Reddit refuge

  • 31 Posts
  • 3.04K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 16th, 2023

help-circle







  • It is far worse than that.

    Universities have a lot of metrics that they are judged against that don’t lead to a quality education. Research doesn’t lead to good undergraduate students. A good pass rate just means the curriculum is soft enough to keep don’t students from failing.

    So you have university presidents who are incentivized to increase prestige and they aren’t going to focus on the quality of education because that doesn’t lead to better metrics. If presidents try to defend their universities’ way of teaching, they get replaced by those who follow the system.




  • A lot of consultants and contractors do the work for different governments. A reason why governments like this is that private companies find hiring and firing a lot easier. So, if a company performs poorly, it is really easy to fire them. In some cases, governments can also get individuals working for the consultant or contractor to stop working on that governments’ jobs, effectively firing them.

    It can be a lot easier to get rid of a poorly performing consultant over a poorly performing government worker.




  • I wouldn’t say my parents were rich, but there was a safety net for them when I grew up. They meant my mom could go back to college when I was a kid and we didn’t have to worry about losing the house.

    I would say that my family didn’t have to worry about the economic existential dread when bad things happened. I could also rely on my family having to invest in my education up to college because my parents would be shamed by extended family if I wasn’t getting my AP tests paid for.

    I had to take on my college loans with a family cosigner on the understanding that I would bear that burden alone when I graduated. Since I went to school for engineering, it was considered a safe investment, which it is.

    My income is such that I can live comfortably below my means, so I do. I still have to deal with the other hardships in life; I just don’t have to worry about it ruining me financially.

    The two major benefits are that I can do important things without having to worry about financing them and I don’t feel guilt and dread over spending money. That said, it isn’t like all problems go away. A lot of problems are made easier, but they are still there.


  • Design:

    The main constraints are geotechnical in nature. You need to conduct borings of the site and the material. It is expected that construction will be faster, so you can’t rely on slowly increasing the load to build up strength. Hopefully, it is found that the soil can take the load. If not, the soil would likely be injected with grout.

    Rock removal and finishing:

    This should be a lot easier since you can use modern masonry tools for this. Cutting and finishing should be rather quick; I expect a somewhat roughened surface to help with friction between stones.

    Rock movement:

    I expect a lot of use of cranes. Once the rock gets dislodged, it will likely have eye-bolts installed into it to help move it around with a crane. From there, cranes well likely move it on to and off of all trucks. There may be barges as well if the trucking costs are too high. On the site, there will be a lot of temporary roads for trucks to drive on, making it easy to bring the stones up to the final crane.

    I expect the project to take at least two years from securing funding, probably more like three. The design is easy. The main issues are mobilization, funding, and logistics.





  • No, but my job includes producing and verifying calculations.

    We already deal with computer models, but there is a concept of “garbage in, garbage out” where the model is garbage because the inputter didn’t understand what to put in the model or even what model should be used.

    So the modeling may be more efficient, but the budget gets blown in verification because the model is crap.