So, this amazing video has been going around for the last day (and I have probably watched it a dozen times!), but it has also prompted some thoughts... 1/ https://twitter.com/arurkuo/status/1316217582882521092

This is a recreation of the construction of the Charles Bridge in Prague. Here is the original (from 2016): 2/

Note that the original video is three minutes; the one that's been passed around recently has been sped up to be only a minute. (!) 3/

As for the bridge itself, it was started in 1357 -- and was completed in 1402. That's 45 years. It's 2020 -- this is as if a project that was started in 1975 just finished! 4/

Seeing this gives me the same feeling as seeing the Taj Mahal in person when visiting my mom in India last year: 5/ https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1108236508480176128

And all of this prompts one of my favorite poems from Danish mathematician and poet Piet Hein: 6/

THINGS TAKE TIME. We lionize big projects, but we too often speed them up when we think of them, losing appreciation for the persistence and resilience it takes to actually pull these projects off. 7/

For example, many investors say they want to fund "moonshots" and "Apollo programs" -- but the Apollo program took 11 years and cost $158 billion dollars! 8/

Beyond the time and cost, anyone who wants to be a part of an "Apollo program" must be braced for their equivalent of Apollo 1: 9/ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo1.html

Apollo 1 was gutting for the program; the most memorable speech I have ever seen in person was at Surge 2013 when Gene Kranz described -- with tears in his eyes -- how the Apollo 1 fire caused them to question absolutely everything: 10/

He described how Apollo 1 showed them how little they understood their own systems -- how many of them were working by accident. In the aftermath, everything was reexamined and much was redesigned; it would be 20 months before a crewed mission would again be attempted. 11/

Huge, ambitious projects are at once deeply frustrating and uniquely gratifying. Let us be inspired by the construction of the Charles Bridge (and Apollo!) -- not to just dream of taking on big problems, but to remain undaunted when they inevitably pose setbacks. 12/

Speaking personally (and on a much smaller scale!), I look forward to one day having a video where we speed up the development of the Oxide rack: where the difficulty and the toil can be distilled down to a viral minute -- may it take less than 45 years to get there! ;) 13/13