Scripting News: Wednesday, January 10, 2024
It would be better if journalists did not gravitate to a Facebook-owned Twitter clone. #
For a guy who likes to write, I am probably not a lot better about writing docs than most other developers. We're supposed to leave a good trail behind us, but I've only managed to do that in certain ways. For example, I have standardized on a worknotes.md file for each of my projects and I'm pretty good about updating it. I also publish the OPML source of my code, which contains a lot more in the way of internal docs than the JavaScript files I publish alongside them, simply because the outline format lends itself to inline docs, and I have been doing that systematically for at least thirty years. And I now include the OPML source in most projects in a file called source.opml. There's a big comment at the top of each of the files at the top that explains. If you're interested, work backward through the directory of my repos. #I spend a lot of time thinking about words, and when I hear a phrase that seems wrong to me, I'll work on it until I figure out why it seems wrong and what would be a better way to express the actual idea. #
That said, I don't think Trump tried to "overturn an election."#
More accurately, he tried to "overthrow the government."#
Why I say that:#
Overturn could be something you do legitimately. If you are convicted of a crime, you could appeal it, be exonerated, and the correct verb would be overturn. Overturn doesn't convey the illegitimacy of what Trump tried to do. The criminality of it. The abhorrence of it, by American values. He tried to "overturn" our most sacred ritual, the transfer of power from one person to another, based on the vote of the people. Overthrow is a much better word for what was done. #
When you commit a crime, say for example killing someone, we don't say they tried to illegally use a weapon, that's too technical, we say they're "accused of murder." We focus on the consequences. There are lots of ways to illegally use a weapon, what matters is the intended result.#
There is always exactly one president, at all times, in all circumstances. It's spelled out in the 20th Amendment.#
On January 20, 2021, we had an actual peaceful transfer of power when Joe Biden took the oath, but the transfer actually took place before he took the oath, at 12PM exactly. #
You can also look at the government as a continuous thing, the only difference is there is a new person occupying the office of president. Same government, the one defined by the Constitution. Always on. #
So on January 6, 2021, the then-president Donald Trump, tried to destroy the government, replacing it with a new government, one that doesn't follow the Constitution. #
Linkblog items for the day.
US verges on vaccination tipping point, faces thousands of needless deaths: FDA. arstechnica.com
The block editor is still not a page builder. briancoords.com
Climate Change Is Driving a Sharp Drop in Snow Levels, Study Finds. nytimes.com
OpenAI debuts ChatGPT subscription aimed at small teams. techcrunch.com
"It was really the simplicity of that last part that struck me: the fact that feed readers still rely on an open format that's easily portable between apps and services." sixcolors.com
It would be better if journalists did not gravitate to a Facebook-owned Twitter clone. threads.net
Clarence Thomas and the self-pity of the rich. latimes.com
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