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

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101–110 of 421 posts

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

#101

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.

Said nobody on their death cot ever, “I wish I’d spent more time carving hieroglyphs down at the Pharoah’s tomb!”

"I wish I had closed more Jira tickets and had a bigger impact on my org's KPIs"

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

#102

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.

> But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity... Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it... Who knows whether the best of men be known? Or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?

~ Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia (1658)

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

#104
post #59
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense, there are like 100 species of scorpions in the regions where house cats were first domesticated. Cats do hunt scorpions which probably scored them some extra holiness points with the ancient Egyptians.

Dogs also hunt scorpions. Dogs are not immune to scorpion stings, they're just ignorant.

I live a block off the salt marsh here on the coast and mine'll hunt after Fiddler Crabs[0] until they get pinched on the snout.

The mutt learned and the Lab just keeps on going after them... strange creatures, dogs are.

[0] - https://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/mrri/acechar/speciesgallery/In...

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

#105
post #15

> to embalm your brother If I'd used that excuse at my old work it would probably have triggered a 'difficult conversation' with my line manager.

I dunno, you probably get some sort of bereavement time off. Also, personal death care involving families seems to be creeping back somewhat.

[deleted]

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

#106

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 learned the same lesson after dealing with a black widow infestation. It's a an easy habit that saves a lot of personal suffering.

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

#107

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.

At least those pyramids are still standing, but most software projects that are not open sourced end up completely wiped out of history in probably less than 20 years.

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

#108
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dogs also hunt scorpions. Dogs are not immune to scorpion stings, they're just ignorant.

Dogs seem to hunt pretty much anything. I wonder if we've bred out the understanding of what is and isn't edible in dogs, but not cats? Or perhaps its a social thing that wild canids teach their young? Half the dog owners I know have some story of their dog catching a hedgehog or something equally inedible, but the worst that seems to happen with cats is their prey fights back a bit harder than they expected and they…

My experience with Labrador Retrievers is that they will eat anything, on the assumption that if it doesn't agree with them, they can always puke it up at 3AM.

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

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that there's a definite standard but someone worth over $100B feels Mega to me.

I was joking about mega conventionally meaning a million of something [1]. I agree it's certainly "mega" in the informal/Aussie sense. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix

Nobody (in English at least) uses SI prefixes for currency though?

£1M (happens to have the same shorthand, but) is never called 'a megapound'.

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that the dates are "Month 3 of Summer, Day 24" etc. The curious bit to me being the enduring use of 4 distinct seasons, when there are obviously other ways to mark a year. Is anyone aware of a culture that did/does not have exactly 4 seasons?

From my perspective, anything regularly periodic in nature is used to track time: the Sun (years, seasons, days, day/dusk) and Moon (months, weeks, King tides). Consider even the starfield (astrology: years, decades+). Four seasons makes sense in all of these contexts, and I hypothesize that there are a lot of patterns in nature that are well bucketed into 4 sequential, equal seasons. This is impossible for me to dem…

  > I always like to imagine what life would be like if weeks were 3 days long. Or 11. I just love this topic.
I especially like that you chose prime numbers. A week composed of a prime number of days will remain the smallest indivisible group of days that a culture will have.
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