from here.
Still, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on a family member’s 3000-head hog farm in the Midwest during times when prices were in the tank and everyone was just trying to stay in business. This is way cleaner, brighter, and safer than his operation.
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I’d be more worried that an outbreak of disease wouldn’t lead to extensive culling.
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I think what makes the dirt visible in this video creepy is that the context rather forcibly excludes an otherwise comforting(though often not actually true) rationalization:
The outdoors; and stuff in vicinity to it, has a variety of ‘dirt’ that isn’t clean; but isn’t filthy in an abhorrent and vaguely transgressive sort of way. Mud, pollen accumulation, dried salt spray; assorted mildew and algae and things; that sort of stuff.
Buried somewhere in 13 stories of climate controlled concrete and (inappropriately for the purpose, I suppose they don’t get crack interior decorators for these jobs) shiny steel; it definitely isn’t mud.
Whatever makes the elevator markedly less shiny(c’mon guys, matte surfaces can hide a lot of sins, in the right color) at piglet-height down? The encrustation on the little elevator door flap? The smears on the elevator buttons? Those areas of the wall where the white shiny tile deviates from shinitude or whiteness?
All definitely not one of nature’s cleaner flavors of dirt; which pretty much leaves us with ‘fecal slurry(dried in-situ)’, ‘fecal slurry(aerosolized and redeposited)’, ‘mixed integumentary exudates’; and 'mammalian biological fluids(mercifully uncategorized) as options to ponder.
The only major exception down in the feeding area; where ‘nutrient pellets(dry fragments, fungal haven)’, ‘nutrient pellets(damp clumped fragments)’; and ‘nutrient pellets(aqueous, in stagnant putrefaction trench)’ join the list.
The disquieting air of filth is enhanced by the uncomfortable juxtoposition of steel-n’-tile sterility(which isn’t comfortable; but can at least look medical/scientific if pulled off) and ‘contractor ran out of fucks to give’(never a virtue; but can be disguised in smaller structures with some natural age and wear and tear to them).
Protective cling plastic not removed from metal panelling? Check. Tiling that just sort of gives up partway up the wall because why not? Yup. Grouting? Just enough, haphazardly enough, to accentuate the gaps baby. Piles of misc. boxes deposited behind random pedestrian barrier? Storage solution of champions. Random metal thing just leaning against the wall in the corridor/cell block thing at 1:06? Doesn’t look stable; but at least it’s smoother than the spikes on the opposite wall. Brilliant white exterior? Not even the heyday of climatically-inappropriate brutalism managed to have the concrete discoloring under every window fitting that quickly; might as well flaunt it. Terrifying glimpse of apathetic cinderblocks in a substantial multifloor structure at 1:55? I don’t even have a snide comment. Juxtaposition of white biosmear on valve with white fluoropolymer smear bodging plastic/steel pipe joint at 1:56? In a photographic sense the composition is quite favorable; if only we weren’t concerned about the subject rather than the photograph. Ring of scrapes, nicks, gouges, and abrasions surrounding retaining nuts on feed nozzles? Eh, I’m sure the coating was decorative rather than protective.
It would honestly be a lot less creepy if it were just your basic low budget feedlot construction(both because it wouldn’t be burdened with the ‘deeply unclean hospital’ baggage; and because the animal pen areas are pretty much the only part of the building that looks like it was actually designed and fabricated for purpose, with a degree of care and attention(compare the condition of the utilitarian grey powdercoat metal sections to that of the intended for apartments? elevator paneling, say)).
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I’ve been to a hospital in China, fortunately just for some tests, and it was pretty fucked up.
Did it at least have convenient feed nozzles?
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Hot-Plate Heaven At The Green Hotel
by Frank Zappa
I used to have a job
An’ I was doin’ fairly well
Depression came along
An’ everybody start to yell
"Where’d they go, them good ol’ days,
'An all that crap we used to sell?"
Now I’m in Hot-Plate Heaven,
at the Green Hotel
Republicans is fine,
If you’re a multi-millionaire
Democrats is fair,
If all you own is what you wear
Neither of 'em’s REALLY right,
'Cause neither of 'em CARE
'Bout that Hot-Plate Heaven,
'Cause they ain’t been there
They really oughta go
'N find out how the hall-way smell -
They’d benefit to know
'Bout what the bums in there could tell
(I guess we’re only dreamin’,
But I s’pose it’s just as well
That’s ALL you get to dream
Up in the Green Hotel)
Nature didn’t put me here,
An’ neither did my fate -
It musta been some evil ol’
Republican candidate!
He’s over there in Washington,
But I wish he was in HELL
'Cause I’m in Hot-Plate Heaven
At the Green Hotel
Things is slightly better now;
They hope we will forget
The misery of ‘TRICKLE DOWN’,
An’ jelly-bean etiquette
The Regal Presidential Style
Has simply not worn well,
But neither has my rags,
Up in the Green Hotel
(I said) the Green Hotel
(I mean) the Green Hotel
(Been there once) the Green Hotel
(An’ gone again) the Green Hotel
Neither has my rags
Up in the Green Hotel
Pass me the dog food!
Gross.
And I’m not talking about the dangling participle.
Known as “hog hotels,” European farmers have already experimented with raising pigs…
