G. Willow Wilson’s Invisible Kingdom. Credits: www.darkhorse.com
Invisible Kingdom. G. Willow Wilson; Christian Ward. www.darkhorse.com . www.hoopladigital.com . 2019. Accessed Dec 3, 2022. Snapshots [Vess] But what if… What if you found something here that seemed wrong? That seemed out of place? [Krikko] I would go straight to Mother Proxima and ask for guidance. That’s why she’s here. [Vess] And… If the something wrong had to do with Mother Proxima herself?...
Vision Vol. 1: Little Worse Than a Man. Credits: marvel.com
Vision Vol. 1: Little Worse Than A Man. Tom King; Gabriel Hernandez Walta. www.marvel.com . www.hoopladigital.com . Jun 29, 2016. Accessed Feb 5, 2023. Snapshots Most of the Visions' neighbors worked downtown, and they talked often about the traffic on 66 or Lee highway. On the weekends they tended to stay in Virginia, though they often lamented that they should go into the city....
A collection of notes/impressions from titles where I didn’t find enough to necessitate a dedicated page. Usually short works of fiction.
Unknown Number Unknown Number. Blue Neustifter. twitter.com . genderdysphoria.fyi . Jul 27, 2021. Accessed Sep 6, 2022. tells the story of a person who has gender dysphoria. In an alternate universe, they never transitioned but went on to become an established physicist who could communicate across parallel universes....
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Source: apple.com
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Walter Mosley. en.wikipedia.org . www.apple.com . 2022-03-11. Accessed Feb 4, 2023. Snapshots [Ptolemy] Well, what I always tell Reggie he got to do? [Reggie] Uh, I got to take care of my kids. I got to go to the doctor if I run a fever. And… And, uh, I got to put in at least ten dollars in the bank every time I get paid....
Strange Loops A Strange Loop occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.
The 3-voice Canon Per Tonos from Musikalisches Opfer BWV 1079 exhibits a strange loop. Successive modulations make one expect to hopelessly far from the starting key, but after six modulations, the original key of C minor is restored!
I can’t quite perceive the rising canon....
Maximizing the Value for Shareholders Suing a company for not following its code of ethics and therefore misleading investors doesn’t fly, but Signet Jewelers settled for $240m . Signet’s 70k female employees sued for discrimination, but the class action is yet to be resolved.
Tom Toro’s New Yorker cartoon : Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders....
Doom Patrol (1987 - 1995). Image from www.dcuniverseinfinite.com
Doom Patrol (1987-1995). Grant Morrison; Richard Case; John Nyberg. www.dcuniverseinfinite.com . www.hoopladigital.com . 1987. Accessed Dec 23, 2022. Snapshots Father McGarry has long since ceased to believe in miracles. Saturdays, he trudges out to the dump, looking for God among the debris. Saturdays are always the longest days and, in the winter, chilly....
Measuring Productivity Devs' Diverging Perceptions of Productivity Got interested in measuring it two years into my SWE career.
Initially rated myself based on % of completed daily objectives. The objectives didn’t necessarily correspond to work items. Stopped because the numbers were high even on days when I didn’t feel productive.
Switched to “stuff that affects others” (later came to know these are “function points”). More intuitively captures non-code objectives, e.g., aligning folks on feature specs....
Mental Attitude While Learning Distinguish Mere Facts From Conclusions or Opinions Discriminate between mere statements of facts, necessary conclusions which follow therefrom, and mere opinions which they seem to render reasonable. There’s no need to perform an experiment to verify that the atomic weight of oxygen is 16. That the sum of the angles of a plane triangle equals two right angles is not a mere fact, but an inevitable truth....
Issues #18 to #23 didn’t have moments that made me think/pause. Mostly free-flowing; similar to how Monstress is turning out. Maybe the series is tapering out? Or the novelty has faded. All the more impressive that Sandman kept me hooked through +70 issues. Will give it one more shot by reading Book 3 (#24 - #36).
Plot Points [Christopher] I don’t get it. I mean, off the record, I understand fighting for equal pay and all that garbage… But I thought you feminists were pacifists, too....
On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs Capitalism is meant to eliminate bullshit jobs, yet layoffs tend to fall on people making, moving, fixing and maintaining things, but not on the salaried paper pushers that effectively work 15 hours a week.
From a political standpoint, a happy productive population with free time on their hands is mortal to the ruling class. Moreover, work is considered a moral value in itself....
Bitter Root. Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series (2020, 2022). Credits: imagecomics.com
Bitter Root. David F. Walker; Chuck Brown; Sanford Greene. imagecomics.com . www.hoopladigital.com . Snapshots [Dr. Sylvester] I am not the devil. It was the devil that made me what I have become, and the devil I am here to destroy. Look around you, Enoch Sangerye. You’ve seen this before – cities and towns burned to the ground....
Batman: Vol. 1: Their Dark Designs. Credits: dc.com
Batman: Vol. 1: Their Dark Designs. James Tynion IV; Guillem March; Tomeu Morey. www.dc.com . www.hoopladigital.com . Tynion IV’s Department of Truth is entertaining in its treatment of truth. Coming in with a bit of bias for Tynion IV’s writing.
Snapshots [Batman] It happened in the little moments. I’d sketch on the edge of a napkin, or at the corner of a page in an old casebook....
Outcast. Robert Kirkman; Paul Azaceta. imagecomics.com . www.hoopladigital.com . 2014. Accessed Dec 11, 2022. Snapshots [Rev. Anderson] I know… How completely I failed you. You brought me face to face with the Devil himself… And I didn’t have the strength to confront him. Am I no longer worthy to do your work? Is that why I have no power over these demons?...
Going to a talk is difficult for everyone because nobody understands the whole thing, but it’s especially difficult for undergraduates because they still expect to.
is a rich resource for understanding scholarly literature. Browse it. Some of the listed items are familiar, e.g. Google Scholar, SCImago, Sci-Hub, but it’d be informative to zoom out to the larger picture, e.g. good alternatives to Google Scholar.
Why Even Read Papers?...
Pick up from:
IEEE’s International Conference on Software Maintenance Improving Code: The (Mis)perception of Quality Metrics Springer’s Software Quality Journal On Abstractions If you find yourself adding more parameters and if-statements to an existing abstraction, is the abstraction still apt? Why not remove the old abstraction and re-extract a new [more apt] abstraction? Devs frequently succumb to the sunken cost fallacy thinking that there must have been a reason that the code was written in a certain way....
Short Term Loans A common narrative for loan providers is financial inclusion. 69% of global adult population is not covered by credit bureaus. Using non-traditional data (e.g. text messages, location, contacts, call logs), more people can get scored.
If only \(x\%\) of people pay you back, then \(\frac{x}{100}(1 + r) \ge 1 \) suggests \(r \ge \frac{100}{x} - 1 \). If \(75\%\) tend to pay back, \(r = 33\frac{1}{3} \%\)....
Clang, LLVM, GCC, and MSVC LLVM is an umbrella project, with several sub-projects, e.g. LLVM Core and Clang. LLVM Core libraries provide an optimizer and code generator for different CPUs. Clang is an “LLVM native” C/C++/Objective-C compiler which aims for fast compilation, useful error and warning messages, and a platform for building source-level tools. The Clang Static Analyzer and clang-tidy are examples of such tools.
So if I were to create a programming language, I can define a transformation into LLVM intermediate representation (LLVM IR), and that will make use of LLVM core to optimize it?...
Why Write Tests Helps catch bugs in the code, and in the programmer’s mental model of what the code does.
The later a bug is caught in the development cycle, the more expensive it is to fix it. A good test today is a future debugging session saved.
The test is the first client of your code. It uncovers sub-optimal design choices, tight couplings, missed cases, etc....
The Joker in ‘Batman: White Knight #1’
Batman: White Knight. Sean Murphy. www.dc.com . www.hoopladigital.com . 2017. First time encountering a comic where the same person wrote, pencilled and inked the work. The panels should be truer to what the writer intended.
Snapshots [Joker] Admit it – I gave you Gotham City! This corrupt war zone is the home we created together....