home.social

#concrete — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #concrete, aggregated by home.social.

  1. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: 🧱🛠️ A 1,900 year old latrine at Hadrian’s Villa in #Tivoli, #Italy, may hold the key to #Roman concrete’s enduring strength.

    Researchers from UC #Berkeley discovered that #carbonation, not just the well known pozzolanic reaction, allows calcite to fill cracks and heal the material over time. The findings could guide efforts to reduce #concrete’s massive #carbon footprint.

    👉 smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/

    #ancientrome #hadriansvilla #science #engineering #sustainability #archaeology #construction #history

  2. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: 🧱🛠️ A 1,900 year old latrine at Hadrian’s Villa in #Tivoli, #Italy, may hold the key to #Roman concrete’s enduring strength.

    Researchers from UC #Berkeley discovered that #carbonation, not just the well known pozzolanic reaction, allows calcite to fill cracks and heal the material over time. The findings could guide efforts to reduce #concrete’s massive #carbon footprint.

    👉 smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/

    #ancientrome #hadriansvilla #science #engineering #sustainability #archaeology #construction #history

  3. You might be surprised by the amount of car-centric infrastructure baked into this mid-sized Midwestern city. That's a lot of concrete baking in the sun.

    Further, if Eden Prairie doesn't have an apple orchard, or a reptile shop, it's missing an opportunity.

    Looking forward to the Farmers Market stop and the Micro Center (Wooddale Ave.) stop, near the manufacturing home of the Bundt pan. You'd rather not have to drive there if you can help it.

    Drone Overview of the Green Line Extension Route, 2026
    youtube.com/watch?v=YsMQouYWFls

    #TwinCities #LightRail #concrete

  4. You might be surprised by the amount of car-centric infrastructure baked into this mid-sized Midwestern city. That's a lot of concrete baking in the sun.

    Further, if Eden Prairie doesn't have an apple orchard, or a reptile shop, it's missing an opportunity.

    Looking forward to the Farmers Market stop and the Micro Center (Wooddale Ave.) stop, near the manufacturing home of the Bundt pan. You'd rather not have to drive there if you can help it.

    Drone Overview of the Green Line Extension Route, 2026
    youtube.com/watch?v=YsMQouYWFls

    #TwinCities #LightRail #concrete

  5. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: #AncientRome packed a million people into multistory apartment #buildings called "insulae," inventing mass urban #housing long before modern cities.

    Built with #Roman #concrete and #brick, these blocks mixed shops on the ground floor with cramped rented rooms above – the higher you lived, the poorer you were. Life was loud, smoky, and occasionally dangerous, but the #insulae let ordinary people live in the heart of #Rome.

    👉 zmescience.com/feature-post/hi

    #apartments #history #architecture #ostia #engineering #archaeology

  6. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: #AncientRome packed a million people into multistory apartment #buildings called "insulae," inventing mass urban #housing long before modern cities.

    Built with #Roman #concrete and #brick, these blocks mixed shops on the ground floor with cramped rented rooms above – the higher you lived, the poorer you were. Life was loud, smoky, and occasionally dangerous, but the #insulae let ordinary people live in the heart of #Rome.

    👉 zmescience.com/feature-post/hi

    #apartments #history #architecture #ostia #engineering #archaeology

  7. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: #AncientRome packed a million people into multistory apartment #buildings called "insulae," inventing mass urban #housing long before modern cities.

    Built with #Roman #concrete and #brick, these blocks mixed shops on the ground floor with cramped rented rooms above – the higher you lived, the poorer you were. Life was loud, smoky, and occasionally dangerous, but the #insulae let ordinary people live in the heart of #Rome.

    👉 zmescience.com/feature-post/hi

    #apartments #history #architecture #ostia #engineering #archaeology

  8. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: #AncientRome packed a million people into multistory apartment #buildings called "insulae," inventing mass urban #housing long before modern cities.

    Built with #Roman #concrete and #brick, these blocks mixed shops on the ground floor with cramped rented rooms above – the higher you lived, the poorer you were. Life was loud, smoky, and occasionally dangerous, but the #insulae let ordinary people live in the heart of #Rome.

    👉 zmescience.com/feature-post/hi

    #apartments #history #architecture #ostia #engineering #archaeology

  9. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: #AncientRome packed a million people into multistory apartment #buildings called "insulae," inventing mass urban #housing long before modern cities.

    Built with #Roman #concrete and #brick, these blocks mixed shops on the ground floor with cramped rented rooms above – the higher you lived, the poorer you were. Life was loud, smoky, and occasionally dangerous, but the #insulae let ordinary people live in the heart of #Rome.

    👉 zmescience.com/feature-post/hi

    #apartments #history #architecture #ostia #engineering #archaeology

  10. When Mike Graham Tried to Grow Concrete, the Internet Did the Rest

    TalkRadio host Mike Graham (left) interviews Insulate Britain spokesperson Cameron Ford (right) in a now-viral exchange about sustainability.

    Dear Cherubs, a radio interview about home insulation somehow turned into a live demonstration of how fast a debate can fall through the floorboards. Cameron Ford, an Insulate Britain spokesperson and carpenter, went on talkRADIO to talk about the campaign’s push to insulate homes, and Mike Graham seemed determined to turn the whole thing into a quiz night for facts that had already packed their bags.

    THE SETUP

    Ford made a very ordinary point: timber is renewable because trees can be regrown, while concrete is a manufactured material with a heavy carbon footprint. The Independent reported that Graham pushed back, asked whether cutting trees could ever be sustainable, and then reached the now-legendary answer that you can grow concrete — which is a sentence so wrong it deserves a parking ticket.

    The clip then went quiet for several seconds, Ford stayed on air, and Graham ended the interview with a breezy “See you Cameron, cheerio.” At that point the silence was not awkward so much as structural. According to the Guardian, this was happening against the backdrop of a wider Insulate Britain campaign, and the group said 146 members had been arrested 690 times by that point.

    THE COMEBACK

    Graham later tried to save the situation on Jeremy Kyle’s show, reportedly saying concrete “expands” as it sets. The Independent said he doubled down, which is a polite way of saying he kept digging after the shovel had already left the chat.

    To be fair, the science lane is more interesting than the punchline. Ingenia and the University of Bath have both reported on self-healing concrete research, including bacteria that can help produce limestone and seal cracks, while Science Focus has covered experimental “living concrete” using sand, gel and bacteria. That is a real field of research; it is just not a magical tree-to-concrete pipeline, and it is certainly not the same thing as saying a bag of cement photosynthesises in the dark.

    So the viral magic here was not really about construction materials at all. It was about tone, timing, and one very public refusal to let a carpenter finish a thought. For the genre of public-argument trainwreck, thisclaimer.com is a decent tab to keep open; for everyone else, the clip remains a tidy reminder that confidence and correctness are not the same material, even if someone on live radio really wishes they were.

    Sources list —
    The Independent — https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/insulate-britain-concrete-trees-b1945549.html
    The Independent TV — https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/talkradio-host-mike-graham-claims-concrete-grows-after-insulate-britain-controversy-b2183123.html
    The Guardian — https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/27/insulate-britain-protests-arrests-group-defies-injunctions
    Ingenia — https://www.ingenia.org.uk/articles/self-healing-concrete/
    University of Bath — https://www.bath.ac.uk/case-studies/using-bacteria-to-create-spontaneous-self-healing-concrete/
    Science Focus — https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/environmentally-friendly-living-concrete-capable-of-self-healing
    thisclaimer.com — https://thisclaimer.com/
    Wikimedia Commons (image source) — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cement_mixer_side.jpg

    The Thisclaimer logo blends a classic warning symbol with a brain icon to represent critical thinking, curiosity, and thoughtful disclaimers. #cameronFord #concrete #insulateBritain #mediaBlunder #mikeGraham #radioFail #sustainability #talkradio #timber #viralClip
  11. When Mike Graham Tried to Grow Concrete, the Internet Did the Rest

    TalkRadio host Mike Graham (left) interviews Insulate Britain spokesperson Cameron Ford (right) in a now-viral exchange about sustainability.

    Dear Cherubs, a radio interview about home insulation somehow turned into a live demonstration of how fast a debate can fall through the floorboards. Cameron Ford, an Insulate Britain spokesperson and carpenter, went on talkRADIO to talk about the campaign’s push to insulate homes, and Mike Graham seemed determined to turn the whole thing into a quiz night for facts that had already packed their bags.

    THE SETUP

    Ford made a very ordinary point: timber is renewable because trees can be regrown, while concrete is a manufactured material with a heavy carbon footprint. The Independent reported that Graham pushed back, asked whether cutting trees could ever be sustainable, and then reached the now-legendary answer that you can grow concrete — which is a sentence so wrong it deserves a parking ticket.

    The clip then went quiet for several seconds, Ford stayed on air, and Graham ended the interview with a breezy “See you Cameron, cheerio.” At that point the silence was not awkward so much as structural. According to the Guardian, this was happening against the backdrop of a wider Insulate Britain campaign, and the group said 146 members had been arrested 690 times by that point.

    THE COMEBACK

    Graham later tried to save the situation on Jeremy Kyle’s show, reportedly saying concrete “expands” as it sets. The Independent said he doubled down, which is a polite way of saying he kept digging after the shovel had already left the chat.

    To be fair, the science lane is more interesting than the punchline. Ingenia and the University of Bath have both reported on self-healing concrete research, including bacteria that can help produce limestone and seal cracks, while Science Focus has covered experimental “living concrete” using sand, gel and bacteria. That is a real field of research; it is just not a magical tree-to-concrete pipeline, and it is certainly not the same thing as saying a bag of cement photosynthesises in the dark.

    So the viral magic here was not really about construction materials at all. It was about tone, timing, and one very public refusal to let a carpenter finish a thought. For the genre of public-argument trainwreck, thisclaimer.com is a decent tab to keep open; for everyone else, the clip remains a tidy reminder that confidence and correctness are not the same material, even if someone on live radio really wishes they were.

    Sources list —
    The Independent — https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/insulate-britain-concrete-trees-b1945549.html
    The Independent TV — https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/talkradio-host-mike-graham-claims-concrete-grows-after-insulate-britain-controversy-b2183123.html
    The Guardian — https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/27/insulate-britain-protests-arrests-group-defies-injunctions
    Ingenia — https://www.ingenia.org.uk/articles/self-healing-concrete/
    University of Bath — https://www.bath.ac.uk/case-studies/using-bacteria-to-create-spontaneous-self-healing-concrete/
    Science Focus — https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/environmentally-friendly-living-concrete-capable-of-self-healing
    thisclaimer.com — https://thisclaimer.com/
    Wikimedia Commons (image source) — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cement_mixer_side.jpg

    The Thisclaimer logo blends a classic warning symbol with a brain icon to represent critical thinking, curiosity, and thoughtful disclaimers. #art #books #cameronFord #concrete #environment #insulateBritain #mediaBlunder #mikeGraham #radioFail #sustainability #talkradio #technology #timber #travel #viralClip
  12. A bit further upstream there is a more modern #steel #ContinuousBeamBridge, which has a #concrete deck. This is obviously a twentieth century construction as steel only became a viable structural #material as the #technology improved enough to provide cheaply and reliably made.

    #MyWork #MyPhoto #CCBYSA #DSLR #Nikon #D7000 #Spring #Heritage #Countryside

  13. A bit further upstream there is a more modern #steel #ContinuousBeamBridge, which has a #concrete deck. This is obviously a twentieth century construction as steel only became a viable structural #material as the #technology improved enough to provide cheaply and reliably made.

    #MyWork #MyPhoto #CCBYSA #DSLR #Nikon #D7000 #Spring #Heritage #Countryside

  14. As promised, more folks found the fresh concrete irresistible.
    We already had Tiffany, Mary! And Quentin. A smiley face is the latest addition.
    I will check soon and see if this pic is still accurate or if others added their monikers too. I felt no compulsion.
    What would you have written?
    #NYC #fresh #concrete #sidewalk #name #initials #smiley #NewYorkCity #midtown #Manhattan #BusStop