oh craps! not this shit again.

gambling has been around longer than rules..... longer than morality... and the alphabet. whether you’ve ever rolled dice or not, you’ve for sure gambled before. everyone has. ancient myth even credits one man, palamedes, with inventing both letters of the alphabet and dice, which means the same figure tied to language and reason also gets blamed for chance.

the story gets stranger from there. the article below, pulled from a 1967 issue of monsieur, goes into how dice moved from divine tools to human habits and is not too concerned with where fact ends and folklore begins.

people talk about atlantic city and vegas like gambling is some modern moral failure, but risk was here long before the rules were if this asshole palamedes was the first one to write them down. (jk palamedes was apparently very smart don't haunt me!!!) everybody gambles. sometimes it’s black 11, sometimes it’s finding five dollars on the sidewalk, sometimes it’s not something you even realize has happened because it was so mundane.

here is a feature of the full musing, available on my substack. i will further go into this over the weeks on my substack and in the next issue of the diving horse. consider subscribing, you'll help keep the lights on and keep things moving at casa diving horse.

read more: https://thedivinghorse.substack.com/p/so-its-always-been-craps