This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
As a Stonemason, this shit always bothers me. Recent example was an article on stone henge. "Scientists still mystified as to how the stones were stood so that to caps were level!"
Mfr! Give me a straight piece of wood, a length of string and a rock, I will make you a basic level. Don't want to lift the stone in and out multiple times to adjust the level? Get logs and cut them to the same length as the upright stones. It's not fucking rocket surgery!
Trying to picture how you do this with those. Brain is stuck on hanging rock from wood with string which feels like I'm going the wrong way
I swallowed my rock, can I be excused?
No you have to act as the string now so start dangling.
Drafting* class taught me that you can build any structure with just a T-square, a compass, a pencil, and some basic math.
*As in the precursor to Computer-Aided Drafting. My school was cheap and didn't let us use AutoCAD till the 2nd semester.
But anyway, place the straight piece of wood across a gap. One end of the string goes around the middle of the wood, the other end hangs down where you tie the rock. You can visually tell with decent enough accuracy if the rock is hanging closer to one side (not level) or just straight down (level). If you can't tell, get a longer string.
some basic math.
The pyramids at gizeh predate most of that. They predate algebra by some 800 years.
Of course, despite Pythagoras not being born for some 2000 years, they DID have Rope stretchers to create square angles. They also had square levels and plumb bobs for making straight blocks and level surfaces.
You don't even need maths, just rope and gravity.
That's actually all there is to it.
Out the stick where you want the thing to be level, and hang a rock off it with string.
The rock hangs straight down. Adjust what the stick is sitting on until the stick is perpendicular to the string.
It's not the most accurate or easiest to use tool we have available today, but they're still used for vertical alignment.
It's one of the oldest tools we have. Hasn't really changed since they were used during the building of the pyramids.
Yeah people simply can't fathom that people in the past were just as intelligent as people are now. They just didn't have quite as much technology as we do now. Also people tend to think of technology as being magic and don't actually understand the underlying science that makes that technology work was the same in the past.
This results in weird ideas about how something isn't possible without a laser level or whatever.
And people tend not to think about skill being a factor. Probably many of the skills you have as a stone mason aren't too different from the skills people had in the past. Sure there's some technology you have available to help you now, but a larger part of it is just skill gained from experience working with stone that's completely independent of technology.
Only idiots listen to Joe rogan
Before the move to Spoopify it was legitimately one of the best podcasts. Rogan has always been a moron and the juxtaposition of that against actual smart guests was so much fun. Then professionally offended fuckwits decided his opinion was worth ... anything ... and it all went downhill from there.
I never regarded him as very smart but he did have interesting guests and good banter, typically. A while before the Spotify buy I thought the quality worsened a lot and he would keep letting his politics shine through too much.
I liked when Bill Burr said he (Joe) couldn't rollerskate because his knuckles would drag on the ground in regards to Joe speculating on Covid without any real qualifications.
Ok he’s finally triggered me. As an engineer, no. We absolutely can build pyramids. At least technologically. Financing it isn’t happening. But we can build pyramids on the size of the great pyramid without modern technology even. It’s impressive sure, but it’s not like people of the past were idiots, they just had less tools at their disposal, and better tools are great for inventing even better tools.
Yeah I'm so tired of hearing that "We can't build the pyramids even with the technology of today" because that's just a bullshit statement with nothing supporting it. It is just to try to dismiss actual reality in order to prop up "It was aliens obviously" that has zero evidence.
Right wingers have nothing but bullshit statements with nothing supporting them. They operate on the principle that they can produce bullshit faster than reasonable people can debunk it.
Pyramids are the easiest structure to build. You stack rocks. Want them to look nice, cut the rocks into bricks.
And all you need is lots of money, lots of labor, and some clever engineers, which are all things the ancient Egyptians had in spades.
It's really not that hard.
fr where does he get the idea that a simple triangle can't be built with today's technology
Same place he gets his COVID takes.
There was a documentary I saw once where they used the best estimates for how long it took the Great Pyramid and how large the work force was and then scaled it down. Like if it took a work force of X people Y number of years to build the Great Pyramid, then a few dozen guys would be able to build a two storey tall pyramid in two months with the same technology.
So they did that. And despite being inexperienced with the ancient technology and having to figure out how to push these massive stone blocks on rollers and make the corners around a spiral ramp winding around the pyramid, they got their little pyramid done on time. The math all checks out on people being able to build the pyramids provided they had a large enough workforce and enough time to do it.
Yes the Pyramids are impressive but it's because it took a lot of work over a lot of time to build them. But it required no special technology. Just a lot of dudes pushing heavy blocks on rollers up a ramp over many years.
Meanwhile on YouTube some dude in nowhere America has a set of videos showing how he can lift, rotate, leverage and pivot massive stone blocks and an entire house using stone-age technology... ropes and wooden levers... by himself!
Rogan appeals to people who want to hear that the world revolves around them. They believe and want to confirm that if they haven't figured it out no one else has. They are literal morons, but too stupid to know it. They are extremely satisfied when Rogan panders to their narcissism.
Yeah, but have you done DMT and then think about the pyramids?
Didn't think so.
This is a prime example how mind altering substances are a bit double edged sword.
They will get results but towards the goal you've set. If you want to do some self exploration and learn about yourself, sure it will most often help in a way or another. If you on the otherhand want to brainwash yourself with dumb conspiracy theories then it will most likely help with that too, especially if you do them too often.
A friend of mine has absolutely fried his brains with ketamine and he believes to the weirdest shit and basically think that the universe has intended him to be untouchable and no bad can happen to him. I for the other hand just learned a lot about my behaviour patterns with ketamine and came out with clearer mind about my life and goals.
We don’t build pyramids anymore because we’ve figured there are better things to spend the money on.
We don’t build pyramids anymore because we got better at building shit. Ramses II was out there commissioning shit that the pyramid builders couldn’t imagine being able to have built. And he could never imagine buildings of steel and glass built anywhere we feel like. Just try explaining Mexico City to these people. When we want massive monuments to hubris a pyramid is too simple for it usually unless we go with a glass and steel one. Also because it’s an inefficient use of space
Also, most countries don't honor their politicians as god-kings. Maybe US hillbillies will (try to) build a pyramid when Trump finally dies.
My god you have to be especially thick if people on 4chan think you're an idiot.
The pyramids are an impressive feat that should not be ignored, but let’s not pretend like the luxury of modern technology doesn’t give us an insurmountable advantage.
We’re comparing a large skillfully built pile of big rocks to modern buildings that are several times taller and thinner while also being hollowed out for everyday use and filled with utilities and other infrastructure.
If the Steinway Tower or the Burj Khalifa were solid rock they would still be more impressive than the pyramids. But they have the equivalent of neighborhoods and towns inside them.
Also the bass pro shop pyramid and luxor pyramid exist, we are at the point where our direct equivelents to the ancient pyramids is a sporting goods place and a monument to mans decadence.
I find it funny that the people that think that the pyramids were built by aliens are the sort of people who get out of breath walking up a staircase. Yeah of course you find it inconceivable that people worked hard.
How Roegan is so fucking stupid it blows my mind that people listen to a word that comes out of his stupid fucking mouth
Want a simple explanation?
The ignorant BEG to be led. And because they’re not qualified at all to know if whoever ends up with the job is dumber than they are- they ultimately end up marching in lock-step behind them oblivious of the fact that they’re just marching in circles.
Led by someone who doesn't make them feel stupid. Because being stupid is bad and they aren't bad.
But they are stupid. And that isn't bad. I don't look down on stupid people for being stupid. I judge them because they do stupid shit, like following stupid people.
I've too well versed in history to ignore the threat of the stupid leading the stupid. Idiocracy is a utopian version of stupid people taking over. The reality is also bloody.
I had a classmate that would tell me over and over how precisely the pyramids aligned with a set of stars at the time they were built, how we needed lasers to measure the imprecision, how we couldn't do the same thing today.
Eventually I found out that the imprecision was... a little over a foot, roughly 35 centimeters. That's the insane precision, the refined craftsmanship we can't produce today, getting the walls of a place within a foot of where we meant to put them.
Everyone that says this is either blindly repeating a thing they heard once, or has never seen a skyscraper, or a shopping mall, or the average parking lot outside a Walmart with that one area where all the rain water stays a few extra days, because it's 6 inches lower than the rest. THAT PARKING LOT IS STILL MORE PRECISE THAN THE PYRAMIDS, BRIAN.
Their advanced technology: slaves
From what archaeologists have discovered, the builders were paid laborers.
that, and wasn't it also kind of a tax duty? "gotta work X days a year on the pyramids".
Although, given how long the civilization was around, all of it might have been true at some point
It was the first ever pyramid scheme in recorded history
You had to recruit two friends to work on the pyramid and they had to each recruit two friends.
I'm convinced the whole "they couldn't do this today" is subtle anti-modernity propaganda whether they are saying it about movies, or ancient megastructures. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human progress, wrapped up in weird conservative anger about how it will never be 40(00) years ago again.
It's as stupid as holding up a floppy disk and saying "modern computers can't even read this data, they're all garbage".
My boyfriends grandmother loves to watch shows like ancient aliens and stuff. Normally I just ignore them as background noise, but sometimes I'll catch something, shake my head and move on.
One time though she was watching the one with William Shatner, unexplained mysteries I think it's called. And the person Shatner was talking too said "and there is no way we could build the pyramids today" and Shatner just said nodded and then said "why?" The guy mean mugged the shot outta him and they cut to a commercial. When it came back they were talking about something else. Really made me laugh.
But like fr though, bass pro shop built a pyramid, we build crazy skyscrapers and have hundreds of building styles all over the world, I'm sure we could build a pyramid today if we had too.
I knew he was an idiot, but goddamn.
All I think about when I see Joe.
That is fucking amazing. Thank you.
There is no limit to the amazing shit you can do if you have power and ignore human suffering
I feel like the show goes like "So you're saying electricity isn't real because it's doesn't have matter?" and an expert says it doesn't have protons and neutrons so it can't be real because it the periodic table of elements doesn't have it. "Really? Hey computer guy, look that up"
It's often some dumb stuff that gets so much credit and validation from Joe that I don't like.
