There is so much wonder around and people are simply not noticing because it is so normal. We have a 57km long tunnel where you can drive through in a high-speed train with up to 250km/h while sitting in a comfortable chair. While you're @200km/h and 2,5km below the alps, you can still use your pocket computer to communicate by video with nearly everyone on this planet in real time. Some of that communication will go through space. You also may use that pocket device to show pictures to thousands of strangers which are claiming that humans have stopped building wonders
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Because it's not profitable. Modern versions of cathedrals would have corporate sponsors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Rong_Khun
Opened in 1997. The murals inside are full of contemporary references like Goku and Master Chief

And the... Twin towers being eaten by a gas pump demon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wat_Rong_Khun_wall_painting.jpg
Reminder that big government science projects, like space programs and supercolliders, count as wonders.
The LHC is 27km in circumference. Still not as big as the Great Wall of China.
ETA: The Burj Khalifa is certainly a wonder of engineering, if it's not regarded as a wonder, itself. But it's the first occupiable tower to exceed Barad-dûr. (Tolkien fans have since adjusted the Sauron's tower to be even taller.)
This but unironically. What was once a marvel is now mundane.
Modern skyscrapers are built with base isolation and mass dampening to make them resistant to earthquakes. Have you seen recent cargo ships? Warehouses? They are great and awful in every sense of both words.
Brazilian Giant Rubber Duck

When you have slave labor and authoritarian control, building aesthetic wonders is easy.
Because humans stopped reading in a coherent direction.
we didn't, Australia has architectural marvels like the Big Prawn, the Big Banana etc
I mean, the first one definitely makes me go "Hmm, I wonder why anyone would build that?"
I think they like fish.
My favourite is this:

I didn't know Yogi Bear owned property!
This is in the city I grew up in, the reason is because it's the headquarters of the national fisheries development board.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fisheries_Development_Board_building
It's highly likely that anyone visiting Hyderabad will see this building on their way to/from the airport - so keep your eyes peeled!
We have stopped building wonders because the modern contractor industry is built deliberately to waste as much money as possible by letting it all go towards middle managers and people at the top.
The government is complicit in financing and upholding this system and has stopped employing people directly to actually do productive building work.
This is hamstringing us, because it means that we are literally uncapble of building great things. All things we try to build will be infinitely delayed and sever times the original budget. Because then, middle managers will be able to suck more money out of the broken system.
Bridges in the US now cost more than entire rail networks back in the day or what the sagrada familia cost over 100 years.
I get the sensationalism but your position is generally wrong. Projects are more expensive because of multiple legitimate reasons (property / land costs, stakeholder costs, building costs, wages, financing costs). I acknowledge that corruption is a thing. But that's less of a driver than legitimate costs.
For a sec I thought the bottom image was DS3 Anor Londo and was wondering what game the upper image was from
I think because finding a quarry with that much quality stone is impossible these days unless you dig very, very deep and ship it likely halfway across the world. Possible of course but prohibitively expensive, not to mention how much fossil fuel will be burned to achieve it.









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