Because once that door swings open a little bit… who knows what might bear some scrutiny?

Who made the clothes you’re wearing? Or your phone? Were they a slave? A child? Are they even still alive, or do they have cancer because of the factory where they worked? Do their parents miss them, if they’re gone?

What happened to make the chicken sandwich you had at lunch? Are you complicit in slow torture unto death, just by existing in the modern world?

Better to keep the door shut tight, and attack the messenger if anyone has anything to say about it. We’re just making music here. No torture, no killing, no profit from the destruction of lives. Just music! Trust me. Enjoy.

(I don’t think most people are like this. I actually think most people in the West at this point are against the “war” in Gaza, to at least some tepidly inactive degree. But certainly, also, a lot of people aren’t against it, q.v. this article.)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I turned in a time card once that had over 24 hours of work on it in a row. The boss was dating a stripper, and she would sometimes bring stripper friends to our parties and hangouts. We had ninja weapons in the office. The heat was shitty, so in the winter we had to use space heaters, but that would overload the house’s power which would cause a breaker to blow which obviously caused significant issues, so a lot of people would wear coats at their desks in the winter, but that obviously doesn’t do much for your typing fingers which was an issue. I frequently would sleep in the office on the couch (a couple of people were living in bedrooms in the upstairs of the house).

Like I say, it’s not surprising that we went out of business. It was definitely pretty fuckin memorable though. Those are just some of the stories or right-away memorable pieces off the top of my head.

Startup in a rented house in a residential neighborhood

“Router” was an old PC running Linux with a few network cards, with no case, with a household fan pointed at it to keep it cool

Loose ethernet cables and little hubs everywhere

Every PC was its own thing and some people were turbo nerds. I had my Linux machine with its vertical monitor; there were many Windows machines, a couple Macs, servers and 2 scrounged Sun workstations also running Linux

No DHCP, pick your own IP and tell the IT guy, which was me, and we’ll set you up. I had a little list in my notebook.

It was great days my friends

We went out of business; no one was shocked