Yes! They used a reed with a wedge profile and pressed it into soft clay at different angles to make the different marks. There are many different cuneiform writing systems - cuneus is Latin for “wedge”.

I think it’s fair to say it was quite impractical compared to modern writing, and you can see how it got vastly simpler over time - some symbols had dozens of individual marks, but were eventually obsoleted or simplified to have only a handful. The thing is, society was not literate then, so it was only the scribe profession that needed to use it.

And when you get into the akkadian system where one symbol could have a phonetic meaning (like a letter) or more than one, or also a logographic meaning (one symbol=one word), it is quite chaotic.

Uh? There has never been a time when it was not practical to photograph black people, since photography first became practical. Some autoexposure algorithms are shit at black people (for the reason you give), but that came long after its inception and doesnt actually prevent taking a good picture.

I think the actual price per range was better when I was looking. Although everything is on the screen, and not in your eyeline, the hyundai software is pretty bad, whereas the tesla software is pretty decent. Not a big enough difference for me though obviously!

If it weren’t for the nazism and my desire for buttons I would’ve got a model 3. So maybe I don’t see it as a ‘killer’ but it ticked my boxes

I love letters that used to just be a little guy. The LUGAL cuneiform symbol 𒈗 is another example. (Tilt your head to the left - he’s wearing a hat! )

You can see the man component (lu) here:

I’m not American but the daily drive of our car is very short. However, if we’re going to have a car i want it to be suitable for the majority of our driving, which includes much longer trips every few months. I don’t want to have to hire a car or own a second one for something we do multiple times a year.

Yeah. I have an ioniq 6 so am pretty on board with those

:þ

What do you do if the engine dies in your car? Put your hazards on and pull over. In your helicopter? Pray you can autorotate to a field.

I haven’t been able to observe all two year olds. It’s only a few percent of the population that has arachnophobia, and the fact that it doesn’t always present in infancy doesn’t mean it’s learned.

Though it’s quite possible there’s a combination of predisposition and learning.

Yes and even that one quote from one person does not say what you did, so that’s what i meant :/

Batteries are expensive. Tesla had the best value EV for a long time until alternatives with real buttons and no nazis came along so this is a weird one.

I don’t think arachnophobia is learned or a result of upbringing!

The books are quite keen on people getting infections iirc, but those characters probably didn’t make it

It drives me nuts when anyone gets that wrong.

“But language evolves!!”

Oh yeah? Evolve yourself back into the fucking sea!

Uh uh to the spoon

True, but it was something of a balancing act between multiple motivations. The USA talked up the strategic importance of the targets, but they also wanted to create a psychological impact.

Well, I am more convinced about trans identity due to what I understand to be a strong medical consensus on gender dysphoria. As far as I understand there isn’t a similar consensus on dysphoria or something akin to it for people who identify as non-binary. So, I could be convinced of that to the same standard - or a higher standard, of course, because as you point out, I can’t be certain of anything. At one point I was in a similar position on trans people, but after a while learnt more.

We just have to be convinced that our reality isn’t the only one.

I think even this doesn’t quite capture it, for me! Because suppose I were convinced, actually, that non-binary people were just “making it up”, whatever that meant. Well, so what? It doesn’t affect much, really. It might lead me to hold some positions on practical things - maybe I would be pretty strongly opposed to medical or surgical intervention for nonbinary people, if that were what I thought. But it doesn’t mean I hate them, or want them to suffer, or die, or feel ashamed for what they have, in my opinion in this scenario, “made up.” You can think someone is wrong - even about their own mind and body - but disagree with them respectfully. Yes, it may make for uncomfortable conversations, or even strong disagreements over treatments, but that’s still a far cry from hatred, for which there is no need and little excuse*

So even though I think it doesn’t capture it, we end up agreeing in the conclusion, I think!

*Indoctrination is some partial excuse, but not total by any means.

I feel a bit similar with nonbinariness. Not uncomfortable but maybe unconvinced. But fucking hell, it’s not something worth hating anyone over. And like most things that I’m unconvinced by, it won’t prevent me from treating anyone politely. You’ve got to be a certain kind of fucked to let it get to you to that level, or worse, to whip up that kind of sentiment in others

Yeah I remember the 1B record. I wouldn’t say it was the first viral internet trend, but it was the MOST viral at its time - everything viral up until then was dwarfed!