deathmtn

Sometimes, I'll really just let myself go during a lunch conversation, and lot of time, I end up in dark territory. I feel kinda bad about that.

Incidentally, in case anyone's concerned about me, I'm doing fine, if you consider the isolated circumstances of my life and of my immediate family and friends. Much like Erik says:

so the world is falling apart but my particular corner is going ok i guess.

Secretary of Homeland Security Nielsenresponding to questions about where the girls and toddlers that have been separated from their parents at the border are:

Q: A couple of questions. One, why is the government only releasing images of the boys who are being held? Where are the girls? Where are the young toddlers?

SECRETARY NIELSEN: I don’t know. I am not familiar with those particular images.

Q: You don’t know where they are? Do you know where the girls are? Do you know where the young toddlers are?

SECRETARY NIELSEN: We have children in DHS care -- both. But as you know, most of the children, after 72 hours, are transferred to HHS. So I don’t know what pictures you’re referencing, but I’d have to refer you to HHS.

Q: We’ve seen images of boys, but we just haven’t seen any of the girls or any of the young toddlers. And you’re saying that they are being well cared for. So how can you make that claim if you don’t know where they are?

SECRETARY NIELSEN: It’s not that I don’t know where they are. I’m saying that the vast majority are held by Health and Human Services. We transfer them after 72 hours. I don’t know what pictures you’re speaking about, but perhaps there are --

Q: The pictures have been released to public; they’ve been aired all over national television.

SECRETARY NIELSEN: Okay. By DHS? Or by HHS?

Q: By DHS.

SECRETARY NIELSEN: Okay. So let’s find out from HHS. I don’t think there’s anything other than (inaudible) pictures.

Q: They were released by your department. I mean, they’ve been aired all over national television throughout the day -- the kids who are being held in the cages. We’ve only seen the boys.

SECRETARY NIELSEN: I will look into that. I’m not aware that there is another picture.

Yes.

(Emphasis added.)

And that's the end of her discussion of that. As Aaron Rupar points out, she states that she and DHS do know where the girls and babies are, but ignores the question of why they never show pictures of them. Most of the possible explanations for why they won't produce a picture of them are horrific.

I've argued many times over the past two years that the right has showed who they truly are in November of 2016. All of their claims about valuing families, Christian morality, honoring the military, free-trade economics, standing against corruption, valuing "all lives" were proven false. Traditional Republicans and young anime-avatar conservatives alike voted for a blatant shitbag that explicitly demonstrated disrespect for all of those traditional Republican values, loudly and on multiple occasions. The only right-wing value he signaled a belief in was bigotry. He made it loud and clear that he thought that people of color, women, queer and trans people deserved worse positions by default. This was a values ranking test, and the right ranked bigotry above all else.

The thing is, no White person wants to believe their uncle is more motivated by racism than an opposition to taxes. However, I think it's important to recognize the prioritization of values, not so we can condemn the right to hell, but so we can predict what the right wants and act accordingly.

This current wave of family persecution is exactly what right-wing voters want out of Trump: Pain for immigrants; pain for people of color. Putting them in their place.

I would like to be proven wrong. I would like to see the right stand up and decide that they've changed their minds since 2016. I would like to see them say even asylum seekers are human, and this is the wrong thing to do to humans, and pressure Trump to stop doing this.

I am not going to plan for this to happen, though.

Reading Karl Gerstner lately. It's really interesting stuff, but I have been conditioned to expect some unhinged Time Cube style theories and/or 18th century occult rituals to jump out whenever I see lots of geometrical pattern diagrams with small labels on them.

I've been getting into ambient music lately, and it's something I instinctively detested in the past. Art that gives people their space is a great idea, though, and software and social media could stand to learn from it.

I've been all about this small notebook lately. It's nice to:

1) Write/draw thoughts out physically
2) Not have to get a phone involved whenever I want to remember something or think it through.

Unfortunately, I lost mine last week. I was cool with it because I think I remember most of what was in there, but there were also checklists in there. Checklists with things I have since done and could be ✔︎ing off!

Got pull-ups in before the sun got Waves of Death hot, but it was still kinda hot. Nice breeze, though. 9*-5-3-3.

*This might have been 10, but I was thinking about leg posture and not concentrating, so I wasn't sure if I skipped 5 or not.

Heh, my entire family got up before me today.

Extremely tempted to add media support to note-taker right now, but I'm sticking to shifting all of that kind of stuff to the morning and getting regular sleep. Perseverance!

What’s Really Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families Are Separated?

AC: How does that child navigate their deportation case without their parent around?

TM: Because a five-year-old doesn’t necessarily know his parents’ information.

AC: In the shelters, they can’t even find the parents because the kids are just crying inconsolably. They often don’t know the full legal name of their parents or their date of birth. They’re not in a position to share a trauma story like what caused the migration. These kids and parents had no idea. None of the parents I talked to were expecting to be separated as they faced the process of asking for asylum.

I never want to forget what this administration is doing to people.

Me: "OK, I'll get you some water."
The guy: "No, I want actual sink water!"

Gyros: Generally good, but much better when you're hungry.

Well, I got done with the AC. It was unsatisfying (my windows never resemble the ones air conditioner designers target), but I feel the installation is safe. I hope these BTUs are worth it.

Re: AC support brackets: The weight rating isn't all you should consider when picking one. I have a 50 lb. AC, so I got the small one that can support up to 80 lbs. I installed it, and it was too short to reach the actual wall; it braced against the outside window frame, which is was not comfortable with. So, I had to return it.

This, hopefully, concludes National Backup Fixing and Air Conditioner Installation Day.

Hand-driving in a 3" wood screw because I don't hand a real drill, and I can't get the collet nut off my Dremel. This was how humanity was meant to spend its time

Started listening to music to motivate me to install the AC, but have pretty much just stopped completely in order to listen to Dragonmen, a song I love but don't actually know what it's about. Presumably, both dragons and men.

The guy, to me: "Stop showing me shapes!"

Heh, two days ago, I said that backups were working. Four commits later, I'm going to say they are for real.

It basically works by committing changes to git via cron on the live server, then pushing to a bare repo. Then, the backup server does a `git pull`. You have to specific the correct directory in the cron for this to work, though.

Also, apparently, mode changes are picked up by git? Your working tree will not be considered clean if you did a `chmod -R 755` or something.

Dave Lombardo also says y'know a bit, but I did listen to this episode. He's really honest, and it's kind of a depressing listen. He was a really pure musician, and he trusted people on business stuff to focus on drumming and writing drum parts. As a result, he is by far, the most technically accomplished member of Slayer.

Some combination of the other members of Slayer and managers cheated him out of his publishing cuts. Imagine any classic Slayer song without what Dave came up with. It's gutting to discover.

Was listening to an interesting interview with Chuck Billy on the Music Business Podcast, but I just had to stop because he says "y'know" before every sentence. This is something I did when I podcasted. I resolve to fix this before I podcast again!

In short: I will never podcast again.

Ah, that thing where you start cooking a dinner then realize that dinner's not going to be done on time, so you start cooking another, shorter, dinner.

Wily is chomping my head! I find multipart form encoding gross for some reason, but I guess I will implement media posting here.

I feel like this is the first time in my adult life that I've experienced the platonic summer that summer lovers love. It's nice, man.

Looks like it's going to end Monday, when we hit 96°F. But at least I had a month of it!

As a result of my honky tonk ignorance, every honky tonk song makes me think of Monday Night Football.

Hey, now Erik's extremely reliable timeline and links to the code that runs this site are in the footer.

I passed a small girl sitting on the sidewalk in a tae kwon do uniform, playing a mobile game.