Friday Ephemera
Levitating Bonsai trees. You heard me. // Large scale snow drawings. // Polish priests blessing things, a Tumblr. // Badland is a game. // Beat box of note. // How to build your very own electronic bee counter. // Sampulator. // Waffle poots. // An actual oasis. // Manhattan snow. // New York Public Library menu collection, from the 1850s to the modern day. // Spherical Droste videos explained. // Wall-mounted drawing robot. // For display purposes only. // Action figures. (h/t, Damian) // Filmmaker trolls censors. (h/t, Franklin) // Text tone analyser. // Is titanium bulletproof? // Intelligent headlights. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) // Darwin awards, a compendium of dumb and acts of an angry god. // You want one very badly. // And finally, erotically, some of that good lovin’.
Adam Smith pointed out that if you created wealth a few hundred years ago or more, the only thing you could spend it on was people. Court hangers on, priests and soldiers mostly. Hence the popularity of empire and conquest. It was the only thing that gave you any return.
I like to think of the pyramids as a workfare program. We’re not feeding so you can just sit around all day. Go and put that stone on this one. You’ve done that? OK now that stone…
I’m chuffed you featured the Titanium video from Demolition Ranch. It helps generate money for Vet Ranch
– Mats second channel.
He’s a really decent guy.
The unscientific Big Bang . . . .
. . . . the initial conditions of the big bang theory remain similarly inexplicable.
I have a rather different memory of Thunderbirds.
Lady P likes a drop or two of acid in her Pernod.
So a great animal like that, you don’t eat him all at once.
I had no idea this existed.
“Free handkerchief.”
Ten
Large numbers of sophisticated megalithic sites point to the 10-12,000 BC era.
Really ?
i[Ancient] people thought for the ages. We have the attention span of a mayfly.
How do we know that ancient people thought for the ages ? For all we know the reason a handful of their structures have survived is chance, available materials and necessary over engineering just to get the things to stand for more than a few years. They may have been totally uninterested in posterity and only wanted to build something of utilitarian value for whatever the intended end.
I bet there was some bloke standing around in 3,000bc as Stonehenge went up, shaking his head and asking what the world was coming to and why modern man was so trivial, unlike when Ug were a lad and his gran made wolfskin socks to really last and with deep spiritual purpose.
We have the attention span of a mayfly.
I’m informed in recent news and political humour that evidently some alleged adults in the UK have been insisting on wandering about anywhere in pyjamas . . . . and then there was the political humour blending in the other news;
Really ?
Yup.
Lady P likes a drop or two of acid in her Pernod.
You don’t?
Really ?
Yup.
Any evidence for that ?
Any evidence for that ?
Yes, or I wouldn’t have made the claim.
Can you provide a link or a reference ? I’m not any sort of expert in the subject but as far as I was aware most megalithic sites date from the Neolithic and earlier ones are either disputed or very rare, you claimed that there are large numbers of them, which I seriously doubt. Not that it makes much difference to my main point which is that we have no evidence that they were erected with posterity in mind, we don’t even know if anyone had a concept of posterity in the way that we do. To dismiss our mega constructions are merely ephemeral and serving no higher purpose on the basis of unknown and possibly misinterpreted history is illogical.
I invite you to find references yourself, Thornavis, although I linked a teaser above. Anonymous people assert wildly different versions of reality at one another online almost as a requirement. I have no interest in making our hosts space an example, as off-topic as this is.
As for posterity, I find the assumption about ancient man’s thinking interesting. Much of the point upthread had to do with modern man’s inability to think, whereas looking back in time we find the wholly ubiquitous phenomenon of legend: it’s illogical, rather, to nullify the tradition of oral and written lore that eventually combined to form the foundation of western thought.
Clearly there is no hard dividing line of human consciousness based on time – a go/no-go gauge with a datestamp. Consider that the Egyptians – who did indeed reference some very old phenomenon – erupted on the historical scene with their stunningly competent sciences, technologies, and methods fully formed, and left no prior or subsequent record of them with their disappearance. They’re not the only ones…
I’m aware that history is shoved into the convenient boxes of our time – they’re another component of the myopic and self-regarding establishment that also replaces reason and mind with post-structuralism and officialdom in virtually every category you’d care to mention. It’s also wrong on at least one major science and it is indeed logical to question its dogmatic view of history. We are not superior because we find ourselves to be superior. We just fiddle better and collect more. Or we think we do.
I also find it interesting that the moderate or conservative will accept a half dozen or so major structural fallacies – political, economic, cultural, social, moral, philosophical – and go so far as to urgently defend their effects that, were they defined fully and completely, would clearly fall into the fanciful progressive mindset. It’s certainly then a small step to link big bang creation myths to a slanted view of history by way of archaeology-by-the-numbers, or more assuredly, archaeology by popular interpretation out on the street. I’m sure that tendency of ours surprises no one.
I proposed that pop sensibilities are as predictable as they are common. With where we’re going and how we’re getting there, we should be less impressed with ourselves and our times than we are.
To dismiss our mega constructions [as] merely ephemeral and serving no higher purpose on the basis of unknown and possibly misinterpreted history is illogical
To say that said history is widely misinterpreted is not such an audacious statement, and if that’s the case, it makes less sense to question posterity and thought; certainly purpose and intent. I simply dismissed our stuff – since roughly the 20th Century, and with some exception – as technical, very short-sighted, and deeply self-impressed. I’d sort the remarkable phenomenon found in the distant past as anything but. Obviously they built for great meaning, whoever they were and however the bloody hell they did it.
Virtually all of our accepted narratives on distant times and peoples simply leaves all the many dozens of unanswered questions up in the air. That’s not a basis; it’s a concession. By now it’s even a tradition.
Right, so you dismiss a polite request to provide a simple link because it’s o/t and then go on to fill several paragraphs on the subject, that makes sense.
Such a travesty, since the general subject of accomplishment and periods and thought had been an open topic, right? I can see how very gutted you’d be not to have some red meat to bang on about.
Given how malformed your comments were, I somehow figured you’d take it that way. Call me perceptive.