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Sheep counters find a monolith:
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/utah-monolith-what-is-it-trnd/index.html
Some geek on Reddit found it on Google Earth already:
https://www.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/jzw628/help_me_find_this_obelisk_in_remote_utah/
That shining, eerily symmetrical silver monolith found in the Utah desert has everyone screaming "ET." The truth is likely far more terrestrial.
We still don't know who made the tall, metal rectangle or why they stuck it among the red rocks, where it was discovered this week in a helicopter flyover by Utah Department of Public Safety employees (they were counting bighorn sheep).
And though comparisons were quickly drawn to the fictional monoliths of film auteur Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," we can safely say this real-life monolith was not the work of aliens.
Still, it's a fittingly mystifying symbol in a year that's often felt stranger than fiction. And while we may eventually learn more about the artwork's origin, any piece of Kubrick-inspired art should leave some questions unanswered, said I.Q. Hunter, a film scholar and De Montfort University professor.
Also at:
Mysterious metal monolith discovered in rural Utah
Utah monolith: Internet sleuths got there, but its origins are still a mystery
Thanks aristarchus_, Runaway1956
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday November 28 2020, @05:50PM (2 children)
Holy shit I know what this is made out of because I've built things like this although not artistically.
Look at the dimensions on wikipedia. Its a single ten foot section of Rohn 65G ham radio tower.
You buy ten foot sections of Rohn and stack them on top of each other and bolt together.
The dimensions of 65G are almost exactly the dimensions of the monolith.
I've built panels for rohn tower. For insurance liability "attractive nuisance" bullshit laws you need to protect the tower and some people build fences etc but for decades "many" people make panels of marine grade plywood that fit between the triangular corners and some bolts and nonsense to hold them in place so you can't climb the bottom ten feet like a ladder, but if you have a ladder you can bypass it or whatever.
Now most people use marine grade plywood and don't permanently mar/ruin the rohn tower section by drilling and rivet work. And no sane ham radio operator is going to spend $$$$ on three sheets of stainless steel. Ham radio guys are famous for making their own copper antenna wire by taking a copper penny and pulling apart real hard because they're cheap bastards. Then again nothing quite says ghetto ham radio engineering quite like putting up a tower section by digging a six inch deep hole and dropping a section in. No that is NOT proper engineering and guarantees corrosion related failure in a wetter climate.
Like you'd expect tower costs scale to something like the 4th power of tower size. So a "typical ham radio" rohn 25G section will set you back like $200 delivered, maybe. But bigger 65G is like a kilobuck delivered.
The special snowflakes are out with the whole "it obviously requires immense skill and power to install what boils down to a stick" but from personal knowledge a section of 25G is quite lightweight and I can manhandle it around easily like fifty pounds at most. I'm told a single piece of 65G weighs "like two hundred pounds". This is relevant to ham radio as in when the flatbed truck arrives with five lengths of rohn the smallest lightest 25G could be unloaded by a single woman, but 65G will require the usual tower work crew like four dudes working together to move sections by hand. Nobody needs a crane to install rohn sections, although you'll need a gin pole as even I after weightlifting for years can't pull even a light 25G section up by hand up a 90 ft tower LOL.
Note that a new section of rohn might cost a kilobuck but a piece of shit art installation that'll never support human weight or survive a hurricane could be some rusty "haul away for free" hulk maybe with snapped cross beams and stuff.
The whole project including quik rivets and a concrete saw and a power drill and a couple dudes to manhandle the rohn section would fit in one 4x4 pickup truck. Now you try to built a 3ft wide monolith or make it 50 feet tall thats gonna be a job and require some logistic support.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2020, @11:09PM
Glad you're back, site isn't the same without that flavor of rightwing macho bullshit. I presume you're still a racist douche bag? SN def wouldn't be the same without some of that nonsense. Learn how to build stuff yourself instead of just bolting things together like an adult version of Lincoln Logs. Woops, sorry, shouldn't have mentioned Lincoln, that probably triggered you.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @05:56AM
Hey VLM. You lost - get over it.