That thing that happened, that one time

(Cylinder seal of First Dynasty of Ur Queen Puabi, found in her tomb, dated circa 2600 BC, with modern impression. Inscription: 𒅤𒀜 𒎏 - Pu3-abi(AD) Nin - Queen Pu-abi. Nicked straight off Wikipedia as it's a fab comparison of seal / relief.)

In the British Museum you can find "Lady Layard's jewellery". Austin Henry Layard is a guy whose academic efforts I'm admittedly very indebted to. He was passionate about Venetian and Roman glass and did a great job re-popularising both styles in the UK, but more importantly he was the assyriologist who excavated Nineveh and the Library of Ashurbanipal—where we've found the majority of the Gilgamesh tablets. Pioneer figure in terms of Near Eastern archaeology... but check this out:

This is a necklace Layard had made for his wife. It uses real cylinder seals.

To quote the British Museum's entry on the item: One cylinder seal is Akkadian (about 2200 BC) and four belong to the second millennium BC, but eight are late Assyrian (about 1000-612 BC). Late Babylonian and Achaemenid stamp seals (about 600-350 BC) are used for the pendants and clasp.

Enid later wrote in her diary that, when they dined with Queen Victoria in 1873, it was 'much admired'.

Ancient Near Eastern artefacts, repurposed as jewellery in a set that doesn't give a single fuck about accurately dating them, let alone treating them with the sort of respect you might perhaps expect of items over four thousand years old. Instead they've become a mark of elite colonial status, an Oriental curiosity utterly separated from their historical context. They're 'old'. They're non-descriptly 'other'. Time and place dissolve into an attractive and vague exoticism.

All while the place these seals have been appropriated from is busy being exploited by the very empire this "jewellery" is being shown off to!

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

sequoyah was the man who created the tsalagi syllabary before it was ever a tree

if i try to look for apparel or crafts to show off my chickasaw pride, i get results for chickasaw plums which is just a specific species of plum before i get results about human beings

others have mentioned if they google their nations name they get boot companies before their nations website!

theres a tweet that still haunts me that was about a Quirky Quasi American Restaurant in europe or somewhere that was being funny by being cowboy themed and their steaks were named after native american nations. even outside the usa we are nothing but literal dead meat for others consumption

"blackhawk" "apache" - fuck theres a whole wikipedia page for the way weve had our names used for weapons used to colonize and kill us and others!

-Buried asbestos waste

-Lead pipes, lead coffins, and other objects

-Arsenic and mercury in historic gold mine tailings

-Acid from buried batteries

-Potassium cyanide and bromo-cyanide, potentially buried in barrels in the same gold mine tailings

-PCBs from a coke oven site, covering a beached shipwreck

-A massive pile of contaminated fish buried with barrels of lime, probably preserving the cholera-causing bacteria that led to a deadly outbreak 150 years ago

-Phytophotodermatitis (and risk of permanent blindness) from wild parsnip, angelica, and giant hogweed

-Lyme-disease-bearing ticks

-UXOs (Unexploded ordinance. Yes, historic, live bombs.)

-Raw, fresh sewage in historic sewer systems that were supposedly no longer active

Colour Painting Tips by slawekfedorczuk

Before the computing era, ILM was the master of oil matte painting, making audiences believe that some of the sets in the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogy were real when they weren’t. They were the work of geniuses like Chris Evans, Michael Pangrazio, Frank Ordaz, Harrison Ellenshaw and Ralph McQuarrie ! Forever thank you, to their handmade art and the work of their colleagues, that made us dream of impossible worlds and fantastic places across Earth and the Universe.

There are more background paintings on this article, featuring comments by the masters/artists themselves ! 

Some of the following pieces were made by other artists 2:

Killerwhale & Eagle Paddle Yellow Cedar wood, Acrylic paint, Abalone shell 61 x 5.5 x 1″ (154.94 x 13.97 x 2.54cm)