• 11 Posts
  • 547 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: September 3rd, 2023
  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users: Leak show feds tracking anti-ICE Reddit users like "Budget-Chicken-2425"English
    6·
    17 days ago

    These newsletters come out all the damn time and are relatively easy to get signed up for these Fusion Center briefs. You can generally apply if you have at least a remote level of need for them either through physical security, or cyber security.

    They’re typically based on SAR (suspicious activity reporting), so they’re essentially briefs and generally tip guides about things that might be happening in your state or area. All those tips that you send via tips.fbi.com or similar tend to make their way to your local fusion center. They get marked down for relevant current political climate stuff from multiple agencies, typically include thwarted terrorist events or online calls for action, and will usually training available.

    While most of the info in these newsletters are For Official Use Only, there’s a lot that might straight up be publicly available which can still be shared under the CUI Program. You just can’t share the entire document itself since it’s typically unclassified, but that doesn’t mean you can share it publicly. Parts of it maybe, it’ll tell you which parts you can. It’s similar to Traffic Light Protocol for any CISA stuff if you get those. TLP Clear is capable of being publicly released. Everything else has some sort of limitation.

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.world•It's just aging /sEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I hate to tell you, but this sort of anti-science medical fearmongering is half the reason why millennials and older had to suffer through their entire formative years and young adult lives dealing with untreated ADHD by treating help as if it’s makes people lesser than others.

    They’re just kids! They don’t need no ritalin, that’s just how boys are! He just needs to focus, and that’s on the school to figure out! Besides, what happens when they stop taking it, all the good work you’ve done for 10 years including the capability of getting a good job will just fall apart when the apocalypse hits!

    Okay, Bill. Now don’t forget to take your omeprazole and losartan heart meds before you have to visit the ER again from thinking you’re having a heart attack, or actually having one again.

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.world•Trains 🤧English
    2·
    3 months ago

    Edit: Unfortunately despite everyone’s removeding, including a very helpful friendly neighborhood train autist, we still have no better answers for how much it would cost with regular google providing wildly different answers, so good chance the below listed information is still correct given the relatively okay, but not robust sauce.

    Per ChatGPT how much would it cost to interconnect all major cities with high speed rail in the usa:

    Good question — there’s no single authoritative number, but based on past studies and real U.S. projects we can make some rough-order estimates of what it might cost to “interconnect all major U.S. cities” with a true high-speed rail (HSR) network — and the result tends to be in the hundreds of billions to low-trillions of dollars. Here’s how one might arrive at such a figure, with major caveats.

    🔎 What we know already: cost per mile is very high

    • Building HSR tracks in the U.S. is extremely expensive. For example, in California High-Speed Rail (CA-HSR), costs per mile have been estimated as high as ~ US$200 million per mile for full, 220 mph-class track. (Hoover Institution)
    • Not all rail needs to be brand-new dedicated track. For less ambitious upgrades (e.g. improving existing rail corridors to somewhat higher speeds) cost estimates are much lower: in one case, upgrading ~3,000 miles of track was estimated at about US$7.7 billion — ~US$2.5 million per mile. (Congress.gov)
    • A 2009 federal assessment noted a wide variation: while dedicated high-speed lines might cost tens of millions per mile (for example a projected HSR line between Los Angeles area and Las Vegas was estimated at about US$22 million to US$48 million per mile depending on route/terrain).

    So the cost per mile can vary by more than an order of magnitude — depending on whether the rail is new vs upgraded, terrain, urban vs rural, tunneling/bridges, land acquisition cost, station infrastructure, electrification, signaling, etc.

    🌐 What “connect all major cities” might mean — and how much track that could require

    Estimating a U.S.-wide high-speed network depends a great deal on how one defines “major cities” and the level of connectivity (hub-and-spoke? dense mesh?). But even a modest network that connects perhaps 30–50 of the largest metropolitan areas would likely require tens of thousands of route-miles of new or upgraded track.

    Past proposals give some sense of scale:

    • A plan studied by U.S. federal authorities once envisioned about 12,800 miles of passenger-rail corridors (not necessarily full HSR), with an early cost projection of ~USD 50 billion for a “moderate-speed” rail system — but that projected cost does not apply to full-speed, dedicated HSR. (Downsizing the Federal Government)
    • Analysts skeptical of HSR argue that a true nationwide high-speed rail network (serving many states and major cities with dedicated track) could cost US$500 billion to US$1 trillion — and once you “fill in all gaps,” perhaps close to US$1 trillion or more. (BLE-T)

    💡 What a plausible ballpark cost looks like today

    Because of all the variation, any large-scale estimate must come with wide error bounds. But a rough range:

    • If you built a “skeleton” network — connecting major city clusters using mostly upgraded existing tracks and selective new segments — costs might run hundreds of billions of dollars (e.g. US$300–600 billion).
    • If you instead built a more ambitious, high-speed, dedicated-track network linking most major cities (think “bullet-train everywhere”), costs could easily reach US$700 billion to over US$1 trillion, possibly more depending on scope, geography, and how modern you demand the system to be.

    Indeed, some conservative projections see ~US$1 trillion as a realistic floor for a comprehensive U.S. HSR system. (BLE-T)

    ⚠️ Why the uncertainty is so large — and what could drive cost up or down

    • Terrain & urban density: Building through mountains, hills, or densely populated urban areas (especially with tunnels/viaducts, land acquisition) dramatically increases per-mile costs (as seen in CA-HSR). (Hoover Institution)
    • Shared vs dedicated tracks: Upgrading existing tracks for “higher-speed” is far cheaper than building new dedicated corridors — but yields slower speeds and sometimes lower ridership. (Congress.gov)
    • Inflation, regulatory, environmental mitigation, stations, electrification, signaling, rolling stock, maintenance facilities: all add huge extra costs over just laying track. U.S. costs historically have run much higher than many international systems for comparable projects. (High Speed Rail Alliance)
    • Ambition & coverage: A minimal network with only a few corridors is much cheaper; a dense mesh covering dozens of metro areas raises costs steeply.
    • Political, legal, and land-rights hurdles: In the U.S., acquiring rights-of-way, dealing with local regulations, environmental reviews, and community opposition tend to add delays and cost overruns — as seen with CA-HSR. (U.S. Government Accountability Office)

    🎯 Bottom line: It’s possible — but very expensive

    If the U.S. decided to connect all major cities with a modern high-speed rail network (dedicated tracks, fast speeds, nationwide coverage), a realistic cost estimate is likely in the range of several hundred billion to over a trillion dollars (in today’s dollars).

    If you like, I can run a rough “back-of-envelope” estimate: pick, say, the 50 biggest U.S. metro areas, lay out hypothetical direct HSR connections, and compute a total cost estimate — to show you concretely what “major-city-wide national HSR” might cost under different assumptions (cheap upgrades vs full build). Do you want me to build that estimate now?