Talk:1717: Pyramid Honey

Seems like this could be the Smithsonian reference! --Kynde (talk) 13:53, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Anyone know what the counter source or argument is? 141.101.98.16 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This looks like it could be the source that inspired the strip:

http://irna.lautre.net/Honey-in-the-pyramids.html 173.245.54.53 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

According to Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the website moved to https://irna.fr/Honey-in-the-pyramids.html Sollyucko (talk) 21:50, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I got suspicious when I looked at the reference given in the Smithsonian article and saw how extremely weak and urban legend-level it was, for something that is supposedly so well documented and common, and started looking... tldr: Egyptian honey is bunk.

Yes, that correctly points out that the supposed Tutankhamen honey was no such thing. It also was the case that another supposed liquid honey turned out to be castor oil; Leek 1975 reviewed a few other candidates, and none of them are liquid honey (if they were honey at all).

I've also checked two of the most recent references on this topic, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, Crane 1999; and The Tears of Re, Kritsky 2015 (both on Libgen). They both concur with Leek 1975 that edible honey (much less liquid) has never been found, and it's definitely not 'found routinely'.

My guess is that that Redditor talking about 'mellified baby' (note that 'mellified man' was basically a hoax to begin with) is also either the victim of a hoax by their professor (highly unlikely) or lying. (You think someone would do that? Just go on the Internet and tell lies?)

So I dunno if Randall knew this, but it looks like 'pyramid honey truthing' is 100% right. There's no such thing as pyramid honey. Wake up sheeple! Honey can't stay liquid or edible in desert atmospheres for thousands of years! --Gwern (talk) 01:50, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Looks like a place to start digging for references: http://bumblehive.com/honey-was-not-found-in-pharaohs-tombs/ -- JourneymanWizard (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Did Randall draw the wrong colored hat?? jameslucas (" " / +) 15:09, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Nah, I think it's just IRL trolling. 173.245.54.80 15:34, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Could this be the ned of Black Hat? The end of xkcd?! 173.245.54.51 16:06, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Correction: this doesn't put "Megan unwillingly into the same camp as conspiracy theorists" it puts Black Hat there. 108.162.246.111 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No. Black hat is very much willing to join the conspiracy theorist camp. Rather, he creates it. Megan isn't a conspiracy theorist, her scepticism towards Cueballs honey claims are perfectly valid. But to an outside observer, she promotes the same viewpoint as Black hat. Indeed, Black hat even refers to Megan for "evidence". So Megan is forever assosiated with the Pyramid Honey truthers, despite having nothing to do with them. --141.101.80.70 09:35, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

This Reddit thread cites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Preservation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Ancient_times 172.68.35.71 18:58, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

The phrase "a weird hill to die on" could probably use an explanation, too, as I'd never heard of that (or its apparent source phrase "Is this the hill you want to die on?", based on some quick googling) before. 199.27.133.101 23:04, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

"Is this the hill you want to die on?" sounds to me like a line from a war movie, e.g. this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_Hill. Maybe its origin is indeed something military, as some sources suggest: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/162813/what-is-the-origin-of-the-phrase-a-mountain-im-willing-to-die-on Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 06:49, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

I have a possible source for the "weird hill to die on" reference, saw it on BBC a while back: Body on the Moor; http://www.bbc.com/news/resources/idt-e8c6cbab-da44-4a3c-8f9b-c4fccd53dd24. 108.162.244.85 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Every particle physicist knows that the shelf life of honey is at most 10⁴² years, just like everything else. --108.162.215.129 00:51, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Only if you assume nucleon decay. If Earth doesn't get absorbed into a black hole and then Hawking Radiated out, the honey would just continue to cool long into the heat death of the universe, eventually cold-fusioning via quantum-tunnelling into Iron-56 by 10¹⁵⁰⁰ years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe#Future_without_proton_decay. Ehryk (talk) 02:23, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

re: tooltip - I thought it was a floating giant eye? --173.245.54.28 00:59, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

The "weird hill to die on" phrase could mean a point of view Black Hat will defend to the last, regardless the sense of it (which makes sense with the militarian source). He might find such a thing worth to find because it would give his entire life a (though in general maybe and in this case definitely unuseful) purpose. furthermore, by simply spreading Megan's claim without considering the nuances of her point and questioning it thouroughly he does basically the same as ll the people who claim honey's shelf life to be infinite (who apparently never thought of asking for further information where exactly the honey was found and by whom).

162.158.83.228 (talk)  (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

when the explanation for "weird hill to die on" as a phrase gets settled the explanation should probably also reference Black Hat's mixing of the metaphorical use (a debate position or principled stand) and a literal hill ("[A]ll the real ones are too far from my house.") 108.162.237.242 12:24, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

So, the "hill to die on" expression does relate back to the military some. Hills are good defensive places (ask any Civilization player). It's much easier to defend yourself when the other army is trying to run up a hill. Hence why lots of forts and military battles are associated with hills. The hill you die on, then, is that area of contention that you'll stubbornly defend to the very end. And of course Black Hat is making something like a zeugma when he mixes the metaphorical and literal meanings. 108.162.216.152 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"a hill to die on" appears in chapter 27 of the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls", by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1940, about the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War in which many non-Spanish volunteers joined the fight on one side or the other for ideological reasons. The book ends with the American protagonist, alone and wounded, preparing to ambush the enemy to buy time for the escape of his comrades; he will probably not survive. GrayJay (talk) 04:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)--

Some facts about honey Honey: Bacteria's Worst Enemy --162.158.92.207 14:27, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

"While some conspiracy theories turn out to be true, most, like the two mentioned here, are fake": while it's completely clear that the Moon landing not happening theory is false, we can't be 100% sure about the 9/11 theories at the moment (of course, the one mentioned is highly unlikely, but it's not refuted to the level of the moon landing conspiracy theories at the moment). I suggest correcting this statement into something weaker. 198.41.242.75 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Wouldn't Black Hat just be trolling everyone else? I can't find the idea among the discussion, and neither in the the explanation, while it seems the obvious one to me. Deliberately spreading conspiracy theorists seems exactly his thing (just like the way he met Danish was a form of deliberate trolling...) 141.101.105.10 15:25, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I totally agree. I'm now a "Black Hat always behaves like Black Hat truther"... :-) No seriously I agree and have added this as an alternative reason for his behavior. Maybe my version could be improved though? --Kynde (talk) 11:51, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I've tried to keep honey in my fridge for a while. After five years or so, it's mostly just so much crystallized sugar. In principle, after a sufficiently long time (probably less than a millenium), all the sugar should probably crystallize away, leaving something that isn't really honey. 172.68.10.51 01:20, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

"Megan seems to think it is OK as long as it is her opinion Black Hat spreads out." You get this from the phrase "Oh well"? A common statement of resignation? 108.162.210.196 01:33, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Has been changed by someone now, that's what so nice about a wiki ;-) --Kynde (talk) 11:51, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, just look at all that consensus established in the discussion field. 108.162.210.196 23:46, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps an alternate explanation for Black Hat's quote "and all the real ones are too far away from my house" would be that he's referring to the real problems. The phrase, "a hill to die on" refers to something you'll defend to the bitter end-- there are many things in the world that need to be fought for, many injustices against which we ought to direct our energy to stopping... and yet people find time to waste fighting about irrelevant, stupid things (like whether or not honey has infinite shelf-life-- I mean, really, how many lives is this going to change?). The reason for this is because to fight for those things, the important things, requires one to actually do something, to get off his/her butt and put effort, energy, money, and more into solving it. But whining/ranting on twitter about something that doesn't matter (or can't be solved by whining/ranting on the internet)? While it takes a lot of [wasted] time and energy to do that, its significantly less effort than, well, doing something meaningful to make a positive difference in the world. So that's why I think Black Hat meant: not that the weird hills were literally too far from his house, but that all the important things to fight for would take too much effort (he would have to get off his butt and go somewhere and strive). Or I might be reading too much into this due to my personal annoyance with pointless internet crusades. *shrug* ~EinarAmund 108.162.215.191 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Black Hat, being Black Hat, is going to troll the internet by stating honey can not last that long (just as Megan said). His scam assume the opposers will bombard him with honey jars to prove their point, with an amount allowing him to literally build a hill made of honey jars. 141.101.98.15 10:41, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The FDA classifies honey as raw meat, if my good friend Gabee is telling the truth.