Also saw this when I was a kid. It holds up shockingly well in parts, particularly as an exploration of computer automation and medical utilitarianism.

Why yes, I’d love a Rich & Meaty windbreaker

Yeah. Feels like it’s approaching cosmic horror from a different direction. Love it.

“Nothing is after you” is such a good setup and payoff for a horror story, it’s been living in my head since I saw the film.

I always thought that “If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself” to be such a poignant encapsulation of the casual and thoughtless cruelty that PKD saw in the world around him.

Pessoa has a very Giacomo Leopardi sensibility to him. Romanticizing solitude, melancholy as contemplation, existence as resignation, a deep distrust of society’s values.

Here’s an adorable pig-shaped rattle from ancient Ur

So I’m not the only person who’s wondered that while reading ANE history. If you want more reading about the economics and ideology of the Assyrian state, Mario Liverani’s Assyria and Cotterell’s The First Great Powers are good places to start.

Woof. Currently slogging through my first novel, and that sobering anecdote certainly hit hard at 6AM.

My favourite part of this ancient Assyrian letter to an ancient Assyrian goldsmith, is the last bit where the writer basically declares that the “house where they purify silver” absolutely does not pass the vibe check.

“They are drunk and silver is stolen”

For anyone wondering, some possible dog names have survived from cuneiform sources.

On tiny dog figurines found buried under a palace in Nineveh, Iraq are inscriptions that seem to be names.

dan rigiššu “loud is his bark”

munaššiku gārîšu “biter of his foe”

mušēṣi lemnūti “expeller of evil”