Locator: 48709ARCHIVES.
Food stamps: Trump cuts hurt "average" families. "Average family" could lose $146 / month. Wow, how much is the "average family" getting now?" Link here.
Food stamps: years ago, my son-in-law separated from a high-paying job in the US Navy and went to get his MBA at Harvard University. Our daughter was taking an overnight low-paying job as an new entry-level nurse. They were living on almost nothing.
They applied for food stamps, a godsend at the time. Two years later, he was now being paid a huge salary. Our daughter called the "food stamp" people to say that they no longer met the requirement for food stamps and needed to be removed from the program. The food stamp representative told my daughter they would leave her on the program for the next year or so. It was easier for everyone all around to leave her on the program than to remove her now and then maybe have to re-instate her later if financial conditions changed. So, there you have it.
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The Book Page
Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire, Eckart Frahm, c. 2023. Notes are here.
Bottom of page 87:
Ashurnasirpal I expressed his desperation in a prayer to the goddess Ishtar of Ninevah, in which he lamented:
You have covered me with sickness. Why am I at death's door? ....
To be sure, to some extent Ashurnasipal's grievances may have been clichés. Mesopotamian appeals to the gods often followed the unspoken rule tht ony the squeaky wheel get the grease.
When I first read that, I immediately thought about what the governor of North Carolina had said during his interview on CNBC earlier this morning, asking for more help from Washington (DC).
Americans are like the Assyrians with regard to their problems. The Assyrians blamed the gods, and then appealed to those very same gods for help. The Assyrians refused to take responsibility for their own actions and then lamented that the gods were not helping them in their time(s) of crisis, often of their own making.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the governor of North Carolina -- the #1 state for business climate -- is lamenting that things could be better, that the state now faces pockets of crisis (mostly of the state's own making -- like expansion of Medicaid) and the governor is appealing to the gods in Washington (DC) to come to his aid.
Human beings have simply replaced one god, in this case Ishtar, with other gods, like the trinity Jeffries-Schumer-Boasberg.
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Word For The Day
Paradise.
Also from the same source as above. Page 98.
Middle East.
Assyria.
879 BC: king moves capital from Ashur to Cahal. This is a huge deal.
A canal was dug from the Upper Zab (tributary of the Tigris) to irrigate a luscious park with numerous exotic plants, including beautiful pomegranates (which intrigued me every summer growing up in Williston, ND).
"Streams of water (luminous) as the stars of heaven" flowed into the "pleasure garden," the earliest known of the many palatial parks and gardens that would be come central features of the imperial landscapes of the Middle East -- from the paridaida of the Persian kings in Pasargadae and Persepolis (from which the word "paradise" derives) to the palace gardens of the Abbasids in medieval Baghdad and Samarra. The tradition would also spread eastward to India and westward to Rome.
The word, and particularly the spelling, paridaida reminds me much of Spanish. Thank you, Duolingo. I now have a 1,751-day streak over on Duolingo, learning Spanish. That equals 4.7973 years of not missing one day of practicing Spanish on Duolingo. It's a free app, but I pay the annual fee to avoid the ads. It's well worth it. I can't remember if it's $89 or $129 but I think it's $89. The piano lesson app I have for Sophia is $129, I believe.
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"The Age Of Magnates" and China
From AI:
In Assyrian history, the "Age of Magnates" refers to a period of internal power struggles and fragmentation within the Neo-Assyrian Empire, specifically from the late 9th to mid-8th centuries BCE. During this time, powerful officials and generals, known as magnates, vied for influence with the Assyrian kings, leading to a weakening of central authority. This era ended with the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, who restored strong royal power.
When you read this section in the book on Assyria, it sounds a lot like what might be going on China under Xi right now. This could have happened in Russia/Putin but somehow Putin managed to maintain control.
