Peak stupidity is allowing, let alone supporting private companies to have control over your health care.
Still....better than having the Federal bureaucracy in charge of it....
Ugh....can you imagine health centers ala DMV?
*shudder*
The most versatile, repairable, recyclable materials for bridges if one can afford them are steels which can be cut, welded, and easily inspected using proven methods then scrapped and recycled efficiently with many of the standard steel sections easy to cut and resell for less critical reuse.
Cheaper concrete destroys reinforcement bars and mats by corrosion which is a major reason why the US infrastructure repair bills are so expensive. (Small and medium bridges can be replaced by portable metal bridging which can even be rented for use on short-term projects. Some WWII Bailey bridges remain in daily use because there's no reason to install a downgrade that's difficult to remove vs. swapping parts, weld repair or disassembly and replacement with similar.) Portable bridging in military usereliably withstand thousands of heavy wheeled and tracked military vehicles
"Shotcrete" is a handy coating and good for the developers trying this out, but the TCO and averting traffic delays due to repair time also matter.
Automated NDI inspection robots designed for these would be a very good idea to save labor. Bridge inspection robots are not new. Check out these inspection and maintenance robots:
Something about some beer or a good mixed drink just seems to make the works GREAT at 30K feet....
Suits the sort of users who deserve (even more) data mining.
Doesn't the Nissan Leaf get about 60 miles?
I was looking at a cheap used one that was down to 45 miles, I think.
30 miles gets me to town and back so it would only last a few years at that rate.
Let's think practical about this new "ice".....
As in...will this keep my cocktail cold longer?
Will this keep the beer in my ice chest colder for longer?
It just sounds like the greatest nation in the world is incapable of doing what other smaller nations do
We just don't want it...nor need it.
Then I travelled the world and actually looked at how things work and now I'm just sad that I lived with my own narrow minded view. Stay ignorant buddy, you'll kick yourself if you actually experience something that changes your world view, it's not a nice feeling
I've been to Europe and some other parts of the world.
While visiting I had fun and thought it was "quaint".....but it's not how I would like to live.
As I've mentioned before, I don't want to share walls with neighbors or live in tower apartments....
I like to have a yard to enjoy....I've always owned FUN sports cars and motorcycles, I love to drive them....every time I jump in my car or on my bike, I get a big stupid ass smile on my face 'cause I'm off on a new adventure.
I think much of the difference is due to mindeset of nations. The US has long been a country of the "individual". Places like the EU are more group think...."the needs of the many".
And those differences lend themselves to different lifestyles.
Different strokes for different folks.
And again...in the US, if you don't like the lifestyles,, laws, etc of where you live...you CAN move to where things more align with your life preferences.
Here we don't have to depend on one size fits all....and, isn't choice the best thing?
You know what is unreliable? Cars. I have no idea what traffic will do. Will I be there in 35minutes or an hour and 10mintes?
Sounds like poor road design if that's your problems.
I rarely run into "traffic" that is in anyway bad
And I live in New Orleans....so, quite often there is going to be drinking involved, and in my older years, I just don't bother driving after adult beverages anymore, so I just call an uber for those times....again, door-to-door.
No needing to deal with the elements walking to a train station, etc.....we might not get THAT cold down here, but a large part of the year is very HOT and HUMID.....and at times you really wanna limit your outdoor time, especially if you are dressed nice...otherwise you show up at your destination as a sweat stain.
Public transport...it just really isn't a thing here, nor in most cities I've lived in in the US, but I'm not felt my life has suffered in the least because if it.
I've always had a car or motorcycle that is FUN to drive and I hop in and enjoy it....
Obviously even Americans prefer walkable cities.
Obviously we don't....if we did, we'd either have more of them or would have more in the works.
That just isn't our mindset.
We generally don't like to be clumped all together, we prefer more open spaces and elbow room.
I prefer to have a yard where I can, in the back, set up my large log burning offset smoker to do BBQ, or set up a large 100 gallon pot for crawfish boils.....and have friends and neighbors over to enjoy a nice day with me.
And going out to see things?
I live in the New Orleans area....we only have 52 weeks a year, and there are FAR more fests (music, food, etc) that you can attended if you tried annually.
And yet, I don't live in "walkable"....nor do I want to.
I have my nice yard, my friends have places to park their boats and we go out on them fishing or just for fun....and again BEST of all, I do not share walls with anyone. Over the years I put a LOT of investments into building my AV system and I occasionally like to exercise its decibel range....with no shared walls, I don't disturb the neighbors and they don't bother me.
I do walk my dog...daily and meet my neighbors as I do...the nice thing is...it's not all concrete like an urban city where you have limited green space.
And guess what - they serve wine on all those occasions.
LOL, I live in fucking New Orleans....we have wine....beer and hard liquor cocktails anywhere here you want, 24/7.....no open container laws either.
Try THAT in your urban paradise.
Were I that slack I'd have been fired from every job I ever held.
To what single-digit IQ audience is that not instantly obvious so why is it defiling Slashdot?
I'd gleefully volunteer because that would at least make my dying experience useful to others if not myself. I consider that no different than donating my organs and other leftovers to whoever can use them. If we can donate a corpse we can consent to donating ourselves during the normally protracted, miserable decline we call old age and should have the option while we're still compos mentis.
For me an ideal departure path would be a clinical trial followed by body donation to science. Volunteering is an honorable exercise of agency useful to humanity.
I've cared for a demented, bedridden, crippled family member whose mistery I was forbidden to end. My father (WWII combat infantry vet who'd seen plenty of death at Aachen etc) was on board with me assisting his departure but others were too weak to get out of the way so he suffered a couple extra years for nothing. Of course I'd volunteer so others might one day be spared.
Humans treat each other with less respect than they give a beloved hunting dog. Many hunters, farmers and other good stewards understand merciful death is a kindness while clinging to a helpessly suffering animal out of emotional weakness is self-centered sadism.
We're all fucking doomed to feed the worms. Get over it and do something useful or at least don't be a human obstacle to others peaceful departure. Testing therapies on the damned won't make them more damned and if it helps they'll be pleased.
"Waiting" rather than running more than one OS just postpones the learning curve. Absent unusual constraints you don't need a "next machine" to run Linux which there are many convenient ways to do without disturbing your Windows host. The "I will switch when things get a little bit worse" meme is self-defeating vs exploring Linux (or any OS) in any of many very convenient, educational ways while sacrificing nothing.
Rather than following the "switching" meme I simply add any OS I fancy using the most convenient method.
The idea of "switching" intimidates many prospective users who'd benefit from choice. Use is not contribution, only money and code, so what an individual uses is of nil outside consequence. It's not raging against anyone's machine though that might be one motivator for the Terry Davis crowd.
Your current PC runs 11 so should be quite capable of running a Linux virtual machine you can learn from without disrupting your workflow.
If storage is an issue drive space is cheap and Linux boot drives are normally near effortless to swap between PCs. More RAM is always good so I max out all my PCs old or new that they may serve me better for longer. If money is tight used RAM from reputable Ebay sellers has never failed me (I run memtest after install to be sure). If your drive is soldered in place you can offload storage to external drives (NTFS can be accessed by Linux) with both OS on your boot drive as host or guest.
VMs are a convenient way to sample any or many distros without installing to bare metal. You can download free prebuilts from osboxes and other helpful sites or roll your own (recommended for install training). After running Linux in VMs you can replace your Windows host with Linux. You can make a VM of your current Windows install so you lose nothing and have a readily bootable Windows install to use. You can copy VM as very convenient backups or to run on other computers. If a Windows update breaks something you can revert to a clean snapshot.
I'm a basic VM user still on VirtualBox which is simple and works well for my use but defer to VM aficionados re: the latest optimal choices.
You could run Daz Studio in a light Windows VM with few other programs and if you don't need to connect that VM to the internet you can skip Windows updates to save space. Save work to a shared folder and should anything hose your Windows install reboot into the snapshot you took of whatever Windows state you preferred to save. No need for activation unless the minor inconveniences trigger you, but I've used offline activators since the XP days with clean
VM aren't just for professionals and in general are a drastic improvement over dual booting and shared boot records. I did that twice in back in 1999ish and found separate hard drives in cheap swap rack trays were the path of least hassle as VM were not an option.
I use Linux because Windows irks me and I greatly prefer my many, many more software options but OS are merely tools so I don't see reason to limit my toolkit. Software doesn't cost a dime unless you feel like paying for it.
You can so I did load Windows To Go drives using leftover small SSD, cheap USB adapters and 3D printed cases. I can boot W10 anywhere or W11 if I cared to use for chores needing bare metal installs like reflashing GM LS V8 firmware. I can swap cheap USB hard drive adapters to use any connector I need. I do similarly with Linux drives which are far more "portable" than Windows. Any sufficiently spacious drive can hold any host and VM and if loaded with Ventoy can boot multiple OS including a wide variety of live
Iff you're unhappy with MSFT their OS are easily contained offline on Linux hosts which let you use your most performant hardware rather than older gear (on which Linux typically runs well, especially on Thinkpads). Installing FOSS firmware like Libreboot on older Thinkpads for secure comms use is an established hobby with strong community support. If you don't feel like flashing it yourself (though the more you do the more capable you become) some Thinkpad enthusiasts will sell you a flashed Thinkpad or flash one you send them. I suggest learning to do that for yourself lest an adversary intercept and backdoor the firmware. You can also boot live security-focused distros like TAILS and remaster their images as desired. Linux offers so many free tools it's hard to beat. https://libreboot.org/
If you prefer control to helplessness why not jump in and enjoy some free (or nearly so) mind-expanding fun?
When seeking tech info I suggest NOT vomiting your emotions all over the internet because:
Nobody else cares. Paranoia is a delusion of personal importance and agency. Everyone sane who reads such
things doesn't pity you, they sneer as you would at your left-wing mirror images.
Cultivating emotional fragility is self-sabotage thus degenerate.
Emotional vomit is a distracting barrier to efficient communication. It's noise, not signal
no matter how much the vomiter fantasizes otherwise. It has the opposite effect of advocacy.
Emotional vomit convinces no one and makes vomiters instant laughingstocks and ridicule targets.
It's the equivalent of the woke airheads you despise puking their lives onto social media
and impresses no one. Nothing you could ever do, be or say can change that.
Go do fun stuff instead. For the rest, I suggest 4chan where
You still can. Just look at the Netherlands. In the 60s the Netherlands was a car mecca. It was following American style city design (including actually importing American city designers). They had grand plans to bulldoze poor neighbourhoods to build highways, heck at one point even the IJ in Amsterdam was proposed to be filled with concrete and turned into an inner city mega highway.
Well, there's no need to in the US.
The Netherlands is SMALL....and US is quite large and well, for the most part, if you want to live careless in a dense urban city, we have them and you can move there.
If you don't want this, and to date many if not most in the US do not want it....you can live in other cities were you don't share walls and have the independence of a private vehicle.
If more people in the US actually wanted less cars and "walkable cities"....we'd have them.
We have voters and if the voters wanted that, they'd elect people to help implement it.
Buit just face the facts,most people today do not want that car-less utopia many of you are promoting.
That's because your city is designed wrong.
Walkable cities have always been a thing. Only in America were cities designed around the car.
I can only guess that people like you can't undertake or fathom that a large majority of people out here, ENJOY our lifestyle and the city designs and types that support them....eh?
I do NOT want to ever live in a heavy urban city where I have to share walls, and depend on public transport and their schedules and shoehorn my life into someone else's timetable....
You do you.....in the US, at least, it is a large and diversified area....you can find cities that cater to your needs and likings and so can I.
One size does NOT fit all.
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol
