girls just wanna have fundamental human rights.
Hi, I'm a 25 y.o. biochem student scrambling to find time/energy for everything I want to do in life.
I always wondered why somebody didn't do something about that. Then I realised, I am somebody.
Bridges aren’t supposed to have weight restrictions on them. That is, they don’t come with weight restrictions on them when they’re new. So a bridge with a weight restriction on it is a sign that something has gone wrong and the bridge does not meet current standards.
The maximum weight that a vehicle is allowed to carry on the Interstate System per federal law is 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (with a max of 20,000 pounds per axle). That’s 40 tons. That limit applies to every inch of pavement, not just the bridges. Since this is a known cap, a new Interstate bridge will be designed to accommodate an 80,000 lb GVW load on it. You could say the bridge’s weight limit is 80,000 lb/40 tons but that doesn’t really have much meaning, because a load higher than that would be illegal to transport on public roads anyway, and the road leading up to the bridge has the same weight restriction. (In practice, the bridge doubtlessly will be designed to have a little bit of let to it just in case some idiot tries to squeak by a few hundred extra pounds.)
Now, note that that law applies to the Interstate System only, because the federal government only has a governing interest in the Interstate System (and other roads that together make up something called the National Highway System) because they partially fund it. Most long-distance roads are owned and funded by the states. The states could theoretically set lower standard weight limits and/or design bridges with lower weight limits…but in practice they don’t.
One, because all of that 80,000 lb GVW traffic on the Interstate system has to go somewhere when it exits the system.
Two, because a group called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO, who are best known for picking the road numbers) maintains a catalog of standard components for making bridges that meet Interstate System requirements. Engineers are expensive on a per-hour basis, so if you can direct your engineer to use standard components and make a standard bridge, that’s a lot cheaper than having them design a bridge from scratch to go over the creek in Nowheresville. As a result, most new bridges meet Interstate standards and have an 80,000 lb GVW rating even if they aren’t on the Interstate system. (This is also why all new bridges kind of look the same, but we’re not worried about how boring the bridges are for the sake of this post.)
So a bridge only has an explicit weight limit if it has been damaged in some way (through failure to properly maintain it usually) or because it predates the application of Interstate System standards and the standard AASHTO bridges.
Older bridges often have other problems in addition to the weight limits: many older designs are what we call “fracture critical”, which means that if one component of the bridge fails the whole thing collapses. Modern bridge designs have redundancy designed into them so that if one beam fails the other beams will carry the load until the damaged beam can be replaced. Older bridges also often don’t meet other standards, like height (16 ft clearance) and width (12 ft per lane plus 14 ft for shoulders) requirements.
Biden isn’t advocating eliminating weight limits and letting it be a laissez-faire free-for-all where trucks can just go wherever they want. He’s advocating for replacing bridges that carry weight limits with new ones that don’t have them.
wow i got absolutely schooled thank you for all this this is really informative. i have learned so much
This is a great explanation of what the fuck Biden was talking about in his tweet. because I will freely admit that I also went “…….wtf?????” when I read it. So thank you.
Today I learned about civil engineering.
I'm going to reblog this a million times so be it
Reminded of that time the xkcd guy was trying to research what sports equipment would be most effective for destroying enemy drones in flight and he looked up a bunch of stats about pro tennis player accuracy against stationary targets like 40 feet away, and figured that a really high level tennis pro might be able to hit the drone in 5-7 shots if they had the time and even then probably wouldn’t do enough damage to disrupt it more than momentarily.
And then Serena volunteered to test this theory and just, killed it instantly.
i see people saying shit like “she’s the best woman player” nah fam she’s the best one out there
I know basically nothing about tennis but I know that she is a league of her own
hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate
BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard to get rid of it!
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false)
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)
youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])
youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)
reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3
love trent sitting in the locker room drinking out of his rainbow mug wearing a dolly parton shirt while everyone is like statistically there must be one more gay in this room who could it possibly be
These tags can't be left behind:
#trent crimm#he really said i will never come out#either people figure it out themselves#or i won't bother
Left is MY FIC, right is the ACTUAL BOOK QUOTE IT WAS INSPIRED BY
(Mask context: masquerade ball / cinderella au)
It has been doing numbers EVERYWHERE and I only found out from this lovely person who commented on Ao3:
So yeah I guess if anyone wants to read an 8 year old Song of Achilles fanfic written in a fever dream after watching Into The Woods, be my guest
NOOOOOO OH MY GOD LMAO
I just saw something that looks very mundane but is extremely rare and incredible. Details later, gotta drive home.
OKAY SO
The plan was to go there friday, but as you recall, I got lost in the forest looking for cool rocks and there just wasn’t time. So I took the detour on my way back.
Here is the setting. We are at the bottom of a disused quarry. We took an hour detour and walked here for a little while and maybe you don’t really know why I’m excited yet.
At first, unless you’re a geology geek (I am not, btw), you might just be thinking, ah, rocks.
But what if we move closer?
Okay, big slab of rock. Some cracks and pockets in it. And?
Come even closer.
What’s the big deal? It’s just a rock with some marks in it. It looks so boring and ordinary and why did I even drag you to this quarry and am making you look at boring rocks?
Because. COME CLOSER.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT?
TOUCH THE LITTLE ROUND MARKS IN THE ROCK. PUT YOUR HAND OVER THEM AND FEEL THE RUSH OF HISTORY.
I AM SORRY TO BE YELLING BUT I AM VERY EXCITED.
YOU ARE LOOKING AT THE FOSSILISED FOOTPRINTS OF…
OUR ANCESTOR!
OKAY OKAY I had to add the meme for effect BUT this wouldn’t be the one in the picture, who is still a fish with fins. The tracks belong to a creature with four legs : A TETRAPOD!
Who may have looked and walked like this:
Why did the tetrapod come out of the water? Well, apparently there were invertebrates to feed on, and they left marks too:
So that was the coolest thing I saw this year for sure :D
Is it verified that it's authentic? Because if so that is incredible
Oh, yeah!!! I can't believe that after all that I didn't include any links to the info about it???
The tracks I saw are in Zachełmie in Poland :
and are a fairly recent discovery from 2010 so scientists are still arguing about what they mean for evolution history, but they ARE real.
I didn't find these myself, there are helpful signposts in the area that just say 'TETRAPOD', but you have to be curious or know what you're after to find the place.
I’m on the 1-2k chapter defense squad now. Y’all need to stop judging authors for writing short chapters.
The fact that they updated at all? For free?? And managed to write more than two words?? Readers can be a little more grateful.
5-10k weekly chapters are nice, but not routinely achievable for someone with a job/work or family/school etc.