[–] 24 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Straightfowardly, no, it couldn't be. Bridge construction on this scale isn't just a matter of throwing money or people at the problem. Like the old saw that says you can't get nine women to make a baby in one month, a 1200' span takes time. Foundations have to be built below water, piers have to be formed and given time to achieve design concrete strength, and each bridge segment has to be completed in sequence, including formwork, rebar, concrete pouring and setting, etc., in a careful sequence that keeps the cantilevered sections of the bridge in balance.

The US is no paragon of speedy infrastructure projects, but even in China cable-stayed concrete bridges are years-long projects. The Changtai Yangtze River Bridge, for instance, has spans similar to the Francis Scott Key bridge and it took fully 6 years from start of construction to completion, never mind design time.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    Not to mention the choice of Toyota here makes this especially silly. The used market for body-on-frame Toyotas has been so far out of whack for so long that back when you could still get 0% dealer financing it was often cheaper to buy new than used after you factored in interest rates.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    That’s the trillion-Euro question, and the answer so far is “between 15 years and never,” but some researchers have said they are seeing early signs of the current weakening. It’s a controversial topic in climate research, but it’s one of lose “low probability, high impact” events that can’t be safely ignored.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    There’s a series of photos from a wildlife photographer that are essentially selfies of him with a litter of cheetah cubs that the mother cheetah literally dropped in his lap while she went to go hunt. It’s been theorized that the only reason cheetahs have never been domesticated is that that they’re very difficult to breed in captivity.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I think Gen X went from "invisible" to "the enemy" in a lot of folks' minds when exit polling showed that they broke for Trump in 2024 by a greater margin than any other age group. Before that point most millennials just knew them as their cool older cousins, whose childhood was shrouded in a warm haze of half-remembered, half-imagined 80s nostalgia.

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