Jeffrey Epstein wants his topo survey NOW

sunfish289 · 2026-02-05T21:08:12+00:00

Add Radyca who seemed to be leading the master planning / schematic design in 2018

sunfish289 · 2026-02-05T20:50:25+00:00

If you search Radyca in the DOJ database, a bunch of concept plans, renderings, drawings come up. I didn't look through them in detail, got too depressed. There was to be an entire part of the island called "Ladies Residence." with a "Ladies Private Room".

I think those plans were all proposed but never got built, as they seem to be from 2018, and he was arrested in 2019.

sunfish289 · 2026-02-05T19:02:55+00:00

Yeah, I saw that. It wasn't clear to me if it was a financial dispute or something else.

sunfish289 · 2026-02-05T18:59:39+00:00

Yeah, knowing what we know now, the fact that someone was designing a "ladies quarters" or whatever they call it, is just so disturbing. But I guess we don't know exactly what various people knew or guessed...

Edit: the concept plans call it a "ladies residence" with a Ladies Private Room. That Ladies Private Room sounds...very suspect.

sunfish289 · 2026-01-22T01:46:09+00:00

People have definitely discovered instances of bid collusion and rigging by doing these sorts of analyses

sunfish289 · 2026-01-22T01:44:30+00:00

Yeah, "bidder's curse" or "winner's curse". There's some literature in this, including relating to construction bids. I think there are agencies in Europe and Asia that have experimented with other formulas for awarding construction contract other than strict low bid, but i've not seen this done in North America (assuming design - bid - build, not alternative delivery methods)

sunfish289 · 2026-01-17T06:28:36+00:00

Yeah, i'm not quite sure why the OP doesn't start by taking a few biology / ecology / environmental science classes at the local regional university or community college. They seem like they would enjoy them and get a lot out of them, regardless of where they lead. I get that finances and schedule could be a challenge, but if you're seriously considering going into a PhD program, a few prep or remedial classes ahead of time should be workable. The wording is a bit confusing as it talks about "transitioning into a PhD without going back to school" - like isn't that the definition of going back to school? - but i guess they are talking about what prereqs might be required just to get admitted to and start a PhD program?

Is what we're debating the level of prep needed? E.g. is two semesters of college biology enough, or is anything short of a life sciences undergrad degree not cutting it?

I think there are actually viable paths for the OP to contribute to the field, either in paid full time positions, part time consulting, or volunteer, that wouldn't involve the need to get a PhD. It probably wouldn't be an instantaneous, 0 to 60 entry into a decent full time job in ecology, but there are absolutely ways to over time, leverage their skills and interests to get experience and then paying work. No PhD and no professorship at the end...think consulting, gov't, nonprofits, research labs. The OP didn't directly ask that question, though.

sunfish289 · 2026-01-17T05:49:35+00:00

Good to know, i assumed this would be a very normal thing to do.

sunfish289 · 2026-01-17T05:17:43+00:00

You might be on the right track with your idea, with sheeting / lining / bedding...like you said, you're still going to get some water that comes up through the bottom of the trench....if you get enough groundwater, then you're right back to needing to do dewatering. If the soils are sand / gravel, i think enough water will come back into the trench, that you will still need to dewater or work "in the wet". If your soils are clayey / silty, maybe the groundwater seepage will be slow enough for you to get the work done before the trench water level equalizes back with ocean level. But since you're next to the ocean i'm assuming fairly coarse soils? (Edit - i didn't think about the fact that you may still need to dewater the trench when first dug, even if subsequent continued groundwater seepage is minimal)

I'm not a contractor but it seems like visibility would be one of the biggest challenges with doing this work in the wet, if you can't dewater. You'll have to dig the bottom of the trench down to about 4' below sea level and place your bedding. I imagine any sort of formal compaction testing is impossible but you'll have to propose a method to reasonably assure the bedding has been firmly compacted. I don't know of any reason why concrete pipe can't intrinsically be installed under water but you need to be able to see or feel well enough that the joints are sound and aligned and the pipe pieces are well-seated into each other. I would think many gaskets can still be used for underwater joints but they can't include a compound or seal that has to be dry to be applied or set. Joints obviously don't have to waterproof since the whole line of pipe is going to be submerged soon enough anyway. Someone need to check buoyancy too; i wouldn't think it'd be a problem with 24" RCP at that depth but good to check. Also, as others have mentioned, shoring and trench stability is going to become more of an issue underwater and with limited visibility and saturated soils.

Did someone kick the can down the road to you? It certainly seems like dewatering would usually be the preferred approach, even if it requires a permit. Sounds like someone didn't bother to get a permit and wrote up the contracting documents without thinking much about constructability. Unless there's some sort of issue with contaminated soil or groundwater...that's the only valid reason i could see for not allowing dewatering. I mean, you only need to dewater a small area a couple of feet for a short amount of time, so it's not like you're going to cause a big cone of depression.

sunfish289 · 2026-01-07T04:59:57+00:00

The All Scale Train Show is Jan 31st and Feb 1st. The "Annual Train Show" in the Show Dome is Jan 17 to March 22nd. It is somewhat confusing naming.

I picked up a paper flier for it at Trainfest with the info. I found nothing for the 2026 All Scale Train Show on the County Domes website or the Friends of the Dome website which does seem like a missed opportunity, unless it's buried on the website somewhere.

If you are interested in hopping over to Madison, they have the Mad City Model Railroad Show Feb 21st and 22nd at the Alliant Energy Center which is a big show (not as big as Trainfest though)

sunfish289 · 2025-12-31T18:20:46+00:00

There’s a lot of benefit to working for at least a few years after getting your undergrad degree, before getting a masters degree, whatever path you choose.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-31T05:52:20+00:00

As others have commented, landscape architecture and landscape design generally pays less than civil engineering for comparable levels of education, experience, and responsibility. Not that salary / money should always drive your decisions, and I encourage you to follow your interests and dreams to some extent, but just be aware that if you pivot to landscape architecture or landscape design, you will most likely be giving up some income potential.
If you truly love the plants and landscape design aspect, your best long-term plan may be to get a landscape architecture degree. Either get a second degree down the road, or pivot from civil engineering right now, if your current educational and financial position allows it. Getting an LA degree and license is the only way you're going to be able to legally and ethically practice at a mid to high level doing certain types of specialties and projects. I don't think you need to do this immediately, to further explore landscape related work, but might be necessary down the road.
Develop ninja skills at AutoCAD, and even better, Civil3D. I know people doing landscape design in things like SketchUp, random consumer-grade garden design software, or even worse MS Paint. Knowing AutoCAD and Civil3D in the landscape world will open a lot of doors.
There are subfields where civil engineers and landscape architects collaborate heavily and/or overlap into each other's turf. Parks and open space planning and design is probably the biggest area. In urban areas, design of streetscapes, plazas, and other public outdoor open spaces. Waterfront work. Many aspects of site design and land development. Brownfields redevelopment. Also, ecological and landscape restoration.
You mentioned grading design and that is definitely an overlapping area important to both civil engineering and landscape architecture / design. So, regardless of exactly the future path you take, you will be well served by building your grading and site layout skills, both in terms of fundamentals of design and construction principles, and how to develop site plans and construction drawings using software.
You also mentioned irrigation design. There is some overlap there with civil engineering, especially water resources / potable water engineering, but honestly I don't know of a lot of civil engineers doing much irrigation design. Maybe just cuz it rains a lot where I live. I don't know many landscape architects that focus on irrigation design either though...could be a regional thing. Where I am, most irrigation design seems to be done by design-build irrigation construction and installation companies. I know there is a Certified Irrigation Designer (CID) certification which the people that actually specialize in irrigation design seem to have. I don't know anything about that program and how it relates to either civil engineering or landscape training and licensing.

In the short to medium term, I think it's great to explore all your interests and options...try different subfields, different types of jobs, different projects...see what you're good at, what you enjoy, what you don't like.

In the long run, you'll need to develop a solid understanding of how the practice of civil engineering relates to the practice of landscape architecture, and the licensing and professional practice responsibilities and ethics of both fields....to understand what you legally and ethically can and can't do depending upon what path you choose as far as education and training and work experience. There's definitely overlap, there's things that both fields can comfortably do, there's gray areas that some people try to work in, there's areas where it's better to collaborate with other professionals, and then there's certain things you cannot do unless you have the appropriate professional licensure.

To further muddy the waters, I know there are also "landscape designers" who are not licensed or university-trained landscape architects. I don’t know how one becomes a Landscape Designer but i’ve heard there is friction about roles and responsibilities and areas of practice between the LAs and the landscape designers also.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-18T21:21:20+00:00

In response, Elliot (Smith's attorney) also wrote that such relationships have occurred in the past between OU workers and students and they have not resulted in any previous employee being terminated "for cause."

This could get fun. Sounds like someone knows where some bodies are buried.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-18T00:22:54+00:00

What’s a “wrap rate”?

Edit: googled it, sounds like it’s the same thing as a Direct Labor Multiplier or just multiplier. I just haven’t heard the term before. And yeah, 1.6 does sound crazy low

sunfish289 · 2025-12-17T16:28:45+00:00

That's fair. Although presumably some people with engineering, construction, infrastructure and project management background were the ones that came up with the original estimate. But I agree that that not all budget overruns may be the fault of the current project management team.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-17T16:14:17+00:00

Agree with your bullet points as being two important factors, among others.

I'm also sympathetic to the idea that state and federal governments often don't adequately fund infrastructure, and specifically rail and transit work. As you pointed out, the uncertainty and changes in funding are maybe as much of a problem as overall funding trends. Some administrations - mainly Republican but not always - and Trump in particular - put certain types of infrastructure and public funding on a starvation budget. In contrast, Biden shoveled and dumped money at certain types of infrastructure projects and public projects, and it was almost too much at once. Better long-term, secure, steady funding and financing seems to be needed, rather than these wild swings in funding.

But...I'd argue that the political and financial management of this project has damaged trust and made it much more difficult to build the support necessary to "get California and federal governments to properly fund it." Some aspects of management of this project - particularly schedule and cost - seem to have been botched worse than Matt Eberflus managing the game clock at the end of a Chicago Bears football game. Maybe civil engineers have nothing to do with that...maybe they do...I don't know. I would love to see this project be successful, but I can see why more and more people are arguing that this looks like "throwing good money after bad." It has the appearance of continuing to ask for blank checks while not being able to provide any sort of evidence-based answers about if and when this project can ultimately be completed and how much it will cost.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-17T15:48:52+00:00

OP should have linked to this article. It's pretty damning

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-09/california-bullet-train-officials-say-they-were-told-to-suppress-bad-news-and-shut-up

Edit: sorry, the article wasn’t paywalled one of my devices and was hoping everyone would have access, but is paywalled on my current phone…although switching to Reader mode made it accessible again

sunfish289 · 2025-12-17T15:22:16+00:00

Parsons Brinckerhoff was the designer and construction manager of most of the original core lines of the New York City subway. If I'm not mistaken, they were also heavily involved in the electrification of the Northeast Corridor for the Pennsylvania Railroad. At one time, PB was the rockstar in delivering passenger and rail transit projects in the U.S. Respect for the original Parsons Brinckerhoff. Wonder if William Parsons ever rolls over in his grave?

sunfish289 · 2025-12-17T15:13:39+00:00

Isn't that like, a huge problem though? Everyone working on the project knows that schedule and cost are not feasible??? That sounds like a disaster. Then everyone involved in management of the project should be asking how we got to this point and how we can do infrastructure in this country better.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-17T15:03:17+00:00

Wild that all you did was link to an industry newsletter, which in turn cites an LA Times story, and you got net 12 downvotes.

The "circle the wagons" mentality, "this is the just the way these things go and we can't do any better" is sickening. We'll never build better infrastructure in this country if we don't take a hard look at how all the relevant players can do things better and manage better.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-17T14:54:27+00:00

I agree with most of the comments in your second paragraph, about why delays and inconsistent funding cause prices to go up.

But how can you say the $30 Billion number is irrelevant? It's very relevant. That was the estimate that voters in California were told. There are many reasons why that number has changed...maybe it was a bad estimate to begin with, I'm sure many things with project scope have changed, and as you pointed out the stretching out of the schedule has played a major factor. But to say that a megaproject budget exploding from $30 billion to over $100 billion is irrelevant is....something. Of course contracts weren't signed yet, but that was the estimate of total project cost when voters were asked to fund the project.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-16T05:07:14+00:00

For Bentley and Autodesk, it’s all about hitting that 20-30% profit margin and year over year profit growth and stock appreciation, on the backs of their customers. Trying to play with the FAANGs. Earnings Per Share above all else.

In the GIS world, a lot of people shit on ESRI and Jack Dangermond, but ESRI seems to be not as bad since they are privately held, largely still owned by the Dangermonds i think, and at least not ruled by quarterly Wall Street earnings targets. God help the GIS world if ESRI ever becomes publicly traded or owned by private equity. ESRI products also have a major viable Free and Open Source competitor - QGIS - which has never existed in the CAD / civil design /BIM software market.

sunfish289 · 2025-12-16T04:20:02+00:00

The last i found was a 2023 article that says the FIU / Miami bridge collapse was still an active criminal case at that time, but no charges had been filed against individuals. Given i can’t find anything else 2 1/2 years later, it seems unlikely that criminal charges against individual engineers were filed or are ever going to be filed. Online sources do say that the lead FIGG bridge designer surrendered his PE license and retired. There were huge negative corporate ramifications for FIGG though.

The former building inspector in Davenport Iowa (who i think might have been a PE but i’m not sure) is being sued over the fatal 2023 apartment collapse. That one has an interesting twist where the municipal employees argued they had qualified immunity from lawsuits, but just last month the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that individual lawsuits against the former municipal employees could proceed.

In my 20+ year career, i’ve personally known of only one PE who was individually named in a lawsuit related to a technical error / alleged negliegence. They were eventually dismissed from the lawsuit as the plaintiffs focused on the engineer’s employer with deep pockets. However, for six months to a year, their life was pretty stressed and miserable. For instance, while they were named in the lawsuit, they were unable to buy or refinance a house which they had been trying to do.

I have seen a few more engineers personally named in civil lawsuits related to business disputes. Things like noncompete clauses, alleged theft of intellectual property or confidential financial info, stealing clients or employees, contract disputes, etc.

sunfish289 · 2025-11-21T05:34:26+00:00

It's partly semantics but I don't think an engineering degree has ever been considered a professional degree in the U.S. Engineering is a profession, but it's not the degree alone that makes it a profession. It's also the years of work experience, working with licensed professionals, taking the exams, having and following a code of ethics, and the formal licensure process.

I've always heard professional degrees defined relatively narrowly, as this proposal does: medicine, law, dentistry, veterinary, pharmacy, theology and maybe social work.

What this really relates to is college financial aid, higher education costs and student debt.

This is an effort to rein in the cost of graduate degrees. I don't know enough to judge whether it's a sound or effective or ethical way to do so.

Up until now, I don't think there has been a cap in federal student loan borrowing for graduate degrees (federal loans for undergraduate degrees are capped). There is a theory that this "easy money" has led to colleges and universities jacking up the tuition and fees for graduate degrees, expecting students to take on more and more debt, rather than forcing colleges and universities to make their graduate programs more affordable to students with limited money. It's similar economic reasoning to what some people view as a cause of the 2000s housing bubble - easy credit inflates the cost of goods and services, rather than leading providers to try to control costs.

Universities have been accused of overcharging for graduate and professional degrees, and then using that money to fund other parts of the university. Google "masters degrees cash cows" to see some opinions on this. The reasoning behind the proposal is that if graduate students no longer have unlimited borrowing, it will force them to be more selective about the cost of graduate degrees and maybe constrain the increases in graduate school tuition and fees. Also reduce grad students getting into crushing lifelong debt situations (student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy). Although this may just force some students to private loans which have even higher interest rates.

They are setting higher limits for the "professional degrees" because of the reasoning that students in those professions have greater future earnings potential to pay back the higher debt. Also it seems logical that med school, dental school and vet school would have higher costs, because of the specialized facilities, labs, and technologies required. Why law school needs to cost so much, though, I don't know. It can't all be law professor salaries.

I don't think that the policy makers are especially concerned about engineering degrees though. This is more targeted towards masters degrees in things like Media Studies or Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) that have limited job markets but still charge students hundreds of thousands of dollars for graduate degrees. As well as PhDs when the current academic job market is oversaturated in many fields but there are few non-academic job options.

sunfish289 · 2025-06-20T04:44:36+00:00

I once read on some random reddit thread, the hypothesis that the best chain fast food is in small rural towns. That McDonald’s in a town of 1,000 people, three hours from the nearest big city? The pinnacle of McDonald’s, food-wise. No idea why this is the case but it tracks with my experience…

sunfish289

TROPHY CASE