Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh
Infrastructure
Fig. 1. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
So this[1] will be an attempt to make Pennsylvania Turnpike Route 43 useful. It goes from pretty much nowhere to pretty much nowhere. The extension will move one of the endpoints to another nowhere.
This after completion of the Southern Beltway (Pennsylvania Turnpike Route 576),[2] God knows how much concrete and how many millions or billions of dollars later, all to save—wait for it—zero time.
Yup, taking the Southern Beltway from Interstate 79 to the Pittsburgh Airport is unlikely to save you any time. It will cost you money—not a lot, but the locals will howl like you’re taking their last nickel—but it won’t save you time because the route bows out so far from a straight line that you might as well just stay on I-79 and take the Parkway (I-376) to the airport. The virtue of the Southern Beltway is like that of the Mon/Fayette Expressway: If you’re looking for some quiet, fast roadway, you’ll often find it on the turnpike.
The Mon/Fayette does, by contrast, save you time, mainly because the alternative roads are all two-lane surface roads that wander through the Appalachian Mountains. But because it doesn’t go anywhere from anywhere, it still remains very, very lightly used.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike system, however, seems to be an entity unto itself, effectively answerable only to itself. I’m not seeing that anyone tells it what to do or not do.
Patrick Varine, “Turnpike officials break ground on next phase of Mon/Fayette Expressway,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, May 22, 2023, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/turnpike-officials-break-ground-on-next-phase-of-mon-fayette-expressway/
Gilead
Donald Trump
Coup attempt
Fig. 2. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
I am still not believing there will be federal charges against Donald Trump until there are actually federal charges.
Aruna Viswanatha, Sadie Gurman, and C. Ryan Barber, “Special Counsel Is Wrapping Up Trump Mar-a-Lago Probe,” Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-is-wrapping-up-trump-mar-a-lago-probe-99cd2517
Abortion
Fig. 3. Sign at demonstration in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, May 3, 2022. Janni Rye, via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
You can’t expect and won’t see a happy ending in the story of Baby Milo, who was tortured by the state of Florida.[3]
Frances Stead Sellers, Thomas Simonetti, and Maggie Penman, “The short life of Baby Milo,” Washington Post, May 23, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/florida-abortion-law-deborah-dorbert/
Imperialism
Russia
Fig. 4. Historic Russian empire, from the New York Times, possibly March 6, 2014, fair use.[4]
Theo Merz, “Ethnic minorities in Russia are campaigning for the breakup of the country,” World, May 22, 2023, https://theworld.org/stories/2023-05-22/ethnic-minorities-russia-are-campaigning-breakup-country
- [1]Patrick Varine, “Turnpike officials break ground on next phase of Mon/Fayette Expressway,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, May 22, 2023, https://triblive.com/local/south-hills/turnpike-officials-break-ground-on-next-phase-of-mon-fayette-expressway/↩
- [2]Ed Blazina, “Moving on: Pennsylvania Turnpike finishes Southern Beltway, ready to begin Mon-Fayette Expressway,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 19, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2022/06/19/southern-beltway-mon-fayette-expressway-pennsylvania-turnpike/stories/202206160141↩
- [3]Frances Stead Sellers, Thomas Simonetti, and Maggie Penman, “The short life of Baby Milo,” Washington Post, May 23, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/florida-abortion-law-deborah-dorbert/↩
- [4]New York Times, “Ukraine Crisis in Maps,” n.d., http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/02/27/world/europe/ukraine-divisions-crimea.html↩