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Idiocracy Trifecta

Bay Arean

Bay Arean

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 8, 2010
Location
El Sobrante
Moto(s)
Bonneville
...and/or The Decline of Engineering in America.

Bay Bridge rusty bolts. Made in China.

Millenium Tower leans. He did it, no he did it.

Salesforce Transit Center. Name and shame. Closed within a month of opening.

I can't quite invoke Schadenfreude because, well, I want the Bay Bridge to be safe. The swells in Millenium Tower? Well, it's not their fault that the thing was plunked into the ground.

"Salesforce" Transit Center?: Still mad about naming the civil facility but irrelevant to the fact that we just can't do stuff anymore.

But it kind of reminds of the shitty unsafe dystopia in Idiocracy.

Surprised nobody already brought it up...
 
CocoLoco said:
Shut up...I'm 'batin.
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Ha! Ya know, the premium cable keeps showing the reboot of Chips and "Frito" is the guy playin the whiter cop. I have a very hard time just not seeing Frito over and over through the movie. Dax Shepard or something... I keep thinking, "I like money.
 
Ow, my balls....

Of course, they did make a point of explaining it was an American manufactured steel beam.
 
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Nucking Futs said:
Just don’t be in the City when the big one hits. I don’t trust anything built there!
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I am not going to lie. I am just waiting for the Salesforce to start leaning too, or one of the Rincons. Sorry, I had a rough childhood and it made me kinda mean.:laughing:laughing
 
Bay Arean said:
...and/or The Decline of Engineering in America.

Bay Bridge rusty bolts. Made in China.

Millenium Tower leans. He did it, no he did it.

Salesforce Transit Center. Name and shame. Closed within a month of opening.

I can't quite invoke Schadenfreude because, well, I want the Bay Bridge to be safe. The swells in Millenium Tower? Well, it's not their fault that the thing was plunked into the ground.

"Salesforce" Transit Center?: Still mad about naming the civil facility but irrelevant to the fact that we just can't do stuff anymore.

But it kind of reminds of the shitty unsafe dystopia in Idiocracy.

Surprised nobody already brought it up...
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85% of these are Union Labor problems. Remove prevailing wage requirements from all of these, and the margins would better allow for materials, over engineering, and QA.

Dystopian Idiocracy suggests people don't know how. Reality is, society is driven by profit and Labor has made it so hard to build anything on these public works projects for a profit, they have to find it in other areas of the project.

Bay Arean said:
I am not going to lie. I am just waiting for the Salesforce to start leaning too, or one of the Rincons. Sorry, I had a rough childhood and it made me kinda mean.:laughing:laughing
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I don't expect Salesforce towers to lean. These guys are building those as an ego trip. They have more money than god, and don't care how much they waste, so they can afford to pay for the Extra Stuff that overbuilds stability, etc. They don't care how much it costs. My best friend ran the plumbing for a significant percentage of those projects.
 
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Eldritch said:
85% of these are Union Labor problems. Remove prevailing wage requirements from all of these, and the margins would better allow for materials, over engineering, and QA.

Dystopian Idiocracy suggests people don't know how. Reality is, society is driven by profit and Labor has made it so hard to build anything on these public works projects for a profit, they have to find it in other areas of the project.
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I bet it has more to do with concern for shareholders getting paid rather than the ones actually doing the work.

Maybe don't try to cut EVERY corner to save a buck.
 
Eldritch said:
85% of these are Union Labor problems. Remove prevailing wage requirements from all of these, and the margins would better allow for materials, over engineering, and QA.

Dystopian Idiocracy suggests people don't know how. Reality is, society is driven by profit and Labor has made it so hard to build anything on these public works projects for a profit, they have to find it in other areas of the project.
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Yeah, I see what you mean, but in the middle of Earthquake Central, it baffles me, the Millenium Tower thing. We are supposed to be one othe leading examples in the world of dealing with seismic safety etc etc etc.
 
something something dust storm, something something burrito coverings.
 
Why do you guys hate capitalism?
 
Thing is, we had capitalism when we could build shit. Like Hoover Dam and stuff. i wonder if Oroville Spillway has cost more than Hoover by now? Kidding but...

PS. Maybe they could get that PR firm to convince us that the beams arent cracked, too!!! That's the ticket!
 
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Bay Arean said:
I am not going to lie. I am just waiting for the Salesforce to start leaning too, or one of the Rincons. Sorry, I had a rough childhood and it made me kinda mean.:laughing:laughing
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Salesforce won't lean. Neither will 181 Fremont or the new Oceanwide Center (under construction now). All of these building have foundations which extend down, and into bedrock. I can't tell you why the Millenium Tower's ownership didn't extend their foundations down to bedrock...maybe they wanted to save $100M.
 
Climber said:
Looks like it's either a manufacturing issue (China?) or somebody put too much weight on the top floor.
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I guarantee this was down to greed. The specs were the specs. Somebody played "good enough" with the materials and "close enough" with the manufacturing. Then they tested a sample and it failed. So they retested and cherry picked to get a passing result. I've seen it happen a lot - but thankfully not in anything structural.
 
easter bunny said:
I guarantee this was down to greed. The specs were the specs. Somebody played "good enough" with the materials and "close enough" with the manufacturing. Then they tested a sample and it failed. So they retested and cherry picked to get a passing result. I've seen it happen a lot - but thankfully not in anything structural.
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Also this was all American steel per the contract at least.

Not sure if it was a materials issue, or if the engineers miscalculated the load. The park would be hard to account for, and they may have been pressured to reduce the estimated weight of it because of the exponentially increasing cost to build sufficient load bearing with linear increases in load.
 
easter bunny said:
I guarantee this was down to greed. The specs were the specs. Somebody played "good enough" with the materials and "close enough" with the manufacturing. Then they tested a sample and it failed. So they retested and cherry picked to get a passing result. I've seen it happen a lot - but thankfully not in anything structural.
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But isn;t there liability in these decisions? is there some business gambit, beyond basic incorporation, that makes those who build failed projects NOT liable? What am I missin, here?
 
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