But my friends call me Spray.

Many of my friends are in critical condition after an incident involving my father and some bees. The pest control guy was not helpful. I spent many hours on the phone with him explaining the situation already, so please do not suggest I call him for advice.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • There’s one around the White Mountains in NH that I have driven on that was 75 mph, but that is the absolute fastest I have ever seen. The same highway (I think) stayed 75 mph through the Green Mountains in VT too. Both areas are rural without a ton of drivers outside of peak tourism season, and about a 0% chance of hitting a pedestrian.

    Definitely a chance of hitting a moose and totally fucking up it’s legs, ending your own life in the process. Motherfuckers have been known to walk away from many car accidents without much more than a limp. They’re tall enough where they roll over most cars and even many pickup trucks when full grown.

    EDIT: Nevermind. It was I-93, which has a speed of 70 mph in the section that I drove on and I couldn’t find a 70 mph speed limit sign on that highway in VT, because it ends quickly after entering VT. Couldn’t be bothered to find where the VT highway was though.

    70 MPH on I-93 in NH



  • This bridge was probably also designed to account for thermal expansion to a certain degree. It seems like more and more of our infrastructure is starting to fail, encountering heat levels it was never expected to encounter. I wonder if failures like this and worse are going to become a common headline

    Bridge engineer here (not much experience, so I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but I have more knowledge about it than the general public).

    Your suspicions are correct, bridges are designed for thermal expansion. More of our infrastructure is starting to fail, and part of that is because it’s experiencing climate it was never designed for (heat, sea level rise, more drastic storm surges, etc). I would fully expect this to be a more common headline. At least for several more years, anyway. If the federal money from the infrastructure bill the US passed a few years ago runs out or is not allocated to the right structures, then this will only get more common. I don’t expect the Trump administration to champion an extension of these funds if they do run out. It was passed under Biden, after all.

    As for this bridge in particular, this is a moveable steel bridge. The fact that it’s moveable means it is particularly sensitive to expansion (as well as salinity which causes rusting). Too much expansion, and the steel will get stuck in one position. In a typical steel bridge, if the thermal expansion exceeds what it was designed for, you end up getting higher stress levels in the steel as it pushes harder against the abutments. Usually this is alright in the short term, since we design these to withstand much higher stresses than it will ever likely experience. Repeated cycles of this, however, will cause fatigue failure (think of a paperclip or metal spoon snapping after you bend it back and forth a bunch).

    Anyways, there you have it. I rambled for too long about this lol.