Everything’s Gonna Be Alright

postcard c1910

Supermoon in Belarus

and i feel like people forget just how many parts of the world didn't use wheels consistently until the last couple of centuries

like. not because they were "primitive" or hadn't thought to invent it, but because there are terrains and regions where wheels just aren't useful. in deserts. on islands. in places with a lot of bog or heavy snowfall.

in the upper pennines, wheeled carts only came into common use when the coal industry grew in the 18th century and the gravity train was developed. until then, roads were too hard to maintain and most people just used horses, mules, or sleds for heavy transport.

in argyll and the west of scotland, where mountain terrain hits the coast and where the lochs mean that there is a lot of coast, it is much easier to use boats and rafts than to try to transport freight overland. so small freight was similarly carried by livestock or dragged, and only as far as the nearest body of water.

in the southern fens (before they were drained) rafts were more common than carts, usually being dragged over mud and bog rather than floating in deep water.

and it is relevant to note that all of these were in England and Scotland, places which had, on aggregate, been using wheels since the neolithic. none of these places failed to invent the wheel. they just uninvented it. because it was useless. other cultures in broader terrain areas (like the steppes, or the deserts, or the Arctic) may never have invented the wheel at all, bc, like, why would you? it's useless.

They used it for pottery. They used it for children's toys. They used it for spinning thread. They used it to turn a spit while cooking. They attached it to a box with handles and used it to carry supplies to and from the battlefield. They stuck it in water and used it to power a mill. They made it out of rock and spun it to sharpen blades. They made them tiny and put them on necklaces.

The wheel's a very useful device and it got invented for a thousand purposes, some common to many cultures, some limited to just a few.

They didn't use it for transport until they they had roads.

And a lot of terrain does not take well to roads, not without a whole lot of time and money being spent by someone other than local farmers. You need a whole lot of people using the exact same route, over and over, to justify the hassle and expense of building & maintaining a road that's faster to navigate with wheels than by either loading your stuff on a string of donkeys, or dragging it behind them on a blanket stretched between two poles.

me: yeah, i posted on tumblr

publisher: .........tumblr?

me: that's where the gays are.

publisher: And what is your marketing strategy on... tumblr?

me: idk, i shitpost at 2am?

publisher: .....and it works?

me: depends on what the gays find funny at that point in time.

publisher: Could I have a link to your tumblr?

me: .......absolutely not.

publisher: I've been looking into tumblr, have you thought of using Blaze to promote your book?

me: NO

publisher: But it seems like an efficient way to get this in front of more eyes-

me: people on tumblr hate Blaze.

publisher: There is no algorithm and you can't pay to promote a post? I don't understand how anyone advertises anything on tumblr.

me: That's the best part. They don't. They can't.

(trying to make him understand that we do not control the attention. We just have to show something shiny and gay enough and if people are interested, they'll reblog.)