Gun Free Zone

In case you missed it, the Fern Hollow Bride in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania collapsed when I municipal bus drove over it and ten people were injured.

Recently it came to light that in 2018 a man walking his dog noticed the bridge structure was rusted through and Tweeted the city about it.

@Pgh311 I hope someone is keeping an eye on the underside of the Forbes Avenue bridge over Frick Park? One of the big "X" beams is rusted through entirely (and, yes, I see the cables, so it's probably not a crisis). pic.twitter.com/UQScawPEGQ

— Dr. G Kochanski (@gpk320) December 29, 2018

That is just over three years ago.

According to the Post-Gazette article linked above:

[Mr. Kochanski] said it was just chance that he took the photo. He walks underneath the bridge at least twice a week with his dog, but, on that day, he happened to look up and noticed the detached beam, as well as some cable supports that seemed to have been added more recently to replace any function that the detached beam had provided. From that point on, it worried him.

“Until they removed the rusted beam, I’d look up every time I walked beneath the bridge,” he said. “But after that, I kind of figured it was taken care of and I gradually forgot about it.”

Mr. Kochanski had seen online that the last documented inspection appeared to have been 2017. Told that Mayor Ed Gainey said Friday morning that there was a much more recent inspection just four months ago, in September, he was stunned.

“If that’s true, then somebody did a pretty miserable job of inspecting,” he said.

According to 2CBS Pittsburgh:

Pittsburgh Bridge Collapse: Fern Hollow Bridge Had ‘Poor’ Rating Since 2011

Inspectors have listed the Fern Hollow Bridge in poor condition for more than a decade, although they said other local bridges are actually in worse condition.

Inspectors began listing the bridge in poor condition as far back as 2011, and as recently as last September.

In 2017, inspectors recommended it be overhauled “because of general structure deterioration and inadequate strength,” and recommended a restoration project estimated at $1.5 million. That project was never funded.

Now here is an interesting article from April, 2021:

Hundreds of Miles of New Bike Lanes Coming to Pittsburgh
Checking in with the Bike(+) Plan in Pittsburgh.

According to the article, the city of Pittsburgh is making progress on a plan that would bring the city’s total of bike lanes above 250 miles. The city last year added 13 miles of bike facilities to an existing 60 miles, according to Karina Ricks, the director of mobility and infrastructure for the city, who is cited throughout the article touting the benefits of bike infrastructure.

This is an image straight from the city’s Bike(+) master plan:

Apparently getting safely home on municipal busses because the brides don’t collapse isn’t on that list.

Here is another:

Historic Shadyside intersection has become official point of Pride

The corner of Ellsworth and Maryland Avenues has more significance than meets the eye.

In the mid-1990s, when LGBTQ Pride marches in Pittsburgh were small and grassroots, Richard Parsakian and others in the community held a homemade rainbow flag over that intersection.

And now the corner has been memorialized with a recently installed public art project to mark its significance. The intersection is filled with a collage of colors and shapes to represent every group of the LGBTQ community and to signify to visitors and Pittsburghers alike the role the area played in the fight for equal rights.

Now I will be the first to admit that I am not a structural engineer.  But I am a PE in metallurgical engineering and I can tell you that it takes a long fucking time to rust entirely through a girder like that.

I’d also say, albeit slightly outside of my area of expertise, that there is clearly something wrong with the bridge’s drainage system if the Salt from the roads covered the steel sub structure and wasn’t safely drained away from it.

Also, again not as a structural engineer but someone who a lot about the strength of steel, I’m having a hard time understanding how two tension rods are an adequate replacement for a girder.

Let’s put this all together.

The city was well aware that the Fern Hollow Bridge was in poor condition for over a decade.

They did some hackneyed fix to it and it passed inspection barely five months before it collapsed.

The city couldn’t find the money to fix that bridge, or others in worse condition, but dies have the money for bike lanes to achieve some Woke goals of reducing car emissions and letting people walk to places where they can buy fresh vegetables.

Bike paths for suburban yuppies to bike to the Whole Foods and LGBT street murals.

That is the government’s priorities.

Not fixing bridges with sub structures that have rusted through.

And when the Federal Government gets involved what do they do?

Secretary Paternity Leave tells us how roads and bridges are racist.

I think the problem with the Fern Hollow Bridge was structural corrosion not structural racism.  But what do I know, I’m just an straight white male engineer who believes in objective facts and that 2+2=4.

Our government tells us we’re racist if we don’t pass a trillion dollar infrastructure bill but the entire time our government knew the bridges were rusty and needed replacement but spent money on bike paths and gay crosswalks until the bridge collapsed and tax paying citizens got hurt.

This is a perfect example of the decadent bullshit that our nation has become.

Florida House Democrats walked out of a committee meeting on Jan. 26 ahead of a vote to approve the nomination of the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo.

Democrats said they walked out because Ladapo could not “adequately answer questions on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Despite the walkout, Republicans unanimously advanced Ladapo to the next round of Senate confirmations.

Florida Democrats Walk Out on Surgeon General’s Confirmation Hearing

Well, you have to understand Democrats. He is the right color and even better, he is an immigrant from Nigeria. But he committed the Mortal Sins of being smart, worked his ass off, graduated in the best school and became a great doctor. And if that was not enough, he was chosen by Governo DeSantis to be the head of Florida’s Health care.

I am still amazed that Democrats have not set a cross on fire in this guy’s front yard and warn him to leave town or else.

Reader Harv sent me this stupidity:

Olympia, WA –U.S. Navy SEALs have temporarily stopped training in Washington state coastal parks while a legal challenge seeking to ban them permanently winds its way through the court system.

Five of the state’s coastal parks have been utilized for special operations exercise and cold-water training for SEALs for over three decades, according to Coffee or Die Magazine.

Between 2015 and 2020, the Navy conducted a total of 37 training events in Washington state parks, Overton told Coffee or Die Magazine.

Navy SEALs Pause Water Training At Washington State Parks After Public Outcry – The Police Tribune

So what happened? Did a Seal go berserk and molested puppies and kitties? Or maybe a team stepped on some flower bed owned by some guru? Or children were scared when they came face to face with painted warriors?

None of the above:

He said there have never been any problems between Navy personnel and park visitors in the past.

So why the opposition? As somebody commented:

“We use our parks for peace, solitude, getting back to nature, getting in tune with our family and ourselves. There is no need to use these spaces. Stop, just stop. This is a terrible idea,” one resident wrote.

This is not just an idea, it is something that has been happening for a while now and probably 99% of the people now complaining about, did not have an idea this was happening because that is one of the ideas behind the training.

Another commenter said the Navy has destroyed homes, wildlife, communities, national parks, and the environment with “toxic jet noise and war games” and urged the state to “say no to the Bullish Toxic Navy.”

And that is where you get the sneaky suspicion none of the complainers have seen the inside of a park, much less really worry about its condition other than say they are “Green.” This is just political bullshit emanated from the deep fountains of the Left Anti-War movement (Specially if it favors the defense of the USA. They don’t care if China or Russia invades other nations, they have a right to do so because reasons.)

Same old shit, different generation.

From The Daily Mail (because the US media is a bunch of cowards):

EXCLUSIVE: ‘We’re uncomfortable in our own locker room.’ Lia Thomas’ UPenn teammate tells how the trans swimmer doesn’t always cover up her male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach

Sharing a locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has become a point of contention for some of her University of Pennsylvania teammates, who feel uncomfortable changing in the private space with someone undergoing gender transition, the DailyMail.com can reveal.

‘It’s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,’ one swimmer on the team told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

Lia has told her teammates that she dates women.

While Lia covers herself with a towel sometimes, there’s a decent amount of nudity, the swimmer said. She and others have had a glimpse at her private parts.

She stated that team members have raised their concern with the coach, trying to get Thomas ousted from the female locker room, but got nowhere.

‘Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,’ the UPenn swimmer said. ‘But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.’

‘It’s really upsetting because Lia doesn’t seem to care how it makes anyone else feel,’ the swimmer continued. ‘The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room for, like, the feelings of one.’

I keep fucking telling you people, the actual number of people who have actual gender dysphoria that meets the standards of the DSM are very small.

Virtually 100% of ‘trans people’ like this are perverts and sexual predators who are using the trans righs zeitgeist to abuse women.

A telltale sign is the ‘transwoman lesbian’ who will tell you “suck her girl-dick.”

As if the moment they get mad they are unable to continue to pretend they are women and start acting like the violent, abusive men that they are.

Lia here enjoys embarrassing women in the pool and flashing women in the locker room, and avoids consequences because he’s a protected class of victim because of how he identifies.

The only upside of this is that the more shit like this happens the more normies will come around.

They may have accepted masks and boosters but I don’t think letting an adult male grow put his hair and prey on their daughters in the name of trans rights is something they can stomach for long.

This crusty old hippie bitch wrote one song that killed millions of children by getting other ignorant hippies to ban DDT causing malaria outbreaks in Africa and South America.

Her music catalog should have been pulled from everywhere decades ago.

Fuck her with a spotted apple.

Miguel has gotten several emails about my last post and forwarded them to me.

I tried the Anime original.

I couldn’t make it through the first episode.

I made a valiant effort but I failed.

It’s not just Anime fans I don’t like.  The visuals of Anime grate on me.

I also didn’t grow up watching American cartoons or their maybe something wrong with my brain and eyes but I found it unwatchable.

I also cannot play Halo, anything that uses the Unreal engine, or Super Smash Bros.  For that matter, I’m not a gamer.  After about 30 minutes of first generation Star Wars Battlefront I have a splitting headache and feel the need to take a nap.

I have watched Spirited Away and like it.

So who knows, but I can’t watch Anime.