A few weeks ago Hippophlebotomist mentioned the “Alarodian hypothesis”; having looked it up, I thought it was intriguing enough to give its own post. Wikipedia:

The Alarodian languages are a proposed language family that encompasses the Northeast Caucasian (Nakh–Dagestanian) languages and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages.

The term Alarodian is derived from Greek Ἀλαρόδιοι (Alarodioi), the name of an ethnic group mentioned by Herodotus which has often been equated with the people of the kingdom of Urartu, although this equation is considered doubtful by modern scholars. A leading Urartologist, Paul Zimansky, rejects a connection between the Urartians and the Alarodians. Nearly nothing is known about the Alarodians except that they “were armed like the Colchians and Saspeires,” according to Herodotus. The Colchians and Saspeires are generally associated with the Kartvelians and/or Scythians, neither of whom spoke a Hurro-Urartian or Northeast Caucasian language

Historically, the term “Alarodian languages” was employed for several language family proposals of various size. Sayce (1880) employed the name for a small group that comprised Urartian (then called “Vannic”) and the Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Laz, Mingrelian, and Svan). In 1884, the German orientalist Fritz Hommel further included all languages of the Caucasus and the ancient Near East which did not belong to the Indo-European, Semitic, and the now obsolete Ural–Altaic language families, e.g. Elamite, Kassite. Later, he extended the Alarodian family to include the pre-Indo-European languages of Europe, e.g. Lemnian, Etruscan, Ligurian. Karel Oštir’s (1921) version of Alarodian included all aforementioned languages, further Basque, Sumerian, Egyptian, the Cushitic and Berber languages. The historical Alarodian proposal – especially Oštir’s maximal extension – was however not well-received by the majority of scholars (“Ce petit livre donne le vertige”—”This little book makes one dizzy”, A. Meillet), and eventually abandoned.

The term “Alarodian languages” was revived by I. M. Diakonoff for the proposed language family that unites the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian languages. Work by I. M. Diakonoff and Starostin (1986) asserted the connection between “Nakh-Dagestanian” (NE Caucasian) and Hurro-Urartian on the basis of comparison of their reconstruction to Proto-Nakh-Dagestanian, later published in 1994 with Nikolayev.

I like the “vertige” quote — Meillet! thou shouldst be living at this hour: linguistics hath need of thee…

Also, this gives me an opportunity to link to Dravido-Korean languages, a piece of weirdness John Emerson (who used to propagate Dravido-Everything around these parts) shared with me recently. Enjoy!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of ensnaring the United States in a wider Middle East war is already partly realized. Earlier this month, U.S. forces were directly engaged for the second time this year in shooting down missiles that Iran had fired in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Iranian interests.

The United States also has been attacking targets in Yemen, even with long-range B-2 heavy bombers. The combat with Yemen, like the exchanges of fire with Iran, is a direct outgrowth of Israel’s policies of subjugation of Palestinians and carnage in the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ October 7 attack.

One of the most recent expansions of U.S. involvement in Israel’s wars has been the deployment to Israel of the THAAD missile defense system, along with about 100 U.S. military personnel to operate it. Such deployments not only put Americans increasingly in harm’s way but also embolden Netanyahu to escalate his wars further by reducing the impact of the inevitable retaliation from those whom Israel attacks.

With no end in sight to the Israeli escalation, and with that escalation focusing in recent weeks on an Israeli assault in Lebanon that has begun to duplicate some of the suffering in Gaza, Americans should reflect on how the United States got ensnared in an earlier Israeli war there, and a tragic result of that involvement that occurred 41 years ago this week.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, which was the beginning of an occupation that would not end completely until 2000. That Israeli invasion of Lebanon, like the current one, was directly related to the same Israeli policy of bashing and subjugating the Palestinians. Israel’s chief objective in 1982 was to destroy the capabilities, resident in Lebanon at the time, of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and to drive the PLO out of the Levant. Israel also sought to tip the balance of forces within Lebanon — which had already been engulfed in civil war — toward ones partial to Israel.

The Israeli invasion and occupation substantially increased the suffering of Lebanese as well as Palestinian refugees there. One of the most horrifying low points was the massacre in September 1982 at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Phalange militiamen slaughtered an estimated 3,000 civilians while the Phalange’s ally, the Israel Defense Forces, fired illuminating flares so that the killing could continue through the night.

A couple of weeks earlier, the United States under the Reagan administration had agreed to deploy U.S. Marines, alongside small military contingents from France, Britain, and Italy, as part of a multinational force in Lebanon. At least on the face of it, this deployment had a noble peacekeeping mission of quelling the violence in Lebanon. But Lebanese and other observers had reason to perceive the U.S. action as a weighing in on the side of Israel and the internal political forces it favored.

In addition to the background of the overall U.S.-Israeli relationship, the principal accomplishment of the multinational force was to facilitate the exit of the PLO from Lebanon, which was part of Israel’s objective in invading Lebanon in the first place.

Besides, as with other deployments of U.S. military personnel to already dangerous places, the lethal logic of force protection kicked in, and peacekeeping morphed into offensive action. President Reagan authorized “aggressive self-defense” against hostile forces that posed a threat to the Marines, with those same hostile forces also being adversaries of Israel and its Lebanese militia allies. The U.S. engagement on the ground was supported by naval gunfire, which would later include the battleship New Jersey firing 16-inch shells at targets in the mountains near Beirut.

All this was in addition to the usual loathing by domestic elements of any foreign military presence, which at other times and places has fed violent responses, including suicide terrorism.

The deadliest response to what the United States was doing in Lebanon came on October 23, 1983, when a suicide driver drove an explosives-laden truck into the building at the Beirut airport the Marines used as a barracks. The detonation of the truck bomb killed 220 Marines plus 21 other U.S. military personnel. It was the deadliest day for the U.S. Marine Corps since the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II and the highest single-day death toll for the U.S. military as a whole since the opening day of the Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968.

It is legitimate to argue that this high price was incurred in vain. The United States withdrew its forces, and the multinational force was dissolved a few months later, while the Lebanese civil war continued until 1990, and the Israeli occupation of parts of Lebanon would continue for 10 more years after that.

Responsibility for the bombing was claimed in the name of Islamic Jihad, which was later generally understood to be Lebanese Shia elements that would coalesce into what is now known as Hezbollah.

Hezbollah owed its origin and early rise in the 1980s to its stout opposition to the Israeli invasion and occupation. It has never looked to pick fights with the United States based on some al-Qaida-like transnational ideology. It has been sharply focused on its objectives of gaining and maintaining political power in Lebanon, defending the interests of Lebanese Shia, and defending Lebanon as a whole against Israeli depredations.

The overseas operations of Hezbollah have grown out of those objectives. These include two bombings of Israeli or Jewish interests in Buenos Aires, each of which was retaliation for Israeli attacks back in the Middle East, and Hezbollah’s support for its local ally, the Assad regime in Syria. The one attack on U.S. interests that may seem removed from fighting in Lebanon and in which Hezbollah may have had an indirect role (by supporting like-minded Saudi elements) — the bombing at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 — was again a matter of a resented U.S. military presence on foreign soil.

The bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 was a direct result of the United States allowing itself to be sucked into involvement in one of Israel’s offensive wars. Without that involvement, the bombing never would have happened.

A similar price to be paid for the United States getting sucked into Israel’s current wars will not necessarily be paid within Lebanon. The battering that the Israeli offensive has inflicted on Hezbollah’s capabilities in Lebanon has probably not diminished its capability for asymmetric operations elsewhere. Its willingness to use that capability against U.S. interests grows to the extent that the United States allows itself to become associated with Israel’s lethal offensives and to the extent those offensives make parts of Lebanon similar to the ghastly rubble of Gaza.

Okay, buckle up for a ride!

Akkadian is a Semitic language with a weird, cobbled-together writing system. It's a bit like a rebus: we can figure out that "👁️ ❤️ 🐑" means "I love you," because "eye" sounds like "I," hearts connote love, and a female sheep is a ewe, which sounds like "you." Likewise, a given cuneiform sign can be one of three things: a syllabogram (representing the sound of particular syllables, like 👁️), a logogram (representing a particular idea, like ❤️); or a determinative (representing a category of ideas, like "Dr."). In many cases, a given sign could be any one of those, depending on context. As a result, there are many possible ways to spell most words—although certain sign combinations tend to get standardized in a particular place and time.

In this case, "UGA" is the logogram for a corvid, and "MUŠEN" is the determinative for a bird. So one way to write "a crow" (literally "a crow-bird") would be to combine the signs for UGA and MUŠEN. (MUL is the determinative for an astral body, so if you were trying to say "the crow-planet," you could write it as "star-crow-bird," or "MUL.UGA.MUŠEN."). And yes, the order does matter in most cases; I wouldn't rearrange them.

But! Instead of writing something logographically, you could "spell it out" using syllabograms. So the word erēbu/arēbu, which is what "crow" would have sounded like, can be broken down into syllables and spelled that way, e.g. a-re/ri-bu. When the Epic of Gilgamesh describes sending out a raven as part of the Flood story, it spells it as "a-ri-bu." (Well, technically a-ri-ba/a-ri-bi, because those are the declined forms.)

The simplest two options that appear in the corpus, then, are UGA or BURU4 ("crow" without the "bird" determinative, which is optional) or a-ri-bu. Here's what those look like, using two different potential writing styles: Old Babylonian (an earlier and more complex writing system) and Neo-Assyrian (a more rectilinear, streamlined, later writing system):

As you can see, UGA is a very complicated sign, so I would recommend choosing either BURU4 or a-ri-bu. I find Neo-Assyrian much easier to reproduce, but the choice of writing system is up to you.

I hope this helps. Send me a picture of what you produce; it sounds so fun!

Many people would prefer to discuss anything—including politics—if it means they don't have to talk about money. But financial conversations are essential to avoid misunderstandings and money missteps, including across generations. That's why you should talk to your parents about money as they near (and enter) retirement and older age.

When you start asking financial questions of your parents, remember that you don't need specifics, such as dollar amounts or who is inheriting what. The purpose of these discussions is to ensure your parents' wishes are backed by a plan and to understand whether (and how) they want or need your support as they age. Their plan may also affect you directly if you have power of attorney, help with paying bills, or are expected to be a caregiver in the future.

What are their wishes for their money?

The first question you might ask your parents is what they want to happen with their money as they age. Do they want to travel? Gift it to a charity or organization they care about? Fund education for their grandkids? Comfortably cover long-term care costs? This can help guide ongoing conversations about how they can plan for their future and how you can support them in the process.

Do they have an estate plan?

An estate plan is something all adults should work on long before retirement, as it determines what happens to your assets if you are incapacitated or pass away at any age as well as how your medical care is handled. A good estate plan provides clarity about your parents' wishes and can minimize both the tax impacts and legal complexity down the line.

Estate plans generally include a will, a living will (which spells out medical treatments you do and do not want), power of attorney (POA), and beneficiary designations (more on this below). Some estate plans also include trusts, which direct how assets are handled after death, and power of attorney for kids at age 18, which allows parents to participate in decision-making (such as healthcare) for their young adult children.

What are their assets (and how are they titled)?

A key step in estate planning is taking a full inventory of assets: real estate, vehicles, bank accounts, investments and retirement accounts, insurance policies, credit cards, valuable personal property, collectibles, ownership stakes in businesses, etc. An inventory will also include liabilities, like mortgages and other debts. This can help your parents anticipate estate tax issues and minimize future legal costs (avoiding the probate process) such as by designating real property as transferable or payable on death or putting it in a trust.

How are they funding retirement?

Without asking for specific numbers, talk to your parents about how they are paying for expenses in retirement and which account(s) they are funding these expenses from. This can help clarify how costs will be covered as they age and what assets will be part of their estate.

Sean Williams, a certified financial planner (CFP) at Cadence Wealth Partners in North Carolina, recommends also discussing the current and future tax implications of funding retirement from different types of accounts and what happens to those accounts when they are left behind. For example, beneficiaries of IRAs inherit the required minimum distributions and tax burdens, which can be significant if you are still in your highest earning years, while non-qualified investment accounts can be inherited but not saddle you with capital gains tax, thanks to a step-up in basis.

Have they designated power of attorney?

Power of attorney is an essential part of estate planning because it authorizes someone to make legal, financial, and/or medical decisions when you cannot act on your own behalf. There are a number of different POA designations and scenarios, but if there is trust between parents and children, Williams recommends discussing durable power of attorney, as this can help their agent to act quickly in an emergency for everything from paying bills to arranging end-of-life care. This conversation should also cover your parents' wishes in more detail.

Do they have updated beneficiaries?

Every financial account should have a beneficiary, which ensures that your assets go where you want them to when you die. Not naming beneficiaries (and updating them if wishes or circumstances change) can lead to confusion and hurt feelings and cost a lot of money and time to sort out. In many cases, parents can designate one or more primary beneficiaries to receive percentages of accounts as well as contingent beneficiaries if the primary beneficiaries have passed away or cannot assume the asset.

How will care be provided and paid for?

Even if your parents are in good health, you should discuss plans for how they will receive care as they age and how that care will be paid for. Healthcare and eldercare costs add up quickly and can be astronomical for older adults who need higher levels of long-term support. Fidelity estimates that the average 65-year-old in 2024 may need $165,000 in after-tax savings to cover healthcare expenses in retirement (a 5% increase over the previous year). Meanwhile, long-term care can easily cost tens of thousands to more than six figures per year.

The National Institute on Aging has a guide to financing long-term care, such as through public and private financing as well as assistance for caregivers of older family members, to support this conversation.

How can important information be accessed if needed?

If your parents already have all of their plans in order, that's great—but you need to know how to access information (or have a trusted person who does) if your parents are incapacitated or pass away. This may include the names and contact information of any professionals that are involved in financial planning and management as well as legal representation. You should also discuss how to hand down logins to everything from bank to social media accounts. Consider a password manager that has a legacy feature, which gives a designated contact emergency access under specific circumstances, and/or the option to securely share selected items with other account holders (if you are helping with day-to-day money management, for example).

You may also encourage your parents to put together a digital estate plan, which is basically a will for digital assets like photos, apps, and online accounts.

How to have financial conversations with your parents

You'll want to approach financial conversations with care, as these topics can be difficult and fraught with emotion—especially if your family does not talk about money. One way to open the discussion is to ask your parents what they want or hope for as they age, suggests Eric Roberge, a Boston-based CFP and founder of financial planning firm Beyond Your Hammock. You might ask questions about how they envision their later years and how they would want things handled if they were unable to make their own decisions.

"Framing it as 'I want to know what YOU want, so I can support you' can be a more productive way to start a conversation that most people are understandably reluctant to have for all kinds of reasons," Roberge says. "Once you get an idea of what your parents may have in mind for what their ideal scenario is, then you can start honing in on specific plans or tactics that may need to be put into place to support what they say is most important to them."

Another option to broach the topic: Let your parents know that you are working on your own estate and retirement planning. Sharing your own experience can create common ground and highlight the importance of the process for both generations.

Know that you won't cover everything in one conversation—in fact, financial planning conversations should be ongoing—and that it will likely feel uncomfortable. Start with the easiest or most approachable topic first and go from there. Remember that you don't need specifics, such as which beneficiaries are receiving which assets, right away. Rather, the goal is to help your parents protect their financial wellbeing and their wishes.

Thanks to G. for sending: “This is new. At the entrance to the alley next to old H Street Country Club.”

From the DC Fire & EMS Foundation:

“The DC Fire & EMS Department has lost 102 firefighters in the line of duty since 1856. There is currently no memorial in the District of Columbia honoring these firefighters’ ultimate sacrifice. The DC Firefighters Memorial Helmet Project memorializes every DC firefighter who died in the line of duty with the installation of memorial helmets and plaques on streetlights at the locations of their ultimate sacrifice. You can read their stories here.

To see a map of the locations, click on the LODD Locations box here.”

I also spotted one at Connecticut and Van Ness: