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The Reader's Digest article is just a mediocre summary of the Atlas Obscura one it links to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-lights-bl
by twic 3y ago
The Reader's Digest article is just a mediocre summary of the Atlas Obscura one it links to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-lights-blue https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-li...
Although the latter does contain a complete misrepresentation of what "grue" means.
The explanation is still unsatisfying. Japan had green lights, referred to in law by a word which means blue but has traditionally encompassed green as well. Pedants pointed out that it would be better if the law explicitly said green. Rather than changing the law or letting things be, the government ordered lights be changed to blue-green. This is, on the face of it, completely insane behaviour, but neither article attempts to explain why the government did this.
- sylware 3y ago[flagged]
- marginalia_nu 3y agoHuh, AO reads fine in w3m. Like many apparent JS-only websites (e.g. Medium), they seem to serve JS-free content if you pass a user agent that doesn't suggest JS-compatibility. https://www.marginalia.nu/junk/w3m-ao.png https://www.marginalia.nu/junk/w3m-ao.png
- pzmarzly 3y agoAO may not work for you, but OP's link to rd.com doesn't work for me - I'm getting some difficult captchas from cloudflare that don't let me visit that site.
- lopis 3y agoFor those that are as confused as me, in the comment above "ao" refers to "Atlas Obscura" not to blue in Japanese.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoAre you on a VPN or Tor by chance?
- pzmarzly 3y agoNo, but: - Using iOS with Apple's Remote Attestation disabled (quite unusual) - Roaming from abroad (so I suspect I share exit IP with all other people on my network coming from abroad)
- sylware 3y agoI am using a perfectly normal domestic IP. If the user agent must be used, it is to detect a Big Tech web engine, namely to switch to the "web app", but if such web engine is not detected, it should have the decency to default to a noscript/basic (x)html portal, if reasonable, of course, aka small tech.
- fenomas 3y agoI just scanned a few articles on this. TFA and its source don't mention this, but the first JP traffic law for traffic lights (from 1930) used midori/green, following US standards. But apparently newspapers mostly used "ao" for whatever reason, and that was the usage that became widespread. Then later on (1947) the traffic law was updated to say "ao", presumably to match common usage. Of course the actual lights were green the whole time. Then in the 1970s the rules changed to recommend bluer shades of green, and new lights made afterwards reflected that. None of the articles I found gave a concrete reason; a few suggested bluer lights were easier to see, and a few implied the change was motivated by the "ao" name.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago> This is, on the face of it, completely insane behaviour, but neither article attempts to explain why the government did this. How is it insane? Did the outcome turn out to be chaos and mass murder? Are the Japanese people all becoming lunatics due to the cognitive burden of trying to remember the differences between one foreign color word and the other? Will the Reticulan Space Navy destroy the Japanese for their insults to chromaticity? This isn't insane. It's just boringly bureaucratic.