Hyperreality

Saint Teresa of Jesus:

In his hands, I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one’s soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it—even a considerable share.

It's the eyes and the uncanny valley effect.

Meh. Lime mortar absorbs and releases moisture. IRC "Roman" lime concrete is much the same.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan, but that kind of thing isn't compatible with modern insulation. You end up with damp and mould issues in the walls.

Sure it works great in uninsulated stuff though. But people and governments want every room in a building to be insulated nowadays. The whole one warm room, the rest of the building is cold and you'd better wear a three piece suit or heavy wool jumper thing, is abhorrent to our spoiled western arses.

Also: the Romans didn't build their buildings that high. AFAIK Lime concrete has lower tensile and compressive strength, which is an issue with high rise buildings.

Thousands of years, to be exact.

Prime games too, although I've noticed they offer less GOG games than they once did, and I refuse to install their app on my pc.

In my defense prime is very cheap in my country, because they haven't crushed the competition yet.

Sounds fine to me.

It's an expensive problem, especially if it's a system that's being used all across the airport by regular staff.

You need to train thousands of employees to use the new software, you need to have one person using the old software as a backup, while the other uses the new software, often while surrounded by hundreds of often angry customers.

And if something goes wrong, which it invaribly does (even if it's user error or someone snagging a cable), shit can get very expensive. Small delays, add up to larger delays, and cascade through the entire system. Delayed flights, tens of thousands of euros in costs, hotels for thousands of passengers, missed flights, missed meetings, damages, lawsuits, penalties for missed landing/take-off slots, missed time windows for certain cities which don't allow flights after a certain time, etc. And often you discover legacy stuff while you're upgrading that needs fixing, stuff that no one knows how to replace anymore or is physically hard to access.

Sometimes it is genuinely better to leave it. COBOL is 60 years old. There's still plenty of stuff running on it, exactly because it's often too expensive and too risky to replace.

A lot of these systems are also always on.

Used to work at an airport that had a similar issue, turning some of these systems off simply isn't possible. So you end up having to run the replacement system simultaneously with the old system for a few days. Can't simply take it off line for a day.

German re-unification cost trillions. It's entirely unsurprising.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Wow. This is great.

You're Finally Awake.