Jurassic Flea Circus

An eccentric billionaire invests his fortune in cloning ancient flea DNA from the Jurassic period, for a live-streamed flea circus for his YouTube channel. But sabotage and bad luck result in his fleas escaping their enclosure. They're not dangerous, but they're really really hard to find.

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 6 days ago

Hurricane Man

When a series of hurricanes terrorizes the town, only one man is brave enough to stand up to the storms. He's got a shotgun, a bible, and an attitude. The hurricanes don't stand a chance.

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 6 days ago
▲ 2 r/taoism

Initiation

What I've read about Daoism speaks to my open curiosity about reality and the impenetrable question of existence, where the Dao seems to honor that mystery rather than attack it (as my favorite philosophy books do). Meditation is a wonderful way to be present with that mystery. I try to find what exists between the incursions of sensory input, while also paying respect to those experiences as beings. And I never seem to find what really exists between those incursions of sensory input, the unifying "me."

But it's really just meditation and reading. I'm not a Daoist. And I've only just begun looking into it, so maybe I'll never want to become a Daoist. Nonetheless, I want to join a spiritual tradition and to take part in ancient practices that have been developed over centuries to interface with the forces of nature, to honor them and align myself with them, rather than casting about by myself. I admit that I love casting about by myself but I'm not so arrogant as to think that the rest of humanity has nothing to teach me.

So how far can I go just by reading books and meditating? I've read the Tao Te Ching and I'm reading The Secret of the Golden Flower. They're amazing books. But what's the normal process for a serious practitioner? Should I find a local Daoist "church"? Ottawa doesn't seem to have much to offer, but there must be something if I look hard enough.

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 2 months ago

Dr. Cat

He's a doctor but the twist is that he's secretly a cat. He has to hide the fact that he's a cat because then people won't take him seriously. But somebody finds out that he's a cat and they try to ruin his career. While he's in jail for being a cat, one of his patients dies because they don't have his care. The whole town rallies behind him. He finally wins when everybody finds out that the person doxxing him was secretly a dog.

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 4 months ago
▲ 89 r/SoftwareTips+1 crossposts

Which languages have an under-appreciated ecosystem of web development libraries and frameworks?

Are there any languages we don't usually associate with webdev, but where they have great libraries that deserve more attention?

So I'm not asking about the language itself. I'm asking about the tooling people have built for webdev in the language.

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 4 months ago

[deleted]: The Movie

I'm not sure what kind of movie it is because most of the scenes are just a black screen with the words "This scene has been removed by Reddit for violating our terms of service."

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 4 months ago
▲ 27 r/webdev

I'm wondering if I just have Shiny Object Syndrome or if my search is a legitimate one. I love a bunch of languages, and each time I start learning a new language I tell myself "I'm going to become an expert in this language and use it whenever I can justify it." But then I become competent at the language, start noticing the things that I don't love, and some other language catches my attention. The cycle begins again!

My history: After gaining some degree of competency with Java, JavaScript, and PHP, the first language I started to LOVE was C++. Now that's a language you can spend your whole life learning and still have tons to learn (I know it's the same for the others too, but my god it's really true of C++). But ugh the compiler and ugh headers and ugh trying to get modules to work and ugh manual memory management. And suddenly Rust started to look like my life's purpose.

So I read the Rust book and started making web apps, and wow, I absolutely love the ecosystem of web libraries for Rust. They are truly robust and effective, just a joy to use. I can easily say that it's my favorite web development language and ecosystem. I'll use PHP for small stuff, and Rust for anything else. But ugh it's so verbose. That's basically my only complaint. You can never just write code. It's all tedious jumping through hoops. A lot of the fun of programming is scattered into endless pattern matching and other very-responsible stuff that makes it a great language. Also ugh lifetimes.

So now I'm having these invasive thoughts like, "Your true life's purpose is oCaml. Stop this Rust project and do it in oCaml. I know it's not the most sensible language for this app, but my god that syntax is something I need to master."

It's partly a healthy curiosity about functional languages. I've become very enamored with declarative style programming in Rust and JavaScript. I just want to take that further and make oCaml the basis of my tech. I also want to use something less verbose than Rust.

The benefit is I keep learning new things and I can claim some breadth of knowledge. The downside is that the vertical shaft of my T-shaped learning isn't as deep as it could be if I stuck to a language and a framework. Rust has more appeal to employers, so that's a good place to acquire some depth. But to really understand functional programming would bring a whole new set of benefits. And I can only get there by obsessing over a functional language for a while. But maybe I'm just justifying my own lack of discipline.

So my question is: Does anybody have a story where you actually did this until you really DID find the language that keeps bringing you back? Or is this simply my own lack of discipline?

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 5 months ago
▲ 2 r/tea

I love puerh tea and I'm always trying different varieties. But I definitely prefer the ones with the more malty flavor, and they're slightly sweet. Is this flavor added or is it natural? It would be nice to know before I buy them which flavor profile I'm getting, to narrow my search.

reddit.com
u/returned_loom — 6 months ago