You can say "fuck" on the Internet π
this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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That's fvcked up, man
Romans used the letter V to transcribe the sound U, then they changed that during the renaissanceand now we have both V and U.
The title is a joke about that
I am referring to the picture.
Oh yeah, right
So where did the "v" sound come from?
The sound V was already present, they used the letter V with both sounds (if i am not wrong), idk where it came from
You can, but Romans couldn't.
Well, now I don't want to.
Well... fuck.
Modern engineer would built an aquaduct in kilometers, not miles π
Roman engineers most probably never heard about miles too.
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.
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.
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 mΔ«l, which was cognate with all other Germanic terms for miles. These derived from the nominal ellipsis form of mΔ«lle passus 'mile' or mΔ«lia 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.
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.
Unless they're american, then it'll be built in freedom units.
Will be built in cheeseburgers and carrying stolen oil.
Interesting (scribbles on clipboard)...and for how many football fields would it span, exactly? And weigh how many Ford F150s?
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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.
And even if we could, Autocad crashed again so I can't
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.
100% not a joke, that is the point.
Also our bridges are subjected to the insane forces of truck freight transportation. Who know how long they would last otherwise.
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,
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like musical instruments, bridges are meant to be stressed. gotta drive over em with trucks or they'll shoot off into space
It's also worth pointing out those structures aren't subjected to a lot of freeze thaw cycles, not to mention almost no salt.
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
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)
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.
Golden gate is almost 90, empire State building also approaching a 100,
I think we can do that.
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
It's an instant downvote for me.
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Their tools still used calculus, just indirectly and without their understanding.
Importantly, I replace dy/dx with βy/βx when I need a really quick sanity check for simple calculations.
Calculus tells you how curves work. Aqueducts are famous for their ability to be topologically flat. The math checks out
Flat on top. They tend to be quite curvy underneath, on account of all the arches.
Well yeah. I said they were topologically flat, not bottomologically flat ;)
Yup, we're stupid, but at least we have the metric system Β―_(γ)_/Β―
Water go downhill, what more do you need to know?
Back then you used to have to have a college degree to be able to multiply.
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