Chengyu (Wikipedia)

“Chengyu (traditional Chinese: 成語; simplified Chinese: 成语; pinyin: chéngyǔ; trans. “set phrase”) are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four Chinese characters. Chengyu were widely used in Literary Chinese and are still common in written vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chengyu in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over... [More]”

This is a long video. It’s a pretty good video, though. It’s quite soothing to listen to and there are really a lot of good movies in there, with lovingly curated clips of all of them. I like to watch these things to see if there’s something I can add to my movie list. I’ve been doing this for a long time, so everything that looked interesting to me … had also already been consumed by me. 🤷🏼‍♂️

The video has a pretty clickbait-y title, but the author is someone I’ve... [More]

The interview below is a podcast interview of Mark Blyth by some dude named Chris who sounds like Ira Glass somehow had a child with NPR, then raised it in a box, feeding it only the New York Times for 50 years.[1] Anyway, Chris doesn’t talk a lot because Mark just can’t stop spitting the truth. I only really disagree with Blyth about Biden’s economic accomplishments but otherwise the guy was on absolute fire. Highly recommended. I have, as usual, transcribed the bits I found to be especially... [More]

Some of the features described in the video below sound pretty interesting but they also sounds super-complicated, with deferred-loading, hydration, signals, and event/replay all combined with decisions about whether something loads on the client or the server or whether it’s initially built on the server but then enhanced on the client and then run independently from the server, …

I understand that a lot of this technology is for optimizing large web sites, but It’s honestly questionable... [More]

The following video shows not only when and how to use calc-size(), it also mixes in advice on generating timing functions for animations, sprinkles CSS variables throughout, and even uses overflow: clip combined with an absolutely positioned element to reveal more content without disturbing the layout.

Animate and do math on things like height: auto with interpolate-size and calc-size() by Kevin Powell (YouTube)

The syntax for calc-size() is, as Kevin says, “weird”; you have to pass two parameters: the first is the name of the logical size you’d like to use, while the second parameter is a formula that... [More]

The picture and title are, as usual, clickbait-y, because apparently people don’t click on videos that sound educational unless you promise them ground-breaking learnings. Still, I don’t hate the player; I hate the game. But it’s the world we have.

The video is quite informative and is 90% not the guy pictured. Instead, it’s another guy called Gui Ferrera, who is quite competent.

The Correct Way to Run Database Migrations in EF Core by Nick Chapsas / @gui.ferreira (YouTube)

He starts by explaining how to deploy migrations in production—you don’t just run them, as you would in... [More]

The 2024 Year in Review (PornHub Insights) is available and has some fun facts.[1] For example, the U.S. had about the same percentage increase for “sneaky cheating” as the French did for “femme a lunette” (women with glasses). This blog post is 100% worth it just to learn terms like “milf culona” (big-ass MILF) in Spanish, which, together with “culo grande” (big ass) in Italian, set a sort of U.N.-like agreement about priorities for a lot of countries. Ukraine, though, wins with a trending search for “на... [More]

The article Given George Stephanopoulos’ Carelessness, ABC’s Defamation Settlement With Trump Seems Prudent by Jacob Sullum (Reason) writes,

“In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) on ABC’s This Week last March, host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Donald Trump, now the president-elect, had been “found liable for rape.” A week later, Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for defamation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, noting that a jury had deemed... [More]”

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

1. Live Free or Die Hard (2007) — 7/10
2. Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) — 8/10
3. Whiplash (2014) — 9/10
4. The Punisher (2004) — 8/10
5. Ein Schatz zum Verlieben (Fool’s Gold) (2008) — 7/10
6. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015) — 8/10
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) — 4/10
8. Lost in Translation (2003) — 9/10
9. Bad Monkey S01 (2024) — 8/10
10. The Last Castle (2001) — 8/10

Live Free or Die Hard (2007) — 7/10

John McClane (Bruce... [More]

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy... [More]