deathmtn

The sale’s top lot, David Hockney’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” (1972), sold for $90,312,500, becoming the most expensive work ever sold by a living artist. Someday, I'd like an explanation of the investor-class art market.

Heated-up grapes are shockingly good! I had a good hot grape adventure.

There's a long and dark story behind the character in that Dennehy song ("Bears, Hawks, Sox, Bulls"), which most people remember because it really sounds like a Chicago '80s/'90s guy if those guys rapped.

The reason for Dennis’s absence is explored on Kenny Dennis III. As it turns out, Dennis had been covering up a 20-year “bennies” addiction, one that nearly ruined his marriage to Jueles. He’d sobered up around the Bulls’ first championship in ‘91, but on Kenny Dennis III he relapses—enabled by deviant named Joji. The record is haunted by neurosis, paranoia, and disillusionment. On “Shidoshi,” Dennis’s swagger falters: “I make it look good,” he swears, but his life is falling apart in the periphery: “Juele she just so upset / Makes me upset / Joji is paging me / Party is in River Forest / Party in South Holland.”

Dag. That's a lot behind what appears to be a really light-hearted character. I always did wonder why he drank O' Doul's.

The reason Serengeti knows so many old Chicago guy touchstones is that he grew up alternately on the South Side and in Olympia Fields (way out by Tinley Park).

I'm feeling better than I was last evening! Violent sneezing seems to be over; febrile weakness gone. Drinking lots of water helped? Probably shoulda took a sick day yesterday, though. I always call it too late when it comes to sickness.

My new (very late) newsletter is out! Go read it and subscribe! There's thoughts on pushing it to the limit, the relaxingness of confidence, and getting big preschool laughs.

Now that Dark Souls is "sticking" with me (or I'm sticking with it), I'm noticing that the pacing is good.

Despite its reputation for being punishing, it's not relentless. There are quite a few spaces for taking everything in and contemplating what has happened. It's not too far from Breath of the Wild in that way.

Radiating from recovery points, there's wandering space, some easy (!) opponents, "how do I get there?" teasers, and of course, new and terrifying opponents. The journey back after those guys kill you isn't too disheartening so far, though, perhaps because I'm not in any sort of rush toward completion.

The deaths continue to be hilarious. Me jumping down a hole that was way deeper than I expected and dying and being told YOU DIED made Katt laugh harder anything on that TV in the last year.

Dark Souls takes a more realistic approach to drinking potions than the games that potions usually appear in. Meaning no one waits for you to drink your potion. Enemies are still trying beat your ass, even if you want to drink a potion. So, you have to dash away and try to glug that shit while guys come at you. Stopping your mace attacks to drink a magic Gatorade looks incredibly hilarious in this game.

I think I need to play some Dark Souls, then watch either a kung fu movie or Great British Bake-Off.

Facebook scrambled anew. Executives quietly shelved an internal communications campaign, called “We Get It,” meant to assure employees that the company was committed to getting back on track in 2018.

Software engineers will look the other way on quite a bit for $200K/year.

Facebook also used Definers to take on bigger opponents, such as Mr. Soros, a longtime boogeyman to mainstream conservatives and the target of intense anti-Semitic smears on the far right. A research document circulated by Definers to reporters this summer, just a month after the House hearing, cast Mr. Soros as the unacknowledged force behind what appeared to be a broad anti-Facebook movement.

Soros! Soros is behind Facebook criticism! Truly, he is today's most convenient Satan.

Mr. Schumer also has a personal connection to Facebook: His daughter Alison joined the firm out of college and is now a marketing manager in Facebook’s New York office, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In July, as Facebook’s troubles threatened to cost the company billions of dollars in market value, Mr. Schumer confronted Mr. Warner, by then Facebook’s most insistent inquisitor in Congress.

Back off, he told Mr. Warner, according to a Facebook employee briefed on Mr. Schumer’s intervention. Mr. Warner should be looking for ways to work with Facebook, Mr. Schumer advised, not harm it. Facebook lobbyists were kept abreast of Mr. Schumer’s efforts to protect the company, according to the employee.

Back off, man

That NYT article about Facebook itself spreading disinformation with the aid of traditional propaganda professionals

Dang it. Sick just in time for my day off.

There it is. Proof: If you don't like Boston, there's ~30% chance your state hates the Irish.

Bah, I think I'm getting sick again.

Aw shit! Composer Weekly this week is Guillaume de Fuckin' Machaut!

Machaut it out! Though I was previously only acquainted with his religious works, he is my (and probably most people's) favorite early music composer.

I don't know much about Bauhaus, except that they may have started goth, but I enjoy that in a recommendations interview, one of the band members recommends his children's bands'.

“This is my eldest daughter, Diva. When she was about 12, she really got into punk rock. We took her to see The Sex Pistols, and she played Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols non-stop. She plays bass in Poptone with me and Daniel, and she’s really good—she’s not there because she’s family. Still, when you hear Diva’s meditation music, I question why this person would ever have been a punk rocker: it’s nurturing and calming music, with a soulful beauty. When she was born, I looked into her eyes and saw this old soul, and she’s always been a spiritual being—her motivation is to make the world a better place, and that’s what comes through this music. She also records under the name Yialmelic Frequencies. Yialmelic isn’t an anagram; it where she travels to when she’s meditating, her home planet.

Seems like a really good and understanding dad.

"Mommy, you are my best friend.
Daddy, you are a friend."