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I’ve often wondered why every good sidewalk I see has a WPA stamp on it from the 1930s and the modern ones are all crumbled and uneven. https://share.gemini.go

I’ve often wondered why every good sidewalk I see has a WPA stamp on it from the 1930s and the modern ones are all crumbled and uneven. https://share.gemini.google/5g0gxGyOmAPD https://share.gemini.google/5g0gxGyOmAPD

defrost 3mo ago
.. and, also, ... The folk of the 1930s were entirely capable of making poor quality concrete that barely lasted 30 years (source, my father, born 1935, still alive despite having mixed many a batch of concrete and having laboured). The reason you don't see that walking about is that poor quality 1930s concrete was replace 50+ years ago.
TylerE 3mo ago
Survivorship bias in action.
- somenameforme 3mo ago
  I don't see how this would work because you're saying that the older sidewalks are scrapped and rebuilt when they hit a state of 'x' deterioration, so you only see > 'x' state ones. But how then could it be that newer sidewalks are allowed to fall below 'x' instead of also just being scrapped and rebuilt?
  - altairprime 3mo ago
    Municipal budgets cratered hard over the past couple decades, roadway maintenance is given precedence over sidewalk maintenance, and SUVs and electric vehicles do considerably more roadway damage per vehicle. So there’s concurrent causes promoting a global decay in sidewalk maintenance in cities that expanded without the necessary tax base to support maintenance: see for example Los Angeles (current-day example!) repaving all but one foot’s width of their roadways so that they don’t have to fix broken sidewalks. This doesn’t contradict the survivor bias point! If anything, it’ll accelerate it: you’re about to see just how many (or few) sidewalk squares survive the underspend. Citizen science, here we come!
  - Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
    Politics, money allocation, taxation, etc. The US had a golden age last century and is now in decline. It can still bounce back but it needs a political and legal revolution, in this particular case, it needs to tax the wealthy and spend it on municipal improvements. But that's socialism / liberalism and apparently that's terrorism now.
    - somenameforme 3mo ago
      This is a bit of a tangent, but government revenue has skyrocketed in recent decades. Here is an inflation adjusted table. [1] As a percent of GDP it's been fairly stable since the end of WW2 [2], and dramatically higher than prior. But that understates reality because it excludes deficit spending which has increased exponentially since then. So the government is collecting and spending substantially more than back in the golden age, even after accounting for population/economic/etc growth. [1] - https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-government-collect/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-go... [2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
    - andsoitis 3mo ago
      > it needs to tax the wealthy The top 1% of earners pay about 38% of all federal individual income taxes, while making up roughly 20% of the nation's total Adjusted Gross Income.
      - cindyllm 3mo ago
        [dead]
Barbing 3mo ago
Gemini 3 Flash? Edit: if you were an expert in this field and that link saved you from typing, and you mentioned you could confirm every word, that’d make sense - I think those Flash models were tested as being as reliable as a coin flip in some hallucination test scenarios, so linking it’s like… eh do I wanna read potentially-only-plausible history?
toasty228 3mo ago
Don't you love it when gemini quotes an AI generated video with 83 views as a source of truth
- Mistletoe 3mo ago
  I'm also judging by my own eyes because I can see that the WPA concrete uses coarser substrate like the Gemini answer says and is harder than normal concrete when I press it. And also has no cracks in it almost 100 years later.

defrost 3mo ago

.. and, also, ... The folk of the 1930s were entirely capable of making poor quality concrete that barely lasted 30 years (source, my father, born 1935, still alive despite having mixed many a batch of concrete and having laboured). The reason you don't see that walking about is that poor quality 1930s concrete was replace 50+ years ago.

TylerE 3mo ago

Survivorship bias in action.

somenameforme 3mo ago
I don't see how this would work because you're saying that the older sidewalks are scrapped and rebuilt when they hit a state of 'x' deterioration, so you only see > 'x' state ones. But how then could it be that newer sidewalks are allowed to fall below 'x' instead of also just being scrapped and rebuilt?
- altairprime 3mo ago
  Municipal budgets cratered hard over the past couple decades, roadway maintenance is given precedence over sidewalk maintenance, and SUVs and electric vehicles do considerably more roadway damage per vehicle. So there’s concurrent causes promoting a global decay in sidewalk maintenance in cities that expanded without the necessary tax base to support maintenance: see for example Los Angeles (current-day example!) repaving all but one foot’s width of their roadways so that they don’t have to fix broken sidewalks. This doesn’t contradict the survivor bias point! If anything, it’ll accelerate it: you’re about to see just how many (or few) sidewalk squares survive the underspend. Citizen science, here we come!
- Cthulhu_ 3mo ago
  Politics, money allocation, taxation, etc. The US had a golden age last century and is now in decline. It can still bounce back but it needs a political and legal revolution, in this particular case, it needs to tax the wealthy and spend it on municipal improvements. But that's socialism / liberalism and apparently that's terrorism now.
  - somenameforme 3mo ago
    This is a bit of a tangent, but government revenue has skyrocketed in recent decades. Here is an inflation adjusted table. [1] As a percent of GDP it's been fairly stable since the end of WW2 [2], and dramatically higher than prior. But that understates reality because it excludes deficit spending which has increased exponentially since then. So the government is collecting and spending substantially more than back in the golden age, even after accounting for population/economic/etc growth. [1] - https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-government-collect/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-go... [2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
  - andsoitis 3mo ago
    > it needs to tax the wealthy The top 1% of earners pay about 38% of all federal individual income taxes, while making up roughly 20% of the nation's total Adjusted Gross Income.
    - cindyllm 3mo ago
      [dead]

Barbing 3mo ago

Gemini 3 Flash? Edit: if you were an expert in this field and that link saved you from typing, and you mentioned you could confirm every word, that’d make sense - I think those Flash models were tested as being as reliable as a coin flip in some hallucination test scenarios, so linking it’s like… eh do I wanna read potentially-only-plausible history?

toasty228 3mo ago

Don't you love it when gemini quotes an AI generated video with 83 views as a source of truth

Mistletoe 3mo ago
I'm also judging by my own eyes because I can see that the WPA concrete uses coarser substrate like the Gemini answer says and is harder than normal concrete when I press it. And also has no cracks in it almost 100 years later.