> Having this one fixed point in the sky is the foundation of all celestial navigation.

Only in the northern hemisphere.

I loved this. I wish I had the ability to do the same innocuous deep dive into a easter egg in code - but I fear it would never be discovered at this rate of which AI is generating similar stuff. But much like this article maybe there's a time and place.

During DEF CON XX, I got bored/overwhelmed (it was not my first year attending) — so I decided to rent a car and visit Hoover Dam (this was before the bypass bridge was completed). I drove through the desert 100mph+, in my own little HST jaunt, searching for nothing but concrete's high water mark.

The statues in OP's article are absolutely beautiful examples of Art Deco / 1930s Americana (my local post office was built then, too, and has eaglettes of similar [but smaller] design). I had no idea they were out there until stumbling upon them, and they definitely leave a lasting impression of our forefather's imposing presence. America, fuck yeah!

Wish I had then-known about this "clock," which is definitely hidden in plain sight. Wish we had similarly-lavish federal budgets, today. But worth visiting, both article, statues & dam.

> construction of the dam began in 01931

Person in far future:

Was that in the original 01931 as in 1931? Or is that the usual truncation of 101931, since most relevant dates are in this decamillennium?

Leading zeros don't do what you think they do; you need look no further than how people say 03 when they mean 2003. A leading zero does not unambiguously say "there are no implied nonzero digits to the left of this zero".

Just, stop.

Or find some other convention, like, say, =1931. The = means, this is an exact value and not some value truncated modulo a power of ten.

Sounds like it's about the precession of the equinoxes and the new "Age of Aquarius".

In the extremely interesting book about water, cadillac desert, there is a great discussion with a scholar of some kind, I think an archeologist, about the large western US dams and the future. The gist is that the reservoirs will eventually silt up and disappear, but the dams will remain for thousands of years. The silted lakes will preserve clear evidence of their construction in the geologic record of these regions.

We will quite plausibly be known as the dam builder civilization, as these artifacts could very easily outlast the memory of what we call ourselves. It is fitting to embellish them in this way.