deathmtn

Having gotten the taste for roll-and-move board games from the Pigeon activity book, the guy is into Talisman now. Getting the water bottle, which allows you to not lose a life in the desert, excited him a great deal.

I avoid painting on large canvases because I don’t want to mess them up, but some kinds of paintings are way easier on large canvases. Painting tiny gradients sucks.

North Korea Unveils What Appears to Be New ICBM During Military Parade

This is the surprising part to me:

Mr. Kim dedicated much of his speech to thanking his people, as well as his military, for enduring “huge challenges and difficulties,” including living under sanctions even as the country temporarily closed its border to its only major trading partner — China — to try to keep the coronavirus from slipping into North Korea. He also apologized to his people for failing to live up ​to ​their expectations.

“I am really sorry for that,” he said, ​appearing to fight back tears. “My efforts and sincerity have not been sufficient enough to rid our people of the difficulties in their life.”

Mr. Kim’s emotional apology was “a shrewd way of placing blame on circumstances beyond his control, and deflecting attention from the enormous resources poured into nuclear weapons​,” Jean H. Lee, a North Korea expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said in an email.

(Emphasis mine.) Insincere or not, he apologized. I don’t think that he or his father or grandfather have ever apologized in anyway before. Millennials!

I’m cautiously optimistic: I don’t have any morning crunchiness in my wrists for the first time in weeks. (“Crunchiness” meaning this sort of “ripping” feeling inside the wrist when you flex it. I don’t quite know how to describe it.)

I avoided typing all day yesterday and made myself stay in a bath for twenty minutes even though I wanted to leave the whole time. Today’s outcome could be because of that or because of other cumulative efforts. Either way. I’m going to continue not typing today.

Well, me and the guy finished Lord of the Rings tonight. I think we started in May. 1008 pages!

He asked why everyone was going across the sea, and all I could come up with is that is the elves’ original home and as for Frodo and Bilbo, I said that they’re going because maybe they’ll feel better over there.

Well, the US hit a record for new coronavirus cases in a single day. Again.

Sixteen states reported single-day records for new cases on Friday: Iowa, Kentucky, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Montana, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oregon, Kansas, Ohio, Colorado and Maine. And three states hit record deaths: Tennessee, Montana and New Mexico.

This is going to be a bad winter, as we knew.

Seeing that many of those states are swing states brings the onset of Election Fear. Given that polling places are not requiring masks, I can’t help but think this will keep people at home, especially those with higher-risk health conditions.

I have been worried about the election because there are so many ways in which voting can be suppressed or even disrupted. All of the ways it was done in 2016 are available, plus many new ways including outright voter intimidation by violence and delegitimizing mail-in voting. But now, it is a tangible fear. It’s how I imagine fantasy Dragon Fear works. Or perhaps I don’t experience just regular fear enough to not make it a big deal like this.

I’m hoping I can numb it to avoid an entire month of fear.

Let’s never forget: Kentucky State Police used Hitler quotes — prescriptively — in training materials.

One slide, titled “Violence of Action,” in addition to imploring officers to be “ruthless killer[s],” instructs troopers to have “a mindset void of emotion” and to “meet violence with greater violence.”
A line from Adolf Hitler’s fascist and anti-Semitic manifesto, Mein Kampf, is featured in the slide: “the very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”
The presentation also links to a Hitler page on Goodreads, a database of quotes and books.
Two other slides quoting Hitler bring his total to three, making him the most quoted person in the presentation.
…

In a deposition on October 14, KSP Captain James Goble said that Lieutenant Curt Hall, whose name is on the slideshow, taught “warrior mentality” trainings at the KSP Academy.
Hall was the Assistant Commander at the KSP Academy from 2005 to 2015, and later became Commander of Internal Affairs at KSP before recently retiring. The internal affairs unit is typically tasked with investigating police misconduct.

I’m sure he investigated real hard over there.

A closing slide of the Powerpoint simply states “Über Alles” in large text.

12 pull-ups, put on our Yakety Sax playlist and ran around the house with the guy. It has not been a great week for working out!

This is an academic paper (albeit a business school one): Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit

When employees act by exiting, they are trying to escape from the bullshit and the bullshitter. This can involve quitting the organization or seeking a transfer to a different unit of the orga- nization so as to avoid the influence of the bull- shitter. Exiting is a likely reaction when employees are so appalled by the bullshit that they cannot stay with the organization or unit, or when they are already disillusioned, and the bullshit (possibly the latest bout in a stream of bullshit) is the last straw. For exiting to happen, employee dissatis- faction with the situation must rise to such a level that the disadvantages of remaining and facing bullshit in the workplace are greater than the disadvantages of leaving.

Too real!

I’m disappointed that there’s no Rosetta Stone for playlists that’ll let you play tracks from a playlist from a given platform on another one. The closest thing are services that port playlist between platforms, if you sign up for the service.

10-4-4-4-4-11.

Chris Rock's Top 25 Hip Hop Albums (from 2004)

He's insightful and has good taste, but also I found this comment incredibly funny:

Doggystyle, to me, is better than Dr. Dre's The Chronic. It has held up way better because it's a party album, and its lyrics are better. The Chronic is sonically incredible, but it's hard to drive around singing songs about "Eazy-E can eat a big fat dick."