4 years to build in the first place
It took nine years from the bond issue (1968) to completion (1977).
The estimate of 10 years to reopening is reasonable and consistent with what it took to build it originally when you take into consideration the four years of project prep-work that happened between the bond issuance and the start of construction.
Frankly, I think ten years is pessimistic. If the existing approaches can be salvaged it will take a good year or two off the construction time. They don't have to do any new geological studies to rebuild the cassions.
As one interesting side note...
If you're ever driving along I-80 through Iowa, north of the interstate about five miles east of Grinnell, you'll see a long, low line of white buildings. That is the 8th or 9th largest chicken factory farm on Earth.
The smell... is like if the Battle of the Somme was fought between pigeons and seaguls.
Net
Net importer just means imports exceed exports. Your original question was:
Isn't most of American beef imported?
Most of our beef is domestically produced. US domestic beef production in a typical year is north of ten million tons. Our largest import customer by comparison is Canada (followed by Mexico) and we only import low hundreds of thousands of tons from them. ALL our imports combined are maybe 1/10 the domestic production.
So why is the US a "net importer"?
Because our exports are very low. Most of the world can't afford US beef.
But in terms of meeting internal demand? Mostly domestic production. Make no mistake, the US has effective autarky with regards to meat.
And also if you dig really deep into the numbers, most of the Canadian and Mexican beef imports are actually manufactured beef products, not carcass cuts. Your frozen beef meatballs, McDonalds hamburger patties, etc; things that can be radiation sterilized.
This makes me the old taqueria across the street from where I used to work before covid. It was in an old fire station and still had the big truck doors that they'd open up on summer days.
It was on the pricey side too (still under twenty for lunch-drink-tip tho) but it was good.
More like "why should we greenlight any new projects that aren't going to leverage Disney Infinity".
Some nameless fools somewhere in the organization thought the idea of selling playable characters at $10 a pop was the best thing since abusing fastpass as a hotel perk.
They didn't win every argument, some games approved anyway, but this is why Infinity 2.0 was basically "Marvel Edition".
Nah.
The port channel will be cleared in a couple weeks. It's only fifty miles (by canal) from Philly and and a hundred miles from Norfolk. The sheer amount of recovery equipment that can be brought onsite in a day or so means they'll be cutting on it by the weekend.
What's more likely is that Maersk is probably looking at the biggest damages fine in their company's history.
standards of Bradford
My reply is based on the assumption that you're British and have never been to North America.
I don't know how bad it is in the US at the moment because I can imagine in a country as big as that it would vary wildly
Yes and no.
Here's the first thing you need to realize about the US and Canada. The overwhelming majority of both countries is either completely undeveloped, or agriculture on a scale so massive it defies European sensibilities. There are only maybe two dozen cities on the WHOLE CONTINENT that compare to the likes of Paris or Berlin, and maybe five that rival London (NYC, LA, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta).
In the vast majority of US cities, the problem is not population but rather de-industrialization. Detroit is the stereotype (miles of rotting abandoned houses because there are no jobs), but the same is happening on a smaller scale in most cities outside the top twenty metros. America (and Canada) is seeing population concentration into islands of extremely high density development while the rest of the country falls apart.
That's partly why the Portland & Seattle riots were so unusual. Race dynamics simply aren't much of an issue in areas where there are no jobs to be had. It takes a special kind of privileged stupid to complain about America being more racist than classist.
I think having a payment provider in place is a critical first step.
This is workable. But getting enough revenue for it to work means throwing in with the only other thought-crime group that consistently gets thrown off payment processors.
I know the location of an empty data center that is strictly speaking off market right now but which could be persuaded to go up for rent quite easily if the right people were reached by the right client.
Of course, as facilities go it's rather overkill for such a project.
Nah, that's not how I'd do it at all.
I'd make it as a parody of the Tycoon games, Factorio, and SimTower, except instead of rollercoasters or machinery, you're filling out an office with cubicles, sound studios, mocap studios, testing workshops, q&a phone banks, etc, and then finding people to fill them.
You have to balance happiness with getting an acceptable rate of workflow. Ranging from an office that's a moneybleeding paradise that accomplishes nothing, a profitable gulag, or an outright reign of terror where dissenters are fired.
The easiest business model to pick would be to focus on mobile games, letting you get away with no testing, no support, but a lottery-like return; low chances of success but massive profits if you get lucky. But the longer you keep making mobile games the less likely you are to get a hit. So you have to transition to other products which means expanding your office and getting more capabilities.
But the more you expand the more testing you potentially need and the more support teams you need to placate customers so testing flaws don't hurt your reputation.
A staffer with many disciplines and successful titles becomes a "rockstar", a special employee type that's a brand unto themselves; you can put in charge of projects based on their strengths and weaknesses to boost results but they also have quixotic demands and a growing risk of leaving (sorta like going rebel in Tropico, or nobles in Dwarf Fortress).
You could even have linked projects. So you have a development project for one game going on, but then you can put another development team on an engine special project. On its own, an engine project is almost guaranteed to fail. An engine project paired with a successful game project becomes a revenue source that requires almost no support as long as you keep pairing it with games (at the cost of limiting the upside of games as the engine gets older).
The headlines are overreaching.
Here's the situation. Texas enacts law. US Government asks for injunction against law. Federal court looks at issue and decides a merit hearing is needed to discuss the injunction and issues an ADMINISTRATIVE injunction.
Texas appeals THAT injunction to the Supreme court, which slaps down the administrative injunction, telling the Federal court to hurry up the determination on the merits of the actual injunction.
The problem the district court is facing is that the merits of issuing an injunction is based in part on a rough determination of which side is LIKELY to prevail. But this is such an unusual case that the merit determination is practically a decision itself.
Because Texas's argument is going to be that the government is abdicating their responsibilities. That's a novel question, whether the federal government's supremacy still applies when it is actively choosing to ignore a problem that a state is willing to step up to do.
A lot of historians think the real failure of Pearl Harbor was to not concentrate on the oil reserves. America had enough oil stockpiled on Hawaii to last almost to the end of the war. Without fuel the pacific fleet would have been forced to withdraw back to California and most of 1942-43 would have been spent stockpiling at Hawaii to support offensive operations again.
let's discuss the Second World War in a different light to how it is portrayed by the victors and their propaganda
It's trivially true and I can demonstrate it with only American sources. Did you know that Roosevelt caused Pearl Harbor to get himself out of his campaign pledge to not join the war?
Here's how it went down.
Crown Prince Fumimaro Konoe is prime minister. Although Konoe has been a militarist, by 1940 there is evidence that he is losing control of the government to more aggressive militarists, illustrated by the contradictory actions of signing the Tripartite Pact and signing treaties with the Kuomintang and Soviets. It's at this point that Konoe starts advocating against war, understanding that he cannot beat the Dutch, British, and Americans.
Things come to a head in Feb 1941 when Foreign Minister Matsuoka viciously berates Konoe in cabinet, all but admitting that he's been ignoring or resisting Konoe's instructions when they're contrary to his aims.
Konoe resolves to try to forestall war by meeting with Roosevelt personally, so the militarists can't sabotage him.
Joseph Grew, the US Ambassador to Japan, is informed of Konoe's intentions. He wants certainty of oil imports from US territories. In exchange, a withdraw from Manchuria is on the table. But there must be no concessions asked as a condition for the meeting to occur, they must meet as equals. Konoe cannot be seen as approaching Roosevelt from a weak position.
This situation is communicated to SecState Cordell Hull and Roosevelt.
Hull's instructions to Grew are unambiguous. No.
Grew responds to Hull that a refusal to meet with Konoe on equal footing WILL result in a collapse of the Konoe government. Hull reiterates Roosevelt's refusal.
At this point, exasperated and confused by their behavior, Grew contacts Herbert Hoover. Grew believes that Hull is deliberately trying to topple the Konoe government, but can't fathom why. Any replacement government will be MORE militarist. Grew hopes that Hoover can convince the Republicans in Congress to demand an explanation from Roosevelt, but sadly he is overestimating Hoover's remaining influence.
Nevertheless, Hoover IS able to determine why Hull is behaving as he is, though too late to do anything about it.
Simply, Roosevelt wants a war.
He knows if he refuses Konoe, Konoe will resign and he'll get a government led by someone else (probably hoping for Matsuoka). But if he flatly refuses, that's too obvious. So instead he demands concessions for a meeting to occur. Konoe can't do this in front of the militarists.
It happens the way Roosevelt and Hull want. Konoe resigns, Tojo gets the seat, and less than a year later Pearl Harbor is on fire and Roosevelt is off the hook for his campaign promise to not join the war.
After the war, Hoover gets access to Roosevelt and Hull's files through his position in the Hoover Commission, confirming that they pursued a "push them to war" policy with Japan. He documents this in his book Freedom Betrayed.
Lead time on orders. Old bridge was 4-5 thousand tons of steel that has to be scheduled into some (already busy) foundries, and you can't even start putting it together until you've got a lot of the pieces staged and ready.
But frankly I doubt they'll rebuild it "as it was". They might as well throw on a couple extra lanes and use a newer style. They could do something a little more grandiose, like the Rio-Antirio bridge.