This reminds me of the entire debate about "the artist and his art".-

He is a one-of-a-kind genius.-

PS. Do we at some point (and, I am addressing he cover-ups here, not the affairs) face the fact that many of the same qualities that make a successful CEO might be antisocial? (a point of course, much researched ...)

Beyond that (and I think this needs to be mentioned - not to condone him, but to examine this), there's an "elephant" in this room (buried, of course, underneath the many layers and magnitude of all this): Here's an atypical, bullied, almost-outcast type - who grew up under conditions, lets say, not leading to much interpersonal expression, particularly with the opposite sex ...

... who is now, literally, on top of the world. Something was going to give.-

What will his Next be like? (a la Jobs)

> parasitic technologies

Great turn or phrase. (And/or, great company name. Probably both :)

Sounds more like some sort of neo-noise-rock/electronica band.

Inevitable question: How long would the 9V battery have lasted?

Many smoke alarms are also plumbed into the house power circuitry, so one with a dead battery will complain forever...

Usually starting at 2AM in a house with 12' ceilings.

It's a temperature thing, if they're failing then they've reached their lowest-available-power level by about 2-4am depending on house conditions. Then when they warm up again later the beeping stops, until the next night. Crude test for a suspect alarm if you can't exactly monitor the battery voltage is to put it in the fridge for a few hours.

I recall seeing a truly horrific video of some Nest devices in a plaintive choir, gnashing their collective teeth all over a house ...

At this point, they are beginning to approach the Tesla Roadster case. The flying one.-

> really wish we would get collectively obsessed with this

Idem. Spot on.-

Sadly that takes a (global) level of stability that we are well outside of nowadays.-

Not to mention how - peculiarly - these sites tend to be around hotspots themselves?

I think it's a mix of coincidence and predestination.

The fact that it happens to be an autocratic fundamentalist theocracy in a regional power struggle with a quasi-autocratic quasi-theocratic ethnostate, involved in a complicated web of alliances with both regional and distant nation-states -- some of which are the strongest powers in the world -- is sort of a coincidence.

But Iran has been important on a continental scale for ~forever, and that certainly has led to a history of it being an attractant for powers great and small to interact with whoever happens to occupy the region at the time. Whether that's trying to conquer it or making alliances or whatever.

Indeed. I mean, the Mother of all Drifts comes with the entire logographic system shifting to accommodate more and more meanings, and abstract concepts ...

... enough to support a flourishing civilization (several) over thousands of years.-

Also, the parallels with today (power, war, "leadership" ...), "our highways are covered with weed and no wine nor syrup flows forth ..." are considerable.-

Cuneiform is mostly phonetic. Semantic drift didn't come from writing.

I do believe later use of cuneiform by Akkadians was indeed sylabic/phonographic.-

The Akkadians used cuneiforms much like Japanese use kanji (Chinese characters).

This means that the Akkadians could read a sign either with an approximation of how Sumerians had pronounced it or with the pronunciation of an Akkadian word that was a translation of the meaning of the original Sumerian word. Some signs did not correspond to the syllables that were pronounced, but they specified a class of things to which the word to which they were attached belonged.

Like in many other writing systems, the most ancient cuneiform signs were ideograms, which symbolized various things, like emojis now. Because at that time they had no phonetic meaning, we do not know which was the language of the writers, i.e. if it was Sumerian or some other language that may have been spoken in those places before Sumerian.

However, it is impossible to have a complete writing systems only with ideograms, where "complete" means that it can be used to write anything that you can communicate by speech.

So many centuries later, some of the signs that were used initially to designate a thing began to be used for any other thing that was pronounced in the same way, and eventually most signs were used to write syllables and the cuneiform writing system became a complete writing system. At the time when this transition from ideograms to phonograms happened, the language of the writers was Sumerian and the writing system became a mixture of syllabic signs and determinative signs.

As I mentioned above, after the Akkadians began to use the cuneiform signs they had their way to pronounce them. Because, like for Japanese texts, there are many alternatives for pronouncing the cuneiform signs, the correct deciphering of such texts is not easy.

I'm referring to Sumerian, too.

Sure, there's accountancy and protowriting like

  𒇻               𒐚
  sheep            six
  (pictogram of
  a sheep butt)

where it can be read entirely ideographically. Yes, there are ideograms and determinatives that are ideographic. But when you're building noun phrases and conjugating verbs, that's phonetic.

> 𒇻 (pictogram of a sheep butt)

Is this like the OG, millenary Goatse? (I mean, of all the things they could have picked to signify the poor thing ...)

The butt is the most distinctive part of the breed of sheep kept in ancient Mesopotamia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_sheep

This is the mother of all TILs.-

Certainly. Meet the new humanity, same as the old humanity...

Out with FDD, in with GPT! (!)

> suck-branded Gold Circle Coin condom

Solid collectible, right there.-

It was in a semi-rigid aluminum clamshell, as I supposed was the style at that time for Gold Circle Coin condoms (and I'm guessing here, because I never bought any of them ever).

It was delivered in a regular business-sized envelope.

The clamshell got squished between themselves and myself, and the combination of squish-damage, sharp edges, paper abrasion, and otherwise-unadorned latex condom made me cast serious upon its efficacy in co-partner use.

The three parts were largely loose inside of the envelope: Front half of sharp clamshell (with suck logo sticker), rear half of sharp clamshell, and a condom just kind of hanging out in there somewhere.

I don't remember what teenager-me did with the actual (and seriously mostly-useless) non-lubricated latex condom that was inside of that tiny thin-metalled tin, and it may be likely that it would have been something that is positively inappropriate to discuss in polite company even today.

But I do know that its potential transport damage did not meet the much, much higher standards that were in-keeping of the rubbers that I was using with my girlfriend of that time.

So whatever came of it, I am quite sure in saying that its efficaciousness was untested by my behest.

And the tin was surely discarded. (I probably tried to keep the well-matched gold foil sticker with the suck logo, but I must have failed.)

All of the condom parts arrived, and none of the important ones were trustworthy. 1/10 on that particular freebie item.

(The orange-pink transparent is still holding on very well.)

May I add Poolside (Laguna S) to this? Used them extensively during their free trial (sadly now apparently over).-