The original with ALL of the excuses is at the British Museum here: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA5634
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3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
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Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#142Talk about going on your permanent record...
Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#143We really are the same people. No measurable difference in IQ (as well as that can be "measured"). Only knowledge (some gained for us; some lost, too) and context are different. The tablet is a cool reminder of this.
Well, IQ tests given in the 1930's and 40's(?) had the results re-scaled today, and the average IQ was 70.
Note, that we're all trained today in taking IQ tests. E.g. one question asked "There are no Elephants in Germany. Munich is in Germany. How many Elephants are in Munich?" with possible answers of 0, 1, 2, 12.
Back then a layman might think "Munich is a big city; I bet there's one or two in the zoo there!" and answer 1 or 2. Because they didn't understand it was a logic question and there is an expectation when taking IQ tests that common sense is not being tested.
Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#144I 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.
If I learned anything from the tablet, is that I should let my friends use me as excuse for getting out of work.
> DRINKING WITH KHONSU
Legend
Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#145Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#146Earlier 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 wondered what it would feel like to not have weeks, or even years, but to live life in a continuous stream of days looking forward. I'm not sure if we would feel a horrible lack of closure or accomplishment, or if it would make us more productive and forward looking and moving. I wonder how much of my life I waste just trying to close out a week/month/year.
Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Said nobody on their death cot ever, “I wish I’d spent more time carving hieroglyphs down at the Pharoah’s tomb!”
Or, "I wish I'd spent more time soaking up scorpion stings so the tomb got built on time and under budget."
My time-travelling archeologist self in another reality would prefer watching this in action rather than the Jira ticket/corporate values/KPI grind, given a choice. Though as a worker, I'm sure I'd prefer being a cubicle slave to being a pyramid day laborer.
Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#148The great thing about being a senior is that you can use hungover as an excuse for missing meetings. I wouldn’t have dared that at the beginning of my career
Just show up and say you were testing solutions late :)
Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#149I 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.
Data retention of carving limestone > charging silicone.
Re: 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records excuses for why people missed work
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn’t call the typical SW career “little or no reward”
Sure 300K TC seems impressive relative to the Barista you buy your Latte from but it pales in comparison to the amount that people like Zuckerburg, Musk, Bezos, etc have increased their wealth in the past 2 years for example, which is on the order of 10s of Billions. You are far closer to the homeless you guy step over on the way to Twitter HQ than to Jack Dorsey and sure if you deliver a great result this quarter ma…
Are you actually comparing regular SW engineers to the wealthiest people on the planet ?