Edit: lol yeah, I deserve this, I teed it up rather magnificently.
OP’s mom.
There’s so much room for activities
So predictable, yet so funny.
I sat back to back with this cute girl at a music festival (first date) strategically placed in the center of several gongs. The artists began gently rolling the gongs in succession in the middle of this electric forest and then they worked together to create rhythms and move them around us.
It is one my favorite memories of my wife :)
That sounds like an absolutely rad first date. Congrats to you both!
Thank you! Electric Forest was an absolutely amazing first date. We fell in love and I proposed a year later at the same festival. We now have a beautiful family :)
Back in the late 90s, in the CA East Bay, one of my family’s neighbors was a big shot (director or something, can’t recall) at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (at the time, it was still called the NOVA laser, I think). My dad got this guy to give us a behind the scenes tour (including clean suit sections) of the complex, including the target chamber where they did inertial confinement fusion experiments (read: shot really fucking powerful lasers with support machinery the size of several contiguous Costcos smashed together at a tiny little gold cylinder with tritium suspended in it), and I got to stick my head in the inspection port.
It was super awesome, and one of the things I credit for making me go down the STEM track in the first place. Also, this was pre-9/11, and in the “peace dividend” era, and I’m fairly certain there’s precisely zero chance a random neighbor kid would be allowed backstage like that in such a sensitive (technically, as well as national security) area these days.
Also, I got to wave at the normie tour group from the other side of the tour glass while in part of the laser hall with our clean suits lol
That’s like beyond super duper cool!
I mean just to put on a clean suit would be rad, but to then go behind the scenes to places no one else goes!? FUCK YEAH!
Then holy crab on a crutch you saw normies behind glass? Just where those poor, unconnected plebes belong! 😬
I’d have been shocked if you mentioned, “…and then I worked at McDonald’s for three decades,” instead of the tour inspiring you to go STEM!
How Could It Not!?
Thanks for sharing. ❤️
A chip fab. Highest level clean room at the time. Amazing experience.
There’s not much left of the Mer de Glace glacier, but every year they still carve a giant ice tunnel into it so you can walk into a glacier. Pretty fascinating
Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul.
Built in 537 by the late Romans and still standing even though it’s in a relatively active earthquake zone, it’s amazing it’s been around for 1500 years without collapsing. The central dome is so huge and so high, it’s amazing to think how they built it back then without modern machinery or technology.
IIRC it did collapse, though very early on in its life. Like, barely after it was built. Got hit by earthquakes. But it was repaired, obviously.
So the answer is Maintenance.
I bet some bridges in America could do with some of that.
For sure. Canada too. Actually, the whole continent could use a tune-up and some anti-corruption updates.
And the site of the easiest to plainly identify earliest example of graffiti. Some Viking wrote on it long ago “Half-Dan was here”
I got to climb into a particle accelerator to look at the acceleration coils. Pretty cool.
Sagrada Família is up there - at least for artificial structures. Amazing architecture.
I loved seeing the chain method of architectural engineering!
Inside the fresnel lens of a lighthouse. (The tallest land-based lighthouse in the UK)
Cool!
Are their taller lighthouses that are not land-based? Are they floating?
Well… I’ve tried to find out just now. Most taller lighthouses are on small rocks in the sea. On some the lighthouse covers the entire rock. I have also discovered that there are potentially taller land-based lighthouses in the uk, this one just seems to be best at advertising it.
Angkor Wat is very cool, remarkably well preserved, beautiful and a huge area of ornately carved buildings and a palace to walk around in.
I’ve wanted to go there ever since I played Illusion of Gaia.
you will not be disappointed, all the images are clear enough that you can still read the polytheistic graphic history that they carved into the Palace walls.
and there’s one main Palace, but like the Palace area extends away further and there’s almost zero people who go to the ancillary buildings which also have really cool carvings and are basically pristine.
Sagrada familia in Barcelona. Genuinely jaw dropping and nothing else has topped it in my travels.
Based on size? Spaceship Earth in EPCOT Center.
On a more personal scale, a lighthouse.
gives OP a hug It’s okay, they mean well.
West Kennet Long Barrow is a Neolithic barrow over 5,500 years old. It’s part of the numerous neolithic structures in Wiltshire, UK (which includes the frankly far less impressive but more famous Stonehenge).
Going inside it is a very odd feeling. You can see and touch ancient work marks put there by people who are so remote to us we know very little about them. I’ve visited numerous ancient world heritage sites and its unique (to me) in how close you feel to those people.
A nuclear reactor would be at the top of the list, but it wasn’t as fascinating as Dutch windmill when I was 6 years old.
Hot air balloon ride wit ma SO,
Safest flight time was in the early AM so we got an amazing sunrise view out of it!
