Posts tagged “Programming”

• I have several of these LEGO lighting kits and love them.
• Is it really true that no one buys books? According to the author, in 2020 only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96% of books sold less than a thousand copies. Big, if true.
• I’d never even considered combining an Arnold Palmer with a margarita.
• Was This Little-Known Standoff Between British Soldiers and Colonists the Real Start of the American Revolution? – via my dad
• One of the most surprising revelations in the Peacock comedy Mr. Throwback is that the Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry is a brilliant actor. (Oh, and he also dunked in a game for the first time in six years.)
• I really cannot decide if this article on testing push notifications on the iOS simulator was generated by AI or a human, but it’s got some helpful code that I was able to use.
• Just… why?
  • GOP blasted for gutting Medicaid to pay for $4.5 trillion tax cut
  • Army Deleting Online Content Related to Women, Minorities – via @tyleraking.com
  • In a strongly worded statement, Norwegian fuel company Haltbakk Bunkers has announced it will cease supplying fuel to U.S. military forces and criticized what happened when Ukraine president Zelensky visited the White House, referring to it as the “biggest shitshow ever presented live on TV.”
  • If “DOGE” is a federal agency, it can’t shield its records from the public. If it’s not an agency, then its tens of millions of dollars in funding weren’t legally allocated and should be returned. – via @propublica.org
  • The inside story of mass firings of Tesla Supercharger staff is pretty gross.
  • When You’re MAGA, They Let You Do It
  • Judge rules firing of federal workforce watchdog was illegal – via @browneyedsusan.bsky.social

• “This is a concentration camp. They are describing a concentration camp.” – via @rhinosoros.bsky.social
• The “DOGE” Brain Drain Has Begun: “But while [the] rampage has been covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will be felt over the span of decades and defined in metrics like intellectual talent lost.” – via @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social
• An interview with Steven Levitsky, a scholar of democratic breakdown, who explains how the latest threats from [the administration] show telltale signs of a country slipping into authoritarian rule. Gee, if only everyone who could have prevented this had listened to everyone who rightfully predicted this based on everything everyone already knew from every other time this has ever happened in human history… – via @mcspocky.bsky.social
• [Wake Up — Rage Against the Machine]
• Kendrick Lamar Awarded Nobel Beef Prize
• A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft: “I have always taken it for granted that, just as my parents made sure that I could read and write, I would make sure that my kids could program computers.” But now? Not so much. This article is from a year or so ago, but I liked it so much it’s worth it to share again. I took a very, very similar path to the author, and feel the same.
• Welcome to the Atmosphere: The AT Protocol is an open, decentralized network for building social applications.
• I can confirm that Taxi Boat Varenna is the best way to explore Lake Como by water taxi. I’d like to be there now. I hate it here.

• FDA has given two biotechnology companies approval for clinical trials that will transplant organs from genetically modified pigs into patients with kidney failure.
• That “fresh” apple you just grabbed at the grocery store was probably picked a thousand miles away and over a year ago. The latest episode of Radiolab, Forever Fresh, was full of surprising facts about the food industry. (Spoiler: It’s all about plastics.)
• Here are two fascinating links on the importance and function of sleep: Our Sleep, Brain Aging, and Waste Clearance and Scientists Uncover How the Brain Washes Itself During Sleep – both via Jodi Ettenberg
• I’m considering adding my bluesky feed to a (new) sidebar on this site using Robert Devore’s WordPress Plugin.
• How do MAGA voters feel after the first two weeks of idiotic executive orders, flagrant disregard for the Constitution, economic upheaval, and diplomatic absurdities? They’re mostly fine with it, which is as horrible and disturbing as it is unsurprising. It was never about eggs.
• Five VSCode Extensions to Supercharge Your Markdown Writing has me interested in looking into VSCode again. (I’ve been using Nova (née Coda) from Panic forever, but really hate the way it handles remote servers and connections.)
• Rather than understand – or even acknowledge – the paradox of intolerance, the increasingly-popular newsletter / publishing platform Substack has decided to double-down on it.
• “Dr. Potter will not be silenced by UnitedHealthcare‘s attempts to threaten and harass her.” Pop Quiz: Without knowing any of the details about this legal issue, would you root for the health insurance company or the doctor?
• A second grade teacher in Philadelphia is using football to help her students score big in math. Her students take inspiration from their hometown football team — the Eagles — practicing their math skills by counting rushing statistics held by Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. – via George Conway

• Tarnschriften (“hidden writings”) were pocket-sized anti-fascist essays, news updates, and how-tos – hidden inside the covers of mundane, everyday materials – which were circulated in Germany after Hitler’s rise to power.
• California has become a vivid example of a global phenomenon known as “hydroclimate whiplash,” which involves sudden and dramatic swings between extreme wet and dry conditions. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• Health and climate information is already disappearing from federal websites.
• The estate of Superman creator Joseph Schuster is suing Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Comics, claiming they lack the rights to release the upcoming summer movie in a handful of key territories.
• “We’ve seen this happen with brittle governments all over the world for the past century – it’s not a novel situation – and Republicans have decided that now is the moment to strike our teetering democracy. (More)
• Four Easy Ways to Make Sure No One Can Read Your Text Messages, just in case you are (justifiably) a little paranoid that you might get in trouble someday for talking about those two chuckleheads
• Related: This Military Packing Technique Can Save Space in Your Bug-Out Bag (You do have a bug-out bag, right?)
• 13 Xcode Shortcuts to Boost Your Productivity
• Saquon Barkley is a superhero for the Eagles. His origin story is straight out of a comic book, too.

• The key difference between a calque and a loanword is that a loanword isn’t translated into English whereas a calque is. – surprisingly not via kottke, although he posted it, too!
• Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Jose Molina are television writer/producers with over forty years of combined experience — on shows including Lost, Firefly, Sleepy Hollow, and Helix — and they have a great podcast.
• Should We Be Punching Nazis? You already know where I stand on this.
• My sons and I love Cautionary Tales, the Tim Harford podcast about mistakes and what we should learn from them. (He’s also written a children’s book, The Truth Detective: How to Make Sense of a World That Doesn’t Add Up.)
• Horror stories of cryonics: The gruesome fates of futurists hoping for immortality
• Is your heart a hardworking pump or a mystic miracle?
• What are Progressive Web Apps?

• Just in time for Penguin Awareness Day (on Thursday, January 20th), the Wildlife Conservation Society‘s Argentina Program has released amazing underwater selfie video recently taken by a male Gentoo penguin fitted with a special camera.
• Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said, “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.” – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter
• In the city of Poznań, Poland, a group of eight clams controls the local water supply through a clever bio-monitoring system. – via kottke
• I have been trying unsuccessfully for a while now to find the recipe for the Pistachio & Orange “Redemption Cake” that Amelia Le Bruin made on The Great British Baking Show: Holidays (S7: E1 “The Great Christmas Baking Show”). If anyone has any leads, please let me know. [Update: I sent her an Instagram DM and she replied to tell me she’d try to find the recipe in her notes!]
• Oysters and Beer Have Always Been on the Menu at One of America’s Oldest, Most Renowned Restaurants. I have been here many times, including a memorable birthday dinner in my 40s, and can confirm that The Union Oyster House is a national treasure. – via my dad
• Netflix Is Telling Writers to Dumb Down Shows Since Viewers Are on Their Phones – via The Dailies
• The essay Who Goes Nazi? from the August 1941 issue of Harper’s Magazine should be required reading at every high school in America. – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• It was fun to read about all the wild Christmas gifts NFL quarterbacks got their offensive lineman last week. Did you know that NFL teams are required to provide “three dozen sliced oranges for halftime” for the visiting team? And that each team easily goes through at least 80,000 Uncrustables each year? Oh, and Notre Dame winning the Sugar Bowl on January 2, 2025 ensured a Black head coach will be in an FBS national championship game for the first time ever. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
• People often ask me what I think their children should study to learn how to be a programmer, or create video games or apps and I always answer that they should start with the absolute basics. Learn Bash Scripting in 10 minutes is a great example.

• Reminder that Breaking Bad was a TV show about the U.S. healthcare system. – via Melanie D’Arrigo (threads / bluesky)
• I’m confused by the many complaints I’ve seen online recently about the streaming quality of NFL games on Amazon Prime. I have AT&T Gigabit fiber at home and for regular TV use the DirecTVStream app embedded in my Samsung TV. If I want to watch something on Amazon Prime, I use their app instead, also baked into the TV software. I honestly think the image quality of the Amazon NFL games beats what I see on NBC, CBS, FOX, and ESPN on DirecTVStream most of the time, which seems crazy to me. You’d think AT&T would either boost DirecTVStream bandwidth (since they own them) or somehow hamstring the Prime bandwidth. But that’s not the case at all.
• Anyway. This joke about berry packaging made me laugh out loud. – via Matt Margolis (threads / bluesky)
• I am a big fan of Wyze and have their front door deadbolt, doorbell camera, several security cameras, two outdoor plugs (for controlling Christmas lights), a bathroom scale, and at least a half dozen WiFi outlets around the house. They’re great.
• For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website – via Laura Olin (threads / bluesky)
• Threes is the iOS game I’ve played most frequently over the last decade. According to its lovely Statistics page, I’ve played it 7,838 times and my high score is 90,147.
• “Learning from other people’s mistakes is a lot less painful than learning from your own.” – via Tim Harford
• Feel-good story of the day? Giant Spoon Taken From Arizona Dairy Queen Found Thanks To Pokemon Go – via @pourmecoffee
• I’ve returned to this article a dozen times since he published it. If you’re working with iOS widget development, check out Launching iOS Apps with a Custom URL Scheme

If you want to add a “Share on Bluesky” hyperlink to your WordPress theme, this is the snippet I’m using. Also note that my theme requires FontAwesome for the bluesky icon.

<span class="label label-primary nobreak me-3"><a target="_blank" href="https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=<?php echo urlencode( get_the_title() ); ?>%0A%0A<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Share on Bluesky" rel="noreferrer"><i class="fa-brands fa-bluesky"></i></a></span>


• When Indiana Jones tells you he needs your help fighting Nazis, you help Indiana Jones fight Nazis. – via @laurenthomanwrites (Vote!)
• If you’re looking for some good news: The population decline of honeybees has actually reversed! – via @dirtyrealism42
• In 2034 people are going to rediscover these unhinged John Mulaney musical sketches and realize they were incredibly brilliant and hysterical. #SNL – via @gatordavid
• The Boss opening his show in Montreal with a cover of Ghostbusters makes me really happy. – via @coachbennett
• I wonder how many of the rabid anti-immigration folks in the US could pass a citizenship test?
• Learn programming by playing games! – via @denicmarko_
• I’m no rocket scientist, but this headline seems bad. The International Space Station Has Been Leaking for Five Years – via @laura.helmuth
• The Athletic just published a great article about sports video game soundtracks that’s worth a read.
• “Can you imagine the beautiful chaos if LinkedIn allowed commenting on open job positions?” – via @regina.thequeen.bee (I love this idea! Couldn’t someone make a browser extension for this?)