🏗️ They Made This Game TOO ADDICTIVE!

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Hello Fellow Engineers!

Welcome to Real Civil Newsletter, the only newsletter where dams get more love than dating apps, bridges get roasted for winking at boats, and engineers bonk harder than goblins in 3D.

This week, we’re crowning our CloverPit giveaway winner, saluting the Hoover Dam (aka the concrete overlord of North America), and reviewing the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, the eye that blinks but never sleeps. Plus, Paddy faces off against a beach ball, and we dive into chaotic indie glory with Mega Bonk.

So grab your hard hat, your sense of superiority over architects, and let’s get into it. 👇

Let’s dive into it 👇

This week, we’re giving away ONE copy of CloverPit! ☘️💥

Feeling lucky, engineers? You’ll need it. CloverPit is a rogue-lite slot machine nightmare - part strategy, part randomness, and 100% “why am I still spinning this thing?” You’re trapped in a hellish cell with a slot machine and a growing debt, and your only way out is to break the game before it breaks you.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… 🥁

🏆 charlotte.coneybeer🏆

Check your inbox for your game key!

Missed out? Don’t worry, more giveaways are coming soon! 🎮

Want a shot at the next one? Vote for a bridge in the poll in this email! 🌉🛠

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

Few things scream “engineers are gods among mortals” quite like the Hoover Dam, a 726-foot-tall monument to math, muscle, and magnificent overdesign.

Built during the Great Depression (1931–1936), this beast required 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete, that’s enough to build a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York City. And just for fun, engineers had to pour it in 215 separate blocks, because if they’d done it all at once, the dam would still be cooling today. Literally, it would take 125 years to cure fully.

The dam holds back 28.9 million acre-feet of water, that’s roughly 9 trillion gallons, and supplies hydroelectric power to Nevada, Arizona, and California, pumping out around 2,080 megawatts at full capacity. It’s not just a wall; it’s a powerhouse with a serious superiority complex.

Now, imagine if architects had been in charge. We’d have a 700-foot glass “water feature” called Reflecting Humanity™, complete with mood lighting, an infinity edge, and a fragile aesthetic that collapses when someone sneezes too hard. Meanwhile, engineers looked at a canyon and said “We can stop a river. With math.”

The Hoover Dam was built with zero computer simulations, just slide rules, grit, and a deep mistrust of aesthetic opinions. Workers dangled from cliffs on ropes, manually drilling holes for dynamite. They built diversion tunnels, rerouted the Colorado River, and somehow finished the whole thing two years early. Architects can’t even finish a bathroom renovation on time.

So next time someone asks if engineers can make something “a little prettier,” remind them that we made a river change direction, permanently.

Because when engineers design something, it doesn’t just stand the test of time, it holds back an entire ocean’s worth of smug architectural ambition.

⚡ Cool Links

🔬 Scientists Accidentally Create a “Rainbow Chip” That Could Supercharge the Internet
Researchers made a chip that splits a laser into dozens of light channels. It could speed up data transfer and revolutionize optical networks. Basically Wi-Fi, but make it science fiction.

🚇 Dublin’s €10B MetroLink Finally Moves Forward
After years of planning, Ireland’s massive underground metro project is actually happening. Engineers rejoice, architects still arguing over the font on the station signs.

🌉 This Bridge’s Weird Design Nearly Caused It to Collapse
An odd design choice left a Rhode Island bridge in danger of failure. Thankfully, engineers stepped in to rescue it from… well, “creative” design decisions.

🚗 EcoCAR Challenge Puts Students in the Driver’s Seat (Literally)
A four-year competition backed by GM and Stellantis has students designing AI-powered EVs. Proof that the future of cars is bright, and probably still over budget.

🎮 Gaming News

🌍 Plan B: Terraform Hits 1.0
Turn barren planets into thriving ecosystems in this blend of Cities: Skylines and Mother Nature’s revenge.

💣 Triple-I Initiative Drops Indie Bombshells
A new showcase revealed indie hits like VoidBreaker and Ikuma: The Frozen Compass. Creativity, chaos, and coding wizardry, everything architects fear.

🔥 Indie Roguelike Megabonk Beats the Big Guns
117,000+ players and counting, this chaotic indie is officially bigger than Call of Duty. Somewhere, a AAA studio just cried into a pile of microtransactions.

🦖 Dinosaur Survival Game Deathground Enters Early Access
It’s Phasmophobia, but with T-Rexes. Team up, panic together, and pray your sensors don’t fail you, just like a real engineering project.

Fact-based news without bias awaits. Make 1440 your choice today.

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🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

8 week old black lab versus beach ball!

It may be snowy still, but Paddy has his first ever play with a beach ball! How long will it last?

This ones a video from the archives, back when Paddy was just a puppy!

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

Ever wanted to bonk goblins, kings, and slimes with fireballs, bananas, and questionable life choices?

Welcome to Mega Bonk, the 3D survivor game that had me bonking at the speed of light (highly discouraged by the safety department). It’s like Vampire Survivors went to therapy, got into 3D modeling, and started throwing burgers. 🍔

Watch me bonk responsibly here 👇️ 

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

Alright folks, buckle your hard hats, today we’re reviewing a bridge that literally blinks at boats. The Gateshead Millennium Bridge, opened in 2001, connects Newcastle to Gateshead and was clearly designed after an architect saw a drawbridge and said, “But what if it… winked?”

The entire bridge tilts on giant hydraulic rams to let ships pass, rotating like an eyelid doing its best impression of a PowerPoint transition. Romantic? Maybe. Practical? Questionable. But you can’t deny, it’s one of the few bridges that manages to look smug.

🛠 Engineering Feats

• The whole 850-tonne structure tilts as one solid piece, resting on massive pivots at each end, basically a seesaw for adults with a £22 million price tag.

• It’s so precisely balanced that it can raise and lower with less energy than boiling a kettle (a fun fact that sounds made up, but isn’t).

• The tolerance on the pivot bearings is within a millimetre, because apparently this bridge is more accurate than most architects’ sketches.

🎨 Architectural Crimes

• It’s been nicknamed “The Blinking Eye,” which is cute until you realize that means the bridge’s most defining feature is pretending to sleep on the job.

• The sleek white arch is beautiful, sure, but also ensures that every pigeon in Newcastle has a front-row seat to defile British engineering excellence.

⚙️ Final Score

8.7 / 10