The Large Hadron Collider and the International Space Stations are amazing wonders. It used to be that humanity’s most expensive projects were religious temples. Now it’s machines for scientific research. Some people apparently have a problem with this, and they’re generally not the sort of people I like to be around.
This is the Large Halibut Collider
I’m already married but can arrange a quickie divorce if you’ll just
Those are exceptions. The majority of our (visible) expensive projects today are homages to power and money
Yep. It’s 2024, and rich men are still funding projects to glorify themselves and assuage their ego.
It used to be that humanity’s most expensive projects were religious temples. Now it’s machines for scientific research.
I wish that were true, but the world spends far more on machines of war than we spend on science.
Warfare science is still science and often has the benefit of funding groups that develop civilian science as well. Civie science doesn’t pay as well as the brass do
Same thing
Highway systems are also massive.
This is the headquarters of the fishery development board in Hyderabad.
It looks like a fish because they manage the fish there.
First glance I thought someone there was crazy enough to build a home like this. Then I found out it really is a fishy workplace
I love the Fish building!! We pass it every time on the way from the airport.
Nobody is doubting it looks like “a fish”, it’s just it looks like a fish drawn by a 3 years old
🐟
It’s a case of being stupid enough to love it.
Reminds me of Turkmenistan.
Looks like a fish out of water.
It wasn’t supposed to look like that, the construction contractor made some changes.
Sounds fishy
I love the fact it’s in the middle of India, almost the furthest it could be from the ocean.
Edit: (not directed at OP)
Bro have you seen the size of the bridges, stadiums and skyscrapers we build? Fuck it, have you seen the LHC?
Should we start adding spires and arches to hospitals and train stations to get support from the RETVRN crowd?
Yes we should. Our buildings and public places should be covered in art
We could build more, better, more beautiful infrastructure, or we could buy more bombs and let the free market deal with that.
Bigger but at what cost? So many buildings are boring, flat and lifeless e.g.
Seriously, we started building things so massive that you literally can’t see all of it at the same time unless you’re in the air, riding in a magical skychair.
That’s cool and all, but not sure if that counts as a thing we built as much as a thing we drew.
Exactly, yes! The LHC is so much more (larger isn’t the right word, maybe massive?). If it was on the surface instead of being buried, and the earth was perfectly spherical, you wouldn’t be able to see it standing in the middle of it, because the ring would be on the other side of the horizon all around you.
Unironically yes, please build spires and arches and gargoyles on everything. I want Gothic architecture everywhere please.
Marvels like the Saturn V or JWST should be mentioned here, too.
JWST is insane. Not quite as insane as Apollo or Voyager relative to current mainstream tech, but still, holy shit.
…I mean…I wouldn’t mind it if we did.
train stations
Have you seen the metro stations in Moscow?
The ones in DC are pretty inspiring, too, in a Brutalist kind of way.
They’re lit from below, so you can tell when a train is at a platform by the shadow it casts on the ceiling, which perfectly aligns with the recessed concrete blocks that make up said ceiling.
Really impressive.
I looked up photos of about a dozen separate metro stations in DC, and… they’re all the same design. I get pragmatism, but those are downright depressing. The only one I liked was Anacostia because the yellow overhead lights and the bright blue advertisement screen made interesting patterns reflecting off the water-damaged walls.
Compare that to Moscow: underground palaces. Marble, statues, reliefs, arches and columns, chandeliers everywhere. Hate the Soviets all you like, but they knew how to build beautiful.
I even like the ancient 81-series rolling stock, if only because of nostalgia.
Beautiful. I wonder how many famines it cost them to build.
Every day in my dreams.
“This meme was brought to you through a single piece of glass several thousand miles long, at the bottom of the ocean”
Undersea cables do have repeater stations, but your point still stands because those are also an engineering marvel.
Undersea fiber optic Internet trunk lines, for anyone who missed the joke
Single piece of glass that runs on electric pulses which travel trough a neatly arranged mineral structure.
More like light pulses travelling through an amorphous silicon dioxide mineral structure, but apart from that you’re entirely right.
The duomo took 600 years to be mostly complete and still has work being done though mostly restoration and maintenance. It has a marble quarry dedicated solely to it. Absolutely magnificent building, I did all the tours a few months ago, loved it.
That is why we don’t build buildings like it anymore, insanely expensive and time consuming. Plus our current rich people would rather rape kids on their massive yachts and private island than commission beauty to be admired by wider society like the wealthy of old.
Yeah, but what about the Taj mahal?
Was built 400 years ago, I wouldn’t consider it modern. Also not nearly as intricate as il duomo in decoration and masonry
When did humans stop building mega-churches?
You’re not going to believe this, but…
Every giant stadium is about the same.
A monument to the arrogance of some developer (et al), who then bilk the state/city for the cost.
Interesting how the entire focus of the stadium is on the preacher himself instead of, for example, the works of Gawwwwwwwewwewd.
Pff
There’s also the Longaberger Basket building.
This is like something Clarissa’s dad would make in Clarissa’s explains it all
The Vegas orb thing probably qualifies as a wonder.
Do you mean The Ball or The Globe?
According to google I mean the Sphere, apparently?
Oh, that orb thingy. Got it.
RIch people used to comission great works, but today it seems like they have abandoned that one duty they have.
Rich people resenting doing the things that justify their existence.
We haven’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Família
since 1882. Very cool, i didn’t know this!
This video features more information about this building (but it is not the main topic). https://youtu.be/iRv_syz2DAc
Something seems fishy here.
I mean, Sagrada Família im Barcelona is still under construction
It’s going to be funny when China finishes it first and the whole thing goes poof
That is National Fisheries Development Board in Hyderabad, India.
Idk if this is truly a wonder, but when I heard about it earlier this year I was stunned by how magnificent it looked. NJ opened the largest Hindu temple outside of Asia last fall. It looks crazy.
Also pretty sure theres a church in Spain that is still being built that was started in the 1500s or some shit and is in the exact same style of gothic architecture as shown above.
The Sagrada Familia, yeah. It’s… pretty big, they’re hoping to finish it in the 2030s. (Construction started in the 1800s though, maybe there’s an even older one idk about?)
Could be one of another one that has been completed but im getting some variable mixed up or where I read about it was woefully out of date.
There’s a shockingly large, beautiful one in my hometown of Pearland, Texas - the Sri Meenakshi Temple.
It was only the third Hindu temple built in America, and, at least when it was built, it was the only Meenakshi temple outside of India. It’s still a venue for high-profile Hindu weddings.
When it was built, Pearland was a mostly-rural community with a population of about 10,000 (2020 census is around 120,000), and they built this phenomenal temple in the middle of nowhere on McLean road.
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