>The tombs include 68 from the Buto period that began around 3300 B.C. and five from the Naqada III period, which was just before the emergence of Egypt's first dynasty around 3100 B.C., according to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
This is incredible. When you zoom out of your daily life, zoom out before smartphones, before electricity, before most modern countries exist... there were other civilizations, living daily lives, probably considering many of the same concerns we have today (family, health, work). Just wild.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
This is one of my favourite things. It's an incredibly old, historically important text in a dead language and it's just a customer complaint.
>"You have put ingots which were not good before my messenger and said, 'If you want to take them, take them. If you do not want to take them, go away'.
3750 years ago some dude was still showing up and trying to rip people off and pull the "cash in hand" choosing beggar play.
But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be patented and GM couldn’t control its production. And oil companies like Du Pont "hated it," he wrote, perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine.
I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for positive change, so these types of "revelations" are really disheartening. What are the solutions to this? What governing system would have mass produced ethenol as the best antiknocker with no regard to the interests of top players?
Perhaps the government should open companies that are meant to lose money and are tax supported (for-loss conpanies) that compete with the industry with solutions that are good for the people but bad for business?
Many government owned companies actually make a profit until private industry lobbies them into ineffectiveness. The US Post Office was profitable until a change lobbied by Fed-Ex and UPS forced them to keep 100% of their pensions available at all times.
Various crown corp electric companies were profitable in Canada and SaskTel, a crown corp telecommunications company is the last bastion of non-insane cell phone plans though I'm sure Rogers and Bell are working on it.
People just hate seeing the government make money. They see that things are good, say "hey, why should the government get this money" and then shut down the system that's working and complain when everything costs more because private industry is trying to squeeze every last cent out of them.