5,500-Year-Old Sumerian Star Map

“For over 150 years scientists have tried to solve the mystery of a controversial cuneiform clay tablet that indicates the so-called Köfel’s impact event was observed in ancient times.

The circular stone-cast tablet was recovered from the 650 BC underground library of King Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, Iraq in the late 19th century. Long thought to be an Assyrian tablet, computer analysis has matched it with the sky above Mesopotamia in 3300 BC and proves it to be of much more ancient Sumerian origin. The tablet is an “Astrolabe,” the earliest known astronomical instrument. It consists of a segmented, disk-shaped star chart with marked units of angle measure inscribed upon the rim.

Or maybe it’s instructions ‘to whom it may concern’ about making a better pizza?

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Country Life

I have no pleasant memories of the old WPA outhouse behind my grandparent’s home when I was growing up. It is nostalgic just like the Mongomery Ward’s catalog that was used to wipe is…

The old coal stove was impossible to keep at a constant temperature unless the temp was dull orange as it overheated. Heating your bathwater and bathing in a corrugated iron wash tub left a lot to be desired too.  The old ringer washer broke half my buttons whenever it was used and I had to go to the button box to try and find replacements to sew on.

Times were different then. I recall darning socks rather than throwing them away and ordering a new set from Costco on-line for delivery at my door.

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Bullet Points

* CNN’s Reshuffle – Brian Stelter was the most contemptible, vapid, and unbearably smug news-tv character of the past two decades. Good riddance. Now dump Don Lemon.

* There is chatter in the democrat propaganda ministry (mainstream media) about Putin’s present intent to somehow scram and detonate the nuclear power plants in Ukraine in order to turn the place into a nuclear wasteland. While don’t know what Vlad is thinking and he doesn’t come to me for advice, my sense is that it’s the typical bullshit, spread to justify more cash and weapons shipments to the infinitely corrupt Ukrainian government. Don’t get me wrong, they’re pikers compared to the DC swamp, but they’re learning. Now we’re out of Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex needs to keep rolling.

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Do YOU trust Google?

“Jigsaw is a unit within Google that explores threats to open societies, and builds technology that inspires scalable solutions.”

Google’s Jigsaw will begin a campaign to combat “misinformation” about Ukrainian refugees. The campaign will be based on research conducted by psychologists at Bristol and Cambridge universities.

The psychologist conducted their research on several social media sites using 90-second clips to inoculate people against disinformation. In their report, they defined “inoculation theory” as a method to “reduce susceptibility to misinformation by informing people about how they might be misinformed.”

They said that they inoculated users against five types of manipulation: “emotionally manipulative language, incoherence, false dichotomies, scapegoating and ad hominem attacks.” The videos, they concluded, “improve manipulation technique recognition” and “increase people’s ability to discern trustworthy from untrustworthy content.”

Speaking to the New York Times, Jigsaw head researcher Beth Goldberg said: “This is one of the few misinformation interventions that I’ve seen at least that has worked not just across the conspiratorial spectrum but across the political spectrum.”

The campaign will begin next week and will be directed toward users in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, which are the major destinations of refugees from Ukraine.

“We are thinking of this as a pilot experiment, so there’s absolutely no reason that this approach couldn’t be scaled to other countries,” Goldberg said.

“Poland was chosen because it has the most Ukrainian refugees,” she added.

Thank heavens we have Google or we may not know what to think…

 

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34 COMMENTS

    • Babylon had a water clock – imagine designing a clock that had to have water flow through it to make it run.

      • The Greeks had steam powered automata, water powered automata (including doors) and so much more.

        The Romans had, well, everything the Greeks had and more.

        The Egyptians had some water-powered features also, along with really surprisingly complex methods for cutting and transporting stone.

        The friggin designers and builders of Stonehenge were able to cut and transport and lift huge blocks.

        The friggin Easter Islanders were able to walk their Moa around the island.

        The Mayans and Aztecs had all sorts of mercury pools and rivers in their temples (mercury being a byproduct of silver and gold processing.)

        Not to mention no modern person can explain how the Mayan were able to dry-build stone walls so accurately that one can’t fit a playing card between the stones. (Well, some Pacific Islanders and some Indonesian cultures were able to do the same.)

        And then, well, everyone knew the world was round. The Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, the friggin Pacific Islanders (who never invented the wheel, but did use rollers so they’re batting .500 at being civilized) knew the world was round. The Aborigines in Australia knew the world was round. The friggin Greeks and Indians (dot, not feather) knew the diameter of the world to almost the exact number. The Chinese say they figured out the diameter before everyone else (just like everything else) but can’t prove it. The only thing Columbus’ voyage proved was he and his backers were using the wrong diameter and circumference figures, some 18,000 +/- miles around vs 25,0000 +/- miles around like almost everyone in Europe knew.

        Nothing is surprising. Our ancestors were very smart and clever people, and did not get information and help from aliens, ancient or otherwise.

        • Wait a minute. The TV shows (on cable) explain how ALL advancements were made with the help of space aliens.

          • My thought as well.

            They did have a lot of slave labor and time on their hands, but aliens is my go-to answer…which is like conspiracy theories being the easy pat answer to hard to understand situations.

            ‘Course, if I had 100 years to build my place it’d be perfectamundo, I’m just not that patient.

          • Paul M.

            Current research on the Egyptians are favoring no real slave labor but more all the farmers that got flooded out of the Nile Basin during the yearly floods. And, yes, some slaves, but mostly ‘free’ subjects working for cold-hard-cash during the off-season.

            Same with the Mayans and Aztecs and monolithic Brits, mostly freemen working on the off-season.

            Even the Mound Builders in America, free men.

            Not even going into discussions on various levels and types of slavery, as lots of ‘slaves’ were often freer than free men. Most slaves had more rights than low-level citizens in Rome. Slaves had rights in Scandinavian cultures. But that’s a whole new bottle of fish sauce that will take up way too much time and space…

    • made a hotel reservation via landline phone. two minutes later i went on google maps to do a map recon, no even naming the place, just the state. there was my reservation posted on the map. beast with tentacles everywhere.

  4. The professional managerial class are experimenting with societal manipulation in Europe, with the help of all those high caste H1B visa holders no doubt. I wonder how much effort it will take to counter “Immigration is Davos Strength” and other simplistic memes? Speaking of immigrants, (refugees) why aren’t they going to Davos?

  5. Google: In bed with the subversive part of our government…gee, what could go wrong? As those with power always do, they’ve morphed to insidious evil-doing instead of simply supplying information. It is “the beast” as WWW suggests, minimally one of the Hydra heads.

    Stelter – Why is it these media personalities can’t simply be called “liars”?

    Sandy – another liar – is from a privileged Westchester, Yorktown Heights background, which – surprise! – includes a stint for The Bern. Nothing but a hand-selected plant by the Democratic Socialists of America…otherwise she’d be dancing on TikTok and bartending in her well-worn BU t-shirt. But as it goes with “public service” grifters she somehow managed to make herself a millionaire while careful to not scratch the Jimmy Choo’s when exiting her Tesla.

    • If she scratched her Jimmy Choo, she’d just throw the pair out and buy another two. The number growing like the heads of the Hydra until she was Imelda Marcos.

      • I suppose everyone needs an inspiration. Hoping we don’t get a sequel of her and the Hateful Gal Pals.

    • I suspected that you mentored the guy who made the Sumerian Star Map. Is this just you being modest again, Odie?

  7. Thankfully the houses I have lived at all had indoor plumbing, well except for some cabins way the heck north in Quebec. Nothing wakes you up in quite the same way as taking a stroll at 6AM in -30 weather with a 30 knot wind to go sit in an outhouse. A real eye opener.

    Sumerian star map. To me it is interesting as all get out that something as fragile as a clay tablet with finely engraved information on it could last for so long and and still be pristine.

    Bullet points. Pretty sure the intent is not to damage the reactor but to use it as an emotional and political lever by both sides. That does not preclude someone getting stupid and damaging or scramming the thing accidentally.

    Google. Not trustworthy, the mere name calls up epic levels of what is the ulterior motive whenever I hear it.

    Jihad Squad. I wonder exactly what all they have done for their constituents. All of them seem more interested in self aggrandizement then in actual governing.

    • There are tens of thousands of intact clay tablets from the period and beyond, stretching for millennia. Most are business records, and ledgers.

    • Permanent records were fired. Some caches of clay tablets were accidentally fired when a palace was burned. Those, especially, survived well because eventually someone built over the ruins, and were untouched until discovered in modern times.

  8. Country living – all those stinging and biting things just waiting for the uncovered fundament to be placed on the wooden throne. Not to mention interactions with various critters (and weather) while trekking to and fro. Makes the Back to Nature crowd look like the brainless idiots they are.
    Nothing like getting arms caught in the wringer 🙂 We had several jars of buttons to search through.
    Online maps mentioned above – I try using Mapquest when possible.

    • We had indoor pluming. The neighboring farmhouse did not for years.
      They had a coal furnace whose thermostat controlled the coal bin conveyor.
      The gas station/ service garage I hung out in as a kid had two single holers.

      • One gal posted a comment about using outhouses as a youngster – with her jeans and undies down below her knees, she set a world speed record for waddling out the door when she felt little feet somewhere that wasn’t supposed to have little feet on it.

  9. Outhouses, washtub baths, wringer washing machines, etc. That was my youth and I have no nostalgia. I enjoy my creature comforts.

  10. Like you and WSF, I remember all those things at my grandparents. The house was built in 1870 and still in use in the 1960s. Re google, it IS a hydra. Cut off one head, six more pop up.

    • The house my grandparents lived in was two-story adobe, built in 1880. They remodeled it and it eventually had a flush system, but while under construction there was the outhouse and if the single restroom was in use — outhouse.

  11. I would be shocked if Don Lemonhead gets the chop….he’s a black, gay liberal and is basically untouchable. Just thin out the white herd and call it good.

  12. Ah, the good old outhouse scenario.

    Coming back soon to a city near Brussels.

    I never minded them, much, in the UK when I was visiting friends. Of course we had in house toilets and they, some of them, didn’t. So what? We didn’t care. Young, obvs.

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