That makes perfect sense.  Thanks!

Beyond tragic. These people were not on vacation. Their lives were awful enough in their native countries to warrant the effort of traveling to the border and taking an obvious risk by climbing into a truck with many other people in late June.

Steel has a coefficient of thermal expansion of about 7 micro-inch/inch/degF. So for every 1 degF increase, it expands 7 micro-inches per inch. For 140F and a rail length of say 1000 ft, it will lengthen about 6 inches.  This could cause the rails to “buckle” and possibly separate from each other enough that would…

It is not the melting point that is relevant here. It is the thermal expansion with increase in temperature. Steel, no matter what the thickness is, expands with temperature increase and what had been tested for up to 115F was not enough for the 140F the city saw. 140F is not the usual temperatures that are reported…

The article states that these deaths will become more common as our climate warms an already hot place to even hotter temps. To me that reads as, an already exasperated situation now has more to contend with. Not that it is the sole cause of this one incident.

Because many American government contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder and aesthetics isn’t a factor in decision-making.

You’re correct - virtually everything on BART is custom. They don’t use standard gauge rails (goal was to make them smoother for rides), and a lot of their systems are so out of date that many of them can’t be easily repaired. They took a small eternity to get the new trains which are pretty much meh.

Are we going to have those orange Blade Runner skies from back in 2020 again when the fires really start going? I hope not.

The newer trains look slightly better. Problem is they still need to build them all, and it also took for-fucking-ever to get new train cars and designs. My understanding from being in the Bay Area is that the original BART cars/tracks/etc. were designed from the ground-up and so many of the parts needed to be…

Because in America, unless it’s a commuter line that takes you from the suburbs into the city, using public transportation is seen as something only the poors do

Something something thoughts and prayers. Except I’m not religious so no prayers, and Texas isn’t worth wasting a thought on. I know there are some decent people living there, but fuck Texas with the biggest steer the state has to offer.

Just keeping their Southern border cities from becoming like Juarez will be challenge enough without the DEA, ATF, CBP, Homeland Security, US military intelligence and other federal agencies, paid for by all US citizens working against the Mexican cartels.

Let them secede.  See how long it takes them to fall apart without the Federal government to bail them out of all their fuckups.

Maybe a certain god is punishing them for how their state is being ran

Have you ever watched the Mythbusters episode about how fecal matter is just about covering everything? And polio is caused by a virus and spread in the usual ways person-to-person, including by people who don’t wash their hands well enough after doing their business. So, yeah, there’s risk here.

The original polio vaccine used weakened virus. Which actually did start spreading on its own. So it is possible it came from someone vaccinated with OPV.

I suspect that the feces-testing is governmental? A rational reason to have a reasonable tax rate then, so as to have facilities available and working so as to provide warning for rising problems such as this.

Some guy (or gal) with a poop fetish is having the best day of their lives today.

This article made my face itch. Thanks.

Never be ashamed of a pun.