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Slow

michaelnotebook.com

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Re: Slow

#51

Post by aaronbrethorst »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #33
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #11

The 2nd Ave Subway in Manhattan, with preparatory construction beginning in 1942. First phase opened in 2017. Although the outcome should be celebrated, the slowness and the added costs that brings certainly should not be. While every project is unique, it is not immediately clear why digging a subway on the Upper East Side is twenty times more expensive than in Seoul or ten times more expensive than in Paris. https:…

Super enjoyed this read today. And a much shorter punchline. https://www.volts.wtf/p/us-transit-costs-and-how-to-tame https://bsky.app/profile/volts.wtf/post/3lvbpy6p2zk2c It's just so sad having a nation where disbelief & being against things is so the spirit.

I was really disappointed when David Roberts stopped writing due to persistent hand pain, but the podcast series he's turned Volts into as a result has been eye opening for me. I haven't listened to this episode yet. thanks for highlighting it!

Re: Slow

#52

Post by Avicebron »

lubujackson wrote: post #26

I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…

"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit" - Paraphrased from Elton Trueblood

Re: Slow

#53

Post by cubefox »

brudgers wrote: post #9

The Art of Computer Programming has been a work in progress since 1962. That’s longer than some of the list items.

Thanks. I was going to ask about long book (or film etc) projects like that. Some dictionaries and encyclopedias took decades to finish. The "Deutsches Wörterbuch" by the Brothers Grimm was started in 1838 and it got finished only in 1961, long after their death.

Re: Slow

#54

Post by MinimalAction »

As an academic, I fairly resonate with this message. Also notice that most examples he noticed are from academia/science endeavors. I see academia as probably the only place where slow projects are expected and even encouraged; think of PhD students working on basic science problems, often supported for 5-7 years at end (of course close to minimum wage).

This is not to hide that all slow undertakings are good or anything. Often because of inefficient executions or bureaucratic hurdles, academic suffers. But, I am trying to highlight the observation that how a slow and steady progress is the typical modus operandi for an academic lab/group. A famous saying comes to mind: Rome isn't built in a day.

Re: Slow

#55

Post by MagnumOpus »

urquhartfe wrote: post #49
lubujackson wrote: post #26

I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…

What is a "growth tree"?

((Old growth) tree), not (old (growth tree)).

Old growth trees are trees or forests that are centuries old and not recently cultures.

Re: Slow

#56

Post by [deleted] »

urquhartfe wrote: post #49
lubujackson wrote: post #26

I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…

What is a "growth tree"?

[deleted]

Re: Slow

#57

Post by wwweston »

tombert wrote: post #4

In my free time, I have taken to trying to prove the Collatz conjecture. People much smarter and more educated than me have failed at this quest, so I will nearly certainly fail at it, but that's not really the point in my mind. Even if I'm not the one to actually prove it, I can at least try and contribute to the body of work towards proving it. Mathematics is, more than nearly anything else, the result of generatio…

And it’s not only never done, it’s always on the verge of dying off. Like Bill Thurston said, mathematical understanding basically lives in communities of mathematicians, every one of them a cell in the superorganism that is the field. You’re part of the distributed filesystem providing persistence as well as the possibility of new understanding.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematici...

Re: Slow

#58

Post by WJW »

bee_rider wrote: post #19

I dunno. I think we should separate out the stuff that fundamentally has to take a long time, like the pitch experiment, from stuff like Notre Dame, which just took a long time because they lacked the resources to do it all at once. Like OK, it takes a long time to build a big church because you need to find all the right rocks or whatever. But the pitch, that’s the universe taking a long time to tell us something. (…

I think it is part of the point for a cathedral to take several generations. If you can point to a building and say "that took 5 years to build and I was there for all of it!", then that's great, but the building is in some way "smaller" than you. If you can point to a partially constructed building and say "my grandfather worked on it, my father worked on it, I'm working on it and my children will work on it too", that's a building that is "larger" than any one person.

Taking a century or more to construct anything makes that thing larger than life. There's a certain sublime quality in such efforts, whether they're explicitly dedicated to a god/pantheon but also if they are "just" earthly like the White House (technically took 178 years to construct from start to finish).

Re: Slow

#59

Post by WJW »

fuzztester wrote: post #17
saagarjha wrote: post #5

Kind of amusing to have this at the top of the front page considering “Fast” was there yesterday

Next? Medium. Posted on Medium, ofc.

You know why they call it Medium, of course? Because it's definitely not Rare and usually also not Well Done.

Re: Slow

#60

Post by ljlolel »

lubujackson wrote: post #26

I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…

Literally what they do for Norte dame?
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