Why pre-commit hooks are fundamentally broken and unreliable
TL;DR A developer walked through building a Rust pre-commit hook that checks formatting and found multiple failure modes: hooks that…
Making Cronjobs More Dynamic with Inline Shell Checks and Examples
TL;DR You can make standard cron entries conditionally run by adding short shell tests directly in the crontab. Examples include…
When ‘-tucky’ Becomes an Insult: The Linguistics of Place-Name Slurs
TL;DR A Language Log post explores how the clipped suffix '-tucky' is appended to place names as a pejorative, prompted…
HelloFresh coupon codes: Save up to 55% and get free meals with student, hero, and referral deals
TL;DR HelloFresh is running a range of promo offers that can discount boxes by as much as 55% and include…
Always Bet on Text: Why Written Language Still Outperforms Rich Media
TL;DR A 2014 blog post argues that text remains the most durable, flexible and efficient communication medium, outperforming images, audio…
Publishing Your Work Increases Your Luck Surface Area and Opportunities
TL;DR A guide from The ReadME Project argues that making your work public raises the odds of unexpected positive outcomes…
Retreating from EVs could be hazardous for Western carmakers
TL;DR Consumer demand for electric vehicles has slowed and governments in the US and Europe are easing transition policies. The…
Always Bet on Text: Why Text Outlasts and Outperforms Other Media
TL;DR A longtime blogger argues that text remains the most durable, flexible and efficient communication medium, able to encode precision,…
Dodgson condensation: Lewis Carroll’s hand-friendly method for determinants
TL;DR Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) devised a condensation procedure for computing determinants by repeatedly forming determinants of 2×2 blocks and…
Drawing with zero-width characters — how Quranic Unicode upended text rendering
TL;DR A short post titled "Drawing with zero-width characters" documents an encounter with a group of 18 Unicode characters usually…