Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love. Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.

There was a great Met exhibit (and great catalog) about this!

Dualism is the view that the Ass is two separate cheeks whereas monism contends that it's one indivisible entity

i posted this to badsite on 2018-07-28: "I've been mulling for the last two years the idea that the GOP's Southern Strategy was like the Bene Gesserit's Kwisatz Haderach breeding program and Trump is Paul Atreides fucking it up for them and they don't know how to put the sandtrout back in the qanat"

guess it's a legacy basketball hoop now probably biweekly meetings asking stakeholders if the hoop can be removed now

And then the tempter took him to a high place, and placed the football before him.

hmmm this taco truck puts finely diced pineapple on their al pastor, interesting

can't even buy junk food at the train station anymore? this is bullshit

Dec. 23, 1925: Salt Lake City orders street Santas to remove their false whiskers, in compliance with a law against wearing masks in public. Miffed because the statute was intended to ban masked Ku Klux Klan parades, the hooded order complained that Santa beards should also be illegal.

sometimes when I'm frustrated I eat it straight from the jar. then I have two problems

These declines are MASSIVE. And the comparative silence in media coverage is absolutely DAMNING. “Why are ppl always so afraid of crime?” THIS is why. When crime goes up, media trips over itself to report it. Falls to pre-war (!!) levels? Just CRICKETS.

I'm going to sit here and maybe someone will explain why we should give a shit about the supposed Epstein letter to Nasser. Regardless of its authenticity, I don't see how that makes a difference at all in the matter.

"I'll doom by making unfalsifiable claims with weasel words (massively backfire, attain prominence) and contradict myself by pointing out that she stopped this from being seen by normies, because I've never heard of the Streisand effect"

In 2023 I became obsessed with videos of dads in cargo shortswaiting in parking lots during Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. So when she came to town, I grabbed a camera and headed down to talk to them. I thought it'd be funny. It turned out to be something else entirely.

get everyone gambling on their phone and then charge them for losing is actually pretty funny

Dr. Thomas C. Weiner, the oncologist who was the subject of my 2024 ProPublica investigation, will never again practice medicine in the state of Montana. One victim’s widow: “It’s definitely welcomed news — very happy to hear it — but with the caveat that this whole thing took way too long.”

lol holy shit

In the past month 3 transport routes have collapsed - but they aren't roads so don't make national news. All 3 have the same root causes, climate change, and Tory austerity passing responsibility for critical infrastructure on to charities and councils. This will happen more, and people will be hurt

Check out the Kavanaugh FN 4; I think it's pretty clear that the Kavanaugh Stop thing has gotten to him:

Really good ("fractitious" aside)

the least shocking thing in the epstein files that wont get enough attention. police regularly arrest and charge victims to coerce them into participating, often jailing them in conditions that are worse.

"President Trump are removing"

Worth repeating this with every new Epstein document drop. The party of Denny Hastert is the party of Jim Jordan is the party of Matt Gaetz is the party of Donald Trump. Looking the other way and protecting child predators from the law is their brand.

BREAKING: Huge loss for Trump administration at Supreme Court, which rules that the Trump administration had lacked authority to federalize and deploy the National Guard to execute laws in Illinois. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

Every byte of Character AI code should be erased and everyone involved should be composted. (gift link)

New from me: The storied fiddler Ashley MacIsaac wanted to play a show at a Nova Scotia First Nation. It got cancelled because Google's AI search summary incorrectly called him a sex offender. Now he's worried for his safety www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/arti...

"Tips" that Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump fed young girls to alligators to entertain aliens. "Tips" that NSA secretly bugged Epstein's victims to get kompromat on foreign leaders. "Tips" that prove DEFINITIVELY that the Pope was behind everything.

as true today as when it was written

If you want to peacefully protest for change? Go for it. Want to block the doors of an abortion clinic so women can't access the medical care they are lawfully entitled to get? Straight to jail, right away.

lol www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

There’s a chance of tornadoes in parts of California tonight through Christmas Day. Here’s a map of where tornadoes have hit the state in the past. #CAwx

Argentina gonna learn California's lessons the hard way, I guess

About the card Jeffrey Epstein purportedly sent to Larry Nassar: * The postmark is from Virginia, not New York where Epstein was jailed * The return address is incorrect and doesn't include his register number * FBI sought a handwriting analysis. Don't know outcome. www.reuters.com/world/us/jus...

He's running

OH GOD OH GOD THERE'S A BUG IN MY EAR never mind it's just another mini clump of earwax

60minutes-cecot.mp4.exe

Bari Weiss' reporting experience is summed up by the time the NYT bizarrely gave her the cushiest possible assignment - go to Australia and hang out and write about it - and she produced a story so bad and so wrong about basic facts of Australian life that it became a running joke there.

Restoring Bivens rights: one bill "would allow citizens to sue for damages resulting from constitutional violations committed by federal officers," while the other "would create a cause of action against federal law enforcement agencies and police depts for constitutional violations."

A C-list anti-vaxxer wanted to know if I was really stupid enough to believe that vaccines work by preventing disease, not infection. Yes, if “stupid” means 200 years of evidence History class is in session. Do you know why vaccines are called vaccines? rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/how-vaccin...

"The hospital was understaffed, and people in the camp were so anemic that they couldn’t get enough blood donations. [Dr.] Otieno had twice donated himself while he was midsurgery in order to save a pregnant woman’s life." @annamaria.bsky.social on the real-world damage done by Trump's aid cuts:

Flintheart Glomgold was originally ALWAYS South African! The whole reason he wasnt in the 87 version of Duck Tales was specifically to downplay Apartheid going on at the time and the way he made his money was literally exploiting and helming African Diamond mines.

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

We've got 1 more Moe Tkacik banger in us before the end of the year. It's about Marco Rubio, his scheme to appoint drug cartel bosses & their cronies atop the governments of every Latin American country in the name of fighting drug cartels, & his high school summer job working for a drug trafficker.

When an entire class of technology states on the packaging that it was made in China but intended "for overseas use only," this should really give you pause before plugging it into your network. You will find this verbiage on a lot of Android TV streaming […] [Original post on infosec.exchange]

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Ever since the TikTok ban they just completely gave up on moderation. Last week I was getting ads for unregistered firearms, this week we’ve gone even more illegal. That’s a 400 watt signal jammer. With a single button press you can get clapped by the FBI, FAA, and FCC all at the same time.

Actually more like “tamizdat” — because it was published in Canada rather than at home. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

it can also temporarily serve as a boat

Ok. Now had a chance to check and, well, at least some docs do appear to be straight up classic redaction fail. And there are some *interesting* bits here. www.justice.gov/multimedia/C...