React Native Impressions

RibbitI’m on a project at work using React Native but not in the typical way, which is to say it didn’t start as a React Native project. It’s an exiting app out in the world actively uses by, I’d imagine, tens and tens of thousands of people. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Bottom line is, it’s a frontline app and is important to our client.

Our client has a large team of React developers and a team dedicated to the design and development of reusable React components for the company. They’ve done an amazing job creating a platform for their devs to build on and would like to have those devs build mobile experiences as well. I can’t blame them. They’re very good at it.

They currently have native iOS and Android apps that are almost ten years old and use various frameworks and technologies. Your typical legacy codebase. That’s nothing new or frightening. All code develops its rough patches over time and as time goes by we go in and turn the soil so to speak. We replace outdated frameworks developed out of necessity with new platform supplied frameworks and our code is more robust and easier to read and maintain, especially for developers coming right out of school.

Brain in a jarWith all that in mind here’s what our client is looking to do. We are building new features in React Native and leveraging much of the internal native code to fetch network data, build models, and return that data to React Native code. The API or Interface to the native code is well defined and implemented on iOS and Android. The React Native team code is the same for both platforms. I’m part of the platform team integrating React Native into the existing app and providing the API/Interfaces to the React Native developers.

Like I said, this is a non-standard way of doing this but it’s been done by others with stories of success and failure. I believe we are on track to have a story of success. It’s not going to be free of bumps along the way but we’re making really great progress and I believe we will hit a steady working state as soon as next week. That means the foundation to strap up and host React Native code is in place and working as expected. Now it’s time to build out the API more thoroughly, driven by our React Native developers need for specific data or business logic. It’s a single app, purpose built, API. The idea is to hide any ugly code on the native side and keep the API to the app clean for the React Native developers.

Cool Bits

One of the extremely cool things about how we’re approaching it is how our React Native devs work.

They work inside of a separate application while they’re developing new views and logic. It allows them to move more quickly and not have to rely on the native apps to update before writing their code. It also means they don’t have to worry about keeping the existing native app building on their computers. That can be a headache, I wish it weren’t, but it can be. More on that in a bit.

How does it work? Well, when you create a brand new React Native project you run some tool to generate the project for you. It creates the scaffolding for your React Native code as well and iOS and Android host app projects complete with the frameworks necessary to build the native host apps. On iOS uses CocoaPods. I don’t know what Android used.

That allows the React Native Developers to run ahead of the platform native developers to build their UI’s.

Ok, so how does that work?

We negotiate with the React Native development team to define an API signature for the native apps. They build a mock version of that in their development host app that matches the agreed upon signature and go about coding.

We build out the platform side to do the true implementation. When we have something to test we pull over a packaged version of the React Native code and give it a spin. If there are problems we work directly with the React Native developers to figure it out. Once it’s ironed out it’s wash, rinse, repeat. We currently have a feature built by WillowTree and one built by our client working in the development host and in the existing native applications.

It’s pretty darned magical when it works! 🧙🏼‍♂️

The Ugly Bits

Getting the React Native frameworks and nuanced build settings and scripts in place has been a bit of a struggle but I think we may finally have all that figured out. But it is painful for a native developer who’s used to opening Xcode, loading the project, hitting build, and it runs. Sure, we may have to use CocoaPods to get started, but that’s rare now since Apple introduced Swift Package Manager, or SPM.

SPM is integrated into Xcode and works really well. I’ve never had an issue with it, knock wood, and went through Stream a couple years back and replaced my use of Carthage and CocoaPods with SPM. It’s been glorious.

This option is, unfortunately, not available to React Native projects AFAIK. That’s fine. CocoaPods works and is familiar.

AHHHHHH!The one really ugly bit, at least to me, is the requirement to use npm. I know web devs are accustomed to using it but it feels really strange and fragile to use these two package managers to be able to build and run an app that includes React Native. I know I’ve run into random issues I can’t explain when node packages change or are added but that’s just me being a big whiny cry baby developer. I understand it well enough to be dangerous but I don’t currently have that deep knowledge I like to have. I’m learning new stuff everyday but I’ve only scratched the surface.

Great! How do you feel about it overall? 🤔

Red sock.I can see why companies are making this choice, especially companies with an army of React developers. It makes complete sense for them to build great UI with their existing developers. And, yes, you can build a great iOS UI with React Native. I’ve witnessed it first hand. If you didn’t know a view was React Native you wouldn’t know the difference in this app. It’s seamless. It’s great in that way.

Angelo Stavrow

but oof — it still feels like I’m working with a business decision, rather than a sharp tool.

I think Angelo’s quote above is a nice TL;DR for me. On the downside I really dislike the tooling. It feels so arcane. I’d love to see something integrated into the Xcode UI for package management and project settings. That’s probably asking a bit much but I’d rather have some do an amazing job of all this scaffolding so I can just hit the build button to run the app.

All that said, it’s still worth using. 👍🏼

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Cold EspressoIt looks like we’ll be getting heavy rain all day with chances of flash flooding. I think we’ll be fine where we are as far as flooding goes but I wouldn’t be surprised if we lose power.

Good thing my coffee is brewed and in hand. 😃

Sarah Vogelsong • virginiamercury.com

Youngkin declares state of emergency ahead of Tropical Storm Ophelia

So, yeah, this is why we have a state of emergency here in Virginia. Overnight we got a bit of rain, enough to have standing water in the yard, but we’ll be fine. I feel for folks in lower lying areas. The town of Staunton often has flooding issues. Here’s hoping everyone stays safe and dry today. 🤞🏼

Nathan Edwards • The Verge

Mastodon, the federated microblogging platform, has been updated to version 4.2, which comes with massive improvements to search and the web interface, particularly for logged-out and first-time users.

The tiny open source crew behind Mastodon continues to deliver excellent features and they do it right unlike Space Karen’s company.

While I wish some friends would leave the bird place I’m still extremely happy to have this space to share and have wonderful conversations with amazing people every day. ❤️

Paul Sutter • Space.com

The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it

This is pretty sad, isn’t it? I read this great piece in The Bitter Southerner a few years back that talked about a small town in Georgia Astronomers love because it’s so dark out there. 🌚

Joe George • Den Of Geek

The Star Trek Next Generation Story That Connects the Borg to The Original Series Crew

My question for Star Trek fans, do you love this or hate this?

I like it! 👍🏼

Vjeran Pavic • The Verge

Apple recently extended its deal for Qualcomm modems despite years of effort to develop its own — now we know why. According to a detailed report from the Wall Street Journal, Apple’s attempt to develop its own in-house 5G modem has been stymied by issues resulting from the iPhone maker underestimating the complexity and technical challenges of the task, and a lack of global leadership to guide the separate development groups siloed in the US and abroad.

This is a surprise to me. I can’t see it being because of the technical challenges. I could understand them saying “It’s just not ready.” But a technical challenge? Perhaps? 🤔

Joel Chrono • joelchrono12.xyz

This post was inspired by Rob Fahrni’s post, Saturday Morning Coffee. It has absolutely nothing to do with the content itself, but I got up, served myself a coffe, and wrote all this…

Hey! I inspired someone to write on their blog! That’s never happened before! It’s really wonderful and I hope Joel continues to write and bring us interesting content. Thanks for the love, Joel! ❤️

Ageist

I believe we’ve got retirement wrong. Hear me out. In the early 1990s, I attended my first business trip as a fresh-faced 23-year-old eager to make my mark in the world. I found myself at a workshop, listening to a speaker discuss the concept of retirement. At that age, retirement was a distant, almost foreign concept. Still, one statement from the speaker stuck in my mind: “People know to prepare financially for retirement but don’t know to prepare mentally.” He revealed a startling fact: mortality rates increase dramatically within the first three years of retirement. This revelation has stayed with me ever since.

Right. Do not retire and live like Blue Zone folks live. I actually love this idea.

Not retiring can take on different forms so go read the piece. Folks that know me know I want to write my own software if I ever achieve the financial stability to do it. I’ve considered doing part time work for someone like Starbucks just to socialize a bit. When we lived in Exeter I would frequent Exeter Coffee Company and hang out with a ragtag gang of folks. That’s living in my book. 👍🏼

Robert Harrington • palmerreport.com

What does it mean should Trump’s bail be revoked? First it’s important to recall he’s out on bail on four different felony charges in the first place. In other words, “out on bail” means he’s free and at liberty at the pleasure of four separate jurisdictions. If that bail is revoked in any of those jurisdictions, US marshals will be sent to wherever Trump is at the moment and summarily drag him out — in handcuffs — and take him to jail.

I know some people don’t believe a former President should be indicted of a crime much less be prosecuted or spend time in jail if convicted. I’m certainly not one of those people. TFG is a criminal and as such deserves a bit of time in the clank. 🚓

And, yeah, even at the risk of violence. If we allow certain people to get away with anything we don’t have a democracy or the rule of law. 🧑‍⚖️

Catherine Thorbecke • CNN

Alyssa Henry, the CEO of Square – a unit of Jack Dorsey’s fintech company, Block – will leave her post at the company next month.

I wonder if Jack plans to sell Block off to Space Karen so he can realize his everything app? 🤣

Valerie Ettenhofer • /Film

While you won’t find a “Joker” alternate ending available to view online, rumors about one persist thanks to a tidbit shared by filmmaker Kevin Smith on his “Fatman Beyond” podcast (via CinemaBlend). In a discussion of the film, Smith explains that he was told about a proposed original ending for the movie in which Arthur himself is revealed to be the Wayne family’s killer, and Bruce Wayne ends up in his crosshairs.

This would’ve been an amazing ending for Joker! The only problem with that is we couldn’t have sequels where Joker and Batman tangle.

I want so badly to see a Batman movie or series of movies that feature Joker exclusively. That may be too much to pull off so at the very least give us A Death in The Family in movie form. In Superman vs. Batman we get a glimpse of Robin’s — Jason Todd — armor in a glass case with Jokers writing on it. Great Easter egg.

Dave Rogers

The second night I was there, two more of our classmates joined us. One was a retired Air Force E-9 who’d worked in meteorology his whole career. The other is a highly trained engineer. Climate came up again, this time from the engineer. He’s convinced we can solve the crisis. Our host told him not to ask me, because he wouldn’t like the answer. But our Air Force friend was in my camp. It was interesting to me to listen to his take. Our views differ somewhat, but our conclusions are the same. It’s too late to avert a general collapse of civilization, likely before this century is out.

I like Dave’s writing a lot. He’s very open in what her shares and is extremely concerned with the state of the state of Florida. It’s a complete nightmare to live in if you’re an empathetic, caring, person. The GOP lead government doesn’t care about anyone or anything.

Dave’s take may seem a bit dark but I think he’s hit the nail on the head. We have screwed ourselves in the name of capitalism and investor return. And we’ve screwed future generations. 🤬

Bradley Brownell • Jalopnik

The United Auto Workers strike has expanded from three facilities to 41, as contract negotiations continue to slog on. Ford and the UAW have come together to form a tentative agreement, and while there is still a lot of work to be done, the union has chosen not to expand its striking efforts against Ford facilities.

Here’s an industry where we need radical transformation, now. I know the piece is about workers and I hope they’re able to negotiate and get what they need to survive and thrive.

At one point Detroit was a model of the middle class because of the automobile.

James Robins • defector.com

Musk’s life and personality, it turns out, is not so hard to contain. It is flat and shallow and open for all to read. The difficulty comes when Isaacson tries to impose some fabricated complexity on a not-very-complex man, and uses that illusion of knottiness as an excuse to paper over a much truer and more interesting story.

Space Karen isn’t the genius everyone thinks he is. He’s a bully who needs someone to smash his nose a few times so he’ll understand that treating people like crap has consequences.

Garbage human who managed to con his way into crap tons of money.

Tiny Apple Core

NASCAR - Bristol

NASCAR.com

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Denny Hamlin landed a knockout punch in the Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Some random observations from a NASCAR noob.

Denny Hamlin looks strong at the right time. He always seems to be fast and has a crazy high racing IQ.

Kyle Larson also looks amazing. He can drive up through anything to get to the front. He’s been first, fourth, and second in the first elimination round of the playoffs. Definitely the strongest of the field at them moment.

Christopher Bell continues to land pole positions and can’t manage to make it to victory lane.

Corey LaJoie finished the second stage in second place and I couldn’t be happier for him! He’s a “middle of the pack” racer and is not supposed to be up in front. He even lead a number of laps. He’s part of a smaller team and is getting better and better each weekend. 👍🏼

Last years Cup Champion, Joey Logano, is out of contention for this years championship after an accident forced him to retire the car.

Bubba Wallace continues to his race craft each and every week and has managed to get into the round of 12. I’m super happy for him and I hope he can make it to at least the round of eight. That would be an amazing accomplishment for 23XI Racing.

I know the Bristol Night Race is very popular but I found it extremely boring. After a couple laps of racing up front it seems like it turns into a single line of cars doing laps. Now, there were times where the racing did get interesting, but overall I found it boring. That’s not typical of a NASCAR race for me.

Bristol is not doing a dirt track next season. That’s too bad. I found that race to be much more exciting. Cars had multiple lines to choose from and the racing was exciting, not to mention Michael McDowell’s two spins that resulted in 360 degree saves. It was an incredible sight to behold.

Kevin Harvick is also out of the playoffs. It’s a real shame as it’s his final season as a driver and he has yet to win a race this year. The man proves his excellent fact crave as a driver every week as the Stuart Haas Racing cars aren’t very competitive, except for Harvick’s. Yes, he’s that good.

It was good to see Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the Xfinity race on Friday night. He drove really well, lead a number of laps, and I have to believe he had a really great chance to win the entire thing but his car caught fire late in the race and he had to retire it. Let’s get that man back in a Cup car a few times a year!

Favorite livery was Tyler Reddick’s 45.

My picks for the Final Four.

• Kyle Larson - Hendrick Motorsports
• Denny Hamlin - Joe Gibbs Racing
• Chris Buescher - Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing
• Tyler Reddick - 23XI Racing

Champion: Kyle Larson

If it’s not Larson I think it’ll be Denny Hamlin.

Of course I could be full of hot air with that list but I really like it!

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Espresso ShotI took Friday off to take some folks visiting us to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. It’s a beautiful place I used to pass daily on my way to work prior to the pandemic turning the world on its head.

It’s both impressive and sad. To know that Monticello was built and maintained by enslaved people puts a stain on an otherwise beautiful place.

What’s worse is Jefferson hated slavery but kept enslaved people because he knew he couldn’t run a 5,000 acre plantation without them.

Bryant Francis • gamedeveloper.com

The cost of using Unity as a game engine is once again about to increase. Starting in January 2024, the company will begin charging what it’s calling a “Unity Runtime Fee” that is based on the number of users installing games built on the widely-used engine.

This has been a huge topic this week. I feel really bad for smaller game devs because it’s going to really hurt their ability to continue operating, much less making great games for folks to enjoy.

I hope the Unity folks come around with something more agreeable.

Matt Birchler • birchtree.me

It’s been nearly a year since it became clear Elon Musk was going to buy Twitter, and I wanted to take a second and just say thank goodness for Mastodon.

Yes indeed! Thank goodness for Mastodon! I don’t regret for one moment spinning up Curmudgeon Cafe and I hope I can keep it going for years to come. 🤞🏼

Yahoo Sports

Aaron Rodgers out for season after MRI confirms Achilles injury for Jets QB

Welp, the Aaron Rodgers story takes a strange turn four plays into the 2023 season.

The big question on everybody’s mind is, is this career ending? He’s 39 years old, which now doesn’t seem so old for an NFL Quarterback, but it’s more difficult to heal as we age and does he have the desire to get healed up and put in the grueling work to get prepared for next season?

Perhaps rubbing a little Ivermectin on it will heal it up sooner?

Too soon?

Charles Chen

This two part musing reflects the conversations I’ve had with some good friends and former teammates of mine as well as reflections on some of my own observations over the last few years as I prepare to join one of the few Bay Area VC-backed startups using .NET on the backend.

A VC backed startup using .NET? Outrageous! 😁

Yeah, not really. I like .NET and C#. If you’re coming from another curly braced language like C or C++ you should feel right at home with C#. And the .NET runtime and supporting libraries are feature rich and give you the tools to do anything you’d like.

Myles Simmons • NBC Sports

News continues to trickle out of ESPN’s on-air layoffs and another former NFL player is among the cuts.

This is a piece from July. I’m not sure how I missed it. I like to watch Sunday NFL Countdown and the opening weekend of the 2023 season the crew had a new member, Alex Smith. That got me asking questions and I find out Matt Hasselbeck was let go.

I’m not a fan of the new set. The old round table in their waterfront studio was nice and different than any other pre-game analysis show. They were all in reaching distance of each other. It had a more intimate feel. It was nice.

This year the crew is spread out along your typical long desk in a drab set. I suspect it’s in the basement of some building to cut costs, which is fine, but why’d you have to make it so drab?

Anywho, enough bellyaching. The NFL is back! 🏈

Ron Amadeo • Ars Technica

Don’t let Chrome’s big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome’s invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the “Privacy Sandbox,” is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today.

I’m not a fan of Chrome. They’re definitely the new Internet Explorer.

I’ll stick with Safari and Firefox. They’re both great browsers and are more concerned about user privacy.

Clean up the web!

Developers, it’s time for you to choose a side: will you help rid the web of privacy-invading tracking or be complicit in it?

This isn’t a blog, rather a site encouraging web devs to clean up their act and fight against privacy invasion. Here’s hoping it works.

Of course we all know every news site is all about tracking and advertising. Good luck getting them to change.

FRANK BRUNI • The New York Times

But was there a bevy of headlines about a brain ravaged by time? Were there notations that Trump, at 77, was already as old as Ronald Reagan at the end of his presidency, and that after another four years in the White House, Trump would be a touch older than Biden at the end of his first term and thus the oldest president ever?

Yeah, why is the focus 100% on Biden? Sure he’s older than Orange Man but three years isn’t that much older.

Also, who in the Democratic Party is ready, willing, and able to beat Orange Man in a general election?

I still wish we had a Hillary Presidency but that ship has sailed.

Aria Yang • Business Insider

I moved to Seattle for a high-paying tech job. It turned out to be the loneliest time of my life.

I can’t imagine having to adjust to a new city — across the country — in our new COVID-19 world.

When we moved to Seattle in the early 1990’s I had a family to care for and enjoy time with at night and on the weekends. Oh, and there wasn’t a pandemic raging across the planet killing folks.

I’d also imagine the transition from college life right into a place like Amazon could be rough. It’s my understanding Amazon is a tough place to work and if you’re a social person I could see it putting a dampener on your social calendar.

Stephanie Keith • commondreams.org

The slow-mo wave of fascism engulfing Florida - book bans, more guns, no drag, cheerleading for slavery - took a big goose-step forward with the latest incursion of a snarling horde of swastika-swathed Nazis screaming “White Power!” and “Did you thank Hitler today?”

The MAGA loving GOP has given white supremacists groups the courage to crawl out from under their rocks and show their true colors.

The GOP needs a boring old conservative to become the head of the ticket.

The MAGA movement needs to die in a fire.

Shape Your City

The City of Vancouver is exploring ways to support existing and new corner stores, and other small-scale shops and services in residential areas.

When I was a little fella growing up in Lindsay and Exeter we had little markets nearby. In particular I remember Lynwood Market near my grandparents house in Lindsay. It’s long gone now but we neighborhood kids would collect our pennies and trek down to Lynwood Market to buy sarsaparilla for the entire gang. I really enjoyed that and still think about it from time to time.

Seeing Vancouver work toward this is encouraging to me.

Dr. Cat Hicks

He fixed things often and silently. Grandpa just cared about things working. He had an instinct for not just broken things but soon to be broken things. He would point out risky work, bad decision making in the form of shoddy materials or shifting angles. He was offended by the trace measures left in the world that signified short-term planning. So I learned that this too had something to do with craft. He had a visual vocabulary that amazed me. I think about how he could see these details. He saw choices and constraints and tensions and frictions where I just saw chairs. He saw effort where most people just saw end products.

Craft. No matter the thing we do for a living we should always work on our craft. I believe I grow a little every day I’m working on developing software. I’ve had so many influences over the years who I believe have collectively made me better at the craft of software development.

It’s a never ending process!

Tiny Apple Core

Flynn is definitely not ready to face the day.

A gray and white kitty covering his face while sleeping.

Bye Bye Twitter Accout

I finally did it. I deleted my Twitter account.

After the shenanigans Space Karen pulled with third-party Twitter clients I knew I wasn’t going to use my trusty fahrni@twitter.com account again but I held onto it until now. I kept it because I didn’t want anyone else to have the handle, especially some Nazi asshole.

It’s obvious Elon Musk is an antisemite wing nut and his support of Russia in the war against Ukraine was kind of my final straw.

He’s just a horrible human being. A big baby man full of himself and high on his own supply.

Good riddance.

Hey, Space Karen, when you finally jettison that wonderful Twitter domain I hope someone turns it into a wildly successful Mastodon instance.

Follow me on Mastodon.

NFL Week One Picks

  • Titans over Saints
  • Bears over Packers
  • Bills over Jets
  • Falcons over Panthers
  • Bengals over Browns
  • Jaguars over Colts
  • Vikings over Buccaneers
  • Steelers over 49ers
  • Commanders over Cardinals
  • Ravens over Texans
  • Broncos over Raiders
  • Eagles over Patriots
  • Chargers over Dolphins
  • Seahawks over Rams
  • Giants over Cowboys

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Cold EspressoKim and I had the grandkids overnight so they’re worn out and we’re worn out. Heck, even our pups are worn out. The house is really quiet, just how I like it. I’m sitting here in the dark, sipping coffee, composing today’s post.

This week work was mostly about onboarding a couple new iOS Devs who’ll be working with me on our project to add React Native support to existing native apps. I’m really enjoying it. 😀

Caitlin Harrington • WIRED

Last month, Grindr gave its all-remote staff two weeks to pledge to work from an office two days a week starting in October or lose their jobs come August 31. Many declined to return: 82 out of 178 employees—46 percent of the staff—were let go after rejecting the mandate, according to the Grindr union, which went public two weeks before the ultimatum.

Wow. That’s about all I had to say when I read this piece. I have a friend who took a job there — as a remote test engineer — only to have this mandate cross his desk two weeks later. Needless to say he didn’t move and is now looking for a new gig. It’s a real head scratcher.

Ron Amadeo • Ars Technica

The Federated Learning of Cohorts and now the Topics API are part of a plan to pitch an “alternative” tracking platform, and Google argues that there has to be a tracking alternative—you can’t just not be spied on.

Emphasis is mine. At least they admit what they’re doing and it’s pathetic. 😳

You know what’s worse? People won’t switch away from Chrome.

thehackernews.com

Apple on Thursday released emergency security updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to address two zero-day flaws that have been exploited in the wild to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware.

Update your devices right away. The talent possessed to do this type of ferreting around an OS looking for holes is both impressive and terrifying all at the same time.

Branko Marcetic • jacobin.com

The inflation rate — that is, the pace at which prices are going up — might be slowing down, but that doesn’t mean prices are lower. In fact, they are much, much higher for all kinds of goods and services than they were three years ago.

I’ve definitely noticed this when we go to our favorite Mexican restaurant here in Charlottesville.

It’s really becoming apparent in the streaming business. I just received email saying our Hulu subscription is going up to $81.99/month. We currently pay $64/month. That’s close to a 25% increase. 🤬

Taegan Goddard • politicalwire.com

Pence Calls Trump’s Populism a ‘Road to Ruin’

Wow. Pence finally figured it out. Took long enough.

I know folks have praised him for what he did January 6 — myself included — but the truth is he could’ve done a lot more prior to the sixth to avert this, like call the FBI.

MSRC • msrc.microsoft.com

Upon identifying that the threat actor had acquired the consumer key, Microsoft performed a comprehensive technical investigation into the acquisition of the Microsoft account consumer signing key, including how it was used to access enterprise email. Our technical investigation has concluded. As part of our commitment to transparency and trust, we are releasing our investigation findings.

Reading these reports is fascinating. I love seeing them own up to mistakes and solve the problems that lead them there. I personally like to focus on the problem and not point fingers. These reports come across like that to me.

Greg Jones • enginebuildermag.com

As a kid, Dan Keenan loved fixing things, tearing things apart, and figuring out a way to build something new. But he never dreamed his skills would one day lead to being a key player in designing a brand-new race engine for NASCAR.

This is an older piece but is a great little read if you’re at all interested in engine building. I most definitely am and would love to see some deep dives of all the motors used in the NASCAR Cup Series. The teams use a new motor each week! It’s amazing to me how consistent the builds are from week to week.

They do see the occasional failure but those are rare. It would be amazing to see reports from engine builders outlining the failures and the steps taken to mitigate them, just like that Microsoft Security piece linked above.

Michael Meng • eng.lyft.com

Lyft runs hundreds of microservices to power the company’s offerings. Our team, the Developer Infrastructure team, aims to build the best tools to enable microservice owners (our “customers”) to reliably and quickly test changes in a local and/or end-to-end environment.

When we crossed that line from desktop focused computing on local networks to service based computing on the open web software development became infinitely more complicated. I know a lot of folks who’ll disagree with that assessment and that’s fine. It’s how it feels to me. I’m a simpleton and prefer my little self contained IDE and platform. 😃

GMS Racing • legacymotorclub.com

LEGACY MOTOR CLUB™ Signs John Hunter Nemechek to Drive the No. 42 in 2024

It’s fun to watch NASCAR teams make lineup changes for next season. How many more changes will we see between now and next season? Who knows.

It’ll also be nice to see where the Stewart Haas Racing rumors land. Do they run two or four cars next year? Do they have charters for sale? If so, who picks them up?

Oh, right, when is Dodge coming back! 🤣 Yes, I really do want to see it.

Lane Brown • Vulture

The Ophelia affair is a useful microcosm for understanding how Rotten Tomatoes, which turned 25 in August, has come to function. The site was conceived in the early days of the web as a Hot or Not for movies. Now, it can make or break them — with implications for how films are perceived, released, marketed, and possibly even green-lit. The Tomatometer may be the most important metric in entertainment, yet it’s also erratic, reductive, and easily hacked.

I’d not heard of folks gamifying Rotten Tomatoes scores but it makes sense it would happen. Gotta keep those scores fresh so folks will watch your movie and put money in your pocket. 🍅

Tiny Apple Core

Kitty? What kitty?

Picture of our kitty cats butt sticking out of a blanket.

F1 and NASCAR

I just finished watching the Italian Grand Prix and the racing is extremely boring for first place.

Verstappen in a post race interview he said “We had to work for this one today.” No, you didn’t. The Red Bull cars are just too darned fast.

It was nice to see Carlos Sainz take P3 but no car on the grid can compete with the Red Bulls.

So, once again, Verstappen wins by 10 seconds going away. He even coasted on some laps, I mean why not?

In the end F1 wins for its fantastic production. There’s nothing better than a commercial free race, even if it’s boring from a racing perspective.

I wish NASCAR could fix their terrible race production. It’s more commercials than racing, which is extremely frustrating.

NASCAR wins for racing value, F1 for production value.

Hello Mr. Cicada exoskeleton.

A cicada exoskeleton

Well! Good morning little froggy!

I was mowing the lawn! Glad the little dude hopped and caught my attention!

Little frog I found in the yard this morning.

Flynn says good morning.

Picture of our gray and white kitty, Flynn.

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Spicy Mexican CoffeeJust poured my first cup, letting it sit a spell while I get started. Kolby and Gracie are chillin’ at the moment, which is nice. It means I don’t have to get them to leave the cats alone. Even though Flynn usually starts the loud morning play fest.

The leaves have started falling off the trees and early mornings have been extremely cool. It’s really nice and is a signal to me fall is coming. 🍁

However, Charlottesville weather is unkind and likes to play mind games. This is fake fall. Next week daytime highs are forecast to be in the 90’s. Ugh. 🥵

I hope you enjoy the links.

Rolling Stone

Jimmy Buffett, the singer-songwriter known for his enduring anthem “Margaritaville” and businessman who transformed the 1977 song into an empire that encompassed restaurants, resorts, and more, has died at the age of 76.

RIP Jimmy.

amo

One interesting choice we’ve decided to stick to throughout the years and on to this new project is to have the app infrastructure (networking, authentication, data synchronization and persistence, feature data backends, etc.) done using the same technology as the backend (in Rust, see more in Production Environment) and shared across iOS and Android.

I like this choice. I’ve tried to sell this idea inside WillowTree but I think we’ll be doing more React Native going forward. Look, if your primary business is not shipping applications it makes sense to use cross platform tooling. From what I’ve seen of our React Native work it’s quite good and you can’t tell the difference.

If you are an application developer and want to get some shared code across native platforms, Rust is a good alternative to languages like C and C++ — even though I still really love C++. 😁

Using Rust for all that common code just feels right to me.

Jennifer Sandlin • Boing Boing

According to Pizzagate conspiracy theorists, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Pizza Hut boxes are encouraging Satanic ritual abuse

I watched the YouTube video linked from the piece and boy do these folks have to do a bunch of mental gymnastics to make this stuff up. It is crazy. If the entire Q phenomenon did anything it was to create a legion of complete nut jobs.

Heck we all thought al-Qaeda was a threat to our nation. We’ve been able to screw things up from the inside with things like the Orange Menace, the GOP, and Q. No outside help necessary.

Denise Yu

Your job title says “software engineer”, but you seem to spend most of your time in meetings. You’d like to have time to code, but nobody else is onboarding the junior engineers, updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone’s going roughly in the same direction. If you stop doing those things, the team won’t be as successful. But now someone’s suggesting that you might be happier in a less technical role. If this describes you, congratulations: you’re the glue. If it’s not, have you thought about who is filling this role on your team? — Tanya Reilly

This is why I wanted to become an Engineering Director at WillowTree. Turns out I was good at team building but horrible at all the management stuff, like reviews.

Now that I’ve gone back to an engineering role I can focus more on team building from a technical perspective, which I love. Sure, I do day-to-day coding, but I also help other grow and do whatever needs doing.

Keri Blakinger • The New York Times

The first time Tony Ford played Dungeons & Dragons, he was a wiry Black kid who had never seen the inside of a prison. His mother, a police officer in Detroit, had quit the force and moved the family to West Texas. To Ford, it seemed like a different world. Strangers talked funny, and El Paso was half desert. But he could skateboard in all that open space, and he eventually befriended a nerdy white kid with a passion for Dungeons & Dragons. Ford fell in love with the role-playing game right away; it was complex and cerebral, a saga you could lose yourself in. And in the 1980s, everyone seemed to be playing it.

My brothers, their friends, and I were part of that nerdy set who played D&D in the 80s. I have wonderful memories of that time in my life. An easier time. The 80s was a great time to be a teenager and D&D contributed heavily to that greatness.

Tim Hardwick • MacRumors

Apple will receive all of TSMC’s first-generation 3-nanometer process chips this year for upcoming iPhones, Macs, and iPads, according to industry sources cited by DigiTimes.

Isn’t it wild to think Apple will take the entire capacity of a chip manufacturer? Heck, I think Intel is finally at 10-nanometer and is expected to move to 7-nanometer this year — maybe they already have, I’m not sure.

It makes me wonder if Intel could get to the point that they’re manufacturing chips for Apple?

Is saying “NO DUH!” too sarcastic? Big oil, gotta love ‘em. 🤬

Thomas Ricouard

I’ve seen countless of tweets and stories lately about modern iOS architecture. I’ve been a huge fan of trying new architecture on iOS, and in the past I have worked with Redux / TCA like architecture because I believe unidirectional data flow is the only way to have a good & robust architecture.

Thomas is a super smart fella and is worth a read. He’s the author of the excellent iOS Mastodon client, Ice Cubes. He’s done an amazing amount to work in the area of SwiftUI performance tuning. Give his piece a read.

George Wright • BBC

Canada has issued a new travel warning to its LGBT citizens planning to visit the United States.

This doesn’t surprise me. Our nation, as a whole, has taken so many steps backwards. Most of the nation wants to move forward but the GOP wants to take us back. They hate women and want them to stay home and be baby making machines, they want to exterminate trans folks, they’re racist, and they’d like to destroy the planet in the name of capitalism.

Meanwhile the sane people want healthcare for all, would like to see an educated America, let the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities exist and be first class citizens, amongst other things.

The choice has always been easy for me. I believe in people and want the best for everyone. We’re all so much better off being a diverse nation.

Sam Gold • lickability.com

SwiftUI is really good. (Stop booing me, I’m right.) However, there comes a time when you may look at your app and think, “this reeks of SwiftUI.” System-provided list layouts, the same typography, the same colors as every other app.

It’s always been a bit hacky to do a good job of theming an iOS App. Especially if you want to support dynamic text in your app, which you most definitely should.

I’m always on the lookout for articles that try to solve this problem.

This article isn’t about that as much as it’s about how to make your app shine in multiple ways.

Yahoo

Managers should not use the budget cuts as an “explanation” for compensation decisions for individual employees and instead should emphasize that the employee’s own “impact” determines “rewards.”

This guidance feels so scummy. Just say you had to do because of budget cuts. Sure, folks will be pissed off they’re missing their raise because of the cuts but do you think allowing them to believe they didn’t get a raise because of their lack of performance is better?

Maybe the goal is to get people to quit? If that is the goal, I think this is a good way to do it. Nice work.

Xe Iaso

WebAssembly is a compiler target for an imaginary CPU that your phones, tablets, laptops, gaming towers and even watches can run. It’s intended to be a level below JavaScript to allow us to ship code in maintainable languages.

I love they this article uses the term imaginary CPU. That imaginary CPU is a computer program that interprets the WebAssembly and executes it on your particular platform. Yes, in almost all cases, it’s going to be a JavaScript runtime.

If you’d like to learn more about WebAssembly you should read the official docs but I’d also encourage you to read my colleagues work on the subject. I’ve mentioned Nish Tahir before. The man’s pretty much a genius and can make a computer do anything he wants with any language. Oh, he can also handle DevOps as well as anyone. A real glue engineer if ever there was one. WillowTree is really lucky to have him.

Tiny Apple Core

Kim was not amused with our visitors this morning.

Don’t eat the hydrangeas! 😃

Three deer foraging in our yard. My wife wasn’t happy with them eating her plants!

I’m renaming NASCAR

Yep, I’m renaming NASCAR. The acronym will remain the same but from now on it will mean:

National Association for Stock Commercial Auto Racing

Watch out! It's a blog fly!As I watched the Coke Zero Sugar 400 Commercial Fest at Daytona last night there was a nice bit of NASCAR racing between commercial breaks, split screen commercials, and commercial reads.

If NASCAR viewership isn’t declining I’d be surprised. I wonder if anyone has put together the actual time spent on commercials and the actual time spent showing the race? I have a feeling it would be close to 50/50, perhaps 60/40, in favor of commercials.

How would I personally measure it? Easy. Any commercial that detracts from what I’d prefer to see. That means commercial breaks, commercials split screen with racing, and commercial reads over the broadcast.

Heck, the split screen commercials with racing view of the broadcast favors the commercial in a larger portion of the screen. Guess what I do when that happens? I mute the TV because there’s zero color commentary and race analysis. It’s all commercial audio.

If NASCAR took commercial breaks like the NFL does it would take 12 hours to complete a single NASCAR race.

F1 does it the right and proper way: commercial free.

NASCAR, please, do your fans a favor and sign a broadcast deal with ESPN or another broadcast provider to show a set of races commercial free.

Until then you have a really substandard product.

UPDATE: I posted a slightly modified version of this to the NASCAR Discord. Doubt it’ll see any feedback.

Most of Kim’s flowers are done for the season, but these are still happy.

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Boy oh boy did I make a mistake last night. I stayed up until after midnight, Gracie woke me up at 3:30 to go out, then again at 5:30.

So, yeah, I need all the coffee this morning.

I hope you enjoy the links!

Reuters

Photoshop maker Adobe’s (ADBE.O) co-founder John Warnock died on Saturday aged 82, the company said in a statement early on Sunday.

Another legend gone.

R.I.P. Mr. Warnock.

Akela Lacy • The Intercept

A little over a week after a prosecutor in Georgia indicted former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 presidential election, Republicans said they will use a new law to remove her from office.

I don’t understand the GOP. It’s clear the Orange Man is a criminal and needs to be brought to justice but their need for power overrides all else.

I’d expect violence to escalate if any of his cases are dropped.

Pathetic.

Kevin Purdy • Ars Technica

Dominic Szablewski grabbed that code before it disappeared and set about creating a version that’s not just a port. He rewrote the game’s rendering, physics, sound, and generally “everything everywhere.” He documented the project, put his code on GitHub, and has some version of a justification.

I haven’t looked at the code and probably never will but it would be interesting to see the diffs.

Something I learned a long time ago. Don’t be quick to judge others code. Someone else is eventually going to look at your code. Be kind.

The Onion

Texas Cancels School Over Concerns Extreme Heat Not Safe Environment For Shootings

I know it’s The Onion but I can believe Texas would do something like this.

Ben Lovejoy, Michael Potuck, and Filipe Espósito • 9to5mac.com

But yesterday, we learned that it had happened. Apple not only made a U-turn, supporting a Californian right to repair law it had previously opposed, but even went as far as actively endorsing it.

The only reason I can see for Apple’s 180 is they’ve discovered a new way to make a profit by doing it.

Vjeran Pavic • The Verge

The computer on Keegan McNamara’s desk is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The machine sits on a light wood table, bathed in the sunlight coming into the second floor of McNamara’s Los Angeles house. McNamara, tall and blonde in jeans and a light khaki Carhartt jacket, walks over to the desk, sits down, and reaches over to hit the power button. Then he pauses. He forgot something. He digs into his pants pocket, pulls out his keys, picks a silver one, sticks it into a cylinder just to the right of the computer’s 8-inch screen, and turns.

I like this. A marriage of the warmth of wood and the cold of technology.

Annie Palmer • CNBC

Amazon is seeing some employees quit instead of moving to a new state as part of relocation mandate

I’m pretty sure we all knew there’d be a reckoning, even with return to office being unpopular.

Microsoft Excel • techcommunity.microsoft.com

Since its inception, Microsoft Excel has changed how people organize, analyze, and visualize their data, providing a basis for decision-making for the millions of people who use it each day. Today we’re announcing a significant evolution in the analytical capabilities available within Excel by releasing a Public Preview of Python in Excel.

This is a head scratcher. Excel has had a great language and IDE built in for years and years. It’s called Visual Basic for Applications and it’s truly great. In fact we had VBA integrated into Visio and you could do amazing things with it.

WillowTree Blog

Generative AI is transforming how we do business. But early adopters have discovered that large language models (LLMs) can occasionally provide responses that are out-of-left field, off-brand, heavily biased, or just plain wrong. The industry has termed these types of completions: hallucinations.

Developers, don’t let your LLM do drugs.

Strange Loop

Programming languages often prioritize either performance or ergonomics. Swift offers a unique modern type-safe low-ceremony approach taking the best of both worlds that scales from mobile apps to high-performance systems where previously memory-unsafe languages would be used. It also interoperates seamlessly with C and C++.

I’ve been waiting to hear about a high performance use of Swift. I expect we’ll see Swift make its way into an OS level component of macOS some day.

Dan Morrison • yardbarker.com

Hamlin went beyond picking a few crashes at the Coke Zero Sugar 400. In fact, he thinks NASCAR is going to have a crash fest on its hands, as he explained on the Actions Detrimental podcast.

This is the final weekend to make the playoffs and there are a few folks on the bubble. If the Xfinity race last night was any indicator of what’s to come tonight could be a real mess.

Tiny Apple Core

INMATE NO. P01135809

Mediaite

I assume, therefore, that she thought I was a “flight” risk – I’d fly far away, maybe to Russia, Russia, Russia, share a gold domed suite with Vladimir, never to be seen or heard from again.

Oh, please, Mr. Orange, please fly away to Russia and hang out with your buddy Vlad. I’d love that so much. It would be the biggest gift you could ever give the great United States of America.

It’s nice to see him come right out and say how much he adores Putin. It also surprised me how much the Republican Party embraces authoritarians like Putin.

Disqualify Him

CNN

Washington (CNN) — Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.

DUH! Right? I mean, the guy has been indicted of several apparent crimes, egged on a coup attempt and is just a vile, corrupt, human being.

So, the big question in my mind is, who is going to stop him if these legal scholars agree he’s not eligible? Do it go to a vote in Congress? Good luck there. The GOP say they believe this is a political witch hunt — they don’t really believe that — and the voters should choose. The voters DID choose. They chose to oust him in 2020 but he did his best to remain President.

If this man becomes President he’ll go full authoritarian, punish his enemies, drag the nation down, outlaw gay marriage, make being gay or trans punishable (or at least turn his back to oviolence), and never leave the White House.

Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to shoot someone in the middle of the road on television.

We do need to face one reality. This man will not go to prison even if he’s convicted of a crime. Our justice system is not equal. The rich and powerful have a different set of rules. Rules that put them above us commoners and for some reason the President of the United States has a special set of rules above and beyond that. That is insane. The President is a temp job at best. The President is supposed to be a public servant, not a king or god.

I’d like to be an Indie Dev

Steven Beschloss

I love architecture. A beautiful structure—like the iconic Flatiron Building in New York (seen here)— inspires me. It’s not just the aesthetic pleasure of the shape, the materials, the details and its placement, but recognizing how much thinking, planning and executing it took for the original idea to become reality. Unlike other art forms, architecture can’t just be beautiful; it also has to be functional.

The title of Mr. Beschloss’ piece is What Job Do You Wish You Had?.

This is an easy answer for me. I love building software, just like I’m doing now, but I’d like to be doing it independently.

Brain in a jarI would love to wake up every morning and work on Hayseed projects like Stream and unnamed project.

The reality is I don’t have the means to do that. I am bound to my salary and I no longer have my 20 something boulders energy to stay up most of the night working on my dream.

Until retirement I’ll keep hacking away an hour here an hour there on my projects in hope I will be able to break out some day.

Even if someday doesn’t arrive for me I am finding the most joy programming my own apps. No overhead, no meetings, just writing code. That’s just the way I like it. 😃

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

What would we start off with this morning? The weather? Our power grid in the Charlottesville area? How about some links to articles I’ve collected through the week? Yes, let’s do that.

Ollie Williams • cabinradio.ca

A mercy flight taking Yellowknife hospital patients to safety was cancelled on Thursday, leaving nurses unsure how they’ll safely leave in the face of an oncoming wildfire.

Poor Canada. It’s been on fire for so, so, long. The human toll is so immense. 😔

Good thing Climate Change isn’t real. 🤬

Evan Selleck • AppleInsider

Apple TV+ has revealed the first details of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” a forthcoming 10-part series starring Kurt Russell, and coming as part of Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse.

I’m down for this series! I love me some Kurt Russell! 🦖

David Ljunggren • Reuters

OTTAWA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta (META.O) lift a “reckless” ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country.

I’m not a fan of Facebook but I do understand why Facebook chose to disallow links to news in Canada. It was a business decision for them based on new Canadian law.

Hopefully they’ll turn linking back on so folks can communicate about these devastating fires. ❤️

Grace Ebert • thisiscolossal.com

Artist Duke Riley is attuned to this history and its modern-day implications. He gathers laundry detergent jugs, flip-flops, and bottles that once held household products once they wash up near beaches and carves incisive allegories and ornamentation into their surfaces. Painted in a warm, grainy beige, the scavenged waste mimics the whale bones traditional to scrimshaw while the artist’s signature wit emerges through the contemporary narratives of oil barons or marine creatures carrying human trash.

It’s amazing what this man can do with trash.

The Globe and Mail

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada has been considering a “game plan” for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year’s presidential elections.

This is really sad when your neighbor and ally feel the need to prepare for the possibility the United States of America could become and totalitarian nation.

All I keep thinking of is Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale.

Who knows, if the US goes full authoritarian/totalitarian Canada may become a refuge for Americans, just like it is in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Kevin Chisholm • Flutter Engineering Blog

Welcome back to our quarterly Flutter stable release, this time for Flutter 3.13! In just the three months since our last release, we have had 724 pull requests merged and 55 community members authoring their first commit to Flutter!

I’ve tossed around the idea of rewriting RxCalc in Flutter so I keep an eye on it. I find it interesting and I feel like it’s a better choice than React Native, but that’s just a feeling because I haven’t written code in either.

One thing I definitely dislike about it, they paint the UI themselves. They’re not using native controls. I understand the choice, but I don’t like it. I don’t think that would keep me from using it for an app like RxCalc since its UI is extremely simple and I’d most likely use its C++ Pharmacokinetics library.

Nick Gernert • WordPress VIP

Vox Media wanted its creative and development teams to focus on experiences instead of platforms, continuing to create industry-leading content for their audiences.

Big moves like this are always very interesting to me. Vox must need the best writing tools the industry can offer to put together stories and I wonder how they’re going to feel about the writing tools in WordPress. I’m personally not a fan of Gutenberg and wonder if writers will work in that editor or use something else for the writing part and someone else does the post? I’d love to know their workflow.

A little inside baseball. I handle putting together posts for the WillowTree Engineering Blog but the authors use Google Docs to write them.

Debopriyaa Dutta • /Film

In her Telegraph interview, Chalotra explained that she was not too well-versed with the source material (at least to the point that her co-star Henry Cavill was, who’s an ardent fan of the franchise) and the stress of showing up to such a big-budget production was stress-inducing for her. Chaltora talked about how she believed she “didn’t think [she] was going to get through the first day of filming

I love The Witcher and Chaltora’s Yennefer is one of the reasons why. Henry Cavill’s Geralt is also fantastic but the ongoing tension between the two adds another great element to the show.

Ash Furrow

I’m narrowing in on a few possibilities, and one of them will soon become my destination. This space is uncomfortable and I feel an urge to escape it. An urge to collapse the wave function of possible career moves into a definite next job. Any job. After a disquieting summer, I feel myself grasping for certainty.

I’ve watched on Mastodon as amazing developer after developer lose their jobs or are having a very difficult time finding one.

This scare me to death. I’m aging, tired, and my brain definitely doesn’t work as well as it once did — it’s not as fast as before. Sure, I can do the work, but could I get past an interview? That’s the biggest fear.

Starbucks Stories & News

He shares the story of Starbucks® Pumpkin Spice Latte – which has become the company’s most popular seasonal beverage of all time – was created 11 years ago.

This is an article I stumbled on from 2014. I thought I’d share it since Starbucks is about to unleash Pumpkin Spick Latte season on us. It’s not a goto drink for me but I’ve had a few. My wife and daughters love them. Heck, they love all things pumpkin spice. Me? I’m just into good pumpkin pie. 🥧

Grace Kay • Business Insider

During an earnings call on Tuesday, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said that by the end of its five-year contract with the Teamsters union, the average full-time UPS driver would make about $170,000 in annual pay and benefits, such as healthcare and pension benefits.

This article is about how tech workers don’t like the thought of UPS drivers making more than them. I say more power to ‘em!

I’ve often thought it would be amazing to work in a coffee shop. Of course I’d never expect to make that kind of money but I have a feeling I’d enjoy the change. At least for a little while. 😃

Scarheel • Atlas Obscura

From 1810 to 1823, Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre were among the most notorious and successful privateers in the Americas. Like many great pirates, Jean Lafitte’s exact origins are shrouded in mystery, but he is believed to be born either in France or one of its Caribbean colony Saint-Domingue (now called Haiti) and he had a spectacular reputation for drinking, womanizing, and debauchery.

Who doesn’t like a little pirate lore? I know in real life these folks were scoundrels but we’ve romanticized them and there’s something about that skull and cross bones I like.

Tiny Apple Core

NASCAR + LGBTQ?

As I’ve mentioned here and other places I’ve gotten into NASCAR this year. It started with F1 then I started watching IndyCar which lead to NASCAR.

I like NASCAR for a couple reasons. It’s more an everyday Joan’s sport. You know, for us common folks. It’s not hoity-toity like F1 and I think the racing is just plain better. The modern NASCAR cars all share the same design as defined and built by NASCAR. The power trains are the only real difference from an engineering perspective so it’s all down to setup and, more importantly, the driver. But I digress.

There is something that bothers me about NASCAR. Fans seem to be very, uh, conservative. Meaning it’s all about God, country, and to many the Confederate flag and all the hate that comes with it. Bubba Wallace asked NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag and they did, it was a step in the right direction. All that said they have a long way to go, which brings me to why I started writing this.

Which team is progressive enough to put a Progress Pride Flag on the car as the entire livery? I think it would look amazing and start to break down that next wall in the sport.

Lindsay Graham - Asshole

HuffPost

“The American people can decide whether they want him to be president or not,” said Graham, a fierce critic of Trump before his 2016 election win who became one of his most loyal allies. “This should be decided at the ballot box, not a bunch of liberal jurisdictions trying to put the man in jail.”

U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham is off his rocker in so many way. First off, the people did decide in 2020 who they wanted as their President. Joe Biden won that election going away.

Second. You’re just as bad as all these other strong arm assholes who want to turn the country into a hellhole governed by the rich and powerful.

Donald J. Trump is a criminal, Mr. Graham. You know that. What does he have on you? Pictures of you and the pool boy or something?

Criminals need to be brought to Justice. Without laws we are not a nation. If Trump didn’t commit a crime he’ll prove that in court. Every American is afforded that right. Trump isn’t special.