10mo ago

We'll fix it later

47 comments

I've been to this bridge. It's the Devil's Bridge in Wales.
Here's another angle, ripped from Wikipedia:

The river underneath is insanely deep. Pictures do not do it justice just how much further it goes out of the bottom of this frame. You do not get out of there. That is death.
The bottom-most bridge was built around the 12th century. How the hell they managed to build stuff like this way back then staggers me.
- They really should continue the tradition by building a fourth bridge over the current one when the time comes.
  
  That's why they stopped at three. The fourth bridge always takes forever to paint.
- They really needed to pass that river.
- Clearly a cousin of The Strid. Except the Strid is usually full to the brim and you can't see the literal death walls that lie beneath the surface.
  Tom Scott made a video about it during his many adventures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCSUmwP02T8
- 90m, that is deep.
- Duh, the Devil helped it's in the name.
  
  You may joke, but that's actually part of the legend of the bridge!
  The legend goes that a woman saw her cow grazing on the opposite side of the river.
  To get it back, the devil offered to build a bridge in exchange for a living soul.
  The woman threw a piece of bread across the new bridge and her dog went to eat it. The devil got the dog's soul 👍
  Poor dog
- The bottom-most bridge was built around the 12th century. How the hell they managed to build stuff like this way back then staggers me.
  I find it hard to relate with this sentence. That's just 3 bridges on the top of what seems like a natural rock formation, right? With 2 being arches and the top one being a modern-ish structure.
  No matter how deep it is, it's narrow enough to just move a prebuild wooden foot bridge used for people to go around constructing the thing.
- So, not only is this a Dark Souls bridge, it spans over an honest-to-god bottomless pit?
- The river underneath is insanely deep.
  That's when you just say frick it and caulk the wagon.
- Link to the wiki page here
- Labor was free because of slavery, so the economics were not the same. Current engineering has the concept of "over engineering" which is what cracked-up addicts in wall street call "building to last", due to the "expense" of not being shortsighted on a quarter by quarter basis.
  
  Actually overenginnering is the thing with pre-modern structures, like the bottom bridge here. Survivorship bias played a role, where things they don't build to last, evidently don't last to this day, but mostly it's because they don't really understand the math behind all of it so they take the most conservative and the tried and tested rules of thumb when doing big structures. This is why big projects back then can take decades to complete.
  In the modern day, we design specifically to balance durability and cost, and we are confident of our maths and understanding of material science to use the least amount that does the work for the design life that we choose.
  
  Was it slaves? I am not seeing any references to slaves building the original bridge online anywhere, where did you see that? :o

Bridge over troubled bridges

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works.
- I once learned that Norwegians have a word for that. It's something like permasorium (provisorium being a temporary solution) and I try to introduce it into German because German does not have a word for it.
- Try to remember this everytime I bastardize something. Will always see it 4 months later and be like "heh"

We should go back to building things with rocks
- The way we build now is as cheap as will be safe. That's why we have engineers, it takes pretty extensive education to make someone able to make a bridge cheap enough

why remove that? it doesn't affect the new bridge in any way, except maybe making access easier

If it's not broke...
- …marry it!
- That bridge looks pretty stout.
  
  Don't worry, if the bridge breaks there are two backup bridges conveniently located close by!

Every game engine older than two console generations in existence.
- The primordial code from the Quake engine in pretty much ever 3d game giggles at the passage of time

I wanna put some plywood walls up and live in it like a troll
- Just don't look down, it's awfully deep
  
  Laughs in hang glider

Surely the devil has something to say about all of this?
- Due to lack of participation, I’m pretty sure he’s in Georgia dealing with a musical competition at the moment.
- I see what you did there.