• Gust@piefed.socialEnglish
    9·
    1 day ago

    Calculus tells you how curves work. Aqueducts are famous for their ability to be topologically flat. The math checks out

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
    304·
    2 days ago

    Stop censoring mens, please?

    I think we should just bad images with censored parts unless the censored part is the point.

    Yeah, this is the internet, you can say bad words and fuck these US tech companies that want to stop everyone saying naughty words only because it makes them more money when we don’t

  • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    669·
    2 days ago

    Between the censoring of “fuck” the usage of “anw” and the font changing inexplicably for the word “calculus” the meme’s potential at humor was basically thrown in the garbage. If formatting and spelling makes you stumble that much trying to read it you lose comedic timing.

  • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.worldEnglish
    481·
    2 days ago

    there’s a difference.

    their engineering was amazing, but to compensate for lack of modern maths, they build with a much larger margin of safety and strength.

    that’s why some of those aqueducts last 2000 years.

    no one wants to build infrastructure that lasts so long. we could build a bridge designed to last thousands of years, but it’ll cost way way more, and the budget isn’t unlimited.

    • Ellvix@lemmy.worldEnglish
      29·
      2 days ago

      I like the way someone described a similar retort:

      Anyone can build a bridge that stays up and lasts a long time, but it takes a skilled engineer to build a bridge that just barely stays up a long time and minimizes costs and materials.

    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.netEnglish
      17·
      2 days ago

      Also our bridges are subjected to the insane forces of truck freight transportation. Who know how long they would last otherwise.

      • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        2 days ago

        They were designed for that (usually), if you want a bridge to last multiple millenia you can design it for that. but it will probably add a couple zeroes at the end of the bill.

        Romans had the ‘advantage’ of slave labour,

        • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          Interestingly enough, construction wasn’t a usual avenue for applying slave labor in Ancient Rome.

          • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            really?

            Did they paid professionals to do that? I understand masons, but not the actual putting a big brick on top of another

            • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPEnglish
              4·
              1 day ago

              Wage labor, usually.

              Despite the widespread use of slave labor in Roman society, unskilled slaves were overwhelmingly used for tasks that were either considered ‘demeaning’ (like domestic servants), did not require any real precision (like mill grinding and monocrop farm labor) or needed a constant application of labor (like mines). The Romans recognized that people work better when offered carrots rather than sticks - some slave who only barely cares if he lives or dies isn’t going to put much effort into aligning the brick with the mortar properly unless you watch him like a hawk - which is more labor you have to put in. Manual labor for construction is not a task that requires a doctorate, but it is a task where you have to do it right the first time, or you waste everyone’s labor and effort.

              Construction, furthermore, is only intermittent work in most places. If you own a bunch of slaves, you don’t stop paying for their food and shelter when they aren’t working - if you want them to be profitable, you’ll have to find other work for them to do the rest of the year. And at that point, it’s probably not less profitable to just have them do that year-round instead. You could, potentially, have your slaves as a traveling construction crew, but travel is not only uncertain and expensive, but offers opportunities for unmotivated workers (like slaves) to simply… slip away, and choose to no longer be one of your workers. Even if you try to hunt them down. Even just transporting building materials from Point A to Point B includes a lot of very dangerous unsupervised time - perhaps something you’d trust a household slave with, but not one of the faceless slave numbers on your business ledger!

              Funny enough, it would be more likely, if anyone was a slave on the job, that it would be potentially a few of the skilled positions. Skilled slaves were often given more trust and responsibilities precisely because they were offered more ‘carrot’ than ‘stick’ - payment, privileges, and the possibility of freedom for a decade or two of labor were on the table. Skilled slaves were thus less likely to run away - and unlike free wage laborers, especially skilled ones, wouldn’t (or rather, couldn’t) demand more pay at the prospect of being dragged from one of the empire to another - very handy if you’re a small construction firm going from place to place, and hiring local labor for most tasks!

      • MintyFresh@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        It’s also worth pointing out those structures aren’t subjected to a lot of freeze thaw cycles, not to mention almost no salt.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.todayEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      but it’ll cost way way more, and the budget isn’t unlimited.

      I wish things weren’t always so short-sighted by default. I mean sometimes things evolve so maybe it’s better to leave room for teardown and improvement or whatnot.

      But it seems if you’re not thinking in “quarterlies”, infrastructure that’s built once and simply maintained should cost a lot less in the long run.

      But then I guess the contractors would dry up if they didn’t have to come rebuild it a dozen times a decade. :p

      • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        2 days ago

        Yhea, it is better to build infrastructure that lasts, but 2000 years?

        that is a bit overkill, and more of a vanity project for billionaires which is more of a cry for help (by help I mean guillotine)

        • autriyo@feddit.orgEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          I feel, for the hard to replace stuff an interstate bridge in a dense city for example, aiming for a three digit life span should be considered.

          Just because it kinda sucks having to replace infrastructure like that. And the city is most likely still going to be there and need that infrastructure.

      • mkwt@lemmy.worldEnglish
        27·
        2 days ago

        millia pasuum, literally “1,000 paces,” was a common unit of measure in the empire, and the basis of various modern miles. It was slightly shorter than the modern statute mile.

        • Klear@quokk.auEnglish
          151·
          2 days ago

          Interesting. Never realised that “mile” just means “thousand” (though it is kinda obvious in retrospect). And since the modern mile is 1760 yards, a kilometre is more of a mile than the actual mile.

          • GraniteM@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            2 days ago

            Yeah, assuming that a yard is meant to approximate the stride of an adult human, who’s the Goliath-sized motherfucker with the 5’ 3" stride who took a thousand steps and called that a mile?

            Edit: Okay, I checked.

            The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods or 10 chains.

            An English mile is defined as 8 furlongs, 8 presumably being chosen because it divides by 2 and 4. What a cockamamie system of measurement.

            Edit Again: Okay, I checked again.

            The modern English word mile derives from Middle English myle and Old English mīl, which was cognate with all other Germanic terms for miles. These derived from the nominal ellipsis form of mīlle passus ‘mile’ or mīlia passuum ‘miles’, the Roman mile of one thousand paces.

            A pace is a unit of length consisting either of one normal walking step, or of a double step, returning to the same foot.

            This is all still very silly.

            • Ruthalas@infosec.pubEnglish
              4·
              2 days ago

              Far be it from me to defend the imperial system- I love and daily work in metric, but you realize nearly all ancient measurement systems are created around commonplace physical measures (body parts, strides, etc.) and simple multiples thereof to make their use easy, yeah?

              We’ve got a lot of tools at our disposal now to both standardize and make working with a decimal system a lot more doable than before.

    • djsaskdja@reddthat.comEnglish
      13·
      2 days ago

      They can build it in kilometers all they want. Plenty of people will still measure it in miles.

  • RubberElectrons@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    2 days ago

    Their tools still used calculus, just indirectly and without their understanding.

    Importantly, I replace dy/dx with ∆y/∆x when I need a really quick sanity check for simple calculations.