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Hoppy Goodness posted:I'll chime in with my own experience as a current conductor for a not-Norfolk Southern Class I railroad, you would be amazed at the speed and efficiency at which they can clean up typical derailments. For one thing, many derailments will be single car or locomotive and/or occur at low speeds such that the equipment goes "on the ground" i.e. off the rail, but does not tip over or suffer major damage. In these instances the equipment can be rerailed using essentially tiny ramps under its own power or with the assistance of a boom truck or crane that lifts the car/locomotive back onto the wheels that have been put on the rail. It's usually the higher speed derailments that cause serious damage to rail and equipment. In these cases, a mechanical supervisor will quickly assess what equipment can be rerailed, hot-fixed, and moved to the nearest facility for repair and what is a loss. The written off will quite simply be pushed away from the rail line to be scrapped out at a later time, sometimes sitting in the wayside for years. After the equipment is cleared the track gangs will bring any damaged rail back into operating shape, typically with a slow order limiting train speeds through the affected track so that they can get traffic moving and then further remediation in the days and weeks to come to get the section back to full track speeds. This will perhaps cause a disruption of 24 to 48 hours, and if there were multiple mains (parallel main tracks right next to the other) at the location the unaffected track may see disruption only for a couple hours allowing traffic to continue to flow. Any longer than that would be due to either major hazmat spills that make remediation dangerous for mechanical and track gangs, or serious damage to a bridge. Recently a wooden bridge burned down (not a derailment) on a low traffic subdivision and even that was replaced and operational within two weeks by a steel and concrete design, I imagine it would've happened much more quickly if it was a major line that was out of service. while I broadly really appreciate this post and think it's cool, my transportation bureaucracy brain is completely loving baffled by "yeah we installed a bridge in two weeks no big"
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Mar 10, 2023 01:31
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Google Jeb Bush posted:while I broadly really appreciate this post and think it's cool, my transportation bureaucracy brain is completely loving baffled by "yeah we installed a bridge in two weeks no big" There's a lot of things that can get done in this world real fuckin fast if it means making a shitload of money.
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Mar 10, 2023 01:39
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A few more details of McConnell's fall have come to light. He is currently being treated for a concussion. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/politics/mitch-mcconnell-hospitalized/index.html quote:Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is being treated for a concussion and is staying at a hospital for observation after a fall at a hotel in Washington, DC, on Wednesday evening. E: This was in the related news. https://news.yahoo.com/freshly-censured-trump-lawyer-called-204755505.html quote:Donald Trump’s newly-censured lawyer Jenna Ellis has been called out for mocking Mitch McConnell with a tumbling tortoise video. https://twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1633863803581415424?s=20 Velocity Raptor fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 01:51
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Google Jeb Bush posted:while I broadly really appreciate this post and think it's cool, my transportation bureaucracy brain is completely loving baffled by "yeah we installed a bridge in two weeks no big" We’re very bad at building things quickly in the United States. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btOE0rcKDC0 A notable exception was when 400 was destroyed near the middle of Atlanta and they just cost+ that sucker.
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Mar 10, 2023 02:05
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Jaxyon posted:Is this the fabled "NYC attourneys trying to make their career off of Trump" we've been told about (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 10, 2023 02:09
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Velocity Raptor posted:A few more details of McConnell's fall have come to light. He is currently being treated for a concussion. Ok, that's funny
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Mar 10, 2023 02:10
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Star Man posted:There's a lot of things that can get done in this world real fuckin fast if it means making a shitload of money. I assume they did the hard part (surveys, planning, design, permitting) at some point in the past in anticipation of the day they’d need a new bridge, so construction could start instantly once the site was cleared cat botherer posted:The walls are closing in. Trump is increasingly isolated. Tell me he’s fuming, I’m almost there
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Mar 10, 2023 02:20
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Google Jeb Bush posted:while I broadly really appreciate this post and think it's cool, my transportation bureaucracy brain is completely loving baffled by "yeah we installed a bridge in two weeks no big" Oh man they’ve got machines to do this stuff like track laying. It’s insanely fast. They don’t gently caress around. Everybody loves to go: we can’t do things that quickly in America. But we export a lot of this machinery and it’s the reason other countries can do it so quickly. Used to look at flat rack after flat rack of rail equipment going out to China.
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Mar 10, 2023 02:23
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I AM GRANDO posted:For a lot of people, “could be worse” means “affects me personally.” Like with abortion, a lot of Americans are basically fine with other states torturing people and stealing their rights if they themselves live in a state where they think the government wouldn’t do that. Joke's on you, I know the leopards won't eat MY face 
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Mar 10, 2023 02:30
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haveblue posted:I assume they did the hard part (surveys, planning, design, permitting) at some point in the past in anticipation of the day they’d need a new bridge, so construction could start instantly once the site was cleared yeah that makes sense and would take me from baffled to just impressed
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Mar 10, 2023 02:45
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Speaking of Ellis, she got censured in Colorado for her election lies. https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1633819912660549632 Granted thats not much of a penalty there. quote:Ellis signed a stipulation stating that several comments she made about the 2020 election violated professional ethics rules barring reckless, knowing or intentional misrepresentations by attorneys, according to documents posted by Colorado’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. As part of the stipulation, Ellis agrees to pay $224.
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Mar 10, 2023 02:47
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Bugsy posted:Speaking of Ellis, she got censured in Colorado for her election lies. It's a loving disgrace. Sher gets to foment the overthrow of the government and receives a fine smaller than a speeding ticket. She needs to be disbarred. This country is a joke.
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Mar 10, 2023 03:00
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Anyone thinking 'well that just means they need to find someone willing to officiate' really needs to learn about the long and creative history of discrimination and how laws are specifically written to make things technically possible but at the discretion of individuals. (That is, the ones hired and empowered to do those jobs) This of course can mean same-sex and interracial marriages can be solemnised by any any clerk willing to do so. All the ones that are just happen to be get fired.
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Mar 10, 2023 03:30
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Anyone thinking 'well that just means they need to find someone willing to officiate' really needs to learn about the long and creative history of discrimination and how laws are specifically written to make things technically possible but at the discretion of individuals. (That is, the ones hired and empowered to do those jobs) This of course can mean same-sex and interracial marriages can be solemnised by any any clerk willing to do so. All the ones that are just happen to be get fired. Very true. I don't think the posters laying out their ideal way of handling marriage were implying that this particular bill was okay or they supported it. They were just posting their thoughts on some ideal version of how marriage should be handled where they wanted to get the religious portion out of the public servant's purview in an ideal world. The original discussion that started the conversation was someone saying "Will this allow them to not issue marriage licenses to interracial or gay couples?" and the answer was "No, it won't." But, they weren't saying that it was a good thing just because it wasn't the absolute worst case scenario.
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Mar 10, 2023 03:34
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Anyone thinking 'well that just means they need to find someone willing to officiate' really needs to learn about the long and creative history of discrimination and how laws are specifically written to make things technically possible but at the discretion of individuals. (That is, the ones hired and empowered to do those jobs) This of course can mean same-sex and interracial marriages can be solemnised by any any clerk willing to do so. All the ones that are just happen to be get fired. Currently in TN any notary or minister (including universalist as far as I can tell) can solemnize. But presumably reducing the list of people who can do that is a future step
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Mar 10, 2023 03:35
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Anyone thinking 'well that just means they need to find someone willing to officiate' really needs to learn about the long and creative history of discrimination and how laws are specifically written to make things technically possible but at the discretion of individuals. (That is, the ones hired and empowered to do those jobs) This of course can mean same-sex and interracial marriages can be solemnised by any any clerk willing to do so. All the ones that are just happen to be get fired. How do people not get this point by now? "Nobody is saying you can't get an abortion, you just have to follow these rules." "Nobody is saying you can't vote, you just have to take this literacy test." "Nobody is saying you can't buy houses in this neighborhood, you just have to fill out this paperwork." This is loving America. We have god drat centuries of doing this poo poo in exactly this way. Stop being willfully blind.
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Mar 10, 2023 03:45
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Very true. I said "I don't think anyone thinks it's not bad" with regards to the bill. Which translates to "I'm pretty sure everyone present thinks its bad".
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Mar 10, 2023 04:23
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A lot of the big lessons from the success with anti-education and specifically anti-LGTQIA+ education bills is that fear and uncertainty are in of themselves powerful tools. A wedding for a lot of people is in of itself a huge financial commitment with months or years of planning, never-mind actually being married. So, if a gay couple or a biracial couple or couple with a trans partner are more hesitant to get married because of this law, that's a win for them. Beyond that, it's generally institutionalizing the notion that you can arbitrarily say that certain employees are not allowed to do certain things because of their religious beliefs which is currently being used to make the harassment and discrimination of LGTBQIA people in schools and workplaces acceptable. It's also messaging to the partisan courts. The Bostok case not only had two conservative justices voting in favor of LGBTQIA protections, but someone like Kavanaugh giving a very, very tepid dissent in which he recognized the material positives of the decision. It's not just that these bills are setting up Supreme Court cases, they're reminding the conservative wing of the court what side to be on and the movement of the party.
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Mar 10, 2023 04:33
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Google Jeb Bush posted:yeah that makes sense and would take me from baffled to just impressed I can't say with certainty that there wasn't a prewritten plan to replace this bridge, but this press release seems to indicate that the new bridge was drawn up after the fire: https://www.basinelectric.com/news-center/news-briefs/Zap-Line-Subdivision-Rail-Bridge-burned,-replaced-in-under-two-weeks
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Mar 10, 2023 04:58
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haveblue posted:I assume they did the hard part (surveys, planning, design, permitting) at some point in the past in anticipation of the day they’d need a new bridge, so construction could start instantly once the site was cleared I could imagine they also built a design that required minimal time for any earthworks to settle. Either that or the railroad just accepted they'd have to come back 5 years later to fix things up. Whenever you build big earthworks you have to let any dirt you've disturbed settle at least a bit before you continue construction. This is part of why roadworks and bridges often take so long. The big mound of earth that the construction crew created for the overpass will take like a decade to fully settle and compress all the air out, but most of the settling is done in the first couple of weeks. If you build before then yes the construction is done but you're going to have problems down the line as the roadbed settles another 2-3 inches. Or the dirt settles but the reinforced concrete pylons don't. Or you could watch this video for an even better explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t65tbfU9sCI
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Mar 10, 2023 05:01
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https://twitter.com/billscher/status/1633862055634649094?s=20 American voters are a mystery. Got to love 'em! It sounds like poll wonks could pick apart the questions until the end of the time, but man... it still amazes me how disconnected what people believe and what they choose at the end can be. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 05:33
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The democrats really need to start hammering on the fact that republicans (including so called moderates like Romney etc.) have been trying like hell to get this repealed recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis-Bacon_Act_of_1931 I've been using this to blue pill my coworkers to surprising success. It's weird to me that this isn't even on the radar. Seems like it would resonate pretty greatly in PA, OH, MI for example. No one likes money taken out of their pocket.
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Mar 10, 2023 06:12
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Eric Cantonese posted:https://twitter.com/billscher/status/1633862055634649094?s=20 People are really loving stupid. The number of people who say they hate obamacare, but love PPACA makes me want to jump into a river
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Mar 10, 2023 08:34
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Virginia Governor Youngkin "town hall" on Public Education expecting roars of applause for this weak-rear end pandering. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1634027479256932354?s=20
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Mar 10, 2023 13:34
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Dick Trauma posted:Virginia Governor Youngkin "town hall" on Public Education expecting roars of applause for this weak-rear end pandering. lmao it's been obvious for a while that this ludicrous moron has enormous Jeb! energy. He's got a hugely inflated opinion of himself for winning the Virginia governorship, something Republicans had despaired of doing after several rounds of bad elections for them, but in fact he barely eked out a victory in a pro-GOP environment against a very subpar campaign. His only real strategic genius was exploiting the media unwillingness to call out Republicans in order to say moderate things to moderate audiences and blood cultist things to blood cultist audiences, but that strategy works best when you're a cipher with no political history like Trump. He's a sentient puffy vest with zero charisma and he's liable to flail when pinned down and forced to confront a question he doesn't want to answer. The governorship is definitely a powerful office, one that gives him plenty of opportunities to harm vulnerable Virginians, but it's a dead end for him; there's nowhere left to go but the Senate or the Presidency and he's never winning either.
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Mar 10, 2023 14:32
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U.S. Economy continues to be in a very weird place. - Despite over a year of the Fed rapidly raising rates, inflation has gone down a small amount and employment is still surging. - U.S. GDP is still growing, but slower than you would think given other factors. - Personal savings are plummeting. - It is still amongst the best time ever to quit your job or be looking for a job in the last 35 years. - Real wages have finally started going up again after about a year of declines. - Everyone still feels pretty bad about the economy in general. - Prices in general have slowed their increase (but, are mostly still increasing - just at slower rates), but some things have collapsed in price (used car sales & home prices) while others have shot up (eggs). - The Fed's rate increase schedule has been trying to slow down inflation and the labor market, but so far they have just mildly slowed down inflation and slammed the stock market and housing market; while leaving the labor market mostly untouched. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1634187285427093509 Dpulex posted:People are really loving stupid. The number of people who say they hate obamacare, but love PPACA makes me want to jump into a river This is unfortunately pretty much an old thing and not unique to Florida or modern politics. There is a famous joke where they display two sets of poll results and they say: quote:"Do you support [OUTCOME]?" Not to mention the infamous poll they do every few years where a solid majority of Americans always say they want someone who will cut taxes, increase spending on everything (except foreign aid), and balance the budget. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 15:04
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Also, I don't think it is really a surprise to anyone at this point, but DeSantis confirms he intends to run for President. https://twitter.com/DouglasSoule/status/1633992013531021313
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Mar 10, 2023 15:39
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:U.S. Economy continues to be in a very weird place. My own feeling on this is that like 20 years ago, hell 10 years ago this would of been heralded as a decent economy.
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Mar 10, 2023 15:43
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Mooseontheloose posted:My own feeling on this is that like 20 years ago, hell 10 years ago this would of been heralded as a decent economy. The basic fundamentals are pretty good historically. The main issue is just uncertainty in general and especially about where the trend line is. 1) Prices are still up a lot. Wages were growing faster than prices for most of 2021, but from late 2021 to late 2022 real wages were falling. Real wages are starting to rise again, but nobody knows for how long or how much. It could be a peak before the valley. The slingshot of real wages rising rapidly, falling rapidly, and now rising slowly (and this most recent month decreasing) all in just over 2 years is another indicator of "it is really hard to predict anything given all the unique circumstances." 2) People aren't sure when inflation will get down to an "acceptable" level or how to even achieve that. The Fed has had a very minimal impact so far and the pandemic/supply chain issues/labor changes all happening at once have kind of thrown the traditional rules out of the window. 3) Related to #2, nobody knows if the Fed will overshoot and cause a recession, undershoot and leave lingering inflation, or if the Fed just has no real impact because all the inflation is supply strained because of rising wages from a labor shortage and rising prices from a supply shortage combined. Based on the fundamentals, we should have been heading towards large unemployment and recession by the end of 2022, but... we didn't. At the same time, growing GDP, rising wages, and low unemployment should be signs of a booming economy, but... it's doing better than expected, but not booming. And it's not clear if the trendline is up or down. Nobody really knows 100% what the economy will look like in 2 years because a lot of the old rules are kind of broken. It's also hitting people in VERY uneven ways. If you own your own home, didn't need to buy a new car, and your wages went up about the average amount over the last two years then you are likely decently better off now (even with all the inflation) than you were in late 2019. But, if you rent, had to buy a new car, and never switched jobs or got a below average rise in wages, then there is a chance you were hammered by rent increases and inflation. Usually, a "good" economy means the vast majority of people are doing at least a little bit better. The current one is kind of weird because about 40% of people are doing better, 40% are slightly worse/slightly better/about the same, and 20% were slammed incredibly hard and doing worse. Is that a "good" economy? Sort of! Depends how you look at it and where you stand. From a snapshot overview, growing GDP, low unemployment, rising real wages, it looks pretty good! But, nobody lives their life based on the "average" economic conditions. Some people are a lot better off in some ways and a lot worse off in others and their particular circumstances determine whether it is more of the first or second category. Everything is just kind of mixed in extreme directions (best time to get a job in 35 years! Food prices up 15%! Real wages finally rising! Eggs up 70%! GDP is solid! Rents hit record highs!) and there's tons of uncertainty on the macro and micro level. Maybe in 5 years it will turn out that 2021-2022 was an aberration and inflation will have come down with no significant employment or economic damage. Maybe in 5 years it will turn out that 2022-2023 was the aberration and we just reached the high point before falling off the cliff. Nobody really knows! That makes everyone confused and nervous. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 16:07
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Also people have seen how bedgrudging and quickly snatched back any real government help even for situations completely out of their control is. It doesn't feel like a matter of if, but how long until the next crisis. And in general, a lot of people realising 'the economy' as a term simply does not include them when people say things like 'the economy is good'.
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Mar 10, 2023 16:24
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Also people have seen how bedgrudging and quickly snatched back any real government help even for situations completely out of their control is. It doesn't feel like a matter of if, but how long until the next crisis. Don't forget the constant, institutionally accepted fudgery of numbers to make "the economy" look better - number of people receiving unemployment benefits vs. number of people out of work, for example!
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Mar 10, 2023 16:25
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Lib and let die posted:Don't forget the constant, institutionally accepted fudgery of numbers to make "the economy" look better - number of people receiving unemployment benefits vs. number of people out of work, for example! Please don't make us do the U3 v. U6 debate again, its old.
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Mar 10, 2023 16:28
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The labor force participation level is also now higher than it was pre-pandemic.quote:An influx of more than 400,000 job seekers lifted the labor force participation rate, which has been slow to recover as older people retired early. The rate for those in their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — jumped to 83.1 percent, exceeding its prepandemic level. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/10/business/jobs-report-economy-news
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Mar 10, 2023 16:32
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if you're broke the economy doing bad, if you ain't its doing good economy is doing bad from my seat
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Mar 10, 2023 16:32
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The labor force participation level is also now higher than it was pre-pandemic. How/is the labor force participation level impacted by people seeking additional employment?
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Mar 10, 2023 16:33
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The labor force participation level is also now higher than it was pre-pandemic. On a related note, I found this Jason Furman thread interesting: https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1633833787212828672
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Mar 10, 2023 16:36
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Lib and let die posted:How/is the labor force participation level impacted by people seeking additional employment? BLS posted:The labor force participation rate is calculated as: (Labor Force ÷ Civilian Noninstitutional Population) x 100 I'm not sure how the size of the labor force is determined but I'm pretty sure it's survey-based and has large enough error bars that the ~5% of people who work more than one job, and the smaller subset of people who are currently starting an extra job, is unlikely to be statistically significant. (e: Assuming that the effect isn't getting screened out somehow anyway, which it very well might be.) link to semi-effortpost from yesterday about relative rarity of people working multiple jobs Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 16:40
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Lib and let die posted:How/is the labor force participation level impacted by people seeking additional employment? If they are already working full-time, then it wouldn't. Are you saying that a lot of people are working multiple jobs now? It's around 4.8%, so not a huge amount of people. That is slightly lower than the 5.1% it was pre-pandemic. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620
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Mar 10, 2023 16:41
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World Famous W posted:if you're broke the economy doing bad, if you ain't its doing good When Wall Street sends its mediators, they’re not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of empty words, and they’re bringing those words with us. They’re bringing lies. They’re bringing bullshit statistics. They’re crooks. And some, I assume, are good people
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Mar 10, 2023 16:41
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Silicon Valley Bank looks like its experiencing a legit bank run. For those not aware, it's a really popular bank for startups. https://twitter.com/GRDecter/status/1634181229816709125 https://twitter.com/jamiequint/status/1633956163565002752 TL;DR, they got a huge amount of new deposits during COVID, and went all-in on 10+ year mortgage backed securities. This made them crazy exposed to rising interest rates. This is probably not going to cause any real contagion, though.
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Mar 10, 2023 16:44
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