How my blog has looked through the ages (Click on images to enlarge. Links in italics are external and subject to rot):
2007:
March 28th 2007: I move my blog from Blogger to WordPress. I chose the Quentin theme (pictured above) because it made my imported Blogger posts look the least bad.
June 2007: I moved to the cleaner look of the White As Milk theme. I started doing posts on beautiful women and the brown background of Quentin looked terrible.
2008:
January 5th 2008: After playing around with different themes I move to the Connections theme. The picture is an angel from Leonardo’s “The Virgin of the Rocks” (1508).
May 2008: Through most of 2008 and 2009 I used masthead pictures taken from an old picture of Quiloa. So much so that some thought my name was Quiloa!
2009:
March 2009: I used this picture of Quiloa through most of 2009. Then about December I saw this masthead picture at mulattodiaries.com:
It sold me on the MistyLook theme that I use to this day:
2010:
January 2010: The masthead picture comes from “Blues” (1929) by Archibald Motley.
November 2010: From a picture of Nick’s Pub in Harlem. I loved this picture because it suggests people talking late at night, which is kind of how I saw my blog.
2011:
April 2011: Race map of metropolitan New York.
July 2011: From a tomb painting from Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qurnah, Egypt, c. 1400 BC. I was doing posts on Cheikh Anta Diop.
September 2011: Troy Davis. This was when the background turned black. That picture was too much for some, so I sarcastically changed it to:
October 2011: Bambi, the Disney version. The grim underlying message of this picture for me is that the Disney film plays in the US while Jews are sent to Treblinka.
Now the masthead picture changes every month or so. Here are some of them:
November 2011: From Vincent Van Gogh’s “Cafe Terrace at Night” (1888). In the same vein as Nick’s Pub.
2012:
January 2012: From a Mambu Bayoh photograph (2010).
February 2012: Whitney Houston, R.I.P. Shows her sitting on a cloud with Michael Jackson. From youngearlgrey.tumblr.com.
March 2012: Trayvon Martin.
March 2012: Arrest George Zimmerman! From Google Images.
April 2012: From “Curly” (2010) by Milos Gazdic.
May 2012: From the Naked Black Justice poster.
October 2012: From “Her SMIRK” (2012) by Mambu Bayoh. Model: Whippa Wiley.
2013:
May 2013: Being the only Black person. From Tumblr.
June 2013: From “Secret Self” (2010) by Tim Okamura.
July 2013: In the wake of the George Zimmerman trial, a picture of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin.
August 2013: The Dark Knight from Monty Python’s “Holy Grail” (1975), who reminded me of xPraetorius, a troll then at his height.
2014:
February 2014: From “La Martinique” (1986) by Françoise Huguier
April 2014: Model Loredana Ituah. From Tumblr.
May 2014: Asian Heritage Month. Detail from an Ansel Adams photograph (1943) of morning exercises at the Manzanar Japanese American internment camp.
August 12th 2014: A picture I made from Jet magazine covers, one from every ten years or so.
August 14th 2014: “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot”. Ferguson protest at Howard University.
September 25th 2014: The current masthead, for Hispanic Heritage Month. Taken from “The Virgin’s Seed” (1991), a mural in East Los Angeles by Paul Botello.
Newer mastheads are shown in the Masthead Museum Annex.
See also:
- blog masthead museum, part 2 – from 2014 to 2020
- First post in WordPress
- Pakistan
- I saw the iPhone for the first time
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Quiloa, aka Kilwa
- Harlem
- Cheikh Anta Diop
- Troy Davis
- A man was lynched yesterday
- Warsaw Ghetto – Treblinka, etc
- Whitney Houston
- Tumblr: yet more Internet crack
- Trayvon Martin
- Should George Zimmerman be arrested?
- George Zimmerman is found not guilty
- Emmett Till
- Notes on xPraetorius
- Welcome to Asian American History Month!
- Ferguson
- Welcome to Hispanic Heritage Month 2014
Abagond 
When I first came here you had a Christmas picture (maybe an angel?)
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I like the Black Barbies.
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And my favorite is Michael and Whitney sitting in heaven on a cloud that is just my all time favorite of all. I love that one. It touches my heart.
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@ Paige
I have special Christmas and Easter pictures. I left those out.
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Abagond, do you have statistics on readership changes since 2007?
Things like:
total unique readers/posters
sex
age
race
…
what changes have you witnessed?
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I read your blog daily but post seldom, mainly because I live a hectic, busy life. Every time I read your blog I learn something, and usually I’m also left pondering something in a way I had not previously done. Extremely high quality work, consistently, day in and day out. Provocative, thoughtful, intelligent, challenging — just a few of the adjectives I’ve used to describe your excellent work. In my opinion one the best blogs on the internet. You should be published formally.
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“Provocative, thoughtful, intelligent, challenging — just a few of the adjectives I’ve used to describe your excellent work. In my opinion one the best blogs on the internet. You should be published formally.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I agree with this. But how you well tolerate the deliberately ignorant (RACISTS and clueless) trolls totally escapes me. That’s a gift I don’t have.
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Hold on now lets not go crazy. There are qualitative limits on depth and criticality when you do “500 words a day on whatever I want”; these limits exist independent of the writer skill/ability…
So no Im not hating the player, but I am hating the game.
Accumulation of data is no substitute for comprehension of logic; but this is the direction internet culture is driving people. The “fastfoodification” of information, McNooz stories, and Drudge report style hype/fear based journalism… is not producing smarter people; and its definitely not making people wise.
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I remember lurking here in ’08 and I finally decided to join in the following year. It totally brings me back. 🙂
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Agabond’s tolerance of trolls and extremists is part of his Zen.
A writer of economy and precision like Agabond can say a lot in 500 words, especially if the topic is sufficiently focused.
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@ thwack
The last time I ran the numbers and wrote about it:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/traffic-on-this-blog/
Last I checked, maybe six months ago, the demographics were pretty much the same.
I turned on comments in 2007. As long as I can remember most commenters have been Black, particularly Black women. But there have been differences over time. In 2010 it seems I had more people in interracial relationships (like B.R.), in 2012 more race realist trolls, and in 2014 more Asian and Asian-involved people (like Kiwi, Biff, etc). At least some of that seems to be content-related.
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I love this post Abagond!
I found your blog when you had the “Naked Black Justice poster” masthead.
I adopted your idea of changing the masthead for three of my four blogs 🙂
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Blanc2
Agabond’s tolerance of trolls and extremists is part of his Zen.
————————————————————————————————
Or maybe he is trying to prepare you people for life in the REAL WORLD were you cannot “ban” people, delete their comments, place them in “moderation… because you don’t “like” what they say, agree with it, or they reveal flaws/contradictions in your logic…?
I feel sad for people who grew up on the internet because they are seriously handicapped in the real world. There is a world of consequence and accountability out there they are completely clueless about.
For years Neely Fuller has reminded people that grab the mic at his presentation; “Now don’t forget, you are in court; under the system of racism white supremacy, black people are ALWAYS in court…”
people would laugh about. But today think about how often you are on camera in a typical 24 hour period?
Think about how much of what you SAY and what you DO is being recorded?
Yet some people still don’t get it.
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@thwack: So what would be a better game? What would be make information widely accessible, i.e. even to the poor, but without diluting it?
@thwack: And what is said on the Internet can itself have real-world consequences, too.
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@thwack: So what do you do if you have that handicap?
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Hey Mike,
I didn’t mean to trash the internet as a tool/utility… Actually, its tailor made for black people since it allows us to interact without being in close proximity to each other (which far too often produces conflict)
Its just that the sheer volume of “stuff”
and “choices” it makes available to people, and ephemeral nature of the medium retards those things most necessary for constructive activity in the real world like integrity, focus, discipline, PATIENCE…
The internet is not the real world; yet increasingly, more and more people act like it is, in the real word.
The work around?
Don’t paddle around on the surface. Dive deep; don’t just read an article or watch a video on the 30 years war; read an entire book on it from start to finish. Go down deep, all the way to the bottom of the abyss. Look at all the skeletons and remember that the truth is black and ugly, which is why nobody wants it until its all they got left.
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@thwack: However, the thing I was wondering about would be how you would make that “deep” stuff accessible regardless of income level. What would it take to achieve distributive justice with regards to access to real knowledge?
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Mike,
the problem is NOT one of information distribution or access, the internet has very effectively wiped that problem out. The problem is cultural; what do people want to do/know…. You used to have to know some white people to get access to information that is now on the internet for free.
But for some reason this massive flood of information has resulted in many people never knowing what its like to have an original thought of their own.
Where does the motivation for knowledge come from? For most people it is money, sex, or ego. But since the internet has effectively monetized all 3 of those, large numbers of people are consuming their own feces; and paying to do it.
I don’t have the answer for self propulsion.
In some religious schools in Asia the first lesson for a monk involves being dressed in dirty rags and sent onto the street with a wooden bowl to beg for food for 2 weeks. Getting control or your ego is so important the teachers don’t even want to have anything to do with you until you experience this. Now compare this to internet culture?
Im not sure what you call it, but there is something “shifty” and untrustworthy about internet culture and as it seeps out into the real world I find the less I want to interact with it.
I might make a tee-shirt that says: “this ain’t the internet mother f*cker”
PS– don’t worry too much about helping/saving people. Save yourself; mother nature will take care of everything else. No matter how long the game, she always bats last.
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One other thing Mike; the internet means the monetization of everything. It is increasingly becoming the motivation behind anything and everything you experience on the internet.
Even your hate has been monetized; funny sad and true all at the same time. Somebody has now found a way to turn your anger into dollars in their wallet. Here is the most vulgar description I have found to date:
(http://www.returnofkings.com/36717/anatomy-of-a-troll-job-the-xobang-gang-and-the-business-of-rage)
But “click bait” has been an advertising staple even before “if it bleeds it leads” became nooz/journalism gospel.
But its even worse than that. Much of what you think is “News” or “journalism” is really something called an “advertorial” i.e, a commercial for a product or service that is cloaked in a news report on tee-vee or noozpapers, magazines…
Someone paid for that “news story” to be made.
So the next time you get mad ready to blow up over something on the internet; remember, your hate may be putting dollars in some body’s pocket.
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What is the new masthead? from Selma or the march on Washington?
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@ Jefe
My guess is that it is the March on Washington. This seems to be the same picture taken from behind:
http://thetransactiontax.org/2012/01/16/i-have-a-dream/
which clearly is the March on Washington.
But the masthead picture might be too cool to be real. Notice that it uses a 48-star flag. The column in the background matches the March on Washington, but the microphone does not:
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i stole that pic of mlk jr.
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We are here!
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@ Jefe
Yes! A post on it will be up soon.
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What is the new masthead?
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@ Jefe
It is a picture of a Comanche family from the early 1900s.
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How about the new one now?
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@ jefe
Well, now the old one. I just updated the masthead for Martin Luther King Day. It was from the Teahouse theme that I use in Gmail:
http://wp.jiinjoo.com/?p=481
It changes throughout the day. I used the one for 11.00pm to 1.00am since it shows the Teahouse Fox writing:
I do not know how culturally accurate or stereotypical it is or whether it is just a mishmash of Chinese and Japanese.
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Masthead’s I like:
“Her smirk” by Mambu Bayou.
The picture of Emmet Till and Travon Martin. Appears sketched in pencil.
“La Martinque” by Francoise Huguier.
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Curious where the current masthead depicts.
It looks like one of those grocery stores in the South, like Mississippi or Alabama.
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It is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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@ jefe
Taotesan is right. It is the Triple S Food Mart where Alton Sterling was killed by police.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/07/07/alton-sterling/
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