• stembolts@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    It seems like one of the dumbest things ever. I hope they carry on. Don’t invest in the future, that’s for dummies, build a giant phallic symbol in one of the least hospitable areas of the world.

    Think about the maintenance costs alone…

    • Peppycito
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      6 months ago

      Roofing is the most expensive and trickiest parts of a building, so let’s take an enormous skyscraper and make one of the walls a roof. They probably plan for a team of flat roofing slaves working around the clock like window washers. When they get to one end they go back to the start in an ourorobus of roofing.

  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Wait, so this boondoggle is a boondoggle? surprised-pika-messed-up

    This headline reminds me of how confused I was by Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: how can the ocean be deeper than the diameter of the Earth?

    • bulwark@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The Nautilus traveled for 20,000 leagues under the surface of the ocean at various fathoms of depth. This is all expertly explained by the great Kelsey Grammer here.

    • Lyre@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      so like… were you still confused after you read it? or did you literally judge the book by its cover…

  • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    I’m convinced Neom is actually a secret plot to confuse future archeologists.

    Why are these stones here? Ancient people must have left them in a religious ritual to the Gadgetbahn Gods.

    • TheSlad
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      6 months ago

      Dont worry, they’ll give up on it and come up with an even bigger and dumber idea in a few years.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The future of Neom, Saudi Arabia’s enormous city building project, is looking shaky as costs soar and sloppy construction setbacks mount, The Wall Street Journal reports.

    The uber-ambitious pair of skyscrapers is supposed to be taller than the Empire State Building and span 105 miles of desert, its western end terminating on the coast of the Red Sea.

    “It’s battling against the entire history of the way cities are founded and grow,” John E. Fernandez, professor in the department of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the WSJ.

    Spread across a hundred miles, that verticality will allow for more than seven billion square feet of floor space, according to the WSJ, which is 29 percent larger than all the buildings in New York City.

    The Line’s foundations were being built years before architects had finished designing the above-ground structure in order to show progress to the crown prince, according to the newspaper.

    A community that’s home to Neom’s engineers and administrative workers already needs to be demolished, according to the WSJ, after yet more revisions to the Line’s design now means that the skyscraper will run right through its location.


    The original article contains 502 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    I can’t fathom how much money it would actually cost to build the original structure as envisioned.

    200 m wide by 500 m tall, 105 miles long with 300+ mph high speed rail underground.

    It’s a cool idea, but completely mad to implement such a megastructure with our current technology.

    • Belastend@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It isnt even a cool idea. The city would be completely unusable: Most cities are somewhat circular to minize distances. The line maximes distances. No organic city growth, instead you have an extremely limiting footprint that allows no out ward expansion. Narrow street and high rise buildings sound like an absolut nightmare to me.

      And dont get me started on all of the “artificial moon, robot dinosaur, human gene editing” bullshit.

      • Fuck spez
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        6 months ago

        And dont get me started on all of the “artificial moon, robot dinosaur, human gene editing” bullshit.

        Wait, what? I’m sorry but now I’m curious and I’d actually like to get you started.