For people interested in learning Old English, Osweald Bera is an introductory book written by Colin Gorrie that, if I recall from his prior announcement about this, leans on a method called comprehensible input to teach the language. As far as I can tell from watching some of his youtube videos and reading his other online material, this looks like it could be useful for folks that are including "Learn Old English" as an item on their New Year's Resolution list.

The preorders were just announced. They are saying they intend to begin shipping the books themselves mid-November.

Trump was on Univision yesterday for a town hall, and during one exchange he made a huge deal about how great he was for farmers. Additionally, he's been talking about crazy tariffs again at recent events like the Economic Club of Chicago. With those things in mind, I thought it would be relevant to take a quick walk down memory lane. It's also worth noting, the article is pre-COVID - August 30, 2019. As many people with functioning memories will recall, things would not go on to get better from there.

Iran's alleged plot to assassinate former President Donald Trump and hack the Trump campaign amount to "an act of war," according to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Just days after a would-be assassin's bullet grazed Trump's ear in July, the FBI announced that Iran had allegedly been separately plotting to kill the former president. Federal officials later revealed that Iran had hacked and stolen confidential information from the Trump campaign.

...

Paraphrasing his psychotic post that they are discussing in this article: "Bullets are flying, the war has begun, the Immigrant Problem must be brought to a final solution!"

After seeing someone else posting their struggles with getting Docker running on their system, I thought I might share my process for setting up new Docker nodes. I don't make any representations about my way being the right way, or the best way, but this way has been working for me. I have been playing around with a swarm, but if you aren't setting up a swarm you can just omit the swarm commands and some of the firewall allows (keep what you need open, obviously, like 22 for SSH if you're using it). Similarly, if you aren't connecting to a NAS, you can leave out the part about mounting external storage.

# new Docker Swarm node setup from fresh Debian Netinst

# as root, all nodes
apt install sudo
usermod -aG sudo [user]
logout

# as [user], all nodes
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install fail2ban rkhunter ufw unattended-upgrades ca-certificates curl -y
sudo ufw allow 22 
sudo ufw allow 2377
sudo ufw allow 7946
sudo ufw allow 4789
sudo ufw enable
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin -y
sudo usermod -aG docker [user]

## Shared Storage Stuff, all nodes ##

nano ~/.smbcredentials
# paste the following:
#   username=[cluserUser]
#   password=[clusterPW]
#
# add mount point for shared storage
sudo nano /etc/fstab
# add the following to the bottom:
# /[NAS.IP.Address]/[ClusterStorageFolder]/ /home/[user]/share cifs credentials=/home/[user]/.smbcredentials 0 0

# on main node only
docker swarm init --advertise-address 
  #  copy the join command, we'll need it next

# on any additional nodes, paste the command copied above
docker swarm join [...all the rest of the command...]

# for each docker container, on any manager node
mkdir ~/share/[serviceName]  
cd ~/share/[serviceName]
  #  copy relevant compose.yml into the folder
  #  if necessary, also create any needed directories
docker compose up -d
docker compose down
docker stack deploy -c compose.yml

Just saw these new HoMe boxed sets are coming out, with the first set releasing in November

Credit: TimeMaps

As part of a personal educational journey, I've been exploring early human cultures. There are a lot of great websites I've encountered along the way, but this one had escaped my radar until yesterday.

I grabbed the map portion from a series of posts they had about early farming and strung them all together into a gif so I could visualize it better for myself, and it ended up looking pretty neat so it seemed crazy not to share it.

The green parts of each slide show you where the farming was happening at the time. The first slide represents 10000 BCE, and each slide after is dated 1000 years further ahead in time, all the way up to the last slide at 3000 BCE, as outlined by the TimeMaps folks.

Here's a fun, ten-minute video from PBS Digital Studios and hosted by Dr. Moiya McTier & Dr. Emily Zarka that discusses trees, especially World Trees (or Great Trees) as seen in so many mythologies, and their prevalence in ancient stories. From Baobab trees to Yggdrasil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txy-3IpFz8M

I'm currently reading the Third Edition of Rosenberg's World Mythology, which is what I referenced when writing the Enuma Elish summary before. For anyone wanting to read more of her work, the Second Edition of her book is available online free and has a ton of great content:

https://archive.org/details/worldmythologyan0000rose

Here's a quick synopsis based on some notes that I jotted down as I was looking over a version of the Enuma Elish that was written in Donna Rosenberg's World Mythology textbook.

What is the Enuma Elish? Great question! It's an ancient creation story, dating back to the Babylonians in Mesopotamia, perhaps reaching as far back as 2000 BCE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En%C5%ABma_Eli%C5%A1

Everything interesting about this is a credit to Rosenberg's work and to the Babylonian people that documented the stories on clay tablets so long ago, and everything wrong with it is undoubtedly down to my own poor comprehension. Enjoy!

The Enuma elish

Apsu and Tiamat, the fresh- and saltwater primordial gods that existed before all else, have a mist-baby named Mummu. Two more gods form in the mix of salt and fresh water, notably not referred to as children of Apsu and Tiamat, nor as siblings to each other, but it seems implied. These two are Anshar (male) and Kishar (female). Anshar and Kishar have a child named Anu (god of the Heavens). Anu fathers Ea, who is super-wise and becomes god of the Earth. Eventually he will settle down and marry Damkina, but first he and the rest of his still-living ancestry make a lot of noise and royally piss off Tiamat.

Now-enraged Tiamat tells Apsu to get the offspring in line. Apsu says he prefers the nuclear option, kill ‘em all. Mummu is on board. Tiamat suggests they chill a bit. They do not chill. They choose violence, and they begin preparations to wage a battle.

The offspring gods caught wind of their impending demise and got ready. Clever Ea made a trap, put Apsu to sleep, chained him up, killed him until he was quite dead, imprisoned Mummu (because you don’t just go leaving witnesses, ok?), and Bob’s your uncle. Now for some victory nookie.

Ea and Damkina shack up and have a son named Marduk. Marduk is the wisest and strongest of the gods. Truly, a sight to behold. Ea made Marduk all-seeing and all-hearing, and then also made him bright as the sun.

Time goes on, the kids get rowdy again, Anu is kicking up a tempest and it angers the Old Timers. Kingu is especially perturbed. He calls out Tiamat for letting all of this happen. Tiamat finally sees it Kingu’s way and they get ready to rumble. Kingu is Tiamat’s head commander.

It’s important to point out here, I think, the fact that there still does not yet exist an Earth. Or anything. Except the gods and their drama, I mean. An endless void… and god-drama.

Ea finds out there is another fight coming. He freaks out a bit and asks Anshar for advice. Anshar tells him to be brave and strong and to kill Kingu just like he did Apsu. Ea is apparently super inspired because he sets out to give it the old college-try, realizes on the way that he’s gonna die if he tries to fight this, and promptly chickens out and runs home.

Anshar tells Anu to go next. Same deal, he’s super into the idea, gets scared, funs home. Good thing there’s another boy, right?

They tell Marduk he’s got to help them. He basically says “But… it’s only a girl lol” and then goes on to tell them he’ll do it, but they should recognize his most supreme excellence by making his very words govern the fates. The gods call a meeting and decide they will agree, but only if Marduk can do a magic trick first. Marduk makes a towel disappear - and then, reappear ! if you can believe it!

The gods must have known they were in serious trouble because at this point they agreed to Marduk’s terms. He is now the Supreme God of the Void. Huzzah!

Storm God Marduk outfits himself with awesome armor and weaponry. He raises seven winds and four beasts, and meets Tiamat in battle. (Kingu fled, scared) He defeats Tiamat. Half of Tiamat’s body becomes the Earth, the other half the heavens. They catch Kingu, murderize him, and use his blood to give life to all mankind.

Greetings all, and welcome to the Mythology board! I have recently embarked on an adventure through early Mesopotamian mythology, and intend to keep exploring more cultures moving forward through history. With that in mind, this space is meant to be a fun and open community for people to chat about their favorite mythologies, share what they have learned, ask questions, and hopefully we can all learn and experience the magic, myths, and legends from the many cultures that came before us.