deathmtn

An incredible account by a Black man who worked at Cards Against Humanity (if you don't know it, it's a reskinning of the card game Apples-to-Apples for people without imaginations). Among other things, Max Temkin tried to get him to "sign off" on having an n-word card and then made his family think he needed psychiatric help because he was talking about racism.

I haven't been into Max Cavalera's post-Sepultura work, but I notice he still has really good taste and keeps up with current music. I know about Celtic Frost, Bolt Thrower, Nile, and Nails, but I hadn't heard the rest, which are really good.

Batushka is particularly striking.

Via Amin, a a really good video piece by Arthur Jafa. It was from 2016.

Another one for the slow recall files: It took me a minute to remember name of our office manager.

When I moved away from Chicago, rather than selling my condo, I rented it out to cover the mortgage, hoping that some day the place would be worth as much or more than I bought it for. (The housing crash happened shortly after that.)

My most recent tenant was the best tenant. He was honest and earnest, and when he was late with rent he communicated about it in a straightforward way. He was really kind whenever I spoke to him on the phone, even when he was talking about something that he needed me to get fixed.

He moved out a bit of over a month ago, and I just found out that he had died a few days ago from complications from the coronavirus.

If you actually bother to read this weblog, I'm sure you are considerate and are doing your part to not spread this disease. Probably like you, I wish more people as did their part as well so that fewer people would be killed.

10-4-4-4-4-11. Long break after the first set to take a phone call.

Well, I got back on the podcasting horse. New episode of Small Findings. It's not a happy episode, but it's done.

10-4-4-11. Dinner break. 4-4.

I’ve had to deal with less real estate stuff than some of my friends, but I have to say, I totally hate it. These tasks are thoroughly unpleasant.

Re-read articles Arbery's killing. A lot of the killers' defense is about Arbery walking onto an empty construction site. I've done that probably dozens of times. This elevation of property over life is incredible.

It turns out WAI-ARIA is the full name of ARIA, not an evil version of it.

35-minute run, 10 pull-ups. Falling way short of getting it done before noon, but at least landing on before 5.

I remember looking for Beatnuts CDs after hearing them on some DJ Babu CD. I couldn't find any, then completely forgot about them for nearly two decades. I just remembered, and they're actually good as I thought they might be back then!

This one has a nice surprise uncredited guest.

I spent the afternoon reading the appendices of Lord of the Rings. In a way, this was really regressive thing to do. This did not make me a better person in any way. I did not learn anything, nor was it even my first time reading them. But it was a genuine escape, which I haven't had in quite a while.

The new Noveller single is really good, if you like ambient music created by guitars with so many effects that they don't sound like guitars.

I am old, so I guess it follows that I use up time writing cranky letters like this:

Hi, after a lot of struggling I was able to renew my Pro account for a year. There were two parts to the problem.

The worst part was that DigitalRiver requires you to accept third-party cookies. If you don't accept them by default, the credit form does nothing to tell you it has a problem. If your customer is not a web developer, you have probably lost them at this point.

The second problem is that even if you grind your way through payment, you still get notified by Flickr's account page that you are on a monthly payment plan, even though you started the whole journey by selecting the yearly plan.

I really like Flickr as a service and hope it sticks around for a long time. I know you are probably short-staffed, but I think it is important for you to prioritize making it much easier for customers to give you money.

Some answers about slavery I had to provide to a five-year-old

What did they make the slaves do?

They made them work for free and didn't give them any money for their work. They also did not let them do what they wanted, even though they were grown-ups.

Why did they do it?

So they could have money without having to do any work. (Saying this out loud made it seem especially cruel.)

How did they do it?

The slave owners hurt people if they didn't do what they told them to do. People went to another continent, Africa, to kidnap people and make them come to America to be slaves.

Who did it?

(I had to think for a while before saying it.) White people in America 150 years ago.

Were they bad guys?

Yes. But another sad thing is that they told everyone they were good guys, and that everyone either believed them or were afraid to say that they weren't. A lot of bad guys think they're good guys, but the slave owners probably knew they were doing really bad things.

He had some good questions. We agreed that all of this was sad and mean.

It does help to look at slavery from this perspective to realize how incredibly cruel it is.

Black Lives Matter Master of Reality-style shirt. 100% of proceeds go to Black Lives Matter. Ordered it as hard as I could.