deathmtn

I’ve been eating beans lately, and I gotta say: They’re incredibly filling!

10-4-4-4-4-12.

It’s Quitting Day!

If you can afford it, consider donating to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, especially if you can take advantage of an employee donation match. This is where we put most of our donation money.

It's hard to evaluate non-profit organizations, though Charity Navigator can help with assessing whether or not an organization is scamming money or wasting it outright.

Measuring effect is more difficult. The NAACP LDF, though, produces litigation (that is often successful), and that is easy to see. Much of it is in the domain of voter rights and voter participation, which I think is one of the root problems in the United States, alongside Citizens United, poor education, technology-driven misinformation, and the Electoral College. (I'm talking about potentially addressable root problems here, not stuff like the people's fundamental inability to learn from observed mistakes or the possible inevitability of racism.)

Doctors Without Borders is another organization whose output is easy to check. They simply get medical care to a lot of people without skimming a lot off the top like the Red Cross does. And as it says in the name, they do a lot of work outside the US, though due to our incompetent handling of the coronavirus, they do a lot within our borders, too.

35-minute run, 12 pull-ups. It was way warmer than I thought it was going to be.

I wrote a what's basically a book report about Things Fall Apart that relates it to King of the Hill.

I’m planning what I’m going to do over the next few months, and it is shockingly easy to fill without even getting through a third of what I imagined.

I started playing Link’s Awakening last night. I am actually stuck. (I was previously stuck near the very beginning.) This is a remake of a GameBoy game. It can’t be that hard. Or is it that I’m not used to ‘80s levels of non-hand-holding?

That aside, it’s really enjoyable. And the mini games, like the fishing and skill crane are really good. (I normally hate minigames.)

From The Fire Is Upon Us:

Soon after the four hundred civil rights protesters began their short march to the jail, their leaders sensed they were in for trouble. After making it only half a block, the marchers were confronted by a blockade of law enforcement officers who ordered them “to disperse or to return to the church” As planned, Dobynes knelt to lead the group in prayer before returning to the church, but as he lowered his head, a state trooper bludgeoned him with a club. The Alabama law enforcement officers on the scene had the foresight to keep the news media on the other side of the square and unofficially “deputized” some local segregationist ruffians to keep the reporters at bay in the event Violence broke out. Soon after the state troopers attacked Dobynes, the reporters began to make their move across the square, only to be met by the segregationist mob, which proceeded to assault them and destroy their cameras. In the midst of the assault, the correspondent from the New York Times reported that

“Negroes could be heard screaming and loud whacks rang through the square.” Jimmie Lee Jackson—a twenty-six—year-old church deacon—sought refuge from this horror, along with his mother and his injured eighty-two-
year—old grandfather, in Mack’s Café. State troopers followed the family into the café, and began beating Jackson, his mother, and his grandfather with clubs. At some point in the melee, a state trooper shot Jackson twice
in the stomach. A few days later, Jackson would die from his wounds.

I hadn’t thought deputizing was practiced in modern times. Then, I learned that the police had informally deputized the White man who murdered Ahmaud Arbery. And the police standing by as White supremacists beat and shot at people at Charlottesville now seems like something loosely akin to that. I think it’s feasible that some of those cops were thinking “These people are doing our work.”

The guy has been repeating “We’re saying it right now!” for the last ten minutes.

It’s annoying, but I can’t argue with that.

20-minute run, 10 burpees, 12 pull-ups. But also three hours of standing in the park talking to dads earlier today. Standing takes more out of you than you think. Try some extended standing!

Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency company, has faced many internal complaints about discriminatory treatment.

But in September, Mr. Armstrong published a public blog post telling employees to leave concerns for issues like racial justice at the door. He said that while the company embraced diversity, the staff needed to focus on Coinbase’s mission of profit and advancing cryptocurrencies. They should resign if they did not agree, he said.

We must always keep in mind: The important thing in the world is blockchain.

10 burpees, 12 pull-ups, 5-3-1 deadlifts.