What is the difference between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and Syria?

In both cases, a country has taken action to establish what it calls a “buffer zone” in a neighboring country that it finds threatening, out of what it considers to be legitimate “security concerns”. Security concerns arise whenever there is animosity between neighbors.

By dint of their respective overwhelming military advantage, Russia and Israel can force their neighbors to... [More]

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

1. Tschugger S01–S02 (2021–2022) — 9/10
2. Tschugger S03 (2024) — 9/10
3. Tschugger S04 (2024) — 9/10
4. Titans S01–S04 (2018–2023) — 7/10
5. Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance (2024) — 5/10
6. One Punch Man S01–S02 (2015–2019) — 9/10
7. End of Watch (2012) — 7/10
8. The Boy and the Heron (2023) — 8/10
9. The Killer (2023) — 6/10
10. Operation Hyacinth (2021) — 7/10

Tschugger S01–S02 (2021–2022) — 9/10

This show is a labor of love by David... [More]

According to the article Did Lyndon B. Johnson Say This About The ‘Lowest White Man’ and ‘Best Colored Man’? by David Emery (Snopes), it was a then-young Bill Moyers himself to whom Johnson said this, presumably in the 60s. Moyers quotes him as having said it in response to “... [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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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
• Economy & Finance
• Science &... [More]

I was recently bragging to a friend about how I’d finally just about conquered a difficult jigsaw puzzle with methodology and techniques, My friend of course asked[1] to which methodologies and techniques I might be referring.

Background

I was raised on jigsaw puzzles. We always had a Christmas puzzle at my house. When I was much younger, we did them throughout the year. As I got older, we only had the Christmas puzzle, but we always had that one.[2] Everyone in my nuclear family did it: mom, dad,... [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]

There was recently a “favorite Far Side” topic in the comics sub-reddit. I’ve lost the link and don’t feel like searching for it. I downloaded all of the ones that I liked, so consider this article a distillation of—and vast improvement over—that post,

The Far Side was pretty formative for me. Most of these are subversion of expectations, but many have multiple layers, which makes you feel clever for figuring it out. I had a lot of the books and collections and read through them again and... [More]

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

1. Terminator Zero S01 (2024) — 6/10
2. Kung Fu Hustle (2004) — 9/10
3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) — 7/10
4. Il pianeta delle scimmie (Planet of the Apes) (2001) — 5/10
5. JFK (1991) — 8/10
6. The Century of the Self (2002) — 9/10
7. Last Breath (2019) — 7/10
8. Farha (2021) — 8/10
9. Roma (2018) — 8/10
10. Another Life E01 (2019) — 3/10

Terminator Zero S01 (2024) — 6/10

As with any other Japanese animated feature, this one is... [More]

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

1. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) — 9/10
2. School of Rock (2003) — 6/10
3. Nuclear Now (2024) — 8/10
4. Sahara (2005) — 8/10
5. Glassboy (2020) — 6/10
6. The First Men in the Moon (1964) — 7/10
7. Dracula Untold (2014) — 8/10
8. Here Comes the Boom (2012) — 8/10
9. Arctic (2018) — 9/10
10. Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy (2024) — 9/10

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) — 9/10

My review from 2018 stands. It’s a fun super-hero action-movie that’s not trying to be... [More]

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

1. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) — 7/10
2. Shanghai Knights (2020) — 7/10
3. Cowboys and Aliens (2011) — 5/10
4. Fifth Element (1997) — 10/10
5. Assassin’s Creed (2016) — 5/10
6. The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) — 9/10
7. John Wick 4 (2023) — 8/10
8. Disturbia (2007) — 8/10
9. Split (2016) — 9/10
10. Platform 2 (2024) — 3/10

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) — 7/10

I don’t have much to add to my review from 2017.

I watched it in German. “Die... [More]”

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]

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
• Labor
• Economy & Finance
• Science... [More]

The video/podcast Talking Trump, RFK Jr., Epistemic Collapse, &c. by Justin Smith-Ruiu & Olivia Ward-Jackson (Hinternet) was pretty good. I credit both participants but, if we’re honest, Justin talks about 95% of the time. It was quite an interesting discussion, touching on several salient points.

Misinformed about Trump

I’m still somewhat surprised to hear how empire-tinged some of the Justin’s information is, despite his conclusions being decidedly anti-empire. In particular, he completely mischaracterized Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney,... [More]

Simon ShusterThe interview in the video below was quite good for showing what “manufactured consent” looks like in person. Simon Shuster is an affable, seemingly reasonable person who represents exactly what the U.S. empire wants him to represent. When Aaron pushes back, though, he concedes that Aaron is right but then doubles down on his opinion anyway—and always expressed in a friendly manner, negating the disagreement for the untrained listener.

If you listen to what he’s saying, he admits that... [More]

No. No, I’m not.

I was briefly considering it because two good programmer friends[1] of mine asked me, and it seemed like it might be kind of fun to compare our solutions.

But … 24 days, man.

I’ve got other things to do. Like, a lot of other things to do.

I am not in any way bored or looking for things to do.

I’m not even lacking in programming projects that I could be working on.

I’m teaching a JavaScript class right now, for which I’m constantly refining the examples and project code,... [More]

Breaking the Public Schools / Jennifer Berkshire by Chuck Mertz (This is Hell!) is an excellent interview about public-school funding with the very articulate—and clearly a trained podcaster—Jennifer Berkshire.

Jennifer BerkshireShe was a bit hesitant to go all-out revolutionary in some cases, preferring the more mealy-mouthed liberal-style formulations like (possibly paraphrasing here),

“It’s interesting that Republican representatives who otherwise oppose government expenditures are so generous with the public wallet when it comes to... [More]”

A little while back, someone wrote I can’t wrap my head around MVVM (Reddit), asking for help. I answered with a short example, reproduced below.

tl;dr: Use the MVVM Toolkit and try JetBrains ReSharper or Rider for more IDE assistance for binding and fixing up views.[1]

The concept is that:

• the (M)odel describes your data in the shape you want to store it, process it, etc.
• a (V)iew describes the elements of the UI.
• a (V)iew(M)odel mediates between these two “shapes”.

Why do we need this? Why not... [More]

2024 Election was the Oligarchic Elite vs. Corporate Elite (w/ Chris Hedges) (YouTube)

This is a fantastic and wide-ranging interview by Brianna. Hedges is at his morose and realistic best.

Near the end, they discuss the possibility of Hedges going on Rogan to teach him about Gramsci. I, for one, would absolutely watch the hell out of Chris Hedges on Joe Rogan. Joe would take a week off just to think about what had just happened.

Imagine Hedges bringing his message to Rogan’s audience. I really wonder what that would look like in terms of viewer numbers. Would the same people... [More]

The comic Bizarre Adventures #34 [Newsstand] (Comics.Org) came out in 1981.[1] It would be the final issue of the Bizarre Adventures series but it was the first one I picked up. I was nine years old. I loved this comic. My best friend loved this comic. He still quotes it to me every once in a while, usually around the holiday season. It was nearly impossibly subversive. I am proud of my mom that she let me buy it, even though it literally says “Not for kiddies! We mean it!” right on the cover.

It’s really hard... [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]

I watched this video analyzing a chunk of code, in the hopes of refactoring it.

Always Return Early in Your Code | Code Cop #024 by Nick Chapsas (YouTube)

The original code is the laughably overblown example below.

public List<int> ProcessData(List<int> data)
{
  if (data != null)
  {
    if (data.Count > 0)
    {
      var processedData = new List<int>();
      foreach (var d in data)
      {
        processedData.Add(d * 2);
      }
      return processedData;
    }
    else
    {
      return new List<int>();
    }
  }
  else
  {
    return null;
  }
}

Nick... [More]