Sunday, October 27, 2024

Ancient map

 https://x.com/Culture_Crit/status/1850600478058467783

This 2,700-year-old tablet is the oldest map of the world. It reveals just how differently the ancients understood the world — but one detail is particularly strange. It sheds light on a VERY ancient story… (thread) 🧵

The "Imago Mundi" is the oldest map of the world — as it was known to the Babylonians around 700 BC. It's carved into a small piece of clay, with annotations explaining it, and the creation myth of the world.

The central parts of the map are easy to read: The Euphrates river runs north to south, straddled by the city of Babylon (modern-day Iraq), and surrounded by cities and regions marked by small circles.

A point of interest is the place marked "Urartu" — this is the ancient name for what we now call Armenia. Encircling these points on the map is the "Bitter River" (meaning salt water).

Like other ancient maps, the known world is encircled by water across which man wasn't known to have ventured. What lies across the water is where it gets interesting...

On the other side lie 7 triangular regions — and this is where the mythological is introduced. These regions are where legendary beasts are said to roam, and the text on the back of the tablet tells us what we can find at each one...

One area is marked: "where the sun is not seen." This likely refers to the legendary journey of Gilgamesh to lands of perpetual darkness, as in Sumerian myth.

Next, a "great wall" occupies one region (likely the home of a demon from Sumerian myth). To reach it, "you must travel seven leagues". The Babylonian worldview was steeped in mystery and myth — with the mythological firmly entangled with the physical world...

But most interesting of all are the (fragmented) inscriptions relating to the next triangle: "To the fourth, to which you must travel seven leagues…. Are as thick as a parsiktu-vessel..."

There's only one other cuneiform tablet known to exist that uses that language: "thick as a parsiktu-vessel". It's the "Ark Tablet" — 1,000 years older than the map, it provides instructions for the building of a great Ark...

This tablet describes the boat built by Atraḥasis to carry humanity through the Flood at God's instruction. That ancient measuring unit relates to its giant ribs: "I set in place in thirty ribs, that were one parsiktu-vessel thick."

So, the map seems to imply a rough location of where the Ark came to ground according to Babylonian myth. If an intrepid explorer went from Babylon, through Urartu and across the Bitter River, they'd find the Ark's wooden ribs upon the mountainside...

Intriguingly, that's in the direction of the Ararat mountains — where Biblical tradition states Noah's Ark landed. Albeit, the map implies you must keep going, and cross the water (unclear which) before you'll find it.

To modern archeologists, the location of Noah's Ark lies firmly in the realm of myth. But that wasn't true of first-century historians. Josephus said it lay "in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyaeans" — now thought to be Turkey's Mount Ararat.

For the Babylonians, the Ark lay at the very edge of their world — unaccessible, but a tangible distance (7 leagues) away. That is, perhaps, until someone would just be bold enough to venture there...

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The very last paragraph on the back of the tablet reads quite poetically: "In all eight regions of the four shores of the earth …, their interior no-one knows."

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Friday, September 27, 2024

"The best art divides the audience."

 

5h  16 tweets  5 min read   Read on X
This is Rick Rubin.

He's a music producer who's worked with Jay-Z, Kanye & Lady Gaga.

He doesn't know anything about music & made $300M. His badass philosophy for creativity is why artists come to him.

Here's the philosophy:Image
1. “I have no technical ability. And I know nothing about music.” - Rick Rubin

• Being an expert is overrated
• Creative people are great at the intangible
• Theory/education often drowns out the art

Being creative doesn't mean being productive or talented. 
2. "The best art divides the audience."

• Take off your safety pants
• Let people disagree with you
• The haters help your work go viral

If everyone agrees with you, what you've created is sh*t. 
3. "Everything we do is art.

It doesn't matter if it’s picking out clothes, or working on a song, or making dinner. It’s all about how it feels and how it resonates."

• We're all creative even if we don't think we are
• Art is making people feel something 
4. “Get the full idea down as quickly as possible. When you see the whole thing, you see opportunities for connections.”

The first draft needs to happen.

Move your ego out of the way.

Let it flow out of you.

Finished work beats a folder full of drafts that make you an amateur.
5. “Go on with a blind belief something good will happen until proven impossible.”

• Much of creativity is just confidence

• If you believe it's good others will. Convince yourself first.

• Creativity is subjective. Hit publish & let the world decide. 
6. “Perfection is achieved not when there’s nothing more to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.”

• For true creativity to exist you must remove all the filler no killer stuff in the way

• Rarely is there not enough. Often there's too much.

Masterpieces are simple & have fewer layers.
7. “Creativity is not a rare ability.

It is not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us”

• We're born creative

• Corporations & society beat the creativity out of us

Make creativity a habit to get it back 
8. “Impatience is an argument with reality”

The creative journey leads nowhere if you're looking for overnight success

• Slow down
• Put in the work
• Daily flow states
• Chase obsession 
9. "There’s a tremendous power in using the least amount of information to get a point across"

• Morons make things complicated

• Creative people talk simple because that's how movements are built

If it sounds smart it's bullsh*t or it comes from a McKinsey consultant. 
10. "Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience"

• What you think you know is a distraction

• True creativity is humility. It's knowing you know nothing

• Creativity doesn't follow a plan/strategy. It's chaos, madness & insanity all in one.
11. "You can't control people's interpretation. And why would you want to?"

• No one knows if your creative output is good
• Stop trying to be a fortune-teller

The best reactions to your work are unexpected. 
12. "Some mistakes are actually subconscious problem solving."

Creativity is full of mistakes.

That's why perfect people are uncreative.

True art is full of flaws & the flaws make the art better not worse. 
13. "Sometimes the mistakes are what makes something great.

Humanity breathes in the mistakes."

• Humans are imperfect, so imperfect art feels more human & that's why it resonates more

Go write something full of typos. 
14. "Do not think about what you want to be remembered for

Instead, focus on what you want to create"

Creating a legacy is stupid

Why focus on what your life will be like when you're dead?

What's fulfilling is creative work done today. What happens to that work when you're dead is none of your business. 
All forms of creativity start with writing.

Get the ideas out of your brain and onto the internet. Watch it transform your life.

My free email course will help you get started:

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

the real tax

 

Naval
The real tax is society forcing otherwise productive people to pay attention to politics.

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Thomas Sowell quotations

 


ben winchester
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3) What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.
5) Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
6) People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.
8) It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
10) The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling. - Thomas Sowell


Ancient map

  https://x.com/Culture_Crit/status/1850600478058467783 This 2,700-year-old tablet is the oldest map of the world. It reveals just how diffe...