French Montana ft Rick Ross, Drake & Lil Wayne: Pop That

Remarks:

This went to #2 on the US R&B chart in 2012. Despite Lil Wayne and the lyrics, it is easily the best song from that year in my opinion.

See also:

• songs: the 2010s
• Best song of the year: 1964 to 2020
• Rick Ross: Devil in a New Dress
• Monica ft Lil Wayne: Just Right For Me – another good song Lil Wayne was in

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Egypt in 2200 BC

Note: This is so far back in time that dates can be off by up to 70 years or so. I follow the dates in “The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” (2008) by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson. 

• Location: north-eastern Africa, the last 1,000 km of the Nile where ships can freely sail north of the rocky Cataracts. The north-eastern Delta not completely under government control.
• Population: about 1 million.
• Major cities: Bubastis, Heliopolis, Memphis (capital), Abydos, Dendera, Elephantine.
• Language: Old Egyptian – in hieroglyphic writing.
• Religion: idol worship in the temples of Ptah, Ra, Hathor, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Seth, Nut, Thoth, etc.
• Government: Pepi II, a god-king of the 6th Dynasty.
• Economy: Command economy. Wheat, barley, flax, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, honey, figs, beer, shoddy pyramids. Gold from Nubia, copper, turquoise and malachite from Sinai, wine and oil from Palestine, cedar wood from Byblos, myrrh from Punt (Somalia?).
• Currency: none.
• Transport: Nile River, sail boats, barges, donkeys. Roads, horses, and wheel transport are rare, camels unknown.
• Technology: irrigation, mud bricks, stone blocks, paper, pyramids, glass, bee-keeping, linen (not cotton or silk). Although Mesopotamia and India have already entered the Bronze Age, Egypt has not, using arsenic instead of tin to harden copper.

The last 100 years: the -2200s:

• Kings:
  • 6th Dynasty: Pepi I, Merenra, Pepi II.
• Queens: Ankhnespepi II ruled as regent when her son, Pepi II, was still a boy.
• Pepi II ruled for 94 years, the longest ever in Egyptian history. He ruled for 79 of the 100 years of the -2200s. He became king at age six and lived to 100, outliving his sons.
• Pyramids continue to be built with rubble cores. With the limestone casing stripped off to build Cairo, they now just look like mounds of rubble. See Pepi II’s pyramid above. His pyramid was only 100 cubits (52.4 metres) tall despite having ruled for 94 years. But this seems to have become the standard size for pyramids. Pyramid Texts are now also standard.
• Harkhuf, an Egyptian explorer, “set forth upon the Ivory Road” and came upon the land of Yam. It was somewhere to the south of Egypt, beyond Nubia. Maybe further up the Nile or maybe in Darfur to the west. In either case it would have been in the land of the Nilo-Saharans, who still live along the grasslands south of the Sahara. Harkhuf was gone seven months and came back with incense, ebony, panther skins, elephant tusks and, what most excited Pepi II, then an eight-year-old boy king, a “pygmy of the god’s dances from the land of the horizon dwellers”.
• Nubia: The Nubian states of Wawat, Setju and Irtjet became one, becoming a threat to Egypt.
• The Sahara Desert is turning grassland into desert, driving famine-stricken herders into the Nile Valley.
• Decentralization continues, weakening the centre. Kings continue to give land and tax breaks to temples – which meant less tax revenue for the central government. In good times it did not matter too much, but not during a megadrought:
• The 4.2-kiloyear event struck in -2200, in Pepi II’s old age. It brought drought to much of the world for over 100 years. It is probably what led to the collapse of civilization in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley.

Meanwhile in Britain, brown-skinned people like the Whitehawk Woman are moving the bluestones of Stonehenge, but they keep falling over.

– Abagond, +2023. 

See also:

• Egyptian century of the week
  • Egypt in 3100 BC
  • Egypt in 3000 BC
  • Egypt in 2900 BC
  • Egypt in 2800 BC
  • Egypt in 2700 BC
  • Egypt in 2600 BC
  • Egypt in 2500 BC
  • Egypt in 2400 BC
  • Egypt in 2300 BC
  • Egypt
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Ancient Egypt
• Egyptian
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Pyramid Text
• Nubia
• Nilo-Saharans
• Indus Valley
  • The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro
• The British
  • The British through time: the last 10,000 years
  • Whitehawk Woman
  • Stonehenge

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Maxims of Ptahhotep

Ptahhotep pictured left being carried in a palanquin. The oldest copy pictured right, written in hieratic, a cursive form of hieroglyphics.

The Maxims of Ptahhotep (by 1800 BC) is an Egyptian book of father-to-son advice, 36 maxims ascribed to Ptahhotep, vizier of King Djedkara (-2414 to -2375).

It is is arguably the oldest book that still is. But that depends on when you date it and how you define “book”. It was written sometime between the -2300s and -1800s. If in the -2300s, then it is the oldest literary work we have from Egypt: writings that are clearly older are in the nature of inscriptions and government records.

There are older books that are lost, like Imhotep’s own book of wisdom from the -2600s.

Date: Between the -2300s and -1800s. The book itself says it is written in the time of King Djedkara, by -2375 in otherwords. The language and values expressed were meant to seem that old. But it is written in Middle Egyptian, spoken from -2100 to -1600. There is no sign that it was translated from the Old Egyptian current in the -2300s. That means it was written no earlier than -2100. The oldest copy we have, Papyrus Prisse, was written in the -1800s, judging from its style of handwriting.

Target demographic: Elite males. And it shows, not just in its classism and sexism, but in its belief in Just World Doctrine, common among the sheltered: keep your nose clean and all will go well – the gods are in control and they hate evil!

The maxims: In Papyrus Prisse they start in red ink, with the the rest in black ink. The idiomatic Egyptian makes it hard to understand in places, as you will see in the translation below:

Excerpts:

Maxim #18: On greed: 

If you wish your conduct to be good
and to save yourself from all evil,
resist the opportunity of greed.
It is a sore disease of the worm,
no advance can come of it.
It embroils fathers and mothers,
with mother’s brothers.
It entangles the wife and the man,
it is a levy of all evils,
a bundle of all hatefulness.
The man endures whose guideline is Right [Maat],
who proceeds according to his paces.
He can draw up a will by it.
There is no tomb for the greedy hearted.

Maxim #20: On wives:

If you are excellent, found your household,
love your wife within reckoning.
Fill her belly, clother her back,
ointment is the remedy for her body.
Gladden her heart as long as you live.
It is a field of benefit for its lord.
Do not impose her in affairs.
Distance her from power, restrain her.
Her eye is her storm when it sees.
This is what keeps her in your house.
Your quelling her, is water.
The womb puts her in her arms.
In her turmoil a canal is made for her.

Maxim #31: On woman-boys:

Do not have sex with a child woman [woman-boy]
when you knew the approach to the water [= sperm] of its chest.
There is no cooling what is in his body.
Do not go mad on making the approach.
He is cool after damaging his heart.

– Abagond, +2023. 

Sources: Translation from ucl.ac.uk; Dating from “Middle Egyptian Literature” (2015) by James P. Allen. 

See also:

• External links:
  • Maxims of Ptahhotep – text of the English translation with transcription of the original Egyptian
• century readings
• Egyptian
• Imhotep
• Maat
• just world doctrine
• timelines:
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Bible chronology

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Niall Horan: Heaven

Remarks:

This came out on Februrary 17th 2023 and so far has reached #16 on the pop music chart in the UK, #62 in the US, #43 worldwide and #4 in his native Ireland. Horan is from One Direction, a boy band that was overplayed in the 2010s.

Songfacts says the song has nuance:

“The Irish singer clarified that the song is more nuanced than a simple love ballad, as it represents his refusal to conform to society’s arbitrary rules. Horan believes that people are often pressured to meet certain milestones, such as getting married by a specific age, which can lead to disappointment and unfulfilled expectations. As he has matured, Horan has learned to let go of those expectations and follow his heart instead.”

Horan is 29.

The drummer in the video is Emilia Schmier.

See also:

• songs: the 2020s

Lyrics:

(Ah, ah-ah-ah)
(Ah, ah-ah-ah)

Strange light revolves around you
You float across the room
Your touch is made of something
Heaven can’t hold a candle too
You’re made of somethin’ new

Let’s not get complicated
Let’s just enjoy the view
It’s hard to be a human
So much to put an answer to
But that’s just what we do

God only knows where this could go
And even if our love starts to grow outta control
And you and me go up in flames
Heaven won’t be the same

I’m havin’ revelations
You dance across the floor
Beyond infatuation
How I obsessively adore you
That’s what I do

I believe, I believe, I could die in your kiss
No, it doesn’t get, doesn’t get better than this

God only knows where this could go
And even if our love starts to grow outta control
And you and me go up in flames
Heaven won’t be the same

God only knows where this could go
And even if our love starts to grow outta control
And you and me go up in flames
Heaven won’t be the same

Heaven won’t be the same

I believe, I believe, I could die in your kiss
No, it doesn’t get, doesn’t get better than, better than this

God only knows where this could go
And even if our love starts to grow outta control
And you and me go up in flames
Heaven won’t be the same

God only knows where this could go
And even if our love starts to grow outta control
And you and me go up in flames
Heaven won’t be the same

Source: Songfacts.

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Egypt in 2300 BC

From the Pyramid Text of Pepi I.

Note: This is so far back in time that dates can be off by up to 75 years or so. I follow the dates in “The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” (2008) by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson. 

• Location: north-eastern Africa, the last 1,000 km of the Nile where ships can freely sail north of the rocky Cataracts.
• Population: about 1 million.
• Major cities: Buto, Heliopolis, Memphis (capital), Abydos, Dendera, Koptos, Hierakonpolis, Elephantine.
• Language: Old Egyptian – in hieroglyphic writing.
• Religion: idol worship in temples of Ptah, Ra, Hathor, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Seth, Nut, Thoth, etc. Ptah of Memphis is now the creator of the universe, not Ra of Heliopolis. First mention of Amun. In a thousand years he will be the top god.
• Government: Pepi I, a god-king of the 6th Dynasty.
• Economy: Command economy. Wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, honey, figs, beer, pyramids. Gold and slaves from Nubia, copper, turquoise and malachite from Sinai, wine and oil from Palestine, cedar wood from Byblos, myrrh from Punt (Somalia?).
• Currency: none.
• Transport: Nile River, sail boats, barges, donkeys. Roads, horses, and wheel transport are rare, camels unknown.
• Technology: irrigation, mud bricks, stone blocks, copper (stiffened with arsenic, bronze not yet in common use), paper, pyramids, glass, bee-keeping, life-sized copper statues.

The last 100 years: the -2300s:

• Kings:
  • 5th Dynasty: Djedkara, Unas.
  • 6th Dynasty: Teti, Userkara, Pepi I.
• Queens: Iput, who was the daughter of Unas, wife of Teti, and mother of Pepi I, likely ruled when Pepi I was a boy.
• Pyramids continue in the rubble-core style of the -2400s. Since all pyramids have long ago been stripped of anything valuable and movable, including their outer casing of white limestone, the pyramids from this period now look like mounds of rubble. But in the -2300s something new was added, something that could not be stripped away:
• Pyramid Texts: In the room where Unas’s body was laid to rest in a black coffin, the ceiling was blue with golden stars and the walls filled with hieroglyphs carved in alabaster and painted in the blue of the watery abyss of the underworld. This was the first ever Pyramid Text, the oldest surviving religious text in Egypt. The following kings and queens put Pyramid Texts in their pyramids too.
• Pyramid Texts were made up of hundreds of ancient spells to help the king or queen in the afterlife. The spells were ancient even then. Most probably came from the “secret knowledge” found in the now-vanished libraries of temples and palaces. The hieroglyphs were seen as so powerful that its serpents and scorpions were dismembered. The theology is an inconsistent mix of solar, stellar and Osirian, each with its own sort of afterlife.
• Memphite theology: Unas as king pushes a Memphite theology featuring Ptah. It seems priests of the solar theology of Ra had become too powerful.
• The centre continues to weaken: governors out in the provinces continue to grow in power and wealth. Some no longer care to be buried as near as possible to the king’s pyramid but in their own provinces.
• Men-nefer Pepi – “Pepi’s Beautiful Foundation” – was the name of Pepi’s pyramid complex, his city of the dead outside Memphis. It is where the Greek name “Memphis” comes from. The Egyptians called Memphis Ineb-hedj, “White Walls”.

Meanwhile in Britain, brown-skinned people like the Whitehawk Woman are re-erecting the bluestones of Stonehenge.

– Abagond, +2023. 

See also:

• Egyptian century of the week
  • Egypt in 3100 BC
  • Egypt in 3000 BC
  • Egypt in 2900 BC
  • Egypt in 2800 BC
  • Egypt in 2700 BC
  • Egypt in 2600 BC
  • Egypt in 2500 BC
  • Egypt in 2400 BC
  • Egypt
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Ancient Egypt
• Egyptian
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Pyramid Text
• Egyptian gods
  • Ptah
  • Horus
  • Seth
  • Ra
  • Isis
  • Amun
• The British
  • The British through time: the last 10,000 years
  • Whitehawk Woman
  • Stonehenge

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Palermo Stone

The Palermo Stone (2400s BC) is a piece of black rock in a museum in Palermo, Sicily. On it is carved in hieroglyphics the oldest known history in the world. It lists the early kings of Egypt and what took place in each year of their rule. Not counting the mythological part, it covers the first four and a half dynasties of Egypt,  roughly the years -3100 to at least -2471.

Unfortunately:

• we have only about 10% of it;
• not all of what we have is readable;
• historical events are not tied to astronomical ones, so the actual calendar year is a matter of guesswork;
• Ancient Egyptians’s idea of what counts as an important historical event is not the same as that of Western historians.

It goes on and on about what the king did for this or that god at this or that temple, but says little about the building of the pyramids. For Western historians that is frustrating. But for Egyptians, the king was the go-between between gods and humans – so what he did or did not do for the gods was of cosmic importance. As much as the level of the Nile – also recorded.

Excerpt for the year -2601 (give or take) in the time of Sneferu:

Construction of a ship of meru wood [of a type or name] “adoring the Two Lands,” of 100 cubits [52.4 metres] and of 60 royal boats of the “sixteen” type.

Hacking up the Nubians, bringing back 7,000 captives and 200,000 cattle and herds.

Construction of the “mansions of Sneferu” in Upper and Lower Egypt.

Bringing 40 ships full of cedar/pine wood.

[Nile height] 2 cubits, 2 fingers [1.09 metres above baseline].

The height of the Nile was an extremely important fact. If it was too low, it could cause famine. If it was too high, it could lead to vast destruction. Levels in between gave the government a good idea of what to expect in taxes – the higher the Nile, the more land that could be irrigated and farmed.

From the last year of Sahura, -2475 (give or take):

What was brought from:

• The Terraces of Turquoise [Sinai?]: 6,000 pieces of copper (?)
• Punt [Somalia?]: 80,000 measures of myrrh, 6,000 pieces of electrum, 2,900 pieces of malachite, 23,020 measures of unguent.

Which gives you an idea of Egypt’s trade/plunder of the time. It was not all just religious events. Smiting of foreigners was another popular activity.

King lists: One of the most valuable pieces of information on the Palermo stone is its naming of kings and the order in which they ruled. There are some other king lists, none of them complete or entirely accurate or consistent with each other. But from them Western scholars try to reconstruct the true king list, as much as that is possible thousands of years later. And that list in turn becomes their framework for Ancient Egyptian history. Because Egyptian dating was not in terms of a fixed year, like the birth of Christ (AD) or the flight of Muhammad (AH), but in terms of kings, as in the Bible: in the fifth year of King Darius and so on.

– Abagond, +2023 AD. 

See also:

• century readings – this is my reading for the -2400s
• Egypt: a brief history
  • Egypt in 3100 BC
  • Egypt in 3000 BC
  • Egypt in 2900 BC
  • Egypt in 2800 BC
  • Egypt in 2700 BC
  • Egypt in 2600 BC
  • Egypt in 2500 BC
  • Egypt in 2400 BC
• AD (Anno Domini)
• Nubia
• myrrh

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SZA: Kill Bill

Remarks:

This song has been ringing in my head of late, even though I do not approve of the lyrics. It came out in 2023, two months ago, and went to #1 on US R&B chart and #1 worldwide.

See also:

• songs: the 2020s

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ChatGPT

ChatGPT (2022- ) is an AI chatbot, a computer program in a machine that can hold a conversation with a human. It can answer questions, write student essays, poems, even write computer code that works. At least 200 books being sold on Amazon were written or co-written by it. It is the Homework Machine come true. It can easily pass the Turing Test – most people cannot tell the difference between something written by ChatGPT and something written by a human.

Microsoft is using it to make Bing, their also-ran Internet search engine, better than Google’s. But Google and Baidu (the top search engine in China) are working on AI chatbots of their own.

Noam Chomsky calls ChatGPT “high-tech plagiarism”.

It is a glorified autocomplete program – one trained on billions of words of English from the Internet and then fine-tuned by humans. Even though it can talk like a human, even express love or make scary threats, it has no thoughts or feelings. It does not even understand what it is saying. It just knows what the most probable next words are in a conversation. It is like a supercomputerized parrot.

It cannot tell true from false. It is like the game Two Truths and a Lie. Which makes it terrible for Internet searches or student essays. It says wonderful things about me, Abagond, for example, but not all of it is true. Because it all boils down to mere guesswork.

Test scores:

• SAT: 1020
• IQ: 83

That is my take in 241 words.

Now let’s ask ChatGPT itself:

Abagond: What is ChatGPT in 241 words?

ChatGPT: ChatGPT is a highly advanced language model developed by OpenAI that uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to natural language input. It is based on a transformer architecture, which allows it to model long-range dependencies between words and generate highly coherent and fluent text.

To train ChatGPT, OpenAI used a massive dataset of text from the internet, including books, articles, and websites. This allowed the model to learn patterns and relationships in language at an unprecedented scale, enabling it to understand and produce text in a wide range of domains and styles.

One of the key strengths of ChatGPT is its flexibility and adaptability. It can be fine-tuned on specific tasks and domains, such as language translation, summarization, or question answering. This makes it a highly versatile tool for natural language processing (NLP) applications.

ChatGPT is also highly scalable, meaning that it can be trained on even larger datasets as they become available. This allows it to continually improve its performance over time and stay at the cutting edge of NLP research.

While ChatGPT is a remarkable achievement in the field of artificial intelligence, it is important to recognize that it has limitations and can sometimes produce biased or inaccurate responses. Therefore, it is important to use ChatGPT responsibly and to apply critical thinking when evaluating its outputs. Ultimately, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that has the potential to transform how we interact with machines and understand human language.

It can even write its own press release!

– Abagond, 2023. 

See also:

• Compare:
  • post written by me about Bridgerton
  • post written by ChatGPT
• computer
  • Internet
  • Google
• Turing
• Chomsky

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Egypt in 2400 BC

In the foreground is the pyramid of Userkaf, built in the -2400s. In the background is the Step Pyramid of Djoser built in the -2600s. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built in the -2500s.

Note: This is so far back in time that dates can be off by up to 80 years or so. I follow the dates in “The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” (2008) by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson. 

• Location: north-eastern Africa, the last 1,000 km of the Nile where ships can freely sail north of the rocky Cataracts.
• Population: about 1 million.
• Major cities: Buto, Memphis (capital), Heliopolis, Abydos.
• Language: Old Egyptian – in hieroglyphic writing.
• Religion: idol worship in temples of Ra, Hathor, Horus, Osiris, etc. Solar religion. Ra now the top god.
• Government: Djedkara, second-to-last god-king of the 5th Dynasty.
• Economy: Command economy. Wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, goats, pyramids. Gold and diorite from Nubia, copper, turquoise and malachite from Sinai, wine and oil from Palestine, cedar wood from Byblos. An Egyptian stone vase from this period was found as far away as the Greek island of Cythera.
• Currency: none.
• Transport: Nile River, sail boats, barges, donkeys, palanquin (carried by 16 men). Roads, horses, and wheel transport are rare, camels unknown.
• Technology: irrigation, mud bricks, stone blocks, copper (stiffened with arsenic, bronze not yet in common use), paper, pyramids, obelisks, glass, bee-keeping.

The last 100 years: the -2400s:

• Kings: the last four years of the 4th Dynasty and all but the last king of the 5th Dynasty:
  • 4th Dynasty: Shepseskaf.
  • 5th Dynasty: Userkaf, Sahura, Neferirkara, Shepseskara, Raneferef, Nyuserra, Menkauhor, Djedkara.
• Queens: It is possible that Khentkawes II, mother of Raneferef, ruled as queen: she is pictured wearing a uraeus cobra on her forehead, something only kings and gods usually wear.
• Pyramids are now much smaller, generally 40 to 55 metres tall, about a third of the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza. And have not held up as well, some shown to be little more than glorified mounds of rubble once they were stripped of their outer casing of white limestone. There is more art and decoration inside, though, and it is still high quality (much of it stripped away in the +1800s to feed lime kilns).
• Ra, aka Re, the god of the sun, based at Heliopolis (not far from Memphis, the capital), is now the top god. His cult has become the state religion. Most kings either have a name ending in -ra and/or build a solar temple to Ra. A temple is more than just a building – it comes with the lands and tax exemptions needed to support its priesthood.
• Obelisks become all the rage, presumably copies of the gold-tipped obelisk at Heliopolis which can been seen from the pyramids.
• The centre weakens: Not only is there a shift of power and wealth from king to temple, but governors (nomarchs) are also becoming more powerful, their office now sometimes hereditary instead of being appointed by the king. Commoners, even hairdressers, begin appearing in top positions in government. To be fair, the kings of the last century, who could build things like the Great Pyramid of Giza, were arguably way too powerful for the country’s good.

Meanwhile in Britain, brown-skinned people like the Whitehawk Woman are working on the third version of Stonehenge, now made of stone not wood.

– Abagond, +2023. 

See also:

• Egyptian century of the week
  • Egypt in 3100 BC
  • Egypt in 3000 BC
  • Egypt in 2900 BC
  • Egypt in 2800 BC
  • Egypt in 2700 BC
  • Egypt in 2600 BC
  • Egypt in 2500 BC
  • Egypt
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Ancient Egypt
• Egyptian
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Egyptian gods
  • Horus
  • Seth
  • Ra
  • Isis
  • Amun
• The British
  • The British through time: the last 10,000 years
  • Whitehawk Woman
  • Stonehenge

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Bridgerton

Bridgerton is a period drama television series that premiered on Netflix in December 2020. Set in Regency-era London during the early 1800s, the series revolves around the Bridgerton family, a wealthy and influential family consisting of eight siblings and their widowed mother.

The show primarily follows the eldest Bridgerton daughter, Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), as she makes her debut in society and seeks to find a suitable husband. However, her quest for love is complicated by the machinations of Lady Whistledown, a mysterious gossip columnist who is determined to expose the scandalous secrets of the ton, the elite members of London society.

As the season progresses, Daphne falls in love with the Duke of Hastings, Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page), a handsome and eligible bachelor who is determined to avoid marriage and the responsibilities that come with it. The two strike up a deal to pretend to court in order to boost Daphne’s chances of attracting other suitors, but their fake romance soon turns into a real one.

The show also follows the other members of the Bridgerton family as they navigate their own romantic challenges and struggles. The second eldest son, Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), must balance his responsibilities as the head of the family with his desire for independence and a fulfilling romantic life. The third eldest daughter, Eloise (Claudia Jessie), dreams of pursuing a career instead of getting married, but must contend with the expectations placed on women of the ton.

In addition to exploring the intricacies of Regency-era society and the quest for love and marriage, Bridgerton also delves into issues of class, race, and gender. The show introduces a number of diverse characters and storylines, including the experiences of Simon, a black man, in a predominantly white society. The show also features a prominent LGBTQ+ storyline with the character of Lord Berbrooke (Jamie Beamish), who is revealed to be gay.

The series has received widespread critical acclaim for its lush production values, including its beautiful sets and costumes, as well as its engaging storylines and talented cast. In particular, Phoebe Dynevor and Regé-Jean Page have been praised for their chemistry and performances as Daphne and Simon, respectively.

Bridgerton has been a huge hit with viewers, and has been renewed for a second season, which is set to focus on Anthony Bridgerton’s romantic pursuits. Overall, the series offers a delightful mix of romance, intrigue, and drama, all set against the backdrop of a beautifully realized historical setting.

– ChatGPT, 2023. 

Note: I asked ChatGPT: “tell me about bridgerton in 500 words without spoilers” to compare it to my own post written in January 2021. ChatGPT’s knowledge of the world goes up to September 2021. 

See also:

• Bridgerton – my own post written in 2021, based on season one.
• ChatGPT

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Rick Ross: Devil in a New Dress

Remarks:

This is my favourite Rick Ross song. I like it better than the Kanye West version – what it lacks in lyrics it makes up for in the guitar solo. It came out in 2011 but did not chart. The video was shot in Toronto.

See also:

• songs: the 2010s
• Kanye West: Devil In A New Dress
• city streets at night:
  • New York: Moby: Porcelain
  • Los Angeles: Chris Brown: With You

Lyrics:

Looking at my bitch, I bet she give your ass a bone
Looking at my wrist and it’ll turn your ass to stone
Stretched limousines, sipping Rose all alone
Double headed monster with a mind of his own
Cherry red chariot excess is just my character
All black tux, nigga shoes lavender
I never needed acceptance from all you outsiders
Had cyphers with Yeezy before his mouth wired

Before his jaw shatter climbing up the Lord’s ladder
We still speeding, running science like they don’t matter
Haters talking never made me mad, never then
Not when I’m in my favorite paper tag
Bell 4, G4’s at the clear port, when they came twos
Fool imma pet boy, when it came to dope
I was quick to export, never tied a ball and so it’s on to the next sport
New Mercedes Sedan, the next sport, so many cars
DMV thought it was mail fraud, different tracks I was getting mail from
Pope county, Jacksonville, Dayton, Millborn
Whole clique, appetite, had tapeworms
Spinnin’ Teddy Pendergrass vinyl as my jay burns
I shed a tear before the night’s over
God bless the man I put this ice over, Game 2Pac money twice over
Still a real nigga red Coogi sweater dice roller
I’m making love to the angel of death, catch your feelings
Never stumble, retracing my steps
Catch your feelings, never stumble, retracing my steps

Source: AZ Lyrics.

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Diary of Merer

The Diary of Merer (c. 2566 BC) is the oldest known papyrus manuscript. There is an older roll of papyrus but it is blank. And there is older Egyptian writing on stone and ivory. It is more a logbook or timesheet than what we think of as a diary. Government officials like Merer were expected to account for the time they spent working for the king.

It was written in Old Egyptian in hieratic, a simplified, cursive form of hieroglyphics. It was probably written by Merer himself: very few people knew how to read and write, but as a government official he would be one of them.

Excerpt:

[Day 25]: [Inspector Merer spends the day with his phyle [h]au[ling]? st[ones in Tura South]; spends the night at Tura South

[Day 26]: Inspector Merer casts off with his phyle from Tura [South], loaded with stone, for Akhet-Khufu [at Giza]; spends the night at She-Khufu.

Day 27: sets sail from She-Khufu, sails towards Akhet-Khufu, loaded with stone, spends the night at Akhet-Khufu.

Day 28: casts off from Akhet-Khufu in the morning; sails upriver <towards> Tura South.

Day 29: Inspector Merer spends the day with his phyle hauling stones in Tura South; spends the night at Tura South.

Day 30: Inspector Merer spends the day with his phyle hauling stones in Tura South; spends the night at Tura South.

It goes on and on like that for about two and a half months, probably August to October -2566. Not terribly exciting stuff – except that this is not only the oldest known papyrus manuscript, but it is also the only surviving account we have of the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza that was written at the time.

It was written when the Nile was flooded and it was easiest to move stone from the quarry at Tura to Akhet-Khufu, the Horizon of Khufu, presumably the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was built by King Khufu (Cheops). Both the quarry and the pyramid would be near the water’s edge at that time. Tura was 13 to 17 km from Giza. The stone in this case would have been the white limestone that covered the pyramid for over 3,000 years. Later it would be stripped off to build the city of Cairo nearby.

The pyramid would have looked something like this shortly after the diary was written:

Merer led a team (phyle) of 200 men who transported stone from Tura and later copper from Sinai.

According to his records, his men were well-fed, being well supplied with beef, poultry, fish and beer. That is probably accurate: the cattle-to-pig ratio at a worker village near Giza was high. People raised pigs for themselves, cattle for the king, who used beef to feed his workers.

The diary says nothing about transporting copper. That comes from where it was found: at a boat storage facility from the -2500s at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast near Sinai. Egypt got copper and turquoise from Sinai. It was part of the pyramid-building operation: copper was needed to cut pyramid stones. Copper mixed with arsenic was the hardest metal at the time. Bronze (copper + tin) was not yet common in Egypt.

– Abagond, +2023. 

See also:

• century readings – this is my reading for the -2500s
• Egypt: a brief history
  • Egypt in 2500 BC
• papyrus
• Egyptian language
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics

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Tucker Carlson and Trump’s Big Lie

Pictured: Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson, whose cable news show on Fox News is the most watched in the US, has been pushing Trump’s Big Lie for over two years. As late as the other day (February 17th 2023) he was still at it.

Trump’s Big Lie: This is the idea that the 2020 election for US president was stolen from Donald Trump. It is what the Capitol Riot on January 6th 2021, Trump’s coup attempt, was based on. As of September 2022, nearly two years after the election, 61% of Republicans and 29% of grown people in the US still believed the Big Lie.

But Tucker Carlson was never one of them!

Dominion v Fox News (2023): This is a lawsuit that was announced on February 17th 2023. It is for defamation – because Dominion is one of the of companies whose voting machines Fox News maligned in their defence of Trump’s Big Lie. Thanks to this lawsuit some of Carlson’s behind-the-scenes text messages and emails are being made public. Fox News says they were cherry-picked and taken out of context. If they were, that should become clear in time – because Fox News will have to demonstrate it in court.

Some of what Carlson said behind the scenes in the weeks after the election on November 3rd 2020:

November 5th, after Fox News’ decision desk had (correctly) called elections in key states against Trump:

“We worked really hard to build what we have. Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”

“What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

November 7th, as Fox News declared Biden the winner:

“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”

He turned out to be right about that: Fox News started to lose viewers to Newsmax, which, further to the right, was not declaring Trump the loser.

November 12th: When Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked lies Trump was telling, Carlson told Sean Hannity:

“Please get her fired. Seriously…. What the fuck? I’m actually shocked… It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

The next morning Heinrich removed the inconvenient facts.

November 13th: Behind the scenes, Carlson wants Trump to concede, because “there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome.”

November 21st: Carlson texts that it was “shockingly reckless” to accuse Dominion of rigging the election without some proof – “there isn’t any”. He said that Sidney Powell, Trump’s lawyer who was badmouthing Dominion, was a “nutcase”. To his credit he never had her on his show, though Fox News featured her elsewhere.

Just two months before, in September 2020, a judge said of Carlson in a slander case against Fox News:

“Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.”

As they should! But apparently something like 29% of the US prefers feel-good lies to the truth.

– Abagond, 2023.

See also:

• The Republican bubble
  • tribal epistemology
  • The Mythic Past
  • Fox News
    • Sean Hannity
    • Tucker Carlson
      • Ten Days of Tucker Carlson: a news diet
      • Tucker Carlson on Ta-Nehisi Coates
      • Tucker Carlson on Ilhan Omar
  • Trump tweet news diet – a review – I got all my news from Trump tweets for a period after the election
• US cable news
• The Hair Dye Coup
  • The US Capitol riot

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Egypt in 2500 BC

Built in the -2500s.

Note: This is so far back in time that dates can be off by up to 100 years or so. I follow the dates in “The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt” (2008) by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson. 

• Location: north-eastern Africa, the last 1,000 km of the Nile where ships can freely sail north of the rocky Cataracts.
• Population: about 1 million.
• Major cities: Memphis (capital)
• Language: Old Egyptian – in hieroglyphic writing, now in classic form and representing the spoken language.
• Religion: idol worship in temples of Horus, Ra, Osiris, Seth, etc. Rise of the sun god Ra, solar religion, and pyramids. Djedefra becomes the first pharaoh with Ra as part of his name. Ra will become the top god in the next dynasty.
• Government: Shepseskaf, last god-king of the 4th Dynasty.
• Economy: Command economy. Wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, goats, pyramids. Gold from Nubia, copper from Sinai, wine and oil from Palestine, cedar wood from Byblos. Some were slaves, most were serfs working for the god-king or one of his minions.
• Currency: none.
• Transport: Nile River, sail boats, barges, donkeys. Roads and wheel transport are rare, camels unknown.
• Technology: irrigation, mud bricks, copper (stiffened with arsenic, bronze not yet in common use), paper. Newish: stone buildings, pyramids, clear glass.

Left to right: the pyramids (the now-empty tombs) of Khufu, his son Khafra, and his grandson Menkaure. All built in the -2500s. Behind is the city of Cairo in +2008.

The last 100 years: the -2500s:

• Kings:
  • 4th Dynasty: Sneferu, Khufu (Cheops), Djedefra (Radjedef), Khafra (Chephren), Menkaura (Mycerinus), Shepseskaf – all of the  4th Dynasty except for the first 13 years and the last 2.
• Best known for:
  • The Great Pyramid of Giza – built by Khufu as his tomb. The tallest building in the world for the next 3,800 years. It stood 146.6 metres tall when first built, about half as tall as the Eiffel Tower (300 m). The top is gone so now it is only 137.5 m, just about as high as the torch of the Statue of Liberty (139 m). The Great Pyramid was smooth and white till medieval times when the outer limestone covering was stripped off to build the city of Cairo. Despite his huge pyramid, we know little about Khufu. Egyptians in later times said he and his son Khafra were cruel, that his grandson Menkaure, who built a much smaller pyramid, was kind.
  • The Great Sphinx (pictured at top) was built by Khafra, Khufu’s son. A sphinx is a lion with a human head. It represents the king and his power. The Great Sphinx probably has the head of Khafra himself. The nose was destroyed in +1378 by religious fanatics.
• Slavery – there were slaves in Egypt at this time, mainly Asian prisoners of war, but nowhere near enough to build pyramids. Unlike the US in the +1800s, Egypt in the -2500s was not built on slavery, nor were slaves a separate caste. Most people were what we would call serfs – tied to the land (by tradition and circumstance) but not bought or sold separately. Many were forced to work on pyramids in the off-season in place of taxes. The off-season was when the Nile was flooded, making farmwork impossible – and moving huge stone blocks to the edge of the desert (where the pyramids stood) much easier.

Meanwhile in Britain, brown-skinned people like the Whitehawk Woman are working on the third version of Stonehenge, replacing wood with stone!

– Abagond, +2023. 

See also:

• Egyptian century of the week
  • Egypt in 3100 BC
  • Egypt in 3000 BC
  • Egypt in 2900 BC
  • Egypt in 2800 BC
  • Egypt in 2700 BC
  • Egypt in 2600 BC
  • Egypt
  • Egypt: a brief history
  • Ancient Egypt
• Egyptian
  • Egyptian hieroglyphics
• Egyptian gods
  • Horus
  • Seth
  • Ra
  • Isis
  • Amun
• The Sphinx’s nose
• slaveries compared
• Ancient Egypt and ancient astronauts
• The British
  • The British through time: the last 10,000 years
  • Whitehawk Woman
  • Stonehenge
• Statue of Liberty

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Oh very young

Oh very young, what will you leave us this time? You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while. And though your dreams may toss and turn you now, they will vanish away like your daddy’s best jeans – denim blue fading up to the sky. And though you want them to last forever, you know they never will. You know they never will And the patches make the goodbye harder still.

Oh very young, what will you leave us this time? There’ll never be a better chance to change your mind. And if you want this world to see a better day, will you carry the words of love with you? Will you ride the great white bird into heaven? And though you want to last forever, you know you never will. You know you never will. And the goodbye makes the journey harder still

Will you carry the words of love with you? Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Oh very young, what will you leave us this time? You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while.

Oh very young, what will you leave us this time?

– Cat Stevens, 1974. 

See also:

• songs: the 1970s

 

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