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3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

openculture.com

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Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#33

I feel sorry for the poor guys who never missed a day of work and gave their all to building that damn pyramid, 3200 years later nobody even knows who they were.

I hope the parallel of SWEs working for Mega-Billionaires is not lost on the HN crowd.

Don't really think SWEs are being taken advantage of the same way other employees at successful tech companies are. (Coming from the perspective of an SWE)

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#34
post #21

Locusts ? Nile turned to Blood again ? The Wrong Type of Fire followed by the Wrong Type of Brimstone ? Frogs blocked the way ? Not enough sunlight for 3 days? Family Bereavement. Loss of Hebrew assistants

Really is kind of a circuitous solution for an all powerful deity, no?

Moses: um...lord, we're kind of tired of being slaves. Could you look into that?

Lord: Ok! I'll issue 10 plagues of increasing discomfort until Pharaoh breaks!!!

Moses: Couldn't you just teleport us to the promised land or something. These guys are jerks, but do you need to kill their kids?

lightning crashes

Moses: OK OK! Point taken. We'll do the plagues...

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#35
post #10

I used to live in a scorpion-rich environment and can attest that a sting should disqualify one from manual labor for a day. I found that every time I was stung though the effects were less and less. The last time I was stung was a minor nuisance at most. I would advise, if you find yourself living with scorpions, to check your shoes, by shaking them out, before putting them on.

My family lived in Texas for a time when my sister was younger and she stepped out of the shower one day and was stung on the head by a scorpion that was in her towel. Hearing that story I was certainly very vigilant, even paranoid perhaps, about checking my shoes and such when we went to visit family there when I was a kid.

A buddy grew up in Mexico. When he was 10 or so, he pissed on a wall and got stung in just about the worst place imaginable. I don't live around scorpions and now I keep an even larger distance between me and peeing-surfaces lol

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#37

I used to live in a scorpion-rich environment and can attest that a sting should disqualify one from manual labor for a day. I found that every time I was stung though the effects were less and less. The last time I was stung was a minor nuisance at most. I would advise, if you find yourself living with scorpions, to check your shoes, by shaking them out, before putting them on.

I second the shoe-shaking ritual. Even if you keep your shoes inside. When I lived in the desert, the neighbor had work done in his yard, and every scorpion from his property moved into mine.

One day I found the cat eating a scorpion in the living room. Rushed him to the emergency cat vet place, and was told that cats aren't bothered by scorpions or their stings. But don't make crunchy, meaty scorpions part of a regular diet.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#38
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect - iq has risen steadily with improvements in nutrition, public health, and medical science. It's mostly plateaued over the last 50 years, but it's evident that pre-industrial / pre-rnlightenment humans had a much harder life, including things that suppressed potential at an almost global scale. We may see additional gains if there are globally adopted pedagogical improvements in both childhood educa…

> This is incorrect - iq has risen steadily In particular, we recently invented this peculiar notion that one can boil intelligence down to a number :b

No post body was provided.

Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work

#39

I feel sorry for the poor guys who never missed a day of work and gave their all to building that damn pyramid, 3200 years later nobody even knows who they were.

I hope the parallel of SWEs working for Mega-Billionaires is not lost on the HN crowd.

"Billionaire" doesn't need a prefix yet and it'll certainly be a while before we get any megabillionaires, aka quadrillionaires.

Probably not long before we start having megamillionaires, aka kilobillionaires, aka trillionaires though. Elon Musk's around a quarter of the way there.

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