MACHINE CHAOS

I HATE TOM

I HATE DICK

I HATE LARRY

a lot of kids are taught never to start sentences with 'and' or 'but' or 'because' because its the easiest way for your (usually elementary) teachers to explain the concept of a compound/complex sentence vs. a fragment. In academic English, AKA the English used for advanced schooling, this is useful.

In other Englishes? well, no! you can do whatever you want. language is about expression and communication. it's art! and yes learning rules and theories makes you a better artist, but largely that so when you break those rules it's with an aggressive purpose!!

English isn't a monolith. It isn't stagnant. It's a living, breathing organism that grows and changes and you are a part of it. Like a giant mushroom or something. So yeah, go nuts! Start sentences with conjunctions!!! drop your subjects! split your infinitives!!

So far I have found two sources, here and here. Do you notice anything in common about these two? Both of these only have one citation, which is the twitter/x account @/TheAncientWorld. I don’t have an account on X, so if anyone wants to do further digging for me it would be appreciated, but it appears that the original post has been deleted.

The first source I found, from thewhippet.org, acknowledges that the image shown in the post is actually a map of irrigation systems. They provide this image instead, along with the translation (I can’t personally verify whether the translation is accurate):

I have zero idea where these images are sourced from, besides the @/TheAncientWorld twitter account. Reverse image searching both of these yielded no results that I know of. Then again, I didn’t feel like paying any service to have access to “deep” searches, so if anyone has more reliable ways of finding image sources I would gladly accept the help.

All in all, I can’t really say for certain if I think it’s real, but it’s not looking great. And, if I’m being honest, I’m mostly doing this not because I’m personally invested in knowing if it’s actually real, but because it’s annoying and stupid that people in the notes are saying it’s real because one singular person provided one of the sources I listed above.

I looked up “Yale Babylonian Collection 5471”. The Yale site itself is down at the moment, but I was able to find it in Archibab, the Old Babylonian archive.

https://archibab.fr/texte/15185

“(1) Speak to my lord: (2) Thus says Sin-gamil. (4) May (3) Šamaš and Marduk (4) keep you in good health (3) forever for my sake! (5) Concerning the workmen who you wrote about, (6) on the day that I saw your tablet, (8) I made (7) Awil-ili (8) ready and (10) he set out (9) on the journey at night. (11) As to the sesame field, (13) I am not getting water (12) from Sin-id-dinam’s hands; (14) the sesame will die. (15) Do not say “You did not write me”! (16) The sesame is … to see; (17) Ibbi-Ilabrat saw it; (18) that sesame will die. (19) I have written to you (now), (let me hear) what you say. (20) And perhaps (22) I did not ask for (20) the plough-… (21) of Mašatanum, (23) but send me the handles.“

This is probably a crazy idea but I'm in a "normal ideas aren't working so let's get nuts" kind of situation.

For $30, I will write a scene for you.

We've all been struck by particular moments in our blorbo's lives or scenarios to jam them in to make them suffer. It's my favorite kind of thing to write.

So give me some blorbos and I will make that scene happen.

Full deets on the page, but aiming for 600-900 word scene sketches, one revision. 10 slots for now but we'll see how well I can bang them out.

Kitty and I still need your help.

We need to hit at least another 700 on our goal for this month to cover the rent.

If you enjoy my posts, my games, my writing, or just wanna keep a disabled trans girl out the poorhouse one more month, please help.

I hate to keep pestering, but I’m panicking hard, I’m sorry.

$30 for 2 figures, full body, black and white

$40 for 2 figures, full body, flat color

THIS WEEK:

A recent New Scientist cartoon.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

I assume that's a more modern historian coming up with a clever characterization of army pay, but all I've been able to find is either sites talking about modern fast food wages or else a thousand articles about "why ancient roman soldiers were paid in salt"

(I had a brief moment of recognition reading that, because "opsonins" in immunology are a category of proteins that stick to foreign objects and make them tasty to your immune cells.)