For long term preservation of cooked food I prefer canning. Most of the stuff in the freezer is factory sealed.

I love a good food poisoning mystery and am constantly warning people in canning groups about unsafe practices. Even if it gets me banned because some groups have very strict rules about warning people they could die from doing things like water bath canning unpeeled fermented beets. True story.

No. Neither was the steak.

I feel like I get enough birds in towels at home. And don’t even get me started on cats in towels.

Cows do outnumber people on my block but I don’t have any.

I’m inclined to agree. But they make you put a subject on posts.

I get all my owl content from here.

A lot of the freezer meat shows up frozen and in tiny quantities. Like “gotta combine two to get fried rice out of it” small. So it sits there.

There is a thing where you see an ad or post about "20 ribeye for $20”. You go to the parking lot of your local Tractor Supply at the appointed time. Some guy tries to sell large packages of frozen beef, poultry and seafood, all from his farm. 800 miles away and deep inland so the seafood portion is sketchy. They only have like 6 of the ribeye deal. They are the thinnest cut possible and like three ounces of won’t-hold-themself-together when thawed. But it’s cheap protein so you get them. The more you use them the more stingy you get about using them until there are just two left in the back of the freezer hidden behind the emergency chicken nuggets that are $13 for 5 pounds in the freezer section of the local meat store.

That’s how it happened.

The cheesiest.

These don’t start showing up until the 300s CE but those areas were occupied since 100 BCE. So that’s a 400 year gap. And they are always found in the presence of Romans, not indigenous locals.

I had to fight to keep outlines to an absolute minimum.

I’d hate to find out it’s a game piece you toss dice into. I kinda like it as a mystery object. A true cult object.

Excellent breakdown.

Any ideas on if it was used for ciphering that they wouldn’t be located in/near the capital too? Or why they are completely absent from Africa or the East?

The problem I have with them being used for ciphers is that it would require each person using it for that to possess one of the same size. But there is a 30x difference in size from the smallest to the largest.

Weather? Weaker?

That doesn’t check out. Too rare for such a common activity, doesn’t explain the rings around the holes, why they are never found in the company of weaving or sewing support, why never found with women, why they aren’t found in Italy where weaving and sewing is done on grand scales, etc.

The average Roman must have been tiny.

I’m a knitter. I can knit higher quality fingered gloves with double pointed needles (pointy sticks) way faster than anyone can use this as a jig to knit fingered gloves. And this idea completely ignores the existence of the different sized holes with the ring outlines.

Gloves were needed throughout the whole empire. But these don’t show up throughout it. Knitting was pretty much limited to Coptic stitching on sock toes at the end of the Roman period. These objects aren’t found near any Coptic area. Weaving and leather were the default materials for gloves. Knitting didn’t really start until 3rd century. These show up a century before that.

So we have to ignore a lot about their design, age, geographic distribution and the inferior quality of the knitted results to accept they were used for knitting. Knitting doesn’t pass the sniff test as a use for these long before we even get into issues like why they are never found where textile work takes place, aka around women.

I’d definitely take that picture and then pull that kid off because we don’t tolerate taking food from kittens here. Even though all the kitten food is donated. Kitten food is for kittens only in this house.

I had everything available except hot peppers. But it wouldn’t have helped that chorizo.

Most libraries are government property. As a general rule if it’s a government building you can’t carry a weapon. Local, state or fed. My local library has an explicit no conceivable weapons sign at the entrance as per South Carolina state law…