71–75 of 75 posts
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i agree, i couldve just made the statement about string alone. was one of those big intellectual shocks. a whole world opened up when i got into building and learned about the many uses of string. much the same as when i learned to code.
With the difference that in code, unlike building, there should only be one use for a string.
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Well, I do know that cut/square nails are vastly superior to the glorified sharpened steel wire we use today. Square nails don't cause wood to split like rounded wire nails do. It's a great example of older superior technology being replaced due to cost.
The flipside being, when is the last time you heard of a house falling apart because the modern nails weren't good enough? Sometimes good enough and 10x cheaper is the right call.
If you're using engineered or dimensional lumber from 15 year pine, getting 75 years out of the home without major structural upgrades is going to be a rarity so you might as well use wire nails. Most of those nails would outlast the home anyway.
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I reacted to this "The colonizers of the US were largely immigrants from Europe, who were fleeing war, oppression, famine or other calamity. There has never been any comparable immigration from the US to Europe (or indeed to anywhere). To me this indicates very strongly which region has been stable or not." In terms of wars and moving away, US had a lot of action going on. US history is actually interesting. * 1695 -…
The topic of slavery in the US is something that is not very familiar to me. One characteristic difference seems to be that the structure in Europe was largely that of serfdom. In that respect the massive forced movement that you mention is something that I definitely did not consider. The economic impact of slavery, and in the context of stability, especially that of abolition, is interesting. I should read up on th…
American history is not just civil war. Texas was annexed 1845 from Mexico and Mexican-American War was 1846-1848. Pretty close to civil war.
> (one of them resulting in the genocide of more than a million Circassian people, two others to the birth of the German nation state), and many more before and after those.
Indian removal (trail of tears) was around the time of civil war. The expanse was not nearly finished in the run up to it. In fact, expanse was what made it blew in a way, because of the "will the new states be slave states or free states" question. Lincoln himself signed laws that gave away a lot of tribal land. The genocidal acts happened after civil war.
Also, when civil war ended, African Americans did engaged in politics and had real successes. In some states they were huge amount of population, over half sometimes. Which led to terrorist campaigns against those active in politics ultimately in loss of civil rights. That is not stability either. This was huge and long inner conflict.
American history is different. But there was a lot going on since 1695. Is was a lot more then just civil war. Just like Russian history is a lot more then Communism, despite pretty much everyone ignoring run up to it.
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With the difference that in code, unlike building, there should only be one use for a string.
Hm. In languages with poor support for other data types strings are use for just about everything that requires unstructured memory.
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> Why nails? They are a basic manufactured product whose form and quality have changed relatively little over the last three centuries While 'somewhat' true, its also untrue. Modern nails are different from the nails in the 60's. Modern nails are rounded. Many of the 1960s nails are square with sharp edges, a completely different manufacturing technique. I imagine that these were either forged in shape or cut from sq…
According to Wikipedia’s history of nails, wire (round) nails came out in about 1860. I’ve lived in 4 houses built before 1930 That were all full of them. Cut nails continued to be used for masonry through the present.