But modern concrete does not operate on the deep time of rock. Its durability is severely limited. It is restless. “Reinforcement really is the only reason concrete is everywhere today,” said Lucia Allais, an associate professor of architecture at Columbia University. Experiments with reinforced concrete began in the mid-1800s as people sought to mask its weaknesses and make it do things it couldn’t. The reason for this is that concrete has extremely high compressive strength: It’s really difficult to crush. Today’s strongest concretes can withstand pressure of more than 100 megapascals — “about the weight of an African bull elephant balanced on a coin,” as the historian Vaclav Smil put it. But concrete has low tensile strength: It’s easy to pull apart. Steel bars, it turned out, have pretty much the opposite qualities, so rebar (reinforcing bar) became commonly used to create a strengthening skeleton for concrete to be poured around. Almost all of the concrete you see today is reinforced.

“The problem with that is the process of carbonation,” said Allais. “There is carbon dioxide everywhere in the atmosphere, and any time concrete is exposed to carbon dioxide, it permeates its pores.” When the CO2 permeates it triggers a chemical reaction in the concrete that causes the rebar to rust. “The steel expands because it’s rusting. And the concrete cracks and fails. … And what’s especially interesting is that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the last 100 years has greatly expanded, due in no small part to the fact the concrete industry is emitting massive amounts of it into the atmosphere.”

Scientists are trying to figure out how long it takes reinforced concrete to degrade because of carbonation. The average result for a standard structure is 100 years, Allais said. “When you consider that reinforced concrete was invented around 100 years ago,” she went on, “you get this amazing image that the concrete all around the world is beginning to fail.”

Previously disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials, the new study suggests that these tiny lime clasts gave the concrete a previously unrecognized self-healing capability. “The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me,” says Masic. “If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story.”

It’s supposed to be uplifting, isn’t it, “I Gotta Feeling”. In an interview with Marie Claire on the eve of its release, famed Black Eyed Pea will.i.am claimed the song was “dedicated to all the party people out there in the world that want to go out and party”. Indeed, “I Gotta Feeling” seemed to be met on precisely those terms. For years, it was wheeled out as the cross-demographic end of night climax to underline the point that whatever function you were at was fun. It dominated work dos, adverts, video games, the Olympic Games, third birthday parties, 73rd birthday parties and especially those astonishing choreographed wedding videos that people drop loads of money on for some reason. It was specifically designed to be the go-to jam for any uplifting occasion by virtue of avoiding any characteristics that might limit its reach. In doing so, it skirted around every possible human emotion and wound up in hell.

That ethos of customer service has prevailed as universities are increasingly run like businesses. Ultimately, DEI is a management strategy, illustrated by the way the university skillfully pitted its “customers” (outraged students) against its “staff” (the adjunct instructor), directing conflict away from “management” (the administration). In years past, authoritarian Muslim states found similar utility in whipping up anger over international cartoon controversies in order to distract from their citizens’ domestic demands.