Author: Andrew

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe to influence white Christian women. It helped to advance the abolitionist cause but has also received criticism for perpetuating stereotypes.

Bight is a term used in geography meaning a curve or bend in a coastline, river or other geographic feature.

Migrating WordPress / WooCommerce is not proving easy. I have tried the premium versions of Backup Guard and Duplicator and neither plugin has allowed me to migrate the site successfully. I have contacted their support teams but the fact that neither worked out of the box is annoying. Particularly as Duplicator Pro cost $79. To be fair, the backup file is quite large (860mb) and currently on a Google Compute Engine server running PHP 5 and I’m trying to move to a Digital Ocean droplet running PHP 7 but still.. $79!

Update: I managed to do this with Duplicator Pro’s beta drag and drop/admin panel feature.

Maybe make it blue or something?

The Best
DynaDot and NameSilo. Both have free whois privacy, free email forwarding and free DNS management. Plus Afternic and Sedo MLS integration for investors.

The Rest
GoDaddy By far the most the most popular registrar. More expensive than other registrars and a little sleazy with the upsells. Some will appreciate the phone support and localisation.
Epik They have some cool features and good prices. I have one name there and may transfer more there in the future.
Google I haven’t tried them but the interface is nice. Prices are a little higher.
PorkBun An oddly satisfying experience.

I think that I originally read this around Christmas 2017. I was especially hedonistic and unhappy at work at the time.

The days between Christmas and New Year’s day are allowed as holidays; and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor, more than to feed and take care of the stock. This time we regarded as our own, by the grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased. Those of us who had families at a distance, were generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society. This time, however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober, thinking and industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in making corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another class of us would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But by far the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable to the feelings of our masters. A slave who would work during the holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his master. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas.

From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake.

The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,—feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”- Mark Twain

“To begin, begin.”- William Wordsworth

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”- Lao Tzu

“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.”- Buddha