From Amy Patrick, an engineer, Wall Expert.

I’m a licensed structural and civil engineer with a MS in structural engineering from the top program in the nation and over a decade of experience on high-performance projects...
...and particularly of cleaning up design disasters where the factors weren’t properly accounted for, and I’m an adjunct professor of structural analysis and design at UH-Downtown.
I have previously been deposed as an expert witness in matters regarding proper construction of walls and the various factors associated therein, and my testimony has passed Daubert....
Am I a wall expert? I am. I am literally a court-accepted expert on walls....
Structurally and civil engineering-wise, the border wall is not a feasible project. Trump did not hire engineers to design the thing. He solicited bids from contractors, not engineers....
This means it’s not been designed by professionals. It’s a disaster of numerous types waiting to happen.

What disasters?...
Off the top of my head...
1) It will mess with our ability to drain land in flash flooding. Anything impeding the ability of water to get where it needs to go (doesn’t matter if there are holes in the wall or whatever) is going to dramatically increase the risk of flooding...
2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically. For all other projects, we have to do an Environmental Site Assessment, which is arduous. They’re either planning to circumvent all this,...
...or they haven’t accounted for it yet, because that’s part of the design process, and this thing hasn’t been designed.
3) The prototypes they came up with are nearly impossible to build or don’t actually do the job. This article explains more:

google.com/amp/s/mobile.e…

And so on....
The estimates provided for the cost are arrived at unreasonably. You can look for yourself at the two-year-old estimate that you see everyone citing.

fronterasdesk.org/sites/default/…
It does not account for rework, complexities beyond the prototype design, factors to prevent flood and environmental hazard creation, engineering redesign...
It’s going to be higher than $50bn. The contractors will hit the government with near CONSTANT change orders. “Cost overrun” will be the name of the game. It will not be completed in Trump’s lifetime....
I’m a structural forensicist, which means I’m called in when things go wrong. This is a project that WILL go wrong....
When projects go wrong, the original estimates are just *obliterated*....
And when that happens, good luck getting it fixed, because there aren’t that many forensicists out there to right the ship, particularly not that are willing to work on a border wall project—
.. a large quotient of us are immigrants, and besides, we can’t afford to bid on jobs that are this political. We’re small firms, and we’re already busy, and we don’t gamble our reputations on political footballs....
So you’d end up with a revolving door of contractors making a giant, uncoordinated muddle of things, and it’d generally be a mess. Good money after bad. The GAO agrees with me....
And it won’t be effective. I could, right now, purchase a 32 foot extension ladder and weld a cheap custom saddle for the top of the proposed wall so that I can get over it...
I don’t know who they talked to about the wall design and its efficacy, but it sure as heck wasn’t anybody with any engineering imagination.
Another thing: we are not far from the day where inexpensive drones will be able to pick up and carry someone. This will happen in the next ten years, and it’s folly to think that the coyotes who ferry people over the border won’t purchase or create them.
They’re low enough, quiet enough, and small enough to quickly zip people over any wall we could build undetected with our current monitoring setup.
Let’s have border security, by all means, but let’s be smart about it. It’s not effective. It’s NOT cheap. The returns will be diminishing as technology advances, too. This is a ridiculous idea that will never be successfully executed and, would be a monumental waste of money. <>

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More from @RandyResist

Feb 22
Not mine but so good:

A day in the Life of Sue Republican

Sue gets up at 6 a.m. and fills her coffeepot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards….
With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of her medications are paid for by her employer's medical plan….
because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Sue gets it too.

She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Sue's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry….
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Oct 18, 2021
Two women I know ‘beat the system’ by opting out of getting vaccinated based on a ‘religious exemption’. They work at a nursing home caring for many people they grew up with.

Let me share with you a story that made me livid when I found out…
My husband’s best friend was diagnosed with bone cancer right when COVID hit. While we were obsessed with trying to find toilet paper he was trying to find places for chemo and bone marrow transplants. He was in various hospitals for over a year…..
Visitors were not allowed to visit. Not even his wife and 21 year old son. The son they adopted later in life. The son he wanted to live for and the reason he went through any and every painful treatment option the doctors threw his way…
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Oct 6, 2021
Susan Roesel:

I was 30 years old.
I was married.
We were happy.
We were established.
Our 401k runneth over.
We decided to start a family.
I got pregnant right away.
Like right away.
We were over the moon.
I kept a journal of every day of the magic.
I got a bump.
I felt our baby kick.
I embraced it fully.
I rejected tests because "it won't change our path"
Emily sent out baby shower invitations.
The nursery was under way.

And then.

I'm almost halfway there!
I'm 18 and a half weeks pregnant.
The doctor called.
It was 7pm.
I was out at dinner with my friend Deb.
I stepped outside.
The day before on a whim I agreed to a blood test.
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I called Liza sobbing.
Read 13 tweets
Aug 31, 2021
Message from a physician who wishes to remain anonymous:

We wanted to help people
We were smart and driven
We loved science and physiology, humans and disease
So we made a commitment
We signed up
It was an honor
We read thousands of pages
Attended hundreds of lectures
1/9
Pulled all-nighters
Took more exams than we thought possible
Finals week felt insurmountable
But it didn’t break us
It made us stronger
We learned statistics and biochemistry
Immunology and pathophysiology
We mastered genetics, virology and pharmacology
2/9
We read scientific papers and learned how to dissect them
Papers, not videos
It was an honor
We came running when you needed us
Literally, running down the hallway
To the ICU, the trauma bay, labor and delivery
I need help, you said
We can help, we said
It was an honor
3/9
Read 9 tweets
Nov 24, 2020
“In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress..
that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's...
madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina....
Read 13 tweets
Oct 3, 2020
Our Drunk Driver President
By Richard Oxenburg
What is the appropriate way to feel about a serial drunk driver who has plowed his car into others on the highway, killing and maiming many, but who is now in the hospital himself,...
being treated for the damage his own car crash has caused him?

Is sympathy appropriate, given all the suffering he is experiencing? Is rage appropriate, given all the suffering he has caused? Might one feel some glee that "karma" has caught up with him?...
Shall we hope that this will be for him a learning moment? Shall we wish that he reap all the misery he has sown?

Perhaps there is no simple, single, answer. Perhaps all these feelings are appropriate to some degree, and in their own ways.

Last night, on CNN, Bob Woodward...
Read 9 tweets

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