One was built in 1897, and the other in 1925. Both bridges were designed and built by white men, although Mohawk indians may have been involved in the construction of the bridges, given that the bridges are crossing the Niagara River in upstate New York. There was no diversity whatsoever in the engineering of those two bridges. No women, no blacks, no gays, no Latinx, no LGBT of any sort. Nothing but white guys and their slide rules.

One's a railroad bridge and the other a road bridge. Both somewhat austere, form follows function in this case. I still think they're beautiful.

Like I posted in another thread, I get that society may benefit from having more black and female engineers, but I fail to see the benefit to engineering.

We're constantly being told that diversifying the workforce in all fields will benefit those fields - the raison d'être of diversity efforts. How exactly will having more black and female engineers benefit engineering? Will we get better bridges from diversity?

• Woke up (late), turned on my 'personal computer,' saw this and was reminded how much I love Western Civ.

Q.: Hey guys! We're a continental power! Let's automate the mundane, ten-man/three-hour maintenance chores for our majestic cross-country logistical miracles so that it only takes three guys and thirty seconds!

A.: Okay, Dave!… We can do it, but I'll have to design a new MACHINE!… Let's catch up after lunch, and I let you know where things stand!

And this trivia-upon-trivia is almost erotically fulfilling.

Don't know if you've been tracking this week's enchantment from the Chicago Mayor's office, but there are times when one feels a naughty wish that a spark might turn into flame. This is one of those times. ~ Crid at August 23, 2020 7:05 AM

At some point, Chicago voters are going to stop caring that Lightfoot is a black lesbian and just want her to be a good mayor. She's failed on that account already.

The worst part is that the voters will go back to voting for an autocrat, like the Daleys - because, under the Daleys, Chicago worked and was livable.

> Will we get better bridges
> from diversity?

Listen, the people who subscribe to these beliefs aren't worldly. They don't know the difference between an engineering mind and a smooth-talking, elbow-patched, well-bearded (in every sense) Professor Emeritus of Groupthink at the local univers-tee.

They've never surveyed the boundaries of human achievement as you have, Conan. They aren't even (merely) well-read. They think they're being cosmopolitan.

Their literal answer to your question is— "Yes."

Favorite Follow Zanotti, mother of stunning twins, already pregnant with a third…

… and two days after her anniversary, drops a fucking hammer on Portland from the Windy City.

America: Puts out the fire.

France: Puts on the glasses.

Now we need to figure out a better way to recycle solar panels.

Photovoltaic panels are a boon for clean energy but are tricky to recycle. As the oldest ones expire, get ready for a solar e-waste glut.

https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/

To the Bat Club, Robin!

https://twitter.com/cctv_idiots/status/1297269282452189191

This woman walked into a tea shop in Aurora, CO and started berating the owners for Asians stealing black culture, again. The tea shop is called Trap Tea and features a house in its logo. "Trap House" is ghetto slang for a crack or meth house.

Why on earth would you take the lowest elements and activities of people of your race and highlight those as your culture? Whites don't take the Klan or toothless rednecks as "white culture." Why would black people want criminality, illiteracy, and ignorance as the exemplar of black people in America?

• Also, here's an amusing cover. The answer was, of course, "No." Torvalds had released his babymonster into the wild a year earlier.

• A good curio site.

So.. There's been some Twitter drama -as always- about an anime called Uzaki-chan wants to hang out! because the female main character is a petite woman with large breasts. SJWs are offended -as always- and are saying that that kind of women with that anatomy doesn't exist.

So here's a young lady with that kind of body proportions cosplaying as Uzaki-chan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZBdI1kXFd8

Look at his face when she talks:

https://twitter.com/JayMotty/status/1296725142643539968

Listen, the people who subscribe to these beliefs aren't worldly. ~ Crid at August 23, 2020 7:24 AM

I was reading a Twitter exchange on capitalism vs. socialism and the ignorance displayed by both sides was appalling, but the blind certainty, anger, and hate displayed by the socialists was frightening. I do fear for this country if the SJWs get control.

Now, I do recognize that the loudest voices in American politics do not always represent the largest voting blocs. However, I also recognize that the election of people like Lori Lightfoot, Chesa Boudoin, and Kim Foxx herald an increasingly hostile, increasingly disconnected from reality, and increasingly larger portion of the electorate inclined toward collectivism.

You're an optimist. I think our wider culture has lost the plot, and isn't going to find it again. The guy on the street has become convinced that he exists only as an extension of government. He has no idea that he has responsibility for his own fate, let alone the well-being of others. There are no contexts in which humility, initiative, or self-reliance are encouraged... After all, they've shut down the churches.

Specifically, over the past 30 years the United States has offloaded all of its game-changing manufacturing capability to other nations… China, India, and maybe 20 others… Nations which should be expected to watch out for their own interests when it hits the fan, as it so certainly did in 2020. We did it to save pennies on consumer prices, and put each other out of jobs in the process. In particular, we put the intellectually less-capable sectors of our population out of work, while government has always striven to protect the bright ones.

It was only about eight years ago that I was marveling, on this selfsame web page, at the insight from Thomas PM Barnett: 'The United States has the best 3D printer in the universe... It's called China!' Well, as it turns out, we don't even have that.

I've just moved back to a corner of the country that has enormous resourcefulness for small-scale —and some large-scale— manufacturing. If on February 10th someone had said 'Make surgeon's masks!,' America would have been knee-deep in them by the end of the month. Government presumably got in the way.

Go to a lefty you know, or almost anyone on the street, and say "I bet businesses could do well manufacturing PPE right now." The response will be expressions of concern and an urgency to put the brakes on rapacious capitalists. In the hour when we need independent, entrepreneurial Americans working at their best initiative without burdensome regulation, the average Joe wants even more constraint.


I'm in the process of enormous adjustment to find alignment with this belief. To be perfectly clear, I haven't wandered off into the desert to eat grubs and fried salamanders, but I've tried to find a place in this machinery where I can at least live by my beliefs privately.

We'll see.

@sixclaws: Re the Uzaki-chan cosplayer, large breasts are not unusual on a fat woman of any size, but on a small, skinny frame are usually implants. As my wife says, dieting reduces the breasts first...

However, look up "Virginal breast hypertrophy." That can go far beyond Uzaki-chan and become grotesque. I've seen one case, a small, skinny neighbor girl, 12 years old, with Dolly Parton breasts. She walked like her back hurt, and seemed quite embarrassed and unhappy all the time.

You're an optimist. I think our wider culture has lost the plot, and isn't going to find it again. The guy on the street has become convinced that he exists only as an extension of government. He has no idea that he has responsibility for his own fate, let alone the well-being of others. There are no contexts in which humility, initiative, or self-reliance are encouraged.... ~ Crid at August 23, 2020 10:44 PM

I like to think of myself as cynical.

I fear you're right about the wider culture.

Who knows though? As we grow older, we see our own past through nostalgic glasses and view the culture in our prime to have been the high point, the enviable acme of civilization, whereas modern culture cannot help but pale in comparison.

Maybe the kids are all right.

On the other hand, I fear that this is not a case of nostalgia, but one of actual decline. While it may be less important today to be able to survive in the woods without store-bought gear or do points and plugs on a Plymouth in the driveway, there is a certain value in the self-reliance that is not being taught today.

Get away from the coasts. If you live in LA or Seattle then everything Crid bemoans is real. There the kids aren't all right. But there are parts of the nation between Manhattan and the Golden Gate bridge. There are lots of cities that aren't burning.

Get away from the coasts. ... There are lots of cities that aren't burning. ~ Ben at August 24, 2020 1:37 PM

Well, there's nothing left to burn in Minneapolis. Milwaukee went up in May. Atlanta went up in June. And Kenosha just went up. This is not isolated to coastal cities anymore, if it ever truly was.

Fine. Get away from deep blue cities. But there is no denying the cities that are burning are doing so because the people who live there want them to burn. There are plenty of places in the US where such things are not tolerated.

If you want to live in New Orleans for the great food and 'culture' then don't complain when the cops rob your house. It is a package deal. You have to take it or leave it.

> It is a package deal. You have
> to take it or leave it.

That's categorically insane.

That is life Crid. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to live in a corrupt hell hole then you are going to live in a corrupt hell hole.

Expecting things to work any other way is insane.