#civilinfrastructure — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #civilinfrastructure, aggregated by home.social.
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got so angry about walking for miles in the hot sun on pavement when I was homeless I had to start some urban project,
why are we cooking people for wanting to show up for themselves? Walking to work should be a joy, not a gauntlet wtf
#stroads #urban #solarpunk #trees #civilinfrastructure #genz
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Fixing Mosul Dam
Keeping the water in a reservoir is an obvious challenge for any dam. But for Iraq’s Mosul Dam, it’s especially challenging because the dam was built on a foundation of gypsum, a highly water-soluble mineral. Since it was built, Mosul Dam’s water has been eating away at the underlying bedrock, making sinkholes, forcing gaps, and generally working its way out. That, obviously, creates a huge risk for dam failure and massive downstream flooding.
To get the dam stabilized–at least to a point where Iraqi engineers could keep up with filling the holes as they form–took a massive international engineering project, carried out in the shadow of armed conflict. (Video and image credit: Practical Engineering)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #dams #dissolution #fluidDynamics #physics #science -
Fixing Mosul Dam
Keeping the water in a reservoir is an obvious challenge for any dam. But for Iraq’s Mosul Dam, it’s especially challenging because the dam was built on a foundation of gypsum, a highly water-soluble mineral. Since it was built, Mosul Dam’s water has been eating away at the underlying bedrock, making sinkholes, forcing gaps, and generally working its way out. That, obviously, creates a huge risk for dam failure and massive downstream flooding.
To get the dam stabilized–at least to a point where Iraqi engineers could keep up with filling the holes as they form–took a massive international engineering project, carried out in the shadow of armed conflict. (Video and image credit: Practical Engineering)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #dams #dissolution #fluidDynamics #physics #science -
Why Unpaved Roads Washboard
As anyone who has regularly traveled unpaved roads knows, they have a tendency to develop regularly spaced corrugations, otherwise known as washboarding. In addition to shaking cars and passengers, these uneven surfaces make cars harder to control, sicne the wheels can lose contact with the ground entirely at times.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon is fairly unavoidable. Once you have a wheel moving across a granular surface above a critical speed, you get these self-reinforcing patterns. It’s similar to the way that tidal ripples and sand dunes form, and it’s how you get moguls on a ski run, too!
Although they’re somewhat inevitable, as Grady describes, engineers are hard at work figuring out how to keep them from forming too quickly. (Video and image credit: Practical Engineering; research credit: N. Taberlet et al. and I. Hewitt et al.)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #fluidDynamics #Froude #FroudeNumber #granularMaterial #instability #physics #science -
Why Unpaved Roads Washboard
As anyone who has regularly traveled unpaved roads knows, they have a tendency to develop regularly spaced corrugations, otherwise known as washboarding. In addition to shaking cars and passengers, these uneven surfaces make cars harder to control, sicne the wheels can lose contact with the ground entirely at times.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon is fairly unavoidable. Once you have a wheel moving across a granular surface above a critical speed, you get these self-reinforcing patterns. It’s similar to the way that tidal ripples and sand dunes form, and it’s how you get moguls on a ski run, too!
Although they’re somewhat inevitable, as Grady describes, engineers are hard at work figuring out how to keep them from forming too quickly. (Video and image credit: Practical Engineering; research credit: N. Taberlet et al. and I. Hewitt et al.)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #fluidDynamics #Froude #FroudeNumber #granularMaterial #instability #physics #science -
Breaking a Dam to Save It
The concrete that makes up so much of our world is usually local in origin. To keep costs low, engineers use locally-sourced ingredients to make it. But not all ingredients perform the same.
In the decades since concrete’s widespread adoption, engineers have discovered that some components in the concrete are prone to chemical reactions that cause the concrete to expand over time. For big infrastructure projects like a mid-twentieth century dam, this sparks a conundrum: how can we deal with expanding concrete without losing out on years of the project’s planned lifetime?
To find out, see what Grady learned about the Tennessee Valley Authority’s clever method for relieving a dam’s stress. (Video and image credit: Practical Engineering)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #dams #fluidDynamics #physics #science #solidMechanics #stress -
Breaking a Dam to Save It
The concrete that makes up so much of our world is usually local in origin. To keep costs low, engineers use locally-sourced ingredients to make it. But not all ingredients perform the same.
In the decades since concrete’s widespread adoption, engineers have discovered that some components in the concrete are prone to chemical reactions that cause the concrete to expand over time. For big infrastructure projects like a mid-twentieth century dam, this sparks a conundrum: how can we deal with expanding concrete without losing out on years of the project’s planned lifetime?
To find out, see what Grady learned about the Tennessee Valley Authority’s clever method for relieving a dam’s stress. (Video and image credit: Practical Engineering)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #dams #fluidDynamics #physics #science #solidMechanics #stress -
Infrasound Fire Suppression Goes Commercial
Sprinklers have long been the go-to fire protection for commercial properties and some residences. Dousing a fire in water not only puts out the flames but cools the surroundings and helps prevent reignition. But it requires complicated infrastructure and can damage buildings and their contents. Back in 2015, students were experimenting with an alternative fire extinguisher that used sound below the range of human hearing; now a company is pitching a version of that technology for replacing sprinklers.
As described by Ars Technica, this infrasound system can detect and put out a small kitchen fire in under a minute. But fire fighting experts warn that there’s a big difference between a fire small enough for a fire extinguisher to handle and the kinds of fires sprinklers put out. With lives at stake, the burden of proof is significant for Sonic Fire Tech and any other company that wants to get their infrasound “sprinkler” system cleared for use in buildings. (Image credit: I. Azevedo; via Ars Technica)
#acoustics #civilInfrastructure #combustion #fire #fluidDynamics #infrasound #physics #science #soundWaves -
Infrasound Fire Suppression Goes Commercial
Sprinklers have long been the go-to fire protection for commercial properties and some residences. Dousing a fire in water not only puts out the flames but cools the surroundings and helps prevent reignition. But it requires complicated infrastructure and can damage buildings and their contents. Back in 2015, students were experimenting with an alternative fire extinguisher that used sound below the range of human hearing; now a company is pitching a version of that technology for replacing sprinklers.
As described by Ars Technica, this infrasound system can detect and put out a small kitchen fire in under a minute. But fire fighting experts warn that there’s a big difference between a fire small enough for a fire extinguisher to handle and the kinds of fires sprinklers put out. With lives at stake, the burden of proof is significant for Sonic Fire Tech and any other company that wants to get their infrasound “sprinkler” system cleared for use in buildings. (Image credit: I. Azevedo; via Ars Technica)
#acoustics #civilInfrastructure #combustion #fire #fluidDynamics #infrasound #physics #science #soundWaves -
“What wonder that gigantic corporations employ their enormous wealth and the highest legal talent to strain the laws to their upmost! What wonder that ill-gotten fortunes menace the liberties of the people!”
Tech billionaires are building a post-democratic America. Francesca Bria and a team of researchers supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES, the oldest political foundation in Germany) warn that Europe is next…
In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery, the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of its sovereignty.
A ten-billion-dollar contract with Palantir Technologies—one of the largest in the Department of Defense’s history—was framed as a move toward “efficiency.”
It consolidated seventy-five procurement agreements into a single contract: a strategic handover of core military functions to a private company whose founder, Peter Thiel, has declared that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible.”…
… J.D. Vance, propelled to the vice-presidency by $15 million from Peter Thiel, became the face of tech-right governance. Behind him, Thiel’s network moved into the machinery of the state.
Under the banner of “patriotic tech“, this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control—clouds, AI, finance, drones, satellites—an integrated system we call the Authoritarian Stack. It is faster, ideological, and fully privatized: a regime where corporate boards, not public law, set the rules.
Our investigation shows how these firms now operate as state-like powers—writing the rules, winning the tenders, and exporting their model to Europe, where it poses a direct challenge to democratic governance…
[Bria an the team use elegant interactive infographics to map and explain the what’s happened so far in the U.S, then turns to Europe…]
… By mid-2025, its reverberations were already felt across Europe. In Rome, Italian defense officials moved to integrate Elon Musk’s Starlink into military communications. In Berlin, Rheinmetall and Anduril expanded their joint venture to deploy autonomous drone swarms for NATO. The German variants of its drones still run on Californian code. Musk livestreams with the AfD’s Alice Weidel, endorsing the German far-right while supplying NATO infrastructure.
In London, the NHS scaled Palantir’s £330 million Federated Data Platform across tens of millions of patient records, By May 2025, the government had to pay KPMG £8 million just to encourage hospital adoption. Meanwhile, a £1.5 billion defense partnership binds Britain to Palantir’s AI systems.
None of these decisions provoked real debate. Few reached front pages. Together, they reveal the systematic outsourcing of European sovereignty to American oligarchs whose ideology openly undermines democracy.
It is a paradox with devastating implications: pursuing digital sovereignty while ceding control through every signed contract.
Each new contract deepens the trap. Once Palantir becomes indispensable, once Anduril’s drones are NATO standard, once nuclear facilities power AI that runs everything else— the transformation is irreversible. Europe faces an existential choice: build genuine technological sovereignty now, or accept governance by platforms whose architects view democracy as an obsolete operating system.Silicon Valley’s Authoritarian Tech Right is not theorizing this world. They are already building it. The pipelines are operational. The feedback loops are functioning. The sovereignty transfers are completing.
Democracy persists as a legacy interface— maintained for stability, while being systematically hollowed out and replaced.
The question now is whether democratic societies can recognize this formation for what it is—and build alternatives before the infrastructure of control becomes too deeply embedded to dislodge…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Authoritarian Stack,” @francescabria.bsky.social, @fesonline.bsky.social.
* President Theodore Roosevelt, in his 1907 “Provincetown Speech“
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As we reclaim the rudiments of our republic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1970 that The Magic Christian premiered in the U.S. (having premiered in London two months earlier). Starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr (with appearances by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Raquel Welch, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Richard Attenborough and Roman Polanski), it was a scathing farce/satire of capitalism, greed, and human vanities, based on Terry Southern‘s 1959 novel of the same name.
#authoritarianism #civicInfrastructure #civilInfrastructure #civilSociety #culture #film #government #history #PeterSellers #RingoStarr #society #Technology #TerrySouthern #TheMagicChristian -
“What wonder that gigantic corporations employ their enormous wealth and the highest legal talent to strain the laws to their upmost! What wonder that ill-gotten fortunes menace the liberties of the people!”
Tech billionaires are building a post-democratic America. Francesca Bria and a team of researchers supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES, the oldest political foundation in Germany) warn that Europe is next…
In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery, the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of its sovereignty.
A ten-billion-dollar contract with Palantir Technologies—one of the largest in the Department of Defense’s history—was framed as a move toward “efficiency.”
It consolidated seventy-five procurement agreements into a single contract: a strategic handover of core military functions to a private company whose founder, Peter Thiel, has declared that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible.”…
… J.D. Vance, propelled to the vice-presidency by $15 million from Peter Thiel, became the face of tech-right governance. Behind him, Thiel’s network moved into the machinery of the state.
Under the banner of “patriotic tech“, this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control—clouds, AI, finance, drones, satellites—an integrated system we call the Authoritarian Stack. It is faster, ideological, and fully privatized: a regime where corporate boards, not public law, set the rules.
Our investigation shows how these firms now operate as state-like powers—writing the rules, winning the tenders, and exporting their model to Europe, where it poses a direct challenge to democratic governance…
[Bria an the team use elegant interactive infographics to map and explain the what’s happened so far in the U.S, then turns to Europe…]
… By mid-2025, its reverberations were already felt across Europe. In Rome, Italian defense officials moved to integrate Elon Musk’s Starlink into military communications. In Berlin, Rheinmetall and Anduril expanded their joint venture to deploy autonomous drone swarms for NATO. The German variants of its drones still run on Californian code. Musk livestreams with the AfD’s Alice Weidel, endorsing the German far-right while supplying NATO infrastructure.
In London, the NHS scaled Palantir’s £330 million Federated Data Platform across tens of millions of patient records, By May 2025, the government had to pay KPMG £8 million just to encourage hospital adoption. Meanwhile, a £1.5 billion defense partnership binds Britain to Palantir’s AI systems.
None of these decisions provoked real debate. Few reached front pages. Together, they reveal the systematic outsourcing of European sovereignty to American oligarchs whose ideology openly undermines democracy.
It is a paradox with devastating implications: pursuing digital sovereignty while ceding control through every signed contract.
Each new contract deepens the trap. Once Palantir becomes indispensable, once Anduril’s drones are NATO standard, once nuclear facilities power AI that runs everything else— the transformation is irreversible. Europe faces an existential choice: build genuine technological sovereignty now, or accept governance by platforms whose architects view democracy as an obsolete operating system.Silicon Valley’s Authoritarian Tech Right is not theorizing this world. They are already building it. The pipelines are operational. The feedback loops are functioning. The sovereignty transfers are completing.
Democracy persists as a legacy interface— maintained for stability, while being systematically hollowed out and replaced.
The question now is whether democratic societies can recognize this formation for what it is—and build alternatives before the infrastructure of control becomes too deeply embedded to dislodge…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Authoritarian Stack,” @francescabria.bsky.social, @fesonline.bsky.social.
* President Theodore Roosevelt, in his 1907 “Provincetown Speech“
###
As we reclaim the rudiments of our republic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1970 that The Magic Christian premiered in the U.S. (having premiered in London two months earlier). Starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr (with appearances by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Raquel Welch, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Richard Attenborough and Roman Polanski), it was a scathing farce/satire of capitalism, greed, and human vanities, based on Terry Southern‘s 1959 novel of the same name.
#authoritarianism #civicInfrastructure #civilInfrastructure #civilSociety #culture #film #government #history #PeterSellers #RingoStarr #society #Technology #TerrySouthern #TheMagicChristian -
#CivilInfrastructure critic Adam Something turns his attention to City 17:
The Urbanism of #HalfLife City 17
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=O0zPArN1s2gHe finds a laudable investment in high-density housing, walkable streets with no car traffic, and an extensive train network. Worth a watch.
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Thursday, May 1
Zelensky warns Russia is preparing something in Belarus under guise of military drills — ‘There’s an information war, and we’ve disarmed ourselves’ — ex-US diplomat on effects of Trump cuts — 5 explosions; Ukrainian drones strike Russian military plant in Murom — Can Russia’s war machine survive without outside aid? … and more
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Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Journalist Roshchyna’s body missing organs after Russian captivity; brain, eyes, & part of the trachea had been removed — [vlog/video] Expert on US’ declining disinformation defense; Who’s countering Russian propaganda now? — France calls UN Security Council meeting over Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine — Russian drone attack injures at least 38 civilians in Kharkiv’s high-rise apartment blocks, homes … and more
https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/04/wednesday-april-30-2025/
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Behind the San Antonio River Walk
How do you manage necessary updates to an iconic landmark like the San Antonio River Walk without disrupting its function? That’s the concept behind this Practical Engineering video, which shows how the city removed and replaced two control gates for the River Walk without ever changing the water level. It’s a neat view both into the engineering of civil water infrastructure and into the practical considerations of how construction on these systems works. (Video credit: Practical Engineering)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #fluidDynamics #physics #rivers #science
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Behind the San Antonio River Walk
How do you manage necessary updates to an iconic landmark like the San Antonio River Walk without disrupting its function? That’s the concept behind this Practical Engineering video, which shows how the city removed and replaced two control gates for the River Walk without ever changing the water level. It’s a neat view both into the engineering of civil water infrastructure and into the practical considerations of how construction on these systems works. (Video credit: Practical Engineering)
#civilEngineering #civilInfrastructure #fluidDynamics #physics #rivers #science
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Ever wondered why #encryption isn't something you can do halfway? Our whole lives depend on encryption. Not a single piece of #civilinfrastructure can be secured with out it. #banks #pipelines #power #water they all are networked and depend on encryption. If we create usecases that are allowed encryption and ones that aren't, criminals will route through these blessed apps and normal people are the ones who suffer. No #politician can oder this genie back into it's bottle #internet #security
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The Silent Impact Of Underground Climate Change On Civil Infrastructure
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s44172-023-00092-1 <-- shared paper
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #model #modeling #climatechange #Chicago #USA #heat #subsurface #infrastructure #underground #heatislands #environment #publichealth #transportation #issues #impacts #deformation #ChicagoLoop #computermodel #3dmodel #temperaturesensor #temperaturesensors #groundtemperature #displacement #risk #hazard #analysis #hazardanalysis #civilinfrastructure #urbanplanning #construction #constructionengineering #opportunity #geothermal #heatpump #urban #urbandevelopment -
The Silent Impact Of Underground Climate Change On Civil Infrastructure
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s44172-023-00092-1 <-- shared paper
--
#GIS #spatial #mapping #model #modeling #climatechange #Chicago #USA #heat #subsurface #infrastructure #underground #heatislands #environment #publichealth #transportation #issues #impacts #deformation #ChicagoLoop #computermodel #3dmodel #temperaturesensor #temperaturesensors #groundtemperature #displacement #risk #hazard #analysis #hazardanalysis #civilinfrastructure #urbanplanning #construction #constructionengineering #opportunity #geothermal #heatpump #urban #urbandevelopment