🏗 Explosive Fishing & Cursed Highways!

RCE Merch | Patreon | Join My Discord

Hello Fellow Engineers!

We’re back from our Christmas break, recharged and ready to dive into the wonderful world of civil engineering. This week’s newsletter is packed: from Dubai’s explosive New Year’s Eve show to a timber bridge that’s more art piece than overpass, we’ve got plenty to rant about (architects, you’re not safe).

Stick around for cursed highway layouts, a fish-blasting indie game, and, of course, Paddy in glorious 4K! So grab a cup of tea (or coffee—engineers don’t judge), and let’s kick off 2025 in style.

Let’s dive into it 👇

🎉 A Huge Thanks to Everyone Who Entered This Week’s Giveaway! 🎉

The wait is over!

This week, 10 lucky winners are about to take their organizational skills to new heights with Lost But Found! 🧳✈️!

Big congratulations to… clears throat

• erclevel

• jemgrundy

• pantherkat

• dmanyrat

• sylverlyghtning

• anthonybritner

• mipeak124

• tylanm270

• lheaton106

• ahumfleet09

phew…

Check your emails for a key!

Get ready to dive into the chaos of managing an airport’s lost and found, organizing items, and uncovering all kinds of quirky secrets!

For everyone else, no need to despair—next week’s mystery game giveaway is brewing as we speak. Don’t forget to vote in today’s poll for your chance to win! 🎮✨

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

Burj Khalifa New Year’s Eve Spectacle

When it comes to engineering marvels, Dubai never misses. Case in point: the absolutely bonkers New Year’s Eve 2025 show at the Burj Khalifa. It’s got fireworks, fountains, and probably a few architects crying into their blueprints because this level of precision is way out of their league.

Last year’s show took 671 days of planning, 325 firing positions, and 15,682 pyrotechnic elements to create a display so complex, it makes most architectural projects look like finger painting. Engineers choreographed over 2,800 firing directions with state-of-the-art computer tech, turning the sky into a giant pixel art masterpiece. It’s fireworks on steroids—coordinated down to the millisecond.

And let’s not forget the Dubai Fountain’s synchronized aquatic dance. Under the engineering brilliance of Peter Kopik (a fountain choreographer with nearly three decades of experience), the fountains feature MiniShooters, HyperShooters, and XtremeShooters—which sound more like a lineup of superheroes than water jets. These bad boys shoot water 150 meters into the air, lit by 6,600 lights and 127 strobe strings, with 6,700 fog nozzles adding a dramatic “we’re in the clouds now” vibe.

Architects’ contribution? Probably just saying, “Make it look pretty.” Engineers, meanwhile, are the ones pulling off a perfectly timed symphony of pyrotechnics, waterworks, and enough tech wizardry to rival NASA.

The Emaar New Year’s Eve show is proof that engineers are the real magicians. Architects can keep their curves and flair—we’ll take precision, tech, and making the sky explode any day.

⚡ Cool Links

👀 10 Most Anticipated Indie Games Of 2025
2025 is shaping up to be the year of indie game sequels, and it's like Christmas for gamers who love a quirky, creative experience. Highlights? Oh, just Hollow Knight: Silksong, the mythical beast of Metroidvanias that might finally grace our screens after a wait longer than a Skyrim re-release. Then there’s Slay the Spire 2, letting us lose sleep over perfect card combos all over again.

And let’s not sleep on Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, which promises space drama, dice rolls, and a ship you’ll probably wreck at least once. If that’s too intense, Wanderstop turns farming sims on their heads by adding tea-making and existential crises.

🤯 Reviewing the WORST REAL HIGHWAY LAYOUTS in Cities Skylines 2!
You sent me your cursed interchanges, and I’m attempting to build them—emphasis on attempting - because I completely forgot to actually play the game. Watch the chaos unfold above!

🌉 Bridge bearings that facilitate thermal expansion
Reddit's at it again—this time, geeking out over bridge bearings on the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge. Who knew thermal expansion could spark such hot takes? The comments are packed with engineering gold, proving once and for all: engineers do make the best threads.

🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

We play in 4k now!

Need a pick-me-up? It’s 4 solid minutes of Paddy being the goodest boy, now in glorious 4K! Turn that quality all the way up and let this wholesome chaos brighten your Thursday

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

This week’s Indie Game of the Week is Critical Fishing, where fishing goes full-blown action movie! You play as a worm who’s done being bait and starts fishing the American way—with submarines, lasers, and RPGs. It’s all about upgrades, revenge, and decimating the fish population one explosive at a time.

In the video, I build flower beds underwater (because why not), battle aliens, and somehow end up with a fishing stick covered in what feels like every fish in the ocean. Plus, I unlock cluster rockets, which turn fishing into a pyrotechnic spectacle.

Get in on the madness yourself:

Critical Fishing is out now on Steam (30% off!) for just $5

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

Ah yes, the “Timber Bridge” in Gulou Waterfront, China —a structure that screams, “Look at me, I’m an art piece!” rather than just being, you know, a bridge. On the upside, it’s built with sustainable materials and promotes eco-tourism, which is great for the planet. On the downside, it’s got more unnecessary flair than a peacock at a fashion show. Seriously, was a simple plank over the water not enough, architects?

Structurally, it’s a nice feat of engineering—probably because the engineers had to work overtime to make this modern sculpture actually stand up. The latticework is undeniably impressive, but do we really need a bridge that looks like a giant wooden ribcage? The answer, as always, is no.

Score: 5.8/10. Gains points for being eco-friendly and functional, but loses big for trying way too hard to be fancy. Architects, stay in your lane—this is a bridge, not a concert hall.

🏗 r/realcivilengineer Spotlight

Thanks to u/Dinotron098 for this one! The mods marked this one NSFW as looks a a little TOO efficient… You be the judge!

🤔 Thoughts from an Engineer