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It makes me happy to live in a world where scores of intelligent people dedicate their lives to creating a magnum opus and end up with glue. Beautiful. Sure, we

It makes me happy to live in a world where scores of intelligent people dedicate their lives to creating a magnum opus and end up with glue. Beautiful. Sure, we don’t really build cathedrals anymore but at least the world of adhesives (and packaging) is thriving.

bombcar 2y ago
I first realized that glue is the "glue" holding the world together when I read about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse It was caused by using the wrong glue to hold up a 26 ton slab of concrete - which immediately caused me to say "There is a right glue?"
- anamexis 2y ago
  Heck, you could reasonably call cement glue, in which case it’s really holding the world together.
- wrigglingworm 2y ago
  "On August 8, 2007, a Suffolk County Grand Jury indicted epoxy company Powers Fasteners, Inc., on one charge of involuntary manslaughter, with the maximum penalty in Massachusetts being a fine of $1,000." Dude..
  - zaroth 2y ago
    Actual fines and settlements added up to about $500 million.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Given those charges were used to leverage $22M in settlements and a wide recall of the product, something outside the mere $1k seems to have been a useful bludgeon.
  - sodality2 2y ago
    > In January 2008, the state and the office of United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Michael Sullivan, reached a settlement with the contractors responsible for the failure, which included no criminal charges and no bar against receiving future contracts. The Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff joint venture paid $405 million, and smaller contractors paid a total of $51 million. They ended up settling with the contractors for much more.
throwaway1258 2y ago
> Sure, we don't really build cathedrals anymore Maybe not the Catholics, but the Latter Day Saints are still building plenty: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/photo-gallery/san-diego-california-temple?lang=eng https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/photo-gallery/sa... (For context, they refer to them as temples rather than cathedrals , but the general idea of it being a place of worship with lots of effort put into architecting it remains)
matsemann 2y ago
That you can have some glue unstuck by applying power, and even control which side ends up with the residue by changing the polarity just blows my mind. Really cool!
itishappy 2y ago
> we don’t really build cathedrals anymore I visited a recently constructed Hindu temple in Atlanta last year. Very impressive. All imported marble. Sounds like these guys have been building them all over: > A number of shikharbaddha mandirs (large traditional stone mandirs) were inaugurated in major cities; London (1995), Nairobi (1999), New Delhi (2004), Houston (2004), Chicago (2004), Swaminarayan Akshardham (New Delhi) (2005), Toronto (2007), Atlanta (2007), Los Angeles (2012), and Robbinsville (New Jersey) (2014). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bochasanwasi_Akshar_Purushottam_Swaminarayan_Sanstha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bochasanwasi_Akshar_Purushotta...
verandaguy 2y ago
I think this comment ignores a lot of context. Cathedrals were the result of centuries of research into materials science, physics, and geometry -- and that's just considering the buildings themselves, not even the often-intricate religious art within. Some of the challenges and solutions in cathedral architecture took generations to solve; in many gothic and neogothic cathedrals with particularly tall, internally-unsupported naves, solutions like flying buttresses were thought up to support the walls externally -- sometimes with multiple layers of buttresses-upon-flying-buttresses. Developing the right cement and figuring out which type of stone you could use alone were often a project that took years, especially for landmark churches. These churches sometimes took decades or centuries to build, depending on how you measure it (basically, if you include significant reconstructions). They also weren't representative of the average construction project in essentially any region where there are cathedrals; those were more likely to be houses, shops, and other commercial buildings like port structures. Things like flying buttresses or new, opulent-but-functional arch designs also weren't representative of the average innovation in those times. Depending on where you look, that might be stuff like, a new loom variant that lets you produce new patterns, or a new kind of cheese that ages quickly while having a similar enough flavour to a slower-aging, more expensive type of cheese. My overarching point is -- at any given point in time, the average invention is small and boring. Specialists are a valuable resource, yes, but the more specialized they are, the smaller and more boring their contributions will seem to the average person outside of that specialization. Landmark innovations are built on thousands of smaller innovations made over years or decades, and those smaller innovations were usually invented by someone who's spent the past 25 years of their lives obsessing over that tiny thing, having published dozens of papers and argued for years about something you've likely never even heard of.
m4rtink 2y ago
Sagrada Familia is still under construction and likely will be for a while yet. :) Also at least one DiY cathedral build: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez
TrapLord_Rhodo 2y ago
We build cathedrals almost daily, and they dwarf any cathedrals ever created. We just call them factories. Instead of exemplifying the unknown face of some made up entity, we create them to exemplify the industry and fecundity of humanity.
skinner927 2y ago
Glue in an iPhone impacts (for sure indirectly) more people than a cathedral ever would.
oblio 2y ago
We build a million things each year which are a lot more impressive than cathedrals. China built a entire high speed rail network that's about the size of all the other ones in the world, combined, and they did it in 20 years. China built a high speed Maglev train between Beijing and Shanghai, I think Japan is going to build one soon, too. The US has been building hyper tall pencil looking skyscrapers in Manhattan for about 20 years. There are tons of amazing tunnels being built around the world, as we speak. India, China, Indonesia, etc. are building amazing subway networks in tens of cities. The scale, complexity and sheer audacity of what we're building has never been seen in the history of the world.

bombcar 2y ago

I first realized that glue is the "glue" holding the world together when I read about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse It was caused by using the wrong glue to hold up a 26 ton slab of concrete - which immediately caused me to say "There is a right glue?"

anamexis 2y ago
Heck, you could reasonably call cement glue, in which case it’s really holding the world together.
wrigglingworm 2y ago
"On August 8, 2007, a Suffolk County Grand Jury indicted epoxy company Powers Fasteners, Inc., on one charge of involuntary manslaughter, with the maximum penalty in Massachusetts being a fine of $1,000." Dude..
- zaroth 2y ago
  Actual fines and settlements added up to about $500 million.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Given those charges were used to leverage $22M in settlements and a wide recall of the product, something outside the mere $1k seems to have been a useful bludgeon.
- sodality2 2y ago
  > In January 2008, the state and the office of United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Michael Sullivan, reached a settlement with the contractors responsible for the failure, which included no criminal charges and no bar against receiving future contracts. The Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff joint venture paid $405 million, and smaller contractors paid a total of $51 million. They ended up settling with the contractors for much more.

throwaway1258 2y ago

> Sure, we don't really build cathedrals anymore Maybe not the Catholics, but the Latter Day Saints are still building plenty: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/photo-gallery/san-diego-california-temple?lang=eng https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/photo-gallery/sa... (For context, they refer to them as temples rather than cathedrals , but the general idea of it being a place of worship with lots of effort put into architecting it remains)

matsemann 2y ago

That you can have some glue unstuck by applying power, and even control which side ends up with the residue by changing the polarity just blows my mind. Really cool!

itishappy 2y ago

> we don’t really build cathedrals anymore I visited a recently constructed Hindu temple in Atlanta last year. Very impressive. All imported marble. Sounds like these guys have been building them all over: > A number of shikharbaddha mandirs (large traditional stone mandirs) were inaugurated in major cities; London (1995), Nairobi (1999), New Delhi (2004), Houston (2004), Chicago (2004), Swaminarayan Akshardham (New Delhi) (2005), Toronto (2007), Atlanta (2007), Los Angeles (2012), and Robbinsville (New Jersey) (2014). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bochasanwasi_Akshar_Purushottam_Swaminarayan_Sanstha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bochasanwasi_Akshar_Purushotta...

verandaguy 2y ago

I think this comment ignores a lot of context. Cathedrals were the result of centuries of research into materials science, physics, and geometry -- and that's just considering the buildings themselves, not even the often-intricate religious art within. Some of the challenges and solutions in cathedral architecture took generations to solve; in many gothic and neogothic cathedrals with particularly tall, internally-unsupported naves, solutions like flying buttresses were thought up to support the walls externally -- sometimes with multiple layers of buttresses-upon-flying-buttresses. Developing the right cement and figuring out which type of stone you could use alone were often a project that took years, especially for landmark churches. These churches sometimes took decades or centuries to build, depending on how you measure it (basically, if you include significant reconstructions). They also weren't representative of the average construction project in essentially any region where there are cathedrals; those were more likely to be houses, shops, and other commercial buildings like port structures. Things like flying buttresses or new, opulent-but-functional arch designs also weren't representative of the average innovation in those times. Depending on where you look, that might be stuff like, a new loom variant that lets you produce new patterns, or a new kind of cheese that ages quickly while having a similar enough flavour to a slower-aging, more expensive type of cheese. My overarching point is -- at any given point in time, the average invention is small and boring. Specialists are a valuable resource, yes, but the more specialized they are, the smaller and more boring their contributions will seem to the average person outside of that specialization. Landmark innovations are built on thousands of smaller innovations made over years or decades, and those smaller innovations were usually invented by someone who's spent the past 25 years of their lives obsessing over that tiny thing, having published dozens of papers and argued for years about something you've likely never even heard of.

m4rtink 2y ago

Sagrada Familia is still under construction and likely will be for a while yet. :) Also at least one DiY cathedral build: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez

TrapLord_Rhodo 2y ago

We build cathedrals almost daily, and they dwarf any cathedrals ever created. We just call them factories. Instead of exemplifying the unknown face of some made up entity, we create them to exemplify the industry and fecundity of humanity.

skinner927 2y ago

Glue in an iPhone impacts (for sure indirectly) more people than a cathedral ever would.

oblio 2y ago

We build a million things each year which are a lot more impressive than cathedrals. China built a entire high speed rail network that's about the size of all the other ones in the world, combined, and they did it in 20 years. China built a high speed Maglev train between Beijing and Shanghai, I think Japan is going to build one soon, too. The US has been building hyper tall pencil looking skyscrapers in Manhattan for about 20 years. There are tons of amazing tunnels being built around the world, as we speak. India, China, Indonesia, etc. are building amazing subway networks in tens of cities. The scale, complexity and sheer audacity of what we're building has never been seen in the history of the world.