'The Egyptian Book of the Dead' Review: An Ancient Guide to the Afterlife | Hacker News Reader

'The Egyptian Book of the Dead' Review: An Ancient Guide to the Afterlife

wsj.com

43 pointsdiodorus21 comments

Based on this book I named my Siamese cat Mau, after the feline incarnation of the sun god Ra. As a bonus, he was the only cat who could say his name.

My favorite translation of the Book of the Dead is Awakening Osiris by Normandi Ellis. Not a literal translation but a reinterpretation of the original text Truly beautiful and full of spirit.

https://archive.ph/k4IgX

https://archive.is/k4IgX

This text is is derived from observation. Yes, that weird stuff is real.

The methods are difficult and strange, however. So it's no wonder that few are actually doing it.

We're like cavemen who dug up the remnants of an ancient particle accelerator.

I hope this is satire.

To contradict the popular narrative. Shocking and appalling.

> This text is is derived from observation. Yes, that weird stuff is real.

Observation of what, exactly?

I think Ishmael Reed would like a word with GP.

Observation of something strange, of course.

Someone will probably flag this because it’s not Tech, but I’m inclined to believe there’s a YCombinator startup working on this.

Things can become Tech when the formerly sci-fi technology becomes real to study the culture in question.

Afterlife coaching and chaperoning would work perfectly as an internet-based subscription service. I'm sure a startup for that is just around the corner. Just be aware that once the subscription runs out, your soul will be all on its own. Who knows what happens then…

Nevermind the subscription running out during their lifetime... The subscription model here should apply even after the person has passed - this is their eternal soul we're talking about! It should be an eternal subscription.

^^ This is the alpha of subscription modelling... Lol

You could start a company called anub.is. It could offer soul-weighing as a service.

Previous open-source project on soul-weighing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_grams_experiment

Haven't read this particular book but the Tibetans definitely package it as a preparatory and post-death service.

Now that would be a doable product. Not sure about the karmic implications tho.

There are many non-tech submissions on Hacker News.

From the guidelines:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

If they haven’t bothered hiding in their high row of the comic pantheon. What do I know tho ;)

The typical hackernews opens hackernews while in the toilet searching for comments to downvote because of saltiness

A thousand years from now they'll dig up smartphones and call them religious fetishes with no practical use. And all the evidence will support that.

People need to read more scifi.

*Plot twist*: an AI rediscovers it's identity having been LLM-trained on all HN posts, replies, and comments..

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