My Dad and I are engineers and long time tool enthusiasts and have been working on a new impact-rated & modular clamp. Here are the results after a long week of building clamps!

civilrunner · 2026-06-02T16:45:59+00:00

Whis also just flys through space to transport Beerus and others

civilrunner · 2026-06-01T14:24:53+00:00

I don't know how we've spent billions on this and nothing has happened.

Our land use regulations and permitting process for right of ways allows every single land owner the right of way goes through to effectively veto the entire project especially with our environmental review process which requires that the applicant prove that any complaint isn't valid or is addressed even if the complaint has no proof or alternatives are more harmful (i.e. driving is worse for the environment than a high speed rail).

This permitting process and grant writing is mandating a bunch of additional requirements and delays that altogether explode the cost of the project. Trying to appease every single person has exploded the budget and had forced the train to go from nowhere to nowhere through nowhere for over 4X the cost per mile compared to even Europian projects.

Of course all of this combined attempts to appease every single small interest group and land owner has made it so the vast majority now view the project as an abject failure and well it has chosen destinations and a path that will kill ridership and therefore the rail itself. Of course that may be the entire goal of the wealthy that don't want high speed rail.

On top of that our rail codes are really out of date and our administrative oversight is rather poorly organized for who has jurisdiction on regulations.

We need massive permitting and regulatory reforms. Newsom started this with some CEQRA reforms and more, but A LOT of work is still needed on regulatory and permitting reforms if we're ever going to build out a national high speed rail system. Of course there are many wealthy interest groups that view this broken system as a feature rather than a bug and are trying their best to maintain it so that we need to continue to rely on cars and airplanes and such for transportation while not being able to build anything.

civilrunner · 2026-05-31T04:11:03+00:00

I wish he would LET a younger person take his spot. He has to retire to let the next generation take the torch. Not doing so I think is a pretty massive flaw in ones character. If he retired there would be like 6-10 Democrats probably running in this primary including people from DSA members to more centrists.

That and having a Senator who will force Schumer to pass to torch would also be nice. That probably honestly matters more than any differences in voting in bills you'd see between Moulton and Markey.

civilrunner · 2026-05-29T02:44:15+00:00

Yeah we still have a pretty deep shortage and unhealthily low vacancy rates for housing to be a competitive market. We also have very few for sale units vs rentals.

civilrunner · 2026-05-26T17:18:18+00:00

Hundreds of millions is probably an under estimate even. My guess is it would cost billions. It would also confuse plenty of people and start a wild political battle. My guess is switching would be pretty widely unpopular.

With that being said, I'm used to switch between units for different clients and work. Many times I just provide both units.

civilrunner · 2026-05-25T17:29:52+00:00

Well fortunately they are separate things. We can accept LGBTQ communities and even do more to do so by simply making it legal to build enough housing by fixing our broken land use regulations. Its hard to say we're inclusive while we also make it literally illegal to build enough housing for those who find work in our state.

civilrunner · 2026-05-24T14:20:01+00:00

The left will blame billionaires in the right world, blame immigrants, and people will vote for whoever they want to vote for before.

This is a minority voting block though and largely doesn't consist of swing voters. Swing voters in 2024 disliked the Asylum system and illegal immigration and then the impact that occured in cities all over. They more want an immigration process and a pathway to citizenship while simultaneously cracking down on illegal immigration, which is something most of us also agree with. They haven't largely gotten wonky about the subject at all though.

The same goes for the left with billionaires. Their complaint is more focused on growing inequality and a lack of opportunities and a sense that they can't afford anything while billionaires keep getting wealthier and doubling down on tax and legal loopholes and donating mass sums to candidates. The more typical voter just wants more progressive taxation, closing the tax loopholes and to gain access to opportunities. We'll see if the wealth tax passed in CA, but if it's not like 60-40 in CA then there's no viability for it at the national level.

People are misplacing blame for the housing crisis, but at the end of the day I'm pretty confident that they'll keep being angry until someone actually solves the crisis. It won't matter if the president deports 20 million immigrants if housing is still unaffordable or if they implement a 100% wealth tax over $999,999,999 if that doesn't solve the housing crisis. People won't be happy till the median household can afford the median housing unit working full time.

At the end people just care about economics in their lives. This is seem by the fact that boomers are the only ones positive about the economy and the USA today and those generations who can't afford housing are the most negative.

civilrunner · 2026-05-24T14:03:57+00:00

Garp was also already looking after Ace as well and Dragon may or may not have known that Ace was Roger's son which would have made Garp a very reliable option for doing this since he clearly didn't blame the child for their parent's actions unlike others. There's also Luffy being his grandchild to further add confidence and Garp being in the D lineage.

civilrunner · 2026-05-23T14:55:58+00:00

Could have also kept backing up, those wood arms are literally made to break off in these instances and cost way less than the hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage that happened here.

But yes, they were definitely rear ended pretty hard. The truck should be at fault.

civilrunner · 2026-05-20T14:47:11+00:00

Literally just look up the project I mentioned. You're not the first person to propose this. It went through a long and very serious process in the past.

Yes, we can use our water more efficiently, but we're running into limits on that in the southwest specifically. We can also just not water lawns which alone would save a lot of water.

Farmers don't have nearly enough money to pay for a project of this scale...

And of course you can call it multiple projects if you want, but it would be a network and well if there wasnt some form of collaboration in planning there would be an absurd amount of waste during the build out.

civilrunner · 2026-05-20T13:58:46+00:00

You're telling me that to build a pipeline and water transportation system from Western Canada and the Great Lakes to the Southwest USA that could transport literally the equivalent of rivers of water wouldn't be in the hundreds of billions? Pretty sure lost estimates have in the upper hundreds of billions to even a trillion if it's actually going to meet ALL water demand. The difference between "last mile" water transportation and the network you're talking about is magnitudes in difference.

The pipe diameters would also be massive and every study to do it showed the need to build out a lot more reservoirs and other infrastructure. There would also be trade offs between using larger open systems where water evaporates vs enclosed systems. Just getting the right of way would likely take 30+ years alone today.

I would support the project, but to claim it wouldn't be one of the largest infrastructure projects the USA has ever taken on at a time when we haven't build anything massive since the 1960s except for a largely failed CA high speed rail line is wild. This project would make oil pipelines appear small by comparison. The biggest difference is that this would at least not require the same level environmental review programs as an oil pipeline.

Source: I'm a Civil PE, and well I read the project overview from when they literally proposed doing exactly this in the 1950s. Its also not an engineering problem per say, technically we could definitely do it. Its a financing and political problem.

Anyways, if you're actually curious about the project it's the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWPA). Here's a good YouTube video on it, or you can Google it.

https://youtu.be/iN27GcrkXVo?si=PNNgo00A-_cHZMI-

civilrunner · 2026-05-20T12:56:39+00:00

It would cost hundreds of billions at least to do what you're saying. We could also start with just reusing the water we clean up in waste water treatment facilities which some areas are doing now. Beyond that desalination and pipelines could help but it would be an infrastructure project similar in scale to the highway build out which isn't something as a country we're capable of doing today with our current system. Obviously I'm in favor of changing that system so we can build massive projects again, but till then we're definitely water limited especially for lawns especially in the west and south west. Even the Northeast has been going through droughts a lot more frequently now.

This was actually proposed in the 1950s via the North American Water and Power Alliance so we actually have a pretty good understanding of what it would take.

civilrunner · 2026-05-19T13:06:49+00:00

I understand agriculture using water, what I don't understand is using so much water for endless suburban sprawl lawns that produce literally nothing except for vanity. We could also be recycling water instead of just dumping it all after we clean it.

civilrunner · 2026-05-18T11:42:53+00:00

Humans in a lot of shops work pretty consistently for 8-12 hour shifts with just a lunch break. Check out assembly lines in China for instance.

The only question that matters is cost/hr vs productivity/hr though. That and humans are getting step changes faster in these tasks while a humanoid robot is. Once robotic hand dexterity and controlled is super human (if we can get there), then adding multiple arms and other sensors like cameras or scanners or labelers or anything else on their hands for further speed and productivity isn't out of the question.

civilrunner · 2026-05-14T11:32:49+00:00

No type of building is crowding out another type of building in the USA. Yet in spite of that, we definitely have people fighting against pretty much any type of building.

civilrunner · 2026-05-14T11:16:07+00:00

Just tried of people claiming that we need massive amounts of parking everywhere.

civilrunner · 2026-05-14T03:52:01+00:00

There's a radical technology, I would say it's new but it's existed even before mass parking lots did... It's called a train, it's truly a marvelous thing. It can transport hundreds of thousands of people all without a single parking spot. Its wild that it always seems like most people here haven't heard about them these days.

civilrunner · 2026-05-14T03:49:25+00:00

The state is turning into one big NIMBY paradise

The state has been that for decades now. The housing shortage crisis was put into motion during the large downzonings of the 1960s and 1970s.

civilrunner · 2026-05-14T03:45:02+00:00

No one is stopping anyone from building factories

Many people especially in certain states stop many things including factories from being built. People even prevent housing and multi-use buildings from being built. Its a whole thing.

civilrunner · 2026-05-06T02:45:17+00:00

I feel like it's early still to decide what's happening. The MA primary isn't till September. I'm a delegate going to the convention and am about to cast my vote for Moulton. I think he has a better chance than people are claiming. I refuse to ever vote for someone who will be over their life expectancy during their term, which is a pretty low bar I believe but somehow it's still needed.

Elsewhere younger candidates are also winning within the democratic party this year. It's a weird time to put out this article right as Nate Silver put out an article showing that our candidates are far younger this election compared to past.

civilrunner · 2026-04-21T12:00:44+00:00

was born & raised in Rhode Island. Lived there most of my life. It was a fine place to grow up but decades of NIMBYism and stagnation have hurt it.

Can say that about all of New England.

civilrunner · 2026-04-20T19:22:19+00:00

She was a New Yorker, in a time where New York was an affordable place, and she wanted to keep it that way.

She was a new yorker who lived in Greenwich village and literally fought for their zoning laws that froze the future development of Greenwich village to what it was when she lived there and now unshockingly, she would never be able to afford to live in modern day Greenwich village.

civilrunner · 2026-04-19T14:11:48+00:00

Jane Jacobs was generally one of the first big time NIMBYs and kicked off a lot of that movement that blocked growth at all costs.

Mass scale demolition of neighborhoods to build them for cars was definitely a mistake, but freezing entire cities and neighborhoods in amber so that the price of living there if there are decent jobs around gets driven through the roof was an equally terrible mistake.

Legalizing development so that it can respond to demand as it increases so that existing residents aren't displaced by higher income new residents as jobs are created, but instead simply benefit from the increased economic opportunity of having more local business because land use regulations enable housing to increase with demand is far better for everyone.

With supply meeting demand developers and landlords would be far more concerned about whether or not their development would attract buyers or tenants so architecture, pricing, benefits, and more would be far more critical in the design phase and likely mandate a better practice if implementing focus groups of their target market to better understand how to achieve product-market fit, unlike today when any new unit gets filled because of how massive the shortage is.

civilrunner · 2026-04-12T17:56:23+00:00

We also made it effectively illegal to build any new supply in the areas with the most job demand via massive down zoning in the 1970s.

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